Chapter 12 - Job security, chuunibyou and other delusions

The room was hot, dark, and did not smell too good. The smell was mostly caused by the lack of air circulation coupled with the sweaty, unwashed clothes dropped on bed, chair and floor alike, not to mention the abandoned empty cups of ramen noodles. Lying on the bed, Yamcha wondered at what time exactly it all went so wrong.

He had at least a dozen candidates for consideration.

A light, rhythmic tapping sound came frome the door. Like a very tiny hand hitting it with a secret knock.

"Open up." moaned Yamcha, shifting slightly amidst the sheets. "It's unlocked."

The door creaked open, and Puar entered, floating, a shopping bag in his hand. The bag must have been quite heavy, because his hovering was quite uncertain, and he occasionally relented and fell a dozen centimetres, then slowly recovered his flying height.

"How are you feeling, Yamcha?" asked the cat. "Any better?"

"No. What did you buy?"

Puar dropped the bag in front of the fridge and started pulling the contents out.

"Some more ramen noodles - I found the spicy chicken ones, just as you like them! Then there's some bottles of beer, your favourite body building magazines, some fresh food, you know, fruit and vegetables..."

"You can have those." groaned the boy.

"...well, I thought it would do you some good to... nevermind. Then I wanted to get you something to cheer you up, and..."

With a slightly trembling hand and a smile, Puar handed her present to Yamcha. It was a baseball.

Autographed by him.

"This is a limited edition from that special event when I met the fans. Where did you get this?" inquired Yamcha, weighing and twiddling the ball in his hand. "I hope you didn't spend too much money for it. You know we're barely getting by."

"It was at the grocery store." admitted Puar. "In a bargain bin."

"Fantastic. This really cheers me up."

He casually tossed the ball aside. It zipped through the air and jammed itself in the wall the opposite side of the room.

"You know," said Yamcha, "I was thinking maybe I should try and go out. I don't want to, but I need the air. I feel like I'm losing my shape."

"It won't come out." announced Puar, trying to retrieve the ball stuck five centimetres deep in plasterboard.

"And it's time that I tried making my grand return. Yamcha's greatness can't be limited by these four walls any more." he continued, not sounding very convinced. "I guess."

"That is nice and all," said the cat, leaving the wall to come float over his shoulder, "but what if you were recognised? What if someone started bullying you? What if a mob gathered to lynch you? It could happen. They hate you. They all hate you."

His cat eyes shone bright, alone, in the penumbra of the room.

"Only I love you." he whispered.

"I know, Puar." replied Yamcha. "You're a very good friend."

The cat tilted his head a bit. "Yes, I am." he said.

"And you're probably right. I could handle any of those buffoons if they tried to hurt me, but I couldn't take the humiliation. Perhaps I should just let the whole thing blow off. People forget about this stuff. But we're also running out of money."

"Don't worry, Yamcha. I can make money if necessary."

"Guess so. Can you pass me those magazines you bought?"

The room fell in silence, as Puar arranged the items he had bought on the shelves and Yamcha flipped lazily through the pages of Man Up Now. He was about to put it down when he suddenly did a double take and started re-reading one of the last pages.

"Puar, listen to this." he said. "Do you practice martial arts? Do you believe your strength may exceed what physical limits would normally allow? Do you possess any unusual or supernatural abilities? If your answer to these questions is 'yes', then the Capsule Corporation Human Enhancement Program is looking for you! Headed by Bulma Briefs, daughter of the celebrated Dr. Briefs who established capsule science, the CCHEP aims at pushing our knowledge of the human body beyond all known limits. Be a part of the next scientific revolution, and redefine what peak performance looks like! This is a full time engagement. Reasonable pay, expenses, and room and board provided."

"Sounds like they're looking for lab rats." commented Puar.

"Don't be so negative. They're looking for special people. Like me! This is a great chance, Puar. I can re-establish my position, show everyone back in the League! And make some money in the meantime."

"Do you think they will accept you? They know who you are."

"You're worrying too much, Puar!" laughed Yamcha. "They're scientists, which means they're nerds. They don't care about sports and related news. I'm sure they will have never even heard of me."

Puar's voice got thinner. "I don't like this."

"I'm telling you, you're just overthinking it... I wonder if there's any info on this Bulma person..."

Yamcha grabbed a few past issues of magazines from a pile next to his bed. He remembered that a few months ago, Gym Junkies had ran a series of articles about useful tech for training at any time, and capsules were a big part of it. When he found it, there was a family photo of the whole Briefs household accompanying a cover story about Capsule Corporation. And upon seeing the picture, Yamcha said something that he would have never said just a few months before, proving how much city life and success could change a person.

"She's hot!" he exclaimed. "We're going."

The last three months had been so eventful for Yamcha that he had grown convinced that if his life was a novel, he was sure to be the protagonist. Problem was, he was not quite sure what the genre was supposed to be.

At first, it looked like a sports story. The boy from a seedy background had shown up in the city - not a dime in his pocket, only a flying magic cat for a companion and a lot of big dreams. He had joined a small time team, but as luck would have it, he had made the news as a curiosity when one of his home runs left the stadium entirely and crashed a window at the 50th floor of a nearby skyscraper. During his next match, multiple talent scouts were among the public, and almost immediately snatched him after the game. One wad of bills fanned under his nose later, and Yamcha was the designated hitter of the West City Dinos. His first appearance marked a spectacular victory for the team, with him personally scoring a home run first thing every single time he was at the box. His fame was explosive and instantaneous. Before he got to even play the next match, he had been already featured on the cover of multiple magazines and had become the public's darling.

That's when it all turned into a romantic comedy. Not too suprisingly, Yamcha's combination of sports successes and roguish good looks made him a fan favourite among the female crowd. Which led him to an interesting discovery: his severe anxiety problems when faced with a girl quickly became a non issue when said girl already thought he must be amazing by default and was all over him. All he needed to do was merely avoid embarrassing himself in some really stupid way, and the rest would work itself out just fine. He still managed to screw it up the first times, but soon he got the hang of it. One month in, he had a girlfriend. Two months in, he had more than one at the same time. Two and a half months in, his shyness was but a fading memory of the past, and he had grown confident enough to believe no conquest was off-limits for his irresistible charm.

And then it all crashed down and became a drama.

One day, the president of the West City Dinos received an anonymous call - from a probably disguised voice that he described as sounding "like a child's" - telling him to go back home, because someone had broken in. Deadly worried, since his daughter was supposed to be alone at home, he raced back and ran inside. There he found his best batter touching third base, and not in a baseball match.

The scandal was immense. Since the president's daughter was a minor, in order to avoid being arrested, Yamcha had to prove that he, himself, was only seventeen. Problem was, in order to be contracted in the league, he had lied about his age. In one strike, Yamcha both avoided jail and was summarily fired. When the storm died down, he was disgraced and humiliated. The League had even agreed on a universal ban for him. One of the unspoken reasons for this was, of course, that the teams had realised the championship had become far too boring after someone who could win any game without fail had joined the fray. Once the novelty of it had worn off, the sponsors had slowly come around to the realisation that this was actually terrible for their business.

And so Yamcha had found himself penniless, jobless, fallen from grace, and forced to hole up in a cheap rented apartment in the hopes that the outside world would as soon as possible find some other thing to be outraged about, and forget all about him.

So, walking in the lobby of the main Capsule Corporation research centre for his job interview, amidst giant holographic screens illustrating the incredible new technology that was being worked on by scientists inside that very building and blinking models of equipment whose purpose he couldn't even begin to understand, it was not hard to imagine that the next chapter of his life would have a science fiction twist.

"...how dare you insult the best pupil of the Ancient School of Vega! You will hear from us again!"

The hulking man violently shut the door behind him, taking care to make a great show of his absolute indignation. A dozen pairs of eyes, belonging to some of the other hopefuls sitting in the waiting room, raised to meet his glance - some more directly, others sneakily, from up a magazine they were reading or under the brim of a hat. A few completely ignored him.

Yamcha tried to give the impression that he was doing the same.

"What happened? Did they reject you?" asked one of the others.

"This is a travesty!" roared the man. "I was judged by this woman who obviously gets nothing about martial arts. She simply had me punch some machine with some phony scientific apparatus. Said I was too weak - me! - and I rated only 0.02 Gokus. What the hell is a Goku, anyway?"

There was some murmuring around the room. The muscly guy left, indignant, and invited anyone who was a serious martial artists and did not want to be a disgrace to their dojo to leave us well. This, it was agreed, was a very wise stance. Which made it all the more surprising that, once he left, everyone went back to their seats and kept waiting, chatting among themselves about how much could a Goku be. They seemed to agree that it probably wasn't much.

Next to Yamcha was sitting a group of four that stood out even among this bunch of often rather eccentric-looking martial artists and athletes. Four figures completely covered, head to toe, in long hooded cloaks that hid them from sight entirely. And the one sitting closest to Yamcha was now chuckling softly. He had a chilling, grating voice.

"These chumps don't get it," he said, "they don't have a chance. What the Program people are looking for is something special. And they sure don't have it."

"Uhm, yeah. But we do, right?" Yamcha wasn't in the habit of chatting up scary cloaked strangers that sounded like they'd risen from a grave rather than a bed. He didn't feel like it could really do him any good.

"Well, we sure do. Am I right, friends?"

All four the hooded guys variously nodded and laughed approvingly.

"As for you... we shall see, I guess. But your little friend there sure looks like they may have seen something of the true face of the world."

Puar, who until now had been perched upon Yamcha's shoulder, floated right in front of the stranger's face. "Please leave Yamcha alone." he hissed, softly.

"To concentrate!" intervened the boy, hurriedly. "I need to concentrate before the interview. I mean, I'm sure I could pass with one hand tied behind my back, but I wouldn't want to show anything less than the best that I can do."

The hooded figure had a hysterical fit of laughter. "You're confident. Good! Maybe you really are special. This could be your door to a new reality."

"Mr. See-Through is invited to the interview." suddenly said a speaker, somewhere on the ceiling. "Can Mr. See-Through please come forward and enter the office."

"Brothers, it is my moment." said another of the hooded figures, with a deep, raspy voice.

"Show them all the secret truth of this world." whispered the one next to Yamcha.

The other nodded and slowly got up from their chair. Then, with a theatrical gesture, under the eyes of Yamcha and all the other applicants sitting around, they grabbed the folds of their cloak, violently pulled it away and let it fall to the ground - revealing that it had been empty all along. A few people gasped. One, very discreetly, walked out of the room not to be seen again. One second later, the door to the office opened and closed seemingly on its own.

Yamcha blinked a couple of times.

"What the hell was that?" he asked, pointing alternatively at the cloak, the door, and the empty air in between.

"That," said the stranger next to him, "was your first glimpse into the great unknown."

The office was really one of the underground labs, repurposed for the occasion. A small corner had a desk, chairs, a water cooler and other conveniences arranged together and separated from the rest by a screen. The rest of the office had machinery of various sorts, including a stripped down version of the ki scanner to which a machine with a cushion designed to measure the strength of punches thrown at it had been added. With the full help - technical and financial - of Dr. Briefs, these modifications had been a matter of a few days.

While waiting for the next applicant, Bulma re-read her notes about the previous one. Not that there was much to write down - everyone up until now had been completely unremarkable. Mostly regular jocks, some with some real talent probably by human standards, but not quite what she was looking for. She slumped back in the chair and adjusted her glasses. They weren't prescription glasses, she didn't need them; she just thought they made her look older and more professional.

The next applicant was not here yet.

She pushed a button next to a microphone on her desk. "Mr. See-Through," she repeated, "can you please come forward and..."

"I am already here." said a coarse voice. It had clearly come from inside the room, and yet, no one was in the room.

Mr. See-Through, what a stupid name, had thought Bulma. Maybe not that stupid, though, she realised now.

"Well, would you like then to come forward," she said, loudly, unsure what part of the empty space in front of her to address, "and show yourself?"

No answer. Sound of steps. An irregular, panting breath.

She slowly slid her hand under the desk, where she had stashed a few self-defense weapons, just in case some kind of weirdo showed up to her interview. This really looked like the right time had come.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Who knows." came the voice. It was too low to be natural - whoever was talking was trying to dissimulate it, or perhaps sound scarier. "I am not of this world. I am a shadow that walks among the living, an emptiness among humanity. No one can track me. No one can see me coming. Maybe I am here."

More steps, quick.

"Maybe there."

Steps again. Panting. Close, this time.

"Maybe right next to..."

The pepper spray must have hit him in full face, because his scream immediately rose a couple of octaves over his previous pitch. In fact, it had been so precise it was now possible to see his traits here and there thanks to a fine mist of red that had covered them all.

"Maybe you shouldn't talk and make noise when trying to sneak on someone." said Bulma, coldly. "Now you have five minutes to convince me of why I should hire you and three to convince me not to call the police."

"I'm sowwy!," cried the voice, that had miraculously gone back to a way more normal human tone, and was now broken by sneezing and coughing, "I wanted to impress you, to make sure you would take me..."

"Well, I am not impressed. I'm looking for people with talents to study, not circus performers."

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am."

"Let's start again. What is your name?"

"May I first... err..."

Bulma thought about it for a second and nodded. "Sure. The toilet is that way."

"Thanks!"

There was a distinct sound of running across the room, then the sound of copious amounts of water being poured from the tap came from the washroom as the applicant washed his face. Finally, calmer and coughing less than before, he came back to sit in front of Bulma.

"I am See-Through the Invisible Man." said the air in front of her desk, still wheezing a bit.

"I meant your real... ah, nevermind. What is it that you can do?"

"Well, I can fight a little. And I am invisible."

"Can you turn visible again?"

"I've never managed it, no."

That's harsh, thought Bulma. No surprise he was a little out of it.

"I'm... sorry to hear that. But it's certainly an interesting ability. Do you know if it's magical in nature? Is it learned or innate?"

The other thought a bit about it. "I don't know really. I just woke up one day when I was eight years old, and I was invisible."

"I'll write it down as acquired for unknown causes then. Do you have any other abilities? Can you turn objects that you touch invisible too?"

"Oh, no, ma'am."

"Wait a second." Bulma squinted. "Are you naked?"

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"...I wanted to impress you." repeated the voice.

"OH FOR GOODNESS' SAKE!"

"...for you see, our previous employer did not fully appreciate the extent of our arcane powers. She did not reward them as handsomely as they deserved."

Yamcha nodded automatically at this point as the stranger next to him kept talking, and talking, and talking. For a shadowy figure with a cloak hiding his face, he was remarkably chatty.

"The old hag would make us fight in order and pay us for every warrior we defeated." grumbled another of the cloaked figures, by far the tallest and most massive of all. "But almost no one would ever make it to me. Most would just run in fear after the first fights. We got a shit deal."

"And so, here we are." concluded the other.

The door that connected the waiting room to the office swung open on its own again, and excited steps ran towards them.

"Brothers," said See-Through, "I have been chosen!"

"Oh, joyous day! That us children of the night may be acknowledged by the world! What did she ask you?"

"Just some details about my invisibility. Then she had me punch a machine to measure my strength. Said I scored 0.05 Gokus. Do you guys know what's a Goku?"

Three hooded heads, and Yamcha's, shook in unison.

"Well, anyway, she said my strength was barely enough to be interesting, but my powers more than made up for it."

"Mr. Fangs!" announced the usual speaker. "Can Mr. Fangs please come to the office."

"Oh, it's my turn!"

The only one of the group of hooded people who hadn't spoken yet got up and, in a theatrical swirl, tossed aside his cloak, covering another applicant's head in the process. Ignoring the protests, Fangs posed and flexed, showing off his muscles. Or rather, his lack of them. He looked like a slim, frail man with a sickly complexion wearing boxing gloves. His lips were somewhat retracted and his teeth pointy and pearly white.

"Fangs goes to the battle!" he announced, proudly. "Fear my unlimited power!"

"So, you're a vampire."

"Yes."

"Why are you out in the light of day?"

"Oh, it doesn't bother me."

"Are you undead? Did you die and were reborn as a vampire?"

"I just woke up like this one day."

"Can you turn someone else into a vampire by biting them?"

"No."

"Do you need to suck blood to live?"

"Ugh, no! I tried, it tastes terrible."

"Can you survive any wound except for a wooden stake through your heart?"

"I don't think so."

"Do you reflect in mirrors?"

"Yes, I can do that!"

"Vampires shouldn't."

"Oh."

"Do you strongly dislike garlic?"

"Sure. Garlic is yucky."

Bulma sighed and adjusted her glasses with a very judgemental gesture.

"Mr. Fangs," she said, "at the moment it looks like all you have is a magically-induced case of food intolerance, at best. If you are a vampire, what can you do?"

The thin man got up and lifted his gloved fists to the ceiling. Then he emitted a fierce scream, with that squeaky, unpleasant voice of his, and disappeared in a puff of smoke. When the smoke rarefied, in his place was a small bluish bat, furiously flapping its wings to stay afloat.

One moment and one puff of smoke later, the bat returned to be a very skinny boxer.

"Well, that is moderately impressive." commented Bulma. "Reminds me of a pig I've met once. Now, if you would like to take place inside that machine..."

Picking up the newspaper from the magazine table and opening it up in front of him, Yamcha had found out, was a good way to give to the hooded guy the impression that he was really busy doing something else, which had shut him up. Now, however, there still was the issue of killing time until he was called to the interview, so he thought he might as well try to read it.

PIG IN THE BRIG! Serial molester condemned to ten years of jail sent to West City penitentiary.

Yamcha quickly browsed through the article trying to make sense of the title, but it was hard to get any meaningful information among all the sensationalistic drivel. There was a picture of a handcuffed small anthropomorphic pig in a striped jail uniform being led by cops into a police van. The caption read, Not going to pork anyone anymore, will ya?

"I know this guy!" said Puar, suddenly.

Yamcha looked up to his right, where the cat was hovering. "You know the pig sexual maniac?"

"Sure. We had school together, near the place where I first met you. He learned to transform too - but he has always been an idiot and could not hold up for more than five minutes."

"Huh. It's a small world, isn't it?"

Fangs came out of the office. He raised a fist in sign of victory and was greeted with cheers and a rapid fire of questions from his three friends.

"I scored 0.07 Gokus." he was explaining a few minutes afterwards. "She says she got me mostly for my transformation power though. She really hopes to see someone strong now."

"Well, then it's my turn." said the biggest guy in the group, getting up.

Almost on cue, the speaker announced that Mr. Bandages was now requested in the office. The man removed his cloak like his companions had, and revealed a massive hulking body entirely wrapped in, well, bandages. Yamcha couldn't help but notice that these guys' naming scheme really wasn't that original.

The mummy - hard to call him anything else - walked into the office, having to even bow a little to pass under the door. Yamcha was beginning to think now - how many openings were there? These guys all looked competent and threatening as Hell.

"Don't worry," said Puar, as if he could read his thoughts, "you will get hired. You're way better than these circus freaks."

"I don't know, man." he tossed aside the newspaper for good. "These guys all have something special. What do I have?"

The little cat's inscrutable eyes fixated on his.

"You're Yamcha," he said, "and that's enough."

After the invisible man and a vampire, Bulma was now face to face with a bona fide living mummy. Or rather, she suspected, with a huge, muscular man who for some unfathomable reason felt like going around completely wrapped in linen bandages.

Either way, she didn't feel too at ease.

"Welcome, mister," Bulma cleared her throat, "Bandages. I suppose you're a friend of the other two, uh..."

"Freaks?" suggested the man, with a grin.

"I was looking for a more sensitive word." said the girl.

"Ha! No problem, miss. We know what we are. We all got a curse on us, no two ways about it. Me, I'm just rolling with it. This is pretty awesome, once you get used to it."

"I'm glad to hear that. And 'this' is exactly, in your case...?"

"What, you don't got any eyes?" the man squinted and leaned forward, way too close.

"Huh. The whole... being a mummy thing?"

The other nodded and chuckled. "The being a mummy thing. Pretty handy."

And to prove it, he extended his right arm - and one of his bandages unwrapped. It extended up to the water cooler, deftly grabbed one cup, put it in place, then pressed the tap long enough to fill it with water and brought it back.

"Mouth as dry as the desert's sand." the man excused himself, still grinning. "You understand."

Bulma took notes and nodded. "Remarkable. Just to make this clear, you are actually a dessiccated, mummified corpse that came back to life or...?"

"Same thing, miss." the man put down the empty cup and burped loudly. Bulma winced. "I was a normal human once. Then one day I woke up and I could do... this. With fabric - only linen, really. I didn't immediately understand its significance. Then my friend Spike helped me get it."

The girl quickly checked another sheet of paper. "Spike is the next one that I have to interview?"

"Yeah, probably. We all applied together. See, Spike really gets these things - the supernatural, all that stuff. He made me think. What's wrapped in a lot of linen? Mummies. So I saw the truth."

Bulma tried to remain as composed and professional as she could while the man leaned closer again, deadly serious. "Which is?"

"There are tombs in my land, miss. Ancient, ancient tombs and ruins. And the ancient peoples would turn their dead - you guessed it - into mummies. I am not myself any more. One of those old tormented souls has come back to haunt me, to possess me. I can feel him inside me. Sometimes it's like he's screaming his name, except with no voice, so I can't hear anything. And he has granted me power."

He went back to leaning against the back of the seat, and to his grin.

"And I'm pretty grateful for it. Thought I needed a body large enough for two, so I trained to hell and back. Now I'm really strong."

"Regarding that, would you please enter that machine on the side of the office?"

The mummy man followed Bulma's gesture to the scanner and took position. The new setup made it look like the strength of the applicant would be measured by some kind of pressure sensor upon punching, but that was only part of it, and not even the most relevant. The really important thing was the ki emission measurement. Bulma had calibrated it to Goku's base value, though there were still a lot of questions about how reliable such a measure would be since she didn't know the details of how the emission worked. For example, was it directly proportional to the amount of circulating ki, or was the law more complicated than that? Did it need to be normalised to body mass, or surface area? Without answers yet, the measure could only be a rough guideline. Still, if someone had finally scored at least in the ballpark of what Goku could reach...

Bandages threw a mighty punch at the machine. The metal creaked, the fake leather ripped, a puff of padding came out from the hole. The screen plotting the 3D schematic of monitored ki emissions flared up in a network of bright white nerves.

"You scored 1.1 Gokus." said Bulma. "You're hired."

"I did it boys!"

More cheers and clapping came from the group of the previously cloaked guys (only one was still all covered up). The mummy and the vampire fist bumped in what would have made for a very unusual heavy metal album cover image.

"I am proud of you!" announced solemnly the guy who still wore the cloak, the one who had been chatting up Yamcha all that time. "The spirit of Ramnothep that lives in you gave you the strength."

The mummy laughed. "Yeah, Ramm... well, the old guy was real nice to me. I put out some real power! Told you scrawny guys I'd take the prize home."

"Now I am almost worried for one such as myself." said the other. "I can not compare in strength to you and my power... it is too dark and dangerous to unleash on a whim."

"Nah, you'll be fine. See, I asked the girl, she said she's still got money to get two candidates, tops. 'cos I was worried for you and all. So there's no way she's going to find two options better than you among all these losers. And you're going next anyway!"

"I would hope so. Us denizens of the darkness should not be separated!"

Two more openings, and one was almost sure to be taken by the last member of this gang whose previous employer, Yamcha suspected, had to be the owner of a circus. This didn't shut down his possibilities entirely, but considering that it seemed to be first come, first served, he could have a stroke of bad luck if he didn't come immediately after. Also, this meant something else.

"Is something the problem, Yamcha?" asked Puar, landing on his shoulder, away from the ears of the freaks next seat. "Are these people bothering you?"

"That's not it, Puar." he shook his head. "But you've heard what they said. Just two more openings. They'll take one, and then it's going to be only one of us."

Puar tilted his head. "I'm not following."

"Well, Puar, what I mean is, we can't both be hired, right? Even though I'm strong and you have magical abilities, so I was hoping that..."

"But I did not plan to be hired." said the cat.

"I know, I know, but I still added your name to the application. Thought it was a waste when we could be earning two salaries instead of only one. Not to mention, the application said the hospitality does not include keeping pets or guests."

Puar immediately froze. His mouth stiffened in a sour expression. "Let's go discuss this in private." he said.

They went to the bathroom right as the speaker was calling Mr. Spike to the interview, and the last of the four removed his cloak revealing that underneath he was wearing a ridiculous devil costume, complete with wings, horns and tail. Yamcha shook his head as he closed the door behind him.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but that's how it is."

"I'm not getting separated from you." said Puar.

"Puar, I need this job, you know how I've been living these last days and..."

"I'm not getting separated." insisted the cat, with an extremely final tone.

Yamcha sat on a toiled, grabbing his head between his hands, and sighed. "So? What do you expect me to do about it?"

"You don't have to quit. We don't need to be separated even if you get the job."

The cat flew out of the door, looked around, then slowly closed the door, then checked again from the top of the stall to make sure they were alone.

"I have an idea." he said.

"So you are...?"

"Spike the Devil." "Devil. Right. You're the last one of the group."

"The children of the night. The denizens of the darkness. Yes."

"Oh, that's how you call yourselves?"

"It's not an official name. It's just what we are."

"I see. So I imagine you too possess some kind of ability that you acquired, when, huh..."

"I was ten years old. And yes, I found out one day that I had been overtaken by the darkness, and gifted and cursed with its power."

"Uh, sure, I'm sorry I guess. Would you like to demonstrate?"

"I can't."

"Oh. Why is that?"

"My power is not for show or entertainment. It is far too dark. Whenever I unleash it, I unleash death."

Bulma took a moment to consider this. Until three interviews ago, she would have dismissed this claim as the ramblings of an innocuous buffoon. Now the ramblings and the buffoon parts remained, but she wasn't so sure about the innocuous one any more. So she put a hand under the desk where the weapons were, as naturally as possible, just to stay on the safe side.

"And what is it that makes your power so deadly?" she asked. "For the sake of knowledge."

"Knowledge is a dangerous thing, miss." said the devil, smiling wryly. "And knowledge of this sort, you may wish you had never received. Nevertheless, I see that fate demands that I reveal my secrets today. Perhaps it is for the best that I may share this burden, for once."

"Is your power activated by talking about it?" asked the girl.

"Nay, miss. Nothing of the sort."

"Then I don't see any immediate danger. If you wish to get a shot at the job..."

"But of course. You see, this power is the power of Hell itself coursing through me."

Bulma grimaced and hoped this idiot didn't really know what he was talking about.

"I possess the ability to fire a beam - a Devil Beam, as it is - which upon striking the impure, will resonate with the evil in their souls, and make them explode. You see the irony! My own enemies' malice is their ultimate demise."

"Mr. Spike," asked Bulma, calmly, "may I ask you how many enemies have you smitten in this manner?"

The man was horrified. "No one! I'm not a murderer."

"I see. So how can you know it works? Have you tried it on animals?"

"I have certainly used it on animals, back when I was a fool who did not understand the weight of his own power," Spike nodded, "but it did not do anything, for animals do not have evil souls. All it does is hit them and leave a glowing aura around them for a few moments."

The girl shook her head and sighed. "I see. And you know that it would actually surely kill any evil person it struck because...?"

"I can feel it!" exclaimed the Devil, scandalised. "Whenever I fire the beam, the dark power... the infernal malice... the Hellish Lord that I am channelling through my body, demanding his due! In no way I can doubt of the tremendous effects that it would have, should it strike anyone but the purest of souls!"

"Who even decides who counts as pure, exactly?" Bulma set aside her notes, irritated. All this talking of Hell and demons was not doing great things for her mood. "And what evidence do you have that your power isn't simply to surround whoever is hit by your beam with light?"

"I need no evidence." said the other, indignant. "Would you submit herself to my Devil Beam to prove me wrong?"

She thought about it for a second.

"Good point." she concluded. "Ok, evil beam it is. Can you please enter the machine you can see over there...?"

And finally came Yamcha's turn to enter the office. Spike the Devil had come out celebrating like all his friends before him, and the boy suddenly realised that his only two scenarios at this point were either not getting the job, or becoming a colleague of these weirdos, and he wasn't sure which option was better. Probably the one that didn't leave him to die of starvation alone in a filthy room for rent, if he wanted to be honest with himself, so giving a good impression on the interview was still paramount. He got up from his seat and tried to swagger onwards as confidently as possible. While walking past the door, however, he nervously played around with his left wristband.

This was not, as a casual observer would have imagined, because it was some kind of acquired habit he used to unload stress, or because the wristband was a good luck charm. It was, instead, because his real left wristband was in his pocket, and what he wore now around his arm was his best and currently only friend, Puar, transformed into an article of sports clothing as an infiltration strategy. Yamcha had noted that Puar's idea was indeed quite clever, but pointed out that there was no reason to put it in practice right away - it would make far more sense for Yamcha to get the job and then, with all calm, smuggle Puar inside the complex where he would reside later, far from the eyes of Bulma Briefs, a girl that all sources reported to be insanely smart. Puar, however, had insisted that he didn't want to leave Yamcha alone at such an important moment, and that he could provide assistance, for example by squeezing gently his wrist to suggest answers to Bulma's questions. Yamcha did not think this would help much - this wasn't an exam, after all, and all they had managed to agree upon as a code was that one squeeze meant NO and two meant YES - but it's not like he didn't feel somewhat pleased at the idea of having a familiar presence next to him during the ordeal, so he ended up going along with it. He really didn't have it in him to every say no to his little furry friend anyway.

"Please, come in."

The office looked more like a corner of a workshop that had been repurposed for the task - not exactly what he had expected from the sleek, futuristic Capsule Corporation research centre. The girl sitting at the desk in front of him might have been more or less his age, though her glasses made her look a bit older. She also was, indeed, quite hot.

Yamcha really hoped she wasn't big on the whole "reading newspapers" thing.

Bulma grabbed a copy of his application. "You are Mr. Yamcha, am I right?"

"I am a Yamcha, yes." said the boy.

"Are you implying there are others?" asked the girl. "It sounds quite an unusual name, you know. Should I be aware of it?"

"Yes!" One squeeze. "I mean, no! But you should know it from now on. Because you should know me, your future employee."

She didn't look impressed.

"Whatever. Mr. Yamcha, this has been a long day, and I only have one more spot to offer, so I'll have to be selective. What are your powers? What do you bring to the table? Tell me why I should hire you, in a few words."

"Uhm, sure." The boy cleared his throat. "Ok, so, I am Yamcha of the Dojo of the Wolf..."

"Oh, right. Of course there's a werewolf too." sighed Bulma.

"Ah, no, I'm not with those guys! It's just a martial arts school. We have a wolf theme going on, we take inspiration from nature, ancient wisdom passed down for generations and so on. I haven't studied with them in years, but I still use their moves. My Wolf Fang Fist..."

"Yes, yes, but I'm not interested in the details." interrupted him the girl. "If I hire you, you can discuss that stuff with Goku to your heart's content. What about these previous job experiences you mention in your resume? You're not very specific."

"Well, I lived in the Red Lizard Desert, and was, uh..." Yamcha looked for words. "...a small independent import-export operator."

"I did not know there was much trade going on through the Red Lizard Desert." noted Bulma. "Last time I passed over there, it was a barren wasteland."

"Yes, business was not very good. After that I moved to this city and was a successful... ouch!" The squeeze made him catch his tongue at the last minute. It was unfair how he couldn't mention his best experience without also revealing his greatest shame.

"A successful coach." he corrected himself. "Of baseball. For children. Not professionals at all."

"Mr. Yamcha," Bulma crossed her hands in front of her face and leaned forward, "let me be frank. Your application, on its own, would not have done much to grant you this interview. Then again, what I'm looking for is hard to measure through pen and paper, so I've been taking my chances. With those people, earlier, the risk paid off - but at least they mentioned that they had been hired to fight in private tournaments in the past, so they had something to bring them to my attention. With you, however? What do you think could have possibly prompted me to call you here today?"

Yamcha felt her eyes fixated on him and shifted uncomfortably. Again, he fiddled with his wristband. Puar didn't squeeze or give any other signs of life.

"Was it my baseball..." he started.

"Of course it was your baseball career!" snapped Bulma. "The one during which you achieved consistently completely superhuman feats - something that I would have noticed earlier if in those same weeks I hadn't been completely absorbed by my research to the point of utter detachment from all human affairs. The one that was terminated in equal parts by your own stupidity and lack of self-control and by the League's commercial interests, in a rather shameful incident that I do not care in the slightest about but that it is the height of idiocy for you to assume I am not aware of. I am familiar with the notion of background checks, you know."

Yamcha blinked. "So... you don't mind?"

"Not really." she shrugged. "Nothing illegal happened, and I'm not one for gossip. If you have the abilities that I expect you to have, that's all that really matters. But the one thing I'm going to need from you if I am supposed to have you in my team is that you be honest."

"Ha, of course!" laughed Yamcha, relieved, letting go of the magical cat he was carrying around concealed as a band of cotton. "No problem there."

"Perfect. Then, you can enter that machine down there, and I'll measure your strength."

The boy walked into the scanner. He saw what looked like an ordinary punch machine - such a crude mechanism, every true martial artist would sneer at its naivete - but what he had never seen before was such an elaborate chamber surrounding it. He guessed it must have been all additional measuring equipment, but like hell he could figure out what it did. All he could say was that it looked science-y.

"Am I positioned right?"

"Yes, perfect! Please punch the machine with all your strength now."

Yamcha snickered. All his strength, she said. This was the time to amaze her. He flexed backwards, put his hands in position in front of his body, like claws ready to tear the prey's flesh asunder.

"Wolf Fang Fist!" he screamed, as he jerked forward and struck the machine with his right palm.

The machine emitted a soft 'ding' sound.

"0.95 Gokus." said Bulma, from her desk, without even raising her eyes from the notes she was writing. "Quite impressive, but not the highest I've seen today. There's good chances that you will be chosen, Mr. Yamcha, but I would first like to interview the other candidates. We will let you know."

The dreaded words had been said. Yamcha racked his brains for something, any idea he could pull off at the last minute to reverse this situation. He could not go back to being an unemployed recluse. He would go crazy in a matter of days, at this point.

"Oh, that's too bad!" he finally said, nonchalantly. "Guess you're not interested in seeing my magical abilities, then?"

Bulma's typing at the computer stopped.

"What magical abilities?" she asked. "You didn't mention anything about them in your application."

"It's because I was worried it would feel like a sham." the boy explained, leaving the scanner and going back to the office. "Handsome, strong and with mystical powers? You would have thought I was just making stuff up!"

"What could possibly give me that thought, right? You have two minutes. Demonstrate."

Sarcastic as she may be, she was falling for it. Yamcha extended his left arm in front of him, dramatically.

"My power," he announced, very loudly and clearly, "is to transform my left wristband into anything I wish it to become!"

"That seems oddly specific." objected Bulma.

"I know, right? Magic's crazy like that. Who knows what mysteries that science can not even begin to fathom are beyond the barrier of the mystical..."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. We'll see what science can fathom. Demonstration, now."

"Ok. Here we go."

Yamcha took a deep breath, squinted, tensed his arm, and generally looked very focused.

"Wristband," he screamed, "transform into a baseball!"

Puar got the drift. With a puff of smoke, the next second Yamcha was holding a baseball in his hand. He tossed it up and down a couple of times, with a confident smile; then he tossed it past Bulma, making it bounce against the wall behind her. The girl made an effort not to look fazed, but he could tell her heart had missed a beat there. He had her.

"So," he asked, while his wristband went back to the original form, "am I hired?"

Bulma thought about it for a second. She looked at him, head to feet, as if this could help her figure out what the trick was, in case there was one. She clicked her tongue, annoyed.

"You're hired," she concluded, "come back to this building tomorrow morning with your stuff, and you'll undergo your induction."

And now, for the coup de grace.

"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Do you care to join me for a drink to celebrate our new fruitful work relationship, then?"

One moment later, Yamcha didn't know what hurt more - her hysterical laughter, or the pain of Puar almost crushing his left wrist.