Chapter 16 - King Wukong

Bulma, her parents, and Yamcha were sitting in a bedroom. It was night outside, and all communication lines from the house had been cut in order to isolate the now hopelessly deranged master computer that controlled most of its functionality from the outside world. The kitchen had just exploded and may still be burning; another room was full of poisonous gas. Somewhere in that building was a crazed creature able to transform at will and waiting for its chance to strike at them and kill them - except Yamcha, for whom it felt a perverse form of love. And outside was Bulma's best friend, most likely about to transform into an as of yet unknown but surely terrifying giant ape monster.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, not the most pleasant way to spend the evening. Bulma found herself wondering whether it could qualify as the worst situation she'd ever been in. That this was even a question said a lot about how crazy her life had gotten recently.

When her phone rang, everyone jumped up. Yamcha reacted quickly and smashed a bedside lamp with a fist, then played it cool as if nothing had happened. Given the situation, Bulma would not have bothered answering, had she not seen that the call came from Goku.

"Goku, what's happening?" she said. "Is it all right? Are you still in the gym?"

"No." answered the voice. It was raspy, raucous, and broken by heavy breathing. "I am on the kintoun. Flying north of the City. Been going straight for... thirty seconds now."

Bulma tensed up and put the phone in loudspeak mode for everyone else. "Ok, I see. You're doing the right thing. Are you out of the inhabited centre yet?"

"Yes, but it's still... too close." the kid groaned in pain. "I'll keep going... until I can. Bulma, in case... I still have time to... myself..."

"NO!" shouted the girl. She had thought of that, and knew he would think of it too. "No, look, we can do this. I'll send help. Just get as far as possible! Stay focused! Keep it under control as much as you can."

"Easy... to say... ARRGH!" Goku screamed, and midway through, his pain became rage, and his scream a roar. "I can't... think..."

Everyone in the bedroom held their breath.

"I don't want to!" pleaded the kid.

Then there was a crunching sound, and the call abruptly ceased.

No one managed to speak for almost a minute.

"You do realise," said finally Bulma, slowly, looking Yamcha in the eyes, "that I'm going to fucking kill that cat friend of yours for all of this, yes?"

The boy nodded. Panchy seemed bothered by Bulma's choice of language, but her husband gestured that she'd probably better not say anything.

The girl drew a deep breath. "Right. So, planning time. Yamcha, you go wake up our merry quartet of freaks. I know it's not technically in their contract, but I hope they'll feel like saving the city from destruction is worth their time. Anyway don't waste too much time trying to convince them. Pick up whoever wants to come and go north. Intercept Goku as far as possible out of the city. Don't engage if you're not sure of what you're doing! Don't fight him head on. Try to distract him, slow him down, anything. You need to keep him busy until the Moon sets, or until we figure out how to make him revert."

"This sounds dangerous." commented the fighter.

"It is. But it's also the only way of making sure no one dies because of your little cat buddy." replied Bulma. "Besides, think about it. You save the city tonight, that's the one thing that may rehabilitate your name in front of everyone. We'll make sure to omit the part you played in causing the incident, of course."

Yamcha sighed and nodded, resigned.

"Leave now. We'll go into biological quarantine, which means everything will be sealed. We won't be able to communicate any more."

The boy couldn't believe his ears. "Are you serious? Will you stay locked in here, against... him?"

"If it wants to kill me, I won't getter a better playing field." Bulma shrugged. "I'll manage. I usually do."

Yamcha didn't find it polite to point out that, despite her apparent bravado, she was shaking. All he could muster was a faint smile and a thumbs up.

"I'll be back. For my severance pay, I guess." he said.

Bulma laughed. "That one will go into fixing the damages you caused. Come on, go already!"

With a last goodbye gesture, Yamcha climbed on the windowsill and jumped down. Bulma nodded towards her father, and he pushed a button on a remote. An alarm started sounding in every room of the house. All windows closed automatically and were sealed by metallic curtains; the air circulation system shut down. Of all the security measures Dr. Briefs had installed in the house due to his experimental activities, this was one of the most extreme. It wasn't meant to save the occupants; it was meant to preserve anyone outside from dying as well.

"Honey," asked Panchy, "what's going to happen?"

"We'll be alright." said Bulma, clutching her gun. "First thing, I'll lead you guys to the panic room in the basement."

"What? No!" shouted her father. "You can't just lock us away in a safe place while you fight that thing! You'll die!"

"If it makes you feel better, it won't be safe." replied the girl. "At best, enough of an annoyance that Puar will focus on me. Dad, you're already in bad shape. Mom looks like she's about to have a nervous fit. I'm not letting you be around. Frankly, you'd probably be a liability."

The old man sighed. "You may be right. But at least promise me you'll be as smart and careful as you can be."

"I'll work on the careful part." Bulma smiled bitterly. She put her hand on the door knob.

"And it's two floors down to the basement. Grab everything that could be a weapon in this room, because you may still get your chance to fight."

The wound had been superficial, but it hurt, and it bled. His new form had not been thought up much for taking punishment, it was all attack - so that hit probably had more effect than it should have. Puar had withdrawn in a small, isolated corner of the house to recover, hidden under a shelf in the form of a cockroach. Transforming back was easy enough - the new form was as good as new. But the pain, the shock, remained, and needed some time to heal.

As an insect he had been too small to host any electronics that allowed him to interface with Caroline. Without that constant presence and his ability to rely on it to offload most of his chaotic thoughts, Puar felt lost. The way looked less clear, more uncertain. He only knew he wanted to make Yamcha happy, but had a hard time remembering how he was supposed to do that. Carefully, making sure that no one was around, Puar hazarded going back to his cat form, enhanced by a few additions. He closed his eyes and connected with the computer. The touch of the knowledge and computational power he had grown used to soothed him. It was like finding back his clarity after a long drug-induced haze.

He was slightly displeased to find that a lot of his surveillance capability had been destroyed - most cameras on the first and ground floor of the house were gone. Bulma and the others had to be in one of the rooms that weren't covered any more, because he couldn't see them. Still, he had plenty of possibilities to plan the next attack.

He changed into an alien form - an unusually flat snake, or perhaps an extremely large flatworm - and slid under the door, with only as much as a whisper.

"Wake up! Everyone!"

Yamcha stormed through the dorm, knocking furiously at all the rooms. When Bandages got out of the room, still rubbing his eyes, everyone was already gathered in the hall. He passed next to See Through's floating pajamas to come closer to the origin of the ruckus.

"What's goin' on?" he asked Fangs.

The vampire shrugged. "Apparently Goku transformed into a cat and a giant Bulma is trying to kill a gorilla."

"That's not what I said at all!" Yamcha, clearly in an altered state, clutched his fists. "I said..."

Spike silenced him with a solemn gesture and took his place at the centre of the small crowd.

"Companions in darkness," he started, "while I had not shared all of this information with you all - for his own protection - there is no secret to hide any more. As you know from today's training, Goku shares with us a curse. He has now fallen prey to it, awakened to it by the power of the full Moon, due to the trickery of an enemy whose nature right now escapes me. He is fighting this curse as we speak, while his body, no longer under his control, rampages in blind fury."

"Cut it short, Spike." intervened Bandages. "You want us to go help?"

"That is what I was about to ask you, yes." concluded the other, soberly.

Yamcha shook his head and stepped slightly away. This was the part where they would obviously do the sensible thing and let him deal with the giant monster, while they ran as far as possible.

"Hell yeah we're going!" roared the mummy. "The boy still owes me a grudge match."

"Me and Fangs, I don't know how much we can help," said See Through, "but if there's anything we can do, we'll tag along."

Spike nodded vigorously. "Then it's decided! The Denizens march on to the battle."

Yamcha could not believe his ears. It took him remembering that, even in five, they were still going up against an unknown giant monkey monster to sober him up a bit.

"Great!" he said, finally. "Then we should all move as quickly as possible. Let's leave the dorm."

They ran outside. Goku had said he'd been flying north, but from their current position, they couldn't see anything. West City's skyline covered the horizon. That was a good sign - the kid must have made it far enough that he wasn't causing any visible damage.

"We need to find him." said Yamcha. "How do we move?"

Bandages put a hand on his shoulder. "You and Spike can try keepin' up with me. I can run pretty fast."

"Running will not be enough, my friend." observed Spike. "We need to find Goku as well. A vantage point could be helpful to spot him. I suggest we move by both running and jumping - surely we three should all be able to jump a few dozen metres between building roofs."

Yamcha scoffed at the absurd question. Of course he could.

"There's also us normal people here, you know." said See Through, whose pajamas were visibly shaking in the cold of the night.

"I'll give you guys a ride." proposed the mummy. He kneeled to take up the invisible man, while Fangs transformed into a bat and perched himself up on his head.

"Let's go!"

Yamcha, Spike and Bandages ran through the lawn that surrounded the Capsule Corp buildings, jumped above the surrounding fence, then on top of the closest building, too fast for the eyes of the few amazed observers to make out their faces.

With a prolonged creak, the Briefs' bedroom door opened. From it stepped out three figures that you could barely call human; three bloated round bundles of fabric and fur. Carefully, one of the three figures looked left and right, protruding an arm holding a gun. Then it gestured to the others that they could come forward.

"It's free." whispered Bulma, with a voice muffled by all the layers of scarves, hoods and fur coats that she had wrapped around her head and neck.

Her parents caught up to her, carefully. Among the three of them, they probably wore half of Panchy's wardrobe. Since no one in the house was in the habit of keeping body armour among their clothes, piling up multiple layers of thick, fluffy coats was the next best thing Bulma could come up with for defence. For offence, they had her gun, and a number of other items that they had gathered from the room or already had on themselves; a hairspray can, some bedsheets, a lighter.

The hall was dark. Lights in all the common spaces were controlled by Caroline, and Caroline obviously was not being cooperative. Dr. Briefs lit an electric torch they kept in their bedroom for any emergencies, but the beam was too narrow to see much besides what was right in front of them.

In this darkness, from which an enemy could attack them at any moment, they needed to cross two floors to their destination.

Bulma visualised the path they needed to take. There was the hall, which then morphed into a loft, with a railing right above the living room, which in turn was next to the kitchen, or what was left of it. At the end of the loft was the landing of the stairs, in front of her bedroom. Then it was down the stairs, across the living room, through another hall, and down another flight of stairs to reach the basement - at which point the panic room would be the first thing right in front of them.

She took one step forward. Deep breath, and she listened intently. The house was silent.

It was too much to hope that Yamcha's hit alone had disabled or even killed Puar for good. He probably had only been scared off from attacking them - but now that Yamcha was not in the equation any more, and that he had a way to realise, that peace was not likely to last much. He would attack. Where and when, was the question.

Another few steps, right up to the beginning of the loft. Her parents followed suit. Now they were about to enter in the range of another of Caroline's cameras, but that meant the camera too would be in Bulma's line of sight. She raised her gun, fired twice. The camera's remains dangled out of the ceiling, limp.

The shots reverberated through the house and left a ringing sensation in her ears - the same would happen to her parents, she realised, and she felt stupid. Now they were effectively deaf to any but the loudest sounds for a few seconds. She had just created a perfect opening. She frantically signalled to her father to look around with the torch, gripped her gun.

Nothing happened.

Her ears adjusted again to the silence. It was another six or seven steps to the landing. Step, step, step.

Step.

"Bulma, behind you!" screamed Panchy's voice. The girl instantly reacted, turning on one foot, gun pointed straight forward, looking for an attacker.

"That wasn't me!" said her mother, and the attacker came. What saved Bulma was the motion sensors installed the day before in front of her room. She had turned them on when leaving the room, earlier, and now, when the creature passed right in front of the door to sneak on her from behind, having used Caroline's imitation to distract her, they rang their alarm in full force. Bulma turned again to face something - this time it was smaller, had less tentacles, and a body covered by a hard chitinous shell, like a mutant crab. Its claws protruded towards her, its hind legs flexed, it jumped like a grasshopper, aiming at her neck. She defended herself with her arm, and fangs and claws sank into the many layers of clothing, thankfully without reaching skin. With the other hand, still free, she fired the gun at Puar. The creature was knocked back, but then it got up almost immediately. Its carapace must be enough to withstand even a bullet fired point blank.

"Dad! Mom!" shouted Bulma. Shaken from her stupor, Panchy followed the plan and tossed the bedsheet she was holding towards the enemy. It was a large king-size cotton sheet, drenched in liquid. It fell over the crab-like thing, which immediately tried furiously to wrestle free. The strong alcoholic sting of an entire bottle of very expensive perfume that had been poured over it spread around.

"Now!"

Dr. Briefs stepped up, trembling, and held his lighter in front of him, and right behind a can of his wife's hairspray. He turned the lighter on and sprayed the liquid - in rapid and short bursts, to avoid backflame - hitting the monster with his makeshift flamethrower. The bedsheets and the flammable perfume immediately caught fire, and one moment later, the thing was shrieking in pain and scrambling around.

"Let's go! Run!"

Bulma dragged her parents down the stairs. Above, the torched creature exploded in a puff of smoke, the remains of the sheets finished burning on the floor and the sprinklers turned on again to extinguish them, while Puar had escaped again. The girl ditched the outer layer of her clothes - now pierced and dripping some noxious, unknown venom that the crab thing had been secreting. She didn't want to risk even breathing its vapours for too long.

"Run!"

"I see him!"

Yamcha, Bandages and Spike had separated in a fan, covering a wide angle of directions while they moved north, jumping roof to roof across West City. The buildings had gotten shorter now, as they reached the residential areas in the outskirts of the urban conglomerate, and they could already spot the hills and countryside past its boundaries. Yamcha moved eastwards to catch up to the other two, calling out to them as soon as they were in hearing range. They quickly gathered on top of a building, where they could get a bird's eye view of the landscape.

Far in the distance, in the fields, a gigantic creature rampaged. It seemed to roam aimlessly, occasionally ripping off a tree or tossing a boulder in the air.

"There he is." confirmed Spike. "He's still a way from here. Have the citizens noticed yet?"

Yamcha nodded. "Some. That's how I saw him. People were gathering in some streets, staring and pointing. Some were filming. I don't think we can hide this any more."

"Bit of a big thing to hide." commented Bandages.

The boy squinted. "How big do you think he is? I can't make it out at this distance."

"Hard to say." the devil man shook his head. "Probably 20 metres or so, comparing him to those trees. This might be the most powerful curse I have ever encountered. We should get closer and take a better look. I think it's safe enough if we keep some distance."

Without houses any more, the three descended to the ground and started running. There were no witnesses close enough to see them, and they were too fast to be spotted anyway. At a few hundred metres from Goku, his new size was apparent. He looked like some unknown kind of monkey, a weird hybrid between a gorilla and a baboon, and was as tall as a multi-storey building. Trying to assess his power, Yamcha considered that even regular Goku had managed to kick Bandages' ass, then scaled that up appropriately. The picture was not pretty.

They stopped in the middle of a field and gathered up to look at the creature. The giant primate seemed uninterested by them, although he had not noticed them yet. He stood immobile for a while, then reacted in quick bursts of random anger to anything that moved next to him. He once grabbed and smashed a heavy rock against the ground repeatedly after it had rolled down from a mound of earth. A poor cow that happened to be grazing nearby was tossed into the sky - her pitiful mooing vanishing in the distance.

"He seems distracted." whispered Yamcha. "Maybe if we let him be he'll just stay here until the moon sets?"

Spike shook his head. "I doubt we will get that much time. You said he was seen. Do you think he will be left alone?"

"Oh, crap. You think they're going to call the police?"

"At first." he sighed. "Then the real trouble will start."

West City Police Department, northern precinct, 10:23 PM

"Captain, we had another one of those calls. About the giant monkey."

"Another? What is this, prank night?"

"This time they sent us a link to a video. It's blurry and it could be fake, but, well, you should check out for yourself."

"Let me see."

"Here."

"..."

"..."

"Who's on patrol in that area tonight?"

"It's Willis and Jaa."

"Ok, give them a call. Tell them to check this out. If this is a prank, at this point, I want names and addresses. If these people are so eager to get into trouble, no reason to disappoint them."

Royal Army North-West Airbase, 10:56 PM

"Sir, it's an urgent call from the West City Police. They ask for backup."

"Backup? What, they can't handle a couple of thieves and they want us to bomb them?"

"Apparently, they have a problem with a big monkey."

"What the hell? We're not some sort of pest control service for escaped zoo animals!"

"That's what I told them, sir. But they said it's a really big monkey."

"How big?"

"Approximately twenty-five metres tall, says the officer who saw it. But he can't give a better estimate because he didn't dare getting closer."

"..."

"That was my reaction too, yes."

"This has to be a joke."

"They're really insistent, sir. And if I may, they also sounded quite scared."

"Well, I'll be... I'll give a call to their precinct's captain, try to clear this up. Meanwhile, go tell a couple pilots to get ready to scramble, and have the mechanics prepare their fighters. You never know."

The job had turned out to be far less dangerous and far more boring than Yamcha had anticipated. It was almost half an hour now that they kept guarding Goku, but he hardly did anything really dangerous - or at least, anything that could actually damage anyone in the area he was at the moment. Seemed like he was equally content with raging against inanimate things. The group of fighters had turned to physical exercise to warm themselves up a bit. They took turns running back and forth and training katas, while only one or two stood still and always kept an eye on the giant monkey.

"Say," said Yamcha, looking at the creature, "he looks even stupider than a normal animal would be. Usually animals don't just break stuff for the heck of it."

"He's perpetually angry." commented Spike. "Goku was quite right about that being the key emotion of his curse. His mind isn't clear - if it was, perhaps, he could even be reasoned with."

A whooshing sound came from the sky, and while it was hard to see their silhouettes against the night, the navigation lights and exhaust gave away the fact that two planes were flying above their heads.

Bandages stopped his exercises. "Dang, is that the army?"

"I fear so." Spike said gravely. "Unfortunately, in pursuing their own safety, humans might accelerate their demise. Such is the nature of our kind."

The planes didn't do much at first and seemed to just be scouting, flying in large circles above the area. After a while, however, one of the two separated and dove straight for the centre, pointing at Goku.

"Oh, hell!" screamed Yamcha. "They're going to kill him!"

"No, they're not." replied the devil man.

A series of short, loud cracking sounds came as the plane fired its guns at the creature. But the giant monkey didn't even flinch - at first. Then he slowly turned around towards the direction the bullets had come from, grabbed a nearby rock, winded back his arm.

And then the air itself became made of pure pain for a moment, as the bang from a boulder tossed at multiple times the speed of sound shook the land. The warriors took refuge on the ground, covering their ears.

"They made him angrier." muttered Spike.

The plane was safe, though the shockwave had likely shaken it a bit. It retreated, and both it and its companion turned off their lights and slowed down their engines, becoming almost invisible in the night. Goku now was confused, looking around, growling menacingly. The lights had been his target. The lights had hurt him. The lights needed to be destroyed.

As it turned out, south of his position, he saw there were a lot of lights.

"He's looking this way." whispered Yamcha.

The monster started stepping towards the city. Slow, but determined. Then he wasn't even slow any more.

"He's coming this way!" shouted Yamcha.

"We can see that!" roared Bandages. "Let's scram!"

Running, roaring, the giant monkey hurled towards West City.

It had taken approximately twelve point three seconds after the end of the previous attack for Caroline (Puar? Puaroline?) to come up with a new, obnoxious idea.

Lights and sounds.

When deciding which systems to leave to the smart home controller and which systems to prevent it from accessing for safety purposes, Dr. Briefs had decided lighting and sound diffusion systems were pretty safe, and in fact, exactly the kind of thing that it's convenient for a smart home to be able to handle. So he had not worried much about it and had given full control of both of them to Caroline. What was the worst she could do?

The worst turned out to be much worse than anyone could have imagined. A loud cacophony of horribly mismatched, tone-deaf sounds, with no rhythm or pattern, impossible to escape from, shouted from all speakers at once. Worse, each speaker played its own tune, each as horrible as the others. And it would have perhaps been barely tolerable if not for the lights, going on and off in random stroboscopic patterns which were of course on their own rhythm, completely independent of the sound. The result was confusing, nauseating, maddening. The first assault had nearly caused Panchy to lose her sense of balance and fall down the stairs. They had to physically slow down their walk through the house, towards the panic room, in order to make sure they didn't stumble somewhere, confused by the assault on their senses, while keeping hands and clothes pressed against their ears to try and muffle the sounds. Bulma cursed each second lost because of this hindrance. It wasn't clear if and how Puar needed to recover when damaged, but it was a fact that he had waited some time between his previous assaults, which suggested he probably did. If that was the case, time was their enemy, and acting as fast as possible would be their best shot.

The noises started changing up and down, lowering in volume just to get them to relax a little and then hitting them back at full power. Dr. Briefs leaned on Panchy again, but the woman herself wasn't too sure on her feet. While they were crossing the living room, Bulma angrily grabbed a tall floor lamp and smashed it like a spear into one of the speakers. The noise got slightly tolerable, but as soon as they reached the next flight of stairs they were again in the range of a working speaker.

Mixed to the noise there were voices - usually imitations of one of the three humans', but Bulma was sure she also heard Goku's and Yamcha's in the chaos. Anything that could distract them. At one point Bulma turned to react to a sudden threatening hiss, clutching her gun, finger ready on the trigger, only to realise horrified that she'd been about to shoot her mother.

As she lowered the gun and looked away, she added that to the mental list of things this cursed creature would have to answer for.

In front of the end of the stairs was the panic room. It had a massive security door and a keypad to open it. It had been installed mostly for Panchy, who worried about thieves entering the house - Dr. Briefs wasn't practical enough to worry about that, and Bulma wasn't sensible enough to want to hide in such a situation. After all, she wouldn't follow them inside in this situation either - which arguably was a bit worse than a simple robbery.

"How does it work?" she asked her father, screaming over the noise. Dr. Briefs staggered to the door.

"It has a code." he said. "You can use it to open it from the inside or outside, or to lock it until the code is used again from the inside only. That's to stop intruders from brute forcing their way in. Though it's 14 digits, so it's not very likely anyway."

"Is it connected to Caroline?"

"Yes, so she could call the cops if it's ever used and locked. But she doesn't have the code." he raised his hand, but his fingers were trembling and he didn't manage to push the right buttons. "Damn. Panchy, dear, can you help me?"

"I don't remember the password, honey!" exclaimed his wife.

"Well, tell her, dad!" said Bulma.

He blinked. "Out loud? But Caroline is listening. She could use the code to lock the room and keep us out."

"It's fine." replied the girl. "She doesn't know."

Dr. Briefs' puzzled stare settled into understanding. "Oh, right. The code is 14356478909131."

"Wait a moment!" screamed Panchy, scrambling to push the buttons. "I can't follow if you say it so fast, with all this cursed noise! What's after the first three?"

"Seven." chimed in Bulma.

"What? I was sure it was..."

"It's seven." confirmed Dr. Briefs. "Go!"

"Ok, seven, then WHAT?" she shrieked. The noise kept blasting in new patterns.

"Nine!" "Zero!" screamed her daughter and husband, respectively.

"WHICH ONE?!"

"Zero!" confirmed Bulma. "Go! Quick! Before Caroline locks it!"

Panchy cried some nonsense, her fingers frantically looking for the right key, when there was a final explosion, the ground trembled for a moment, and then nothing. Quiet finally came back. The lights stayed off, but the emergency ones turned on after a moment, with a soft electric buzz.

It was like heaven.

"What happened?" asked Panchy, alarmed. "Did I do something wrong?"

"It's fine, dear." the doctor sighed and let himself lean against the wall. "Now I will need to rebuild her, though."

"Seriously, dad, please don't." Bulma shook her head. "Mom, Caroline was rigged with explosives that would destroy her hard drive in case she tried to access any password-protected system and failed three times. But Puar didn't know. We kept giving you wrong codes hoping that he'd try them through her, and turns out, it worked. Now she's out of the equation."

"So you were giving me nonsense numbers!" said her mother, indignant. "I felt like you were making a fool out of me."

"Sorry, had to fool you to fool them." Bulma shrugged. "Now, dad, try to calm yourself a bit and input the real password yourself. I wouldn't want Puar to be eavesdropping. This isn't over yet."

Mrs. Kofi walked slowly to the entrance, pushing the rollator she heavily relied on to stand. In the time it took her to get up and reach the door, the person had rung five times, and then had just put the finger on the doorbell and never took it off, so now the ringing was continuous. People these days had no patience, she thought.

She removed carefully the four separate bolts keeping the door locked, then opened it. Out was a nice young man with long hair, very fit.

"What do you sell?" asked the old woman.

"Nothing!" said the boy. He really looked like he had no patience at all, Mrs. Kofi noticed, shaking her head in disapproval. "We are evacuating the area! You need to leave your house now!"

"Is it for that building company?" the woman frowned. "I said I will not sell my house five times already."

"It's not that! Listen, madam, it's just that..."

Someone ran to the nice young man. He was pale like the dead and had pointy teeth and a red glint in his eyes. Mrs. Kofi held her chest and started mumbling old chants to ward off evil spirits.

"Yamcha, we have to go now!" said the evil spirit, unaffected.

"Ok, Fangs, I'll catch up!" the young man turned back to Mrs. Kofi. "I'm sorry, madam, it's for your own safety."

And imagine that - he swept in with an arm, grabbed her by her waist, and pulled her out of her house. One second later, more stunned than scared yet, she felt a sudden jolt and up she was in the air, while behind her her house was crushed by a giant hairy foot.

"I'm sorry, madam." mumbled the man who held her. "I'm really sorry. You must be terrified."

"I'm not." said the woman, in some sort of a dreamy state. "This is it, right? It is my day, and you have come to take my soul to heaven."

The young man - obviously an angel - looked at her a bit perplexed, and then "Sure, why not." he said. "If it makes you feel better about the situation."

Having travelled a few hundred metres, Yamcha dropped Mrs. Kofi in a large group of people who were abandoning the area. A few policemen were supervising the operation, and while they had already seen him and his friends in action, they still observed with a certain fascination.

"This was the last one, I believe." said Yamcha to the closest agent. "You should move away as soon as possible, maybe towards some other residential neighbourhood. It's directed towards the centre, so warn those people too. And if you could please tell your aviation to stop trying to attack it..."

"Sorry, can't do." mumbled the agent. "We're grateful to you... huh... civilians for your help, but we can't take your orders on how to deal with the crisis."

"Oh, come on! We're doing better than you anyway." protested Yamcha. Better, in this context, meaning better at dodging, at least. Goku had already taken down one of the Royal Aviation's fighter jets, though the pilot had managed to escape with his ejection seat. "And all you're doing is making it angrier!"

"I noticed, yes." admitted the other. "I'll tell my superiors. See what they can do."

"Right. See ya."

Yamcha zoomed away towards the direction in which Goku was now rampaging through the residential areas of West City. Houses were crushed under his foot, cars became his playthings, but at the very least, no one had died. Yet.

He hoped some of those officers recognised him so that his unquestionable heroism would regain him a bit of recognition.

"The people are safe for now." he said, landing from his last jump right next to Spike. They were standing on the scaffolding of a phone tower, one of the few vantage points in the area. "Goku is advancing slowly."

"Next time, it may not be so easy." commented Spike gravely. "The houses here are small and low. If he reaches the more densely populated area, there will be no time to evacuate them."

"But maybe he won't, right? I mean, look, he's having fun. Smashing that bus on top of that school."

"He may keep roaming aimlessly." admitted the other. "But only if he's not bothered any more."

In that moment, a bat exploded in smoke and Fangs landed next to them. "I've seen the army! There's a column of tanks travelling on a road leading to the city."

"Oh for fuck's sake!" exclaimed Yamcha. "How badly do they want to die?"

"A whole lot, it seems." said the man, shrugging. "They'll be here in fifteen, twenty minutes tops."

Spike frowned. "We can't allow Goku to fight them. There will be victims."

"I know, man, okay? We're all trying to figure out how to stop that."

"There is only one way."

Without a word more, the devil man jumped off, and once he touched the street, he started running towards Goku, a few blocks ahead.

"Where is he going?" asked Bandages, who had just swung up the tower himself.

"I don't know." said Yamcha. "He said something about the only way to stop Goku from fighting the army."

"Oh, dang." the man shook his head. "Pity. He's going to kill the boy."

"Wait, what?"

Spike walked up to Goku, until he was only a few metres away. The giant monkey let the burnt, crushed wreckage of a bus he was still clutching fall, and turned to the new arrival, with a look of curiosity. He retracted his lips over his gums in a menacing grimace. Curiosity was quick to turn into murderous rage.

"I honour your sacrifice, fellow Denizen." said solemnly Spike. "Your battle against your curse will not be forgotten. Let me bear the weight of being the one who relieves you of it."

He raised his fingers to his forehead. A light started shining around their tips.

"It will be painless, at least. Or so I hope."

He extended his arms, pointing the fingers - now flashing with sparkles of unnatural light - right at the creature. A tear rolled down his cheek.

"Let the darkness in your heart consume your body!" he screamed. "DEVIL BEAM!"

The flash split from his fingers and pierced the night, hitting Goku head on. The giant monster was wrapped in pink light, so bright that it was almost like dawn had broke earlier than it should have. He roared to the sky, clutching his fists.

And then he hurled one towards Spike.

"WATCH OUT!" Bandages' own wraps grabbed the devil man and tossed him aside one instant before the fist could smash him and the road below him. Yamcha caught up one instant later.

"Impossible..." mumbled Spike, transfixed. "His heart is truly pure... I could never have guessed."

"Yeah, whatever. You know, good thing it didn't work." the mummy grinned. "As I said, I still have a grudge match to settle."

"Wait, no!" Yamcha screamed, but there didn't seem to be much point in trying to stop Bandages. He jumped towards the monster and punched him right in the face. Goku barely flinched.

"Let's get out of here." he concluded, grabbing the devil man by his arm. "Come on, move."

"I can't believe myself. I tried to kill him." whispered Spike. "Leave me here! It is best for an existence as wicked as mine!"

"Ok, seriously? Have your crisis later! Bandages is gaining us some time, let's use it!"

"COME GET IT BOY!" screamed the mummy. It wasn't clear if his objective was just to gain time for his friends, or if he really thought he could take on Goku by himself and beat him to the ground before the army arrived. He dodged a few clumsy fists, then used his wraps to grab the monkey's head and swing around, getting himself up on the back of his neck. At which point all he could do was punch him, which basically did nothing but annoy him. Goku swatted at him like a man trying to crush a fly.

Yamcha and Spike saw their companion flying past them, straight into a building.

"Did he... did he survive that?" asked the boy, stuttering.

"I'm sure he did. Bandages is a tough bastard."

Just on cue, Bandages emerged from the rubble, beaten up but still full of fighting spirit. He grabbed some of the wreckage and chucked it at Goku, hitting him in the head. The monkey screamed in pain, but when it recovered, no visible wound had been left by the attack. The mummy charged at him again.

"Let's catch our breath." said Yamcha, dropping his companion on the ground. "Do you feel better now?"

"I think so." Spike nodded. "Sorry for that. I acted thinking it was for the best, really. But my beam needs me to feel certain things towards my target. I'd rather not dwell on it."

"Ok, fine. Listen, I get why you did that - if Goku kills someone while he's like this, it's going to be bad for all of us, him included. But it would not be really his fault." the boy scratched his head. "In fact, it's mine. So I would rather find a solution without anyone dying."

"Your fault? You will tell me later. We often give ourselves more guilt than we deserve." the devil man chuckled. "But yes, that would be best. Any ideas?"

"The Moon keeps him transformed." said Yamcha. "So, if we could get rid of the Moon..."

Spike stared at him like he would at a madman.

"I know it's a stupid idea!" exclaimed the other, defensive. "We're just spitballing here."

"Maybe his tail?"

Spike and Yamcha looked at each other. Neither had spoken. So they turned at the empty space to their right.

"See-Through?" they asked, in unison.

"Actually, I'm over here." said See-Through, exactly from the opposite side. "Sorry, I stripped down to help me evacuate the houses."

Yamcha blinked "How did it help?"

"I snuck in, grabbed some random object, and started making ghost-like noises. Everyone ran out like crazy without asking questions. I'm dying of cold though." he explained. "You were talking about Goku, and I remembered that yesterday I stepped on his tail, and he mentioned that it was his weak point."

"He also said he trained it to make it stronger." pointed out Yamcha.

"I know he did!" admitted See-Through. "We're just spitballing here."

"At least it's not as stupid as the Moon one." mused Spike. "Perhaps, if we just could clutch his tail hard enough, or squeeze one of its pressure points, he would still feel the effect."

"So, is that our plan?" asked Yamcha. "Come close enough to the crazy monkey monster that we can grab him by his tail, squeeze it, and hope that makes him weak enough for us to knock him unconscious without killing him?"

"Bandages is close enough." said the devil man. "He's doing fine."

At that point, Bandages crashed again into a nearby house.

"I bet nothing of this would have happened if I still had my talisman." grumbled his voice from under the rubble. "Guys, if you have any great ideas, this is the time."

"We have one idea." suggested carefully Yamcha, running to him as he freed himself from the remains of wood and concrete. "We're not sure if it's great. Do you think we could manage to come close enough to grab and squeeze his tail?"

"Hah. That's the plan? Maybe."

He dusted himself off and coughed out some plaster.

"Good news is, I think he's still in there somewhere." said Bandages. "At the beginning he was just flailing at me without technique, like a wild beast. But then he started being more focused. Stopped wrecking random shit and concentrated on me. He used some moves I could recognize, even re-enacted a bit of our fight from yesterday."

"So you think he could regain control over himself while in that state?" Spike looked incredulous. "I am ashamed for not thinking of it - that would be perfect. What's the bad news?"

"Well, it's that he's getting better." concluded the mummy. "Good luck sneaking up on him now."

The burns had been painful, so painful. And now the computer had been destroyed. It was not a physical feeling, but it still was as if a huge chunk of Puar had been cut out of him. This time he knew it would not come back, and he did not know how could he possibly do without now. He wanted to kill the girl. He needed to kill her. It would make Yamcha happy. Would it? Where was Yamcha anyway now? No matter. He had ideas. So many ideas so so many they hurt his head because they just pushed and pushed and wanted to get out. A thing that had a lot of very deadly things. How was it made again? Puar could not recall, could not remember. It has just been right there and now it was gone. Like that other thing, and that spherical one. Not ideas, chunks of ideas, fragments. The vital parts, gone. A jumble of thoughts without structure. His brain on its own felt heavy, slow, dumb.

Puar hissed in frustration. He would do with what he had. He would get it done.

Kill the girl.

Caroline was destroyed, her parents were in the relative security of the panic room, and Bulma now knew it was time for the final confrontation. It wasn't a nice thought. Being together with her parents had given her some comfort - she had a relatively straightforward objective to try to achieve, and her mind was busy worrying for them. Now however it was only her and her enemy, and she had no delusions how it would have to end. When she had been shot by Mai she didn't expect it. But this, this was it. A fight to the death. The first time she felt something that Goku, like any warrior, must have felt many times; the knowledge that a single mistake, a stroke of bad luck, or even just her own fundamental inferiority would be her undoing and spell the end for her.

She had no idea how anyone took it for long without going crazy.

It helped a bit that she was angry. She was livid. She was afraid for herself, but if one thing did not burden her, it was any shred of pity or compassion for her enemy. He had gone so far that he had forever lost that privilege. But even had it not been so, realistically, she could not fathom any possible way to end this threat that didn't involve killing Puar. A pity, because he would have been an interesting study subject, but that was neither here nor there. Right now, the issue was how more than if.

She needed a plan, and she realised she didn't really have one. That wasn't good. She patrolled the corridor of the basement, gun in hand, painfully aware of her own vulnerability, as now she had lost most of the protective clothing she wore earlier. She had found some other garments in one of the labs, but she was sure Puar could cut through those if he really tried, and latex gloves that only offered the flimsiest of protections. The uncomfortable feeling of being naked, at the mercy of forces outside her control, would not leave her.

The question on which her life hinged was how much had Puar been wounded until now, how close he was to his limit, whether he realised it or not. Oolong had mentioned that damage translated into a loss of energy when transforming, and Puar had been almost killed twice already that night. How many would be enough?

She didn't know. She just walked with her back to the wall, kept an eye on any vents, and hoped that she wasn't missing some tiny crack in the concrete through which she could be stabbed in her back. Racking her head, thinking, how would he try to attack, how would he get her to lower her guard, from what angle would he come next time, and would it be the last thing she'd ever see. "Bulma..."

Her heart sank. She knew that voice, but she had never heard it so full of pain. She didn't expect this. This wasn't part of the equation, not any more.

"Mom?" she called, her voice trembling, and turned around.

Panchy dragged herself towards her. She was standing by leaning on the wall. Her clothes were tattered, ripped, bloody. One of her legs hung limply, bent in an unnatural direction. She was bruised. She was crying.

"He got inside." whispered the woman, sobbing.

Bulma felt the blood drain from her face. A horrible feeling like being naked and alone in the cold vacuum of space.

"I don't know how, but he got inside."

It couldn't be. She had left them in a safe place. He couldn't sink this low.

"Your father is..."

"Mom!" screamed Bulma, and lowering her gun, she ran towards her.

How would he get her to lower her guard.

One moment before she was close enough to hug her mother, Bulma stopped. A different type of chill ran through her body.

Slowly, she raised her gun again. Her eyes were ice cold.

She pointed it in between her mother's eyes.

"Bulma?" the woman whispered, scared, with a broken voice.

"Tell me," said Bulma, calmly, "what happened during the party for my ninth birthday?"

"What?" her eyes were lost. "Bulma, didn't you hear me? Your father..."

"What. Happened. During the party for my ninth birthday." hissed the girl.

"Bulma, what are you saying, I don't reme-"

The shot pierced her forehead and splattered in blood the wall behind her. Panchy screamed, a voice that was a shrieking mix of her own and another, thinner, more child-like, and angry. Despite the bullet that had destroyed her brain, she did not fall. She scrambled onwards, her body dragging itself, broken, twitching, losing colour rapidly, her eyes bloodshot, her mouth drooling, a thin line of blood dripping down her face from the hole above her eyes.

"YOU BASTARD!" screamed Bulma. "HOW DARE YOU!"

She shot again, once, twice, into the mother-creature's chest. It shrieked again. Then it exploded in a cloud of smoke, and Bulma knew it was time to run.

More pain. More poison. More fangs and teeth. All he remembered. All he could think of. All at once.

The nightmare behind her was growing, growing, transforming continuously into an ever angrier, ever deadlier mass. An excessive mass. Puar's strength remained the same, but his body was heavier, which made him slow. Slow enough for a seventeen year old girl to outrun him, reach a chemistry laboratory, enter, lock the door behind her.

It did not stop.

A slimy creature started pouring in from under the door. There was no structure anymore, no logic, no efficiency - every transformation was just focused towards one thing, just a crude sketch, a biological mashup of tissues and functions without coherence, a cancerous mass more than an organism. The slime was like the flesh of a jellyfish, and before it could change again, Bulma grabbed a jar of an hygroscopic salt and dropped its contents on it. It shrivelled and hissed and changed again. And again, she ran. There was a beaker full of acid, she tossed it behind her, she didn't stop to watch the effects but was happy to hear another scream, smell the seared flesh. She passed a tank full of liquid helium, toppled it, then left the laboratory through another door, locking it right behind her as the claws of a wolf-like beast, covered in frostbite burns, tried to reach her.

How much still?

The internal doors connected the various laboratories; now she was in the one where it had all begun, right in front of the massive half-sphere of the ki scanner, still open since the day before. She tossed as many things as she could in front of the door behind her; furniture, cans, raw materials lying around. There was a drum of oil, she poured it on the ground, then tossed a glass panel to shatter on it too. She didn't have time or materials for any kind of sophisticated trap, so she just desperately grasped for every item that looked like it could produce some harm, anything.

There were no more laboratories - from here she could only go back to the corridor, without weapons or tools. Here she would make her last stand.

Bulma reloaded the gun with the last cartridge she had on her, she grabbed a fire extinguisher and a torch burner to her side, turned the computer's monitor towards the scanner and positioned herself right in the centre of the hemisphere, turning the machine on. She increased the sensitivity to the maximum. No matter what form Puar assumed, he would still be emitting his magic's signature radiation. As soon as he'd get inside the scanner's radius, he would turn up on the screen bright as the sun, which would give her at least a chance to spot him and react.

Bulma gripped her gun, one eye on the door, the other on the screen. And on the screen she saw herself. She didn't expect it - had never tried yet. But there she was, thanks to the amplified sensitivity of the machine, her own body's outline, faint but unmistakable. A weave of thin luminous thread twisting through her body, carrying her own, tiny amounts of spiritual energy from her spine to everything else. She could see it move as she reacted to every noise - zooming around to her ears, then down her arm, to her fingers, the index ready to squeeze the trigger. Without even being voluntary, she had been doing this for all her life, and so had probably everyone else. And seeing it made her more conscious of it - when she felt a shiver, a moment of tension, when her senses got sharper to react to the danger, she could connect those things with her own ki swirling around, reaching the right places, activating the right cells.

It would have been all very fascinating if not for the fact that she would probably die there without ever getting a chance to tell anyone else.

"Where is Yamcha?" said a voice, suddenly. She looked around, but couldn't see anything. This must be Puar's true voice - his body transformed in something too small or too well hidden to see.

"I can't... remember." said the voice again, at first with a hint of suffering, then in an ever angrier and more hysterical crescendo. "You must tell me! You know!"

Never let it be said that Bulma Briefs would pass an opportunity.

"Perhaps I do." she said, with a smile. "Funny you would forget."

"IT'S YOUR FAULT!" shrieked Puar. Where was he? Somewhere in front of her, she was sure. "The computer. I was relying... I can't remember. I know Yamcha's here. He was here. He was with you earlier. WHERE IS YAMCHA?"

Keep him angry, but interested, not so angry to kill you...

"I told him to go do something for me." she answered. "Who knows, I might tell you. If you ask kindly enough."

"I'LL KILL YOU!" screamed Puar.

"Then why should I tell you?" Bulma shrugged. "Maybe you want to take me alive."

The scanner didn't show much except for a vague, diffuse brightness. Unfortunately, its design meant that only a close enough object would appear properly in focus.

"You don't want to be taken alive." hissed the other. "I'll do this, and then that. If only I could remember..."

"Let's get this over with." said the girl, bluntly. "You can't kill me, or you'll never know the fate of your beloved Yamcha. You can't turn into anything too big, or I'll fill you with bullets, or set you on fire, and I know you hate that. Nor can you turn into anything too small - you never did yet, for good reason. You wouldn't be able to move freely, or even see me. Bacteria are at the mercy of air currents and random molecular motions. There's only so much you can do. Do it, and let's see who wins this."

She wished she was really that confident, but still - wounded, confused, angry, and forced to fight on her own home turf: Puar wouldn't get any weaker than this. It was all or nothing.

Bulma figured he'd try to sting her. As she had reminded him, mostly to put the idea in his head, the ideal size for an attack now was that of an insect, which would also be the minimum one at which he could secrete enough of a toxin to paralyse her or put her to sleep. So, this would be like those times in summer when mosquitos tried to sting her and she did her best to swat them away. Except for the bit where if she got stung even once, she'd be captured, probably tortured, and then killed by this insane creature.

She drew a deep breath. She focused. Like killing a mosquito. Like playing a video game. She thought of those times when she'd feel fast, reactive, in flow, while doing those things. When it was like time slowed down and she couldn't miss a hit. She tried to summon back to her that feeling.

In the scanner's screen, her body became slightly brighter. Her eyes lit up.

She did not expect this, but now Bulma could see on the screen the tiniest fluctuations of her energy, and she realised she could will them around. Her perception dilated. Her focus sharpened. The better her senses connected her with the here and now, the better she could judge the way the ki flowed in her from the scanner's image; and thus, the better she could control it, improving her senses' reach yet again. It was really that simple, once you got the gist of it, she realised, fascinated. As simple as thinking.

And then for an instant it exploded. Time stood still. Space expanded to infinity. It was like everything else was frozen, and she alone could move in the entire world. And down, in the corner of the screen, slithering from under a space between two panels of the scanner...

"Gotcha." said Bulma.

Her hands bolted to grab the hornet - or the thing resembling a hornet, at least. The spell broke, time got back to normal, but now the creature was her prisoner, grasped between her hands, squirming, shrieking...

She ran. Slammed open the chemistry laboratory's door, all while squeezing the thing in her hands, repressing her disgust as she felt it creak and give way under her fingers and it screamed, screamed with a voice that resembled way too much that of a little girl. But she needed to keep it in pain, distracted, unable to think or transform again.

She reached the laboratory's blast furnace, threw the thing inside, slammed the door shut, and turned the heat on, to the maximum temperature it could reach.

Puar's flesh was crumpled, crushed, stabbed by shards of his own cracked exoskeleton, but he finally managed to find the clarity he needed to transform again. He was inside some kind of container. The walls appeared to be made of a hard mineral substance, except for a thick glass window. The restraints on his strength were valid when transforming too - he could not become anything bigger than the space he was in, or he would just crush himself. So he picked a simple enough form, small but deadly, a cobra snake with some modifications. The girl was outside, he could see her from the glass window. It was just a matter of finding a large enough fissure, sliding through, reaching her. She couldn't run forever.

The container got hot. The temperature was raising quickly. Puar wouldn't have worried much if it was just a matter of discomfort of his body - he had gone through worse pain tonight - but it was getting at the point where it would actually cause some damage. The snake's skin started drying up. His blood passed the boiling point. He could not keep this up.

He transformed into an inanimate thing, a small robot, or his idea of it. He had wheels and metal claws. The tire's rubber started melting off. He changed again, and again, every time replacing a component. Now the tin of the soldering was melting, circuit boards were crumpling up. It was then that Puar realised the danger of the trap he was inside. If he couldn't transform back to leave, as long as the temperature was so high, all he could become was something inanimate - a rock, or a block of metal hardy enough to not melt. He could survive endlessly in that form, but he also wouldn't be able to do anything. He would be effectively trapped.

Yet he remembered - he still retained that much knowledge - that there was another possibility. Things so small they could pass through anything. So simple, they couldn't break down, because they had nothing to break down into. So light and fast, the girl would never be able to catch them.

He had never gone so deep, so far from the ordinary realm. Never pushed his magic that much, not even imagined it. It did not matter. All that mattered was that there was a barrier between him and the human being he needed to get at all costs; the one who knew; the one who could reunite him with Yamcha. Nothing else was worth a single thought.

After all, he would do anything to make him happy.

With a last explosion of smoke, Puar transformed into a neutrino.

When she saw the smoke inside the oven, and nothing afterwards, Bulma finally knew it was over. Either for Puar, or for her, if he could survive even this. Puar had never taken notice of his limits - how his magic was supposed to recharge based on his own body mass. But he had burned a lot of it tonight, and now he had surely seen that his only way out was to become something so infinitely tiny, even his incredible recovery rate couldn't keep up.

Oolong said he didn't know what happened to those who met that fate. Bulma hoped they just passed on. Because otherwise she'd have to live with the knowledge that from now on, out of all the subatomic particles that made up the entire universe, one of them would have a sentient mind, trapped forever, hating her for a fate infinitely worse than death. Perhaps even worse than Hell.

She felt faint and dropped on the floor. A quick glance at her glove revealed it was pierced, and there was a drop of blood on her skin - the sting had reached her, after all. She hoped he really had taken her bait about keeping her alive, then drifted off, and her mind slipped into darkness.

The giant monkey screamed to the sky and beat his chest with his fists. Cars burned, long columns of dark smoke rose towards the sky. Screams echoed, alarms went off, guns shot. It was chaos. Yet the city looked up, to the sky, and in the sky had found hope. They knew they would be saved, because someone was protecting them.

Swinging across buildings with his bandages, zooming, jumping, a man wrapped entirely in white headed obstinately towards the monster. He was beaten up, bloody, but did not surrender. Punched back, he stood up; smashed to the ground, he rose into the air again.

"It's the mummy man!" screamed a voice among the crowd.

Following him was another - slender, purple, with a pair of horns on his head. He had wings but he didn't fly. Rather, he jumped from roof to roof, occasionally pivoting against a skyscraper's side to propel himself.

"It's the devil man!" screamed another voice.

Someone, walking on the ground, pushed and tried to get ahead in the crowd. He apologised for his rudeness, said something about catching up to his friends. He was asked if he felt okay, his face was really pale. At a moment's notice, he jumped up in the air, exploded, and transformed into a bat, flying off into the distance.

"It's the... bat man?" suggested someone.

Somehow, that felt very underwhelming.

"Please, calm down and walk towards the city centre!" shouted a man from the top of a nearby store. His silhouette alone showed against a bright sign. "We have everything under control! The creature is being directed towards the financial district, where the office buildings are empty. Please move calmly, there is no danger if you follow our instructions."

"Who are you?" asked one of the people below.

The man stepped forward. A long mane of black hair swung around his body. His confident smile shone like a diamond.

"My name," he said, "is Yamcha."

"Yamcha from the West City Dinos?" continued the voice, perplexed.

The boy nodded. "The very same."

"Yamcha from the sex scandal that involved the daughter of..."

"I have to go now. My companions need me." he said, as his eyes gazed into the distance. "Just keep calm and follow my instructions."

He zoomed away, leaving unanswered the many questions of the crowd. As he had mentioned, Goku was being slowly drawn towards the financial district. It wasn't just a matter of containing damage - Bandages had judged that the terrain there would be more favourable. Most buildings were taller than Goku's current form, so they could provide vantage points and cover for surprise attacks. Yamcha considered that Bulma's company would most likely have to foot the bill for any collateral damage and didn't feel like she'd be very happy of this, but it wasn't the most pressing worry at the moment. The army's tanks were less than ten minutes away.

"Yamcha, good timing!" screamed Bandages, hanging from a window. "We're about to try something, we need a third man. And Fangs and See-Through are useless for this."

The other landed on the roof of the same building. "What's the plan?"

"I thought we could grab his tail if one of us distracted him while the other attacked him from behind, but turns out that doesn't work." explained the mummy. "He's gotten too smart for that; whenever we try it he backflips and slaps away the second attacker without giving enough of an opening to the first. So we want to double down."

"A third attacker?"

"That's the idea. You up for it?"

Yamcha sighed. "Sure, why not? It's not like I ever made plans to live until old age."

"Don't be a wimp. I got slapped around by Goku a bit, y'know. You can take it. He's strong but he's also a big slow beast."

"If you say so."

"Great! Go meet up with Spike, you're Team Tail. I'll go get that big boy's attention."

"You know," said the other, "you seem to be enjoying yourself."

Bandages grinned. "Long time since I got this beat. Can't wait to dish it back with interest."

They split. Yamcha reached Spike and he had the plan explained. Bandages would draw Goku across a street in between two tall skyscrapers, narrow enough that he would have difficulty turning around. Spike would try to grab his tail from below, and when Goku dodged by jumping, that would be the time for Yamcha's attack, from above. It seemed a good plan, and he agreed to carrying it out. He got on top of the designated building, while Spike was hiding at street level. Goku was still a couple blocks ahead, but steadily coming closer.

"Oh, hey, Yamcha."

He looked around. He was alone on the roof.

"What are you doing here, See-Through?" he asked. "Also, why are you still naked?"

"I couldn't find any clothes. Got used to it at this point." explained the invisible man. "I was just dropped here by Bandages early. I'm afraid I can't help much at this point, so I'll just stay put."

"Well, but I'm not sure this is the best place for... oh, dang, he's coming!"

Bandages must have been really good at pissing off Goku, because he was running full speed now, stomping cars and leaving his footprints in the asphalt. He extended an arm to grab the mummy, and Yamcha thought he was done for, but Bandages pulled one of his wraps and used it to accelerate laterally faster than his feet would have allowed, dodging the hand at the last moment. The giant monkey's momentum led him to spin around trying to pursue, which made him slap his tail in the opposite direction, towards a small side street.

Spike jumped out, aiming for Goku's tail with a horizontal jump. The only sure way to avoid him for the monster was to go up. He used his left hand, that was going after Bandages, to push hard against the ground. With an agility that no one would have expected of a giant primate, Goku shifted to a handstand, lifting his entire body up, and swinging his tail upwards.

Yamcha launched himself at maximum speed from the side of the building. The tail was right in front of him, Goku's equilibrium was precarious, there was no way he could dodge him. And in fact, he didn't. "WATCH OUT!" screamed See-Through. But his reflexes weren't fast enough to help anyone in such a battle. It was all over before he could finish his warning - Goku's tail didn't avoid Yamcha, it simply ran towards him at full speed, slapping him frontally. Yamcha's body was slammed against the building.

The giant monkey jumped up and straightened himself up with a somersault. Then he grasped the edge of the building on which See-Through stood and pulled himself up. As if he had perceived where the last attack had come from, he scrutinized the roof, looking all over it. His giant head turned around, and the man felt a warm breath caress his body. Bandages, Spike and Yamcha were all down, in the road, trying to regroup, and See-Through was there, alone with the monster. For a moment he felt a jolt of irrational fear that he would somehow be exposed to the eyes of the creature, that they could see through his invisibility. When Goku's eyes immediately moved on, the fear completely drained out of him, and was replaced by a sense of relief and exhilaration. Don't be stupid - you're invisible! There's no danger!

Approximately at that moment, having truly, completely relieved himself of fear for the first time after almost twenty years, See-Through became visible again.

He blinked. The now unfamiliar feeling of having opaque eyelids confused him.

And Goku, for all his being a very clever kid underneath, also happened to be a massive and not especially smart primate at the moment. Which meant he reacted to a naked man suddenly appearing in front of his eyes out of nowhere just as well as any monkey would have - with bafflement, confusion, and then scrambling to react by grabbing the new threat.

Which led him to lose his grip on the building's edge.

"NOW!" screamed Spike, Bandages and Yamcha, having the same idea at the same time. Three men from three different angles ran towards Goku's tail. There was no direction in which to move to avoid them all. Before he even touched ground, the three had a firm grasp on it.

"HEAVE, HO!"

They all pulled and swung. Goku did not have time to land straight - rather, his whole body weight was slammed violently against the road. He tried to pull away, but the three started squeezing, and planted their feet into the asphalt to resist.

"He's getting weaker!" roared Bandages. "We can do this!"

The monster fell, screamed angrily. He moved his arms, trying to find something to grab, something to use as a weapon, to smash.

His fingers closed against the trailer of an abandoned truck.

Goku didn't like anger. Anger made him do things he regretted. Anger made him make mistakes. And anger had made him kill his grandpa.

So, even completely lost in a sea of blinding, all-encompassing anger against anything and everything that existed, his mind still experienced a pang of discomfort. So deep was his dislike for this sentiment that he couldn't avoid to feel like something was wrong with anything he did. Yet this feeling couldn't express itself in anything more than anger as well.

He wanted to smash it all, sure. The lights, the city, the rocks, the cars, these annoying people that kept punching him, the ones who kept firing at him, the ones who didn't do anything but exist. But the more time passed, the more he also wanted to smash the fact that he wanted to smash those things, smash his anger, that fucking Moon, smash himself, smash any and all things that made him be like this.

And more than anything...

"Careful!" screamed Yamcha. "He's got a weapon now!"

Goku lifted the trailer up in his right hand, prepared to hit with it. The three warriors wondered for one instant if they should renounce their progress, let the tail go and save at least themselves, but it was clear soon enough that they weren't the target. Instead, when the monkey's hand came down, it fell violently on the base of his own tail.

Bandages was perplexed. "What's he doing?"

The trailer went up and down again. Now its metallic base was dripping blood, and Goku's tail had a visible wound at its base.

"He's trying to cut off his own tail!" said Spike, fascinated.

"Hey, no joking!" said the other. "He does that, we lose our hold on him. Squeeze stronger!"

Goku roared with pain at that, but he didn't desist. Again, and again, and again the now contorted metal of the vehicle fell. The muscle teared and the bone started cracking.

"We can't let him!" screamed Bandages. "Everybody, pull while it's still strong enough! Let's slam him against the building!"

And so the three of them pulled. The monkey screamed, the grasp surely getting much more painful due to the pitiful condition his tail was in now. They pulled stronger, he screamed more, they started a swing, and suddenly it was all very easy, as if their opponent had gotten lighter, as if swinging him around was no effort at all.

When they looked at what they were swinging, it was just a tail ending in a stump.

But before they could decide to retreat and come up with a new plan, an amazing transformation started to happen. The monster shrunk and lost his fur. His roar turned into a whimper. The three men dropped the amputated tail and ran to the body, that was now only three or four meters tall.

"I couldn't possibly imagine." whispered Spike. "It would have been so easy, had we known..."

"This doesn't make sense." grumbled Bandages. "It's a weak point, and he reverts if you rip it off?"

"He transforms into a giant monkey with the full Moon, Bandages." sighed Yamcha. "Nothing about it makes sense."

In front of them, sleeping huddled on the ground in a fetal position, was a naked kid. Goku, now looking perfectly human, except for a little brown stump right above the cleft of his buttocks.

Yamcha took off his shirt and wrapped him in it, then picked him up in his arms. The rumbling sound of the army's tanks was getting closer.

"Come on." he said. "We're going back home."

When Bulma came to her senses, the first thing she checked was that there were no clouds, demonic clerks, or seas of yellow clouds. Instead all she saw in front of her was the familiar environment of her own bedroom. She was still alive. That was good.

The second thing was wondering what had happened with everything else, and how had she been brought there. Next to her bed were towels, a bucket of water and one containing other fluids she'd rather not indulge on. She had been cared for, while passed out.

"You're awake!"

Bulma longed for the comfort of seeing a familiar face. Which made it even more disappointing when the man who walked up to her was someone she'd absolutely never seen in her life.

"Who the hell are you and why are you in my bedroom?" she asked.

"Oh, sorry for that. I'm See-Through." explained the not-invisible-anymore man. "I'll go call the others."

"Ok." the girl blinked, dumbfounded. "I guess a lot happened."

One minute later, the man came back. With him were Yamcha, Goku, and most importantly...

"Mom! Dad!"

Panchy and Dr. Briefs ran to hug their daughter, still in bed. With their help, she got up and went to greet the others.

"Are you fine?" asked Bulma. "What happened to you?"

"We're alright." confirmed her dad. "Nothing really. We were locked inside the panic room until Yamcha here came to break us out."

Yamcha nodded. "When we came back, the entire place was locked. We just broke through the doors and found you all."

"That was incredibly reckless!" screamed Bulma. "What if I had not gotten rid of Puar? You could have helped him escape!"

"But you had gotten rid of him, right?" objected the boy, defensive. "And if you would have rather died suffocating in your own-"

"No, thanks. It's fine." the thought was way too disturbing to consider. "That bad, huh?"

"You were comatose. Nothing that should have caused permanent damage, but you wouldn't have survived without a bit of care."

"Yeah, you're right. Thanks, I guess. Still a stupid thing to do though." Bulma sighed. "Do you want to know how I did it, by the way?"

The other looked uncomfortable. "I don't know. Perhaps it's better if I don't."

"Fair enough." she turned to Goku. "And you, country boy! I see they did just fine bringing you back to your senses! Everything all right?"

Goku smiled faintly. "Well, no one died," he said, "so that's good. Also, I don't have a tail any more."

"Oh, you're right! And no deaths, so I suppose you were kept out of the city, and no one noticed?" she trailed off hopefully.

There was an embarrassed silence. Spike and Fangs, who had just walked in, looked at each other and at their companions, then after a quick silent negotiation they seemingly agreed that the leader of the group should explain this.

"Not exactly." said Spike, finally. "Goku's curse was extremely powerful, far more than we could possibly anticipate, and-"

Bulma's face drained of colour. "How many people saw you?"

"Basically, everyone." explained Yamcha. "An entire residential neighbourhood in the north was completely razed. The financial district suffered some heavy damage."

"Honey, you must understand," intervened Dr. Briefs, "we're just getting scraps of information, right now, but the estimates are not good. We're talking the same numbers as a natural disaster. The army was involved too. Just the fighter jet that was destroyed costed, well, a lot."

"At least everyone's still alive." chimed in Panchy. "Your friends have really done well."

"I appreciate that. This could have gone much worse, I guess." she shook her head. "I'm sorry. I should have been far more careful. I suppose this means it's over for the Human Enhancement Program, right?"

"As much as I'd want it to be, because frankly, Bulma, that was plain irresponsible," said Dr. Briefs, with a judgemental stare, "I'm afraid not."

Bulma couldn't believe it. "Wait, what?"

"Apparently, because we're too damn good." said Yamcha, giggling.

"The King called." explained the doctor. "The news have spread that four extraordinary humans with incredible powers have defended the population of West City on this calamitous night. Yamcha was a famous face already and was recognized immediately. Then someone who had taken the job interview remembered they had seen him here. In no time, the connection was made and now basically everyone thinks Capsule Corporation created a team of heroes able to defend us from supernatural or alien threats. Which, incidentally, is exactly what your intention was, except for the part where we also caused the threat to begin with."

Even as happy as she was to hear that the project wasn't cancelled, this part made her stomach churn. Even though her main sin was just carelessness, she still had endangered the city, because of it. "That doesn't sound right."

"It isn't." admitted her father. "But what should I have done? I wouldn't have wanted you jailed, perhaps lynched, because of a mistake in good faith. And poor Goku would have had it worst of all while deserving none of it. So, I went along with it all. I lied, said we didn't know anything about the giant monkey creature, but that we were indeed working on enhancing the human potential. That it was an experimental thing. Well, not any more. The King has said he wholeheartedly supports the program that created the heroes who saved West City."

"So we have..."

"We have the Crown's funding and support." Dr. Briefs frowned. "But I turned down any money for now, and in fact suggested that our company should help with reconstruction. It's the least we can do. However, shutting down the program is not an option any more. If anything, we'll have to produce results and present them to the King from now on."

Bulma nodded and sat down, a bit stunned. She didn't really feel like she should complain - this had all resolved way better than it probably should have. Still, she couldn't avoid the feeling that this wouldn't be entirely her research any more now that the eyes of the world were pointed on it. But it would have been a silly thing to object to when she could have easily ended up destitute, in jail, or dead.

Suddenly, everyone's attention was grabbed by Bandages, who rushed into the room looking very excited. "Guys!" he screamed. "Good news!"

"Someone with the power to erase everyone's memories of the last 24 hours has appeared?" asked Bulma.

"What? No!" he said. "I found my talisman!"

And he showed a small stone tablet with something etched on it. Everyone outside of Bulma and her parents groaned audibly.

"What is it?" asked Bulma, leaning forward to take a better look at it.

"A fragment from the ruins near our old village." explained the man. "Got it back then, always carry it around for good luck, but yesterday Goku made me lose it. And guess what happened."

"I'm sorry for all that happened and my part in it," Goku was contrite, but then added with a hint of annoyance, "but I really don't think that was the cause."

"I would not take the possibility lightly." said Spike, solemnly. "The ruins are one of the places where the Other Side most powerfully resonates with our world. Legends say that they are haunted by the remains of an ancient force buried underneath them. That symbol is why those like us are called 'Witched' in those parts."

Bulma frowned, confused. "Witched? What does it have to do with this symbol?"

"You're looking at it upside down." explained Fangs.

"Oh, I see."

She made a mental note that at some point in the future, when there would be enough time and resources, maybe these ruins were worth sending a team to look into. However, even if they could historically and archaeologically interesting, she strongly doubted Spike's rambling explanation made much sense. Why would any ancient civilization use the same alphabet and language as modern people, to begin with? And even then it wasn't clear why the symbol would be considered a letter W.

To her, who couldn't get rid any more of her obstinate first impression, that looked rather like a curly, ornate M.

Leaving the Solar System didn't make much of a difference in view. The first reason was that, of course, unless you aimed very precisely, most of the Solar System was desolate, empty vacuum anyway. The second was that anyway, without eyes or other sensory organs, the tiny particle couldn't see anything. Nor could it interact with photons at all, for that matter. Nothing could disturb it in its infinite loneliness. Most particles of the same kind didn't suffer much for it. This one did, though.

Unable to stop, unable to crash onto anything, die, turn back, see, or do anything other than think, Puar travelled on, as every second that passed took him thousands of kilometres further away from the only person he ever loved.