Chapter 28 - Full Metal Capsule (part 1)

June

It had been almost one week since the joint preparations with Capsule Corporation had started, and Commander Black was swamped by work. On his desk, report upon report piled up, listing progresses made, vulnerabilities identified, movements observed, accumulating in the complex, dynamic picture of the way their enemies were preparing to act, and how the slow, powerful war machine of the Red Ribbon was reacting, by repairing the damage taken and adapting to the new situation. From the flood of reports, though, there was one conspicuous absence. After one day in bed, Bulma Briefs had refused to recover for a second more, had jumped up, wincing visibly at every step and effort of her sore muscles, and ran back into the lab. From there, she'd barely come out to sleep. The rest of the day was spent in one furious brainstorm session - Black was not sure there could be a situation to which the term would apply more literally. Shouting was common. Damage occasional. The few times he'd gotten a glimpse inside the laboratory, it looked indeed a hurricane had hit it, spreading paper, either printed or scribbled on, over all visible surfaces.

But they still had not brought him anything.

He considered the picture of the situation he was getting from everything else. It wasn't good. After what Bulma had done to herself, and to dr. Gero's mechanical arm, Black itched to just ask her to copy whatever the hell it was she'd developed, mass produce it, and give it to each and every soldier in his army; but he knew the way things were going now, not only she would refuse, but any such request would elicit great alarm in the King and his ministers once it came to their ears. It was a delicate game that he had to play - politics on top of strategy. It was tiring and stressful, perhaps more so than a battlefield. But he wasn't a man to complain about his job; he would rather get on with doing it.

He was considering giving a call to Gero's lab to solicit them when the door to his office slammed open and Bulma walked in, bags under her eyes and a very disheveled appearance. She dragged herself to his desk, lifted a thick bundle of sheets and dropped it next to his phone with a loud thump. Black gave it an appraising look. It was at least a hundred pages.

"I asked you for an abridged summary of your ideas," he said, calmly, "not a full technical report."

"This is the abridged summary," wheezed Bulma, with a hoarse voice.

Now

Someone knocked at the door once, twice, and Bulma eventually stopped tossing and turning in the bed and realised it wasn't a dream, but someone actually trying to wake her up. From there to "why didn't the alarm ring" to "oh shit it's morning already!" it was a very small step. Bulma jumped up, covered herself hastily in a dressing gown and opened the door.

Out stood a young Red Ribbon soldier on attention.

"Madam, you're requested in the control-"

"I know I know I know!," shouted Bulma, in a rush. "One moment!"

She slammed the door closed again, darted back in, thought about a shower, decided against it, washed her face, then just tossed away gown and pajamas and wore the trousers and sweater from the night before. Neither was very nice, but the Dragon Balls couldn't exactly wait for her to dress fashionably.

She opened the door again. The soldier in front of her didn't bat an eye, and seemed to have not moved one step since she'd closed the door.

"I'm fine," said Bulma, still brushing her hair as she walked out of the room. "Let's go."

"This way, madam."

The day was a very important one, and the girl felt rather embarrassed that she'd had to be woken up for it. She couldn't even remember going to bed the night before, so it probably was not too surprising that she'd missed setting her alarm. Still, the last few days before, rife with preparations, training exercises and putting the final touches on all of their work until then had been nothing if not exhausting. They entered the control room, and a quick glance at a wall clock told her it was still only ten in the morning in Capital Time (quite a bit earlier there at the headquarters, deep in the west - really, she couldn't be blamed for not waking up). Still two hours to go. Her escort led her to the central table, on which a map of the world was laid out, and flags and miniatures indicated critical location; then the soldier clacked his heels, saluted, and turned around, walking swiftly to other duties.

"We have a princess in our midst, it seems. I trust you have slept well?"

The stocky, fat man next to her, whose uniforms bore the shoulder marks of a general, looked at her with a contemptuous stare. She couldn't blame him for being annoyed with her; after all, Bulma didn't care for the man one bit either. He was a middle aged slob, the way she saw him, and could hardly berate her for laziness if that was his best fighting shape. He was bald, had small beady eyes and a bushy, majestic red moustache over an even more spectacular double chin.

"Not so much, General Copper," she replied, flatly. "Really, I must thank you for sending Private Burnt Sienna or whatever to wake me up. I was having dreadful dreams."

She heard a chuckle come from her right. A quick glance revealed the probable source in Lazuli, who together with her brother had taken her place at a nearby desk. Not that one would be able to tell; she had been quick to hide her amusement and was now dispassionately scanning data on a screen.

The officer wasn't as entertained. "Shows what you know," he huffed. "Three months with us, and you still don't realise anyone below the rank of Lieutenant does not have code names, just matriculation numbers. That was Private #e97451."

Bulma sighed. "Of course. Pardon my ignorance. Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll start catching up with my work."

She couldn't really help herself - the guy just ticked her off. In fact, a lot of this sort of pompous asses seemed to populate the upper ranks of the army. She wondered if that wasn't a side effect of the recent split too. Perhaps most of the vicious, ambitious youths, the ones hungry for success and recognition, had defected to the Instruments, and they'd left behind an officer class composed mostly of old men too lazy, or cowardly, or stupid to recognise their own incompetence and do something about it. It wasn't a reassuring thought.

But in the end, it mattered little. She took her place in the corner manned by the Command for Advanced Experimental Operations, as her small group had been pompously named. That would be her, as a civilian consultant, the two brothers Lapis and Lazuli, a few more engineers from the R&D division, and of course dr. Gero himself, who instead of sitting was pacing back and forth nervously, his eyes darting fast between a thousand different things and people.

"Looks like the old man is nervous," whispered Lapis, leaning in, with a malicious smile.

"Looks like you are too," replied Bulma, unperturbed.

He reacted with a shrug, while Lazuli next to him showed another glint of amusement. "Well, it is only normal. We are about to fight a war, after all. Only the great Bulma Briefs could be so relaxed that she'd wake up late for such a day!"

The girl grinned and nodded. Sure, he was absolutely right. This would be a war fought and won by superior science and technology, in one fell swoop, without firing a shot.

She was not nervous at all.

June

"He hath spoken, and I bring forth His word!"

The epic announcement was followed by the rather more underwhelming image of a scruffy Bulma walking into the lab with a pack of papers which a quick glance revealed to be much smaller than the one she'd left with. Lapis clapped nevertheless; dr. Gero didn't deign her of a glance, but then found his way at the same table as everyone else, hovering over her shoulder like a nosy teacher trying to spy on the essay she was writing. Bulma wasn't still sure why he'd sent her to parlay with Commander Black - because his time was too precious to waste outside of the lab, went the excuse, but she suspected it might also be that he realised she had a tad more diplomatic skills than him. Then again, a raging hippo had more diplomatic skills than dr. Gero.

"I see he's trimmed quite a lot of ideas," said Lazuli, giving voice to everyone's thoughts.

"Well, that was expected," groaned Bulma. "I think it's gone better than I hoped, really. So here's the projects that he's endorsed."

She picked a few pages, started reading.

"First, most of the ideas concerning upgraded equipment. The new combat uniforms for our fighters, to begin with."

"That was the most trivial, mundane-" started Gero. "We're not damned tailors!"

"Surprisingly, I agree with you, and so does Black," said Bulma. "Which is why I personally suggested that we defer most of this work to the rest of the Ribbon's R&D division. They can handle that, and our time is best spent otherwise. All we need to do is outline the basic requirements - I'll do that, doctor, don't get alarmed."

"What's with the bags?," asked Lapis, picking up another sheet. "Backpacks don't see very hi-tech items." "Those are for Dragon Balls," explained the girl. "You weren't here when we came up with the idea - but basically, last year, I used some metallic mesh to shield them from detection. This is an improvement on that. They aren't just lined with mesh, they can do active shielding with their own coils and battery. And they're pretty cheap, so we'll just make a bunch of them and give them to almost everyone, so that the ones that matter won't be easily found."

"Is the active shielding your idea, sis?"

Lazuli nodded. "It sounds interesting to code. It'd be almost too easy if not for the constraint that the software has to run on a very cheap, compact hardware, with low power."

"So we'll leave that into your hands," continued Bulma. "Next we have the power detectors. These are based off the design I used to build a scanner and train Goku and the others..."

Gero raised his eyebrows. "This is at least slightly interesting. I can give a hand."

Bulma would have been surprised by the sudden mellowing out if she didn't realise all too well what it was instrumental to. "I'm afraid not, doctor, this too is below your genius," she said, with a smile. "My father will be in charge of it, they will be produced at Capsule Corporation and sent here."

The other scoffed. "Just a suggestion. Do as you wish."

"Same goes for the new and improved short-range Dragon Radars - they're based on similar principles, basically," continued Bulma. "In fact we hope to integrate both into our old rear projection glasses model, reworked to be sturdier, to fit a combat scenario; I had something similar built for Goku. They could be useful as battlefield HUDs."

"Do you think there will be fighting against other... powerful people?," asked Lazuli. "Otherwise this seems pretty useless."

"We don't know of anyone, but these can also pick up faintly the trace of normal people, if they're really close, so it'd still be useful," explained the girl. "And besides, they can help our own to keep tabs of each other's position. It's such a cheap affair anyway that it doesn't bear much thinking."

"Understood."

"Now, to finish the list of things that we won't be doing ourselves, but only coordinating, there's that little, fun idea I had about the Dragon Balls..."

Now

Seven simultaneous connections opened on seven screens, covering almost half of the available space on the wall of the control room. One of them was directly from the Capital. King Furry, Dr. Briefs, and Commander Black, together with most of the King's council, were gathered in a room, from which they would receive an information feed from both the Red Ribbon and the Royal Defence Forces sides, and would be in a position to coordinate both. The RDF was at the moment mostly stationed in defence of the major cities. If any of the Dragon Balls happened to be close enough that clash with the Instruments would become inevitable, they would intervene; but given the ratio of urban to rural area in the world, the likelihood of that was negligible. Commander Black had initially opposed the idea of being away from his own seat of power, but it had soon become clear that the request was not a simple request at all. Perhaps the King's council felt that having him under their direct control was a better insurance of the loyalty of the Ribbon at the most critical time. Seeing General Copper, the guy who had been left in charge of the headquarters in his stead, Bulma doubted the military wisdom of that choice. But then again, it was out of her hands, or her father's.

"We receive you loud and clear," said the King, from his seat at the centre of the table, right in front of the camera. "And we wish you the best of luck in this endeavour."

"Luck has no part in it, Your Majesty," said Copper, with a bow. "We will proudly show what superior tactics and strategy can do."

"I'm sure you will. Miss Bulma, it seems you have your share of responsibility too. Thinking back to our discussion, a few months ago - how do you feel about it?"

Tired, stressed out, and wishing this was all over already, thought Bulma. But, "eager to rise up to Your Majesty's expectations and the needs of the world," was what her mouth said.

The King nodded, and on the side, she thought she could see a shade of a proud smile on her father's expression.

She looked at the other six screens. Six teams, split up to have strengths suited to their assigned territories, and spread more or less homogeneously across the world. Some were based in safe locations; others were holed up in hidden refuges deep into enemy controlled territory. Six teams, positioned in a way to statistically minimise the average distance from the Dragon Balls, wherever they may appear on the world's land mass. Each commanded by a ranked Red Ribbon officer, and each with support from one or more of the warriors that had committed themselves to the cause.

"Silver team, checking in," said Colonel Silver, a buff man with reddish hair. Next to him stood Goku. Bulma gave him a quick greeting gesture from the edge of the camera's field of view, and he answered in kind.

The territory they were stationed in could be easily guessed by their gear. Everyone in that particular team was covered in thick, warm white clothes, with fur-like neck protections. Their visors doubled as ski goggles, protecting their eyes against the glare of snow and the cold winds. In practice, they were the closest to the enemy headquarters, the Muscle Tower, up in the north east. Communication was mediated by satellite, which gave it a slight lag.

"Violet team, checking in." Colonel Violet was a woman - Bulma could count how many she had seen in the Ribbon on the fingers of one hand. Next to her stood Giran, arms crossed, not particularly talkative or happy. He didn't wear any gear outside of his visor. He had outright refused any help, saying he was more comfortable fighting as he was used to. The others had heavy clothes, but less so than Silver's men, and mostly of a greyish colour with mimetic patterns. They also were stocked with ropes and hooks. The northern central region was heavily mountainous.

"Cobalt team, checking in." Another woman appeared on the screen, very tall and athletic, with fierce eyes, bright blue hair tied behind her in a long ponytail, and the insignia of a Major on her shoulder. Hers was the first team yet to be transmitting from an outside location. Their camp was an expanse of tents and trucks in the middle of a desert area, and their uniforms were all colour of the sand. Next to Major Cobalt was Yamcha, in a gi fashioned with a similar camo pattern, ready to fight in the same environment which only one year ago he had roamed as a bandit.

"Purple team, checking in." huffed Colonel Purple. He was short and fat, and wore a regular Red Ribbon uniform for temperate weather. So did the rest of his soldiers, while Spike and Bandages wore their usual getups, except for the visors. The colour of both the devil's costume and the mummy's bandages, though, was slightly different - in both cases, darker, and with the occasional slightly metallic gleam. Their assigned area was central, near West City.

"Ocra team, checking in." This was a lean, humourless man with round spectacles speaking. He wore another regular uniform, as the south-eastern coast region his team was patrolling was quite mild. Next to him, Muten looked like he was readying up for a seaside vacation. He had insisted in keeping his civilian clothes, and was ready to go into battle in shorts and a flower shirt. Even his visor he'd specifically requested to be fashioned in a way that looked like his usual sunglasses. He had ditched his usual turtle shell, though.

"Green team, checking in," The last officer was a middle aged man, with a square jaw and a displeased frown. Behind him, the troops lined up were in gear similar to the one of the Violet team, as the north western area was also mountainous and covered in forests. "We have a problem here."

"What is it, Colonel Green?" asked the General, strutting forward, arms behind his back.

"It's the civilian, sir. The so-called Ox King. He's joined us, but is keeping at a distance, and refuses any sort of coordination. He says he simply wants us to tell him where the Dragon Ball is once we know, and then we can, all, in his words, fuck off."

"What! This is...," started Copper, but he couldn't finish, as Commander Black interrupted.

"You are not, in any circumstance, to fuck off, so to speak," he said. "But if cooperation seems impossible, I strongly advise that you do not force the issue either. I have seen this man in action, and he is very dangerous. Dangerous for the enemy, I hope; we do not him to become dangerous for ourselves too."

Colonel Green nodded. "I understand, sir."

"Do as he asks, give him the information, but then operate on your own. If he acquires the Dragon Ball, we win anyway. Our main objective is to keep it from the hands of the enemy; the rest can be settled later. If he does not, he still can be a powerful diversion. This is not optimal, but it's the best we can do at such short notice."

Green saluted with a click of his heels and took one step from the screen.

"The operative details of this mission have been kept secret from you until now," continued Black, "outside of the broad objective. This was done out of security concerns, of course. I believe the time has come to lift that secrecy. Commanders, civilian aids, please shift the communication to your earpieces for privacy. Miss Bulma, since the plan is of your ideation, perhaps you're the best to conduct this briefing."

"Yes, thanks, Commander." This was the first time Bulma found herself speaking in such an official role to anyone in the Ribbon outside of Black or Gero. She wondered if anyone among the officers felt like Copper about her, but if they did, they didn't show it right now. "As you already know, one of the Dragon Balls we're looking for is in the hands of the enemy, and probably hidden and shielded, if they have any brains at all. The remaining six will appear on our radar screens at precisely 12:07, Capital Time. As a matter of fact, they will appear also on the enemy's screens. Being unable to avoid this, we made it so that a lot more will appear too."

"We have produced approximately one thousand microwave emitters tuned to work on the same exact frequency as the Dragon Balls. These have been shipped anonymously to people who answered a certain newspaper ad, and agreed, for a sum, to drop them in the intended final positions, randomly scattered to cover more or less uniformly the planet's entire surface. The emitters work also on different frequencies, so we've been able to discreetly confirm their current positions, and we can say that at least 80% is where they should be. For the remaining 20%, well, I guess someone's not getting paid."

There were a few chuckles from the room she was in, but all the officers remained dead serious.

"The decoys are programmed to activate randomly, almost simultaneously to the real Dragon Balls, in groups of six. We can't predict the exact moment of the activation of the real set of Dragon Balls, but this way, it is fundamentally impossible to tell which is which, even if the enemy happened to take the precaution of recording the data stream being acquired by their radar. Of course, because we know which ones are our decoys," Bulma grinned, "we will know."

Commander Black signed that she could stop and took over. This part was delicate enough that it better come from someone well trusted. "As I said before, security concerns are our main worry. We have been hurt once, badly, because of poor internal security and compartmentalisation, which allowed the enemy to acquire key positions and leverage them to hijack almost half of our assets. This will not be repeated. You six are the only ones who need to be trusted with the true positions of the Dragon Balls; and thus, you six are the only ones who will be. Once the information is in our hands, each of you will receive a map of the six Dragon Ball positions as we detected them. In each map, one position will be marked - the one closest to your assigned patrol area. You are to immediately move your forces towards that position, keeping the information about the precise coordinates hidden for as long as possible. Simply plot your route and order each step individually."

"I would like you to remember: this plan is not a guarantee of not encountering the enemy. Rather, it gives us the initiative. The true positions of the Dragon Balls will be revealed as soon enough as our own movements make them obvious, and we can expect a reaction then. If we are swift and decisive, we can attack, find the objective, and withdraw fast enough that it will not be a problem. Be swift and decisive."

"One last thing. This is an unusual battle in all senses. The objective is the retrieval of a particularly small artefact, and choosing our battlefield will not be a luxury we will have. The enemy is not the only source of worry. You may have to fight in hostile or dangerous terrain. Make use of all the equipment you were given. Rely on the civilian helpers, who possess great physical abilities and resistance. You've been equipped. You've been trained. You have one excellent reason to fight. Go out there."

Black's voice hardened.

"And make them pay." he said, finally.

June

Bulma sighed deeply. They had gone through all the motions; listed all the things they would be working on more or less tangentially, merely by playing a coordinator role, exchanging information, or otherwise supporting people whose time would be dedicated to them, between the Red Ribbon's own research division and Capsule Corporation, not to mention some of the King's own royal laboratories. The twins were dozing off with a bored stare and Dr. Gero looked like he was twitching with impatience.

But now, finally, it was time to talk about the Fun Stuff.

Commander Black had not been too keen on approving all of the Fun Stuff. In fact, much had been rejected, as Bulma had expected, out of either practicality or political worries. Some of it was born of Gero's mind and was, in fact, too Fun even for her standards. Some of it she hoped would never see the light of day or be used in battle against fellow humans. But there was one certain project that Black had been all too happy to endorse, and that played right into her own interests.

"We have the official go ahead," she announced, triumphantly, "to develop the Human Enhancement Program's Mark II prototype!"

A jolt of attention ran through the table. Lapis and Gero perked up and sat straighter; Lazuli must have been only grazed by it, though, because she barely managed to look slightly less disinterested than before.

"This is, in fact, the project Black wants me and the doctor focus our efforts on the most," continued Bulma. "He has scheduled more than 80% of our time on it. Lapis is also supposed to help, we've got biological interfaces and an animal experimentation phase planned-"

"What a waste of time! As if you needed to stick my creations in some rat to know they work!," grumbled Gero.

"-and Lazuli, you will be in charge of data management and handling since there is some very delicate Capsule Corporation proprietary data involved and we wouldn't want someone to misuse that-"

Gero opened his eyes wide at this, and Lazuli allowed herself a small, stealthy smile.

"-so I'll give you all a detailed plan later on. If there are any objections-"

"There are!," yelled Gero, slamming his hand on the table.

"-they won't be taken in consideration, Black said, as his decision on this matter is absolute, but please do go on," finished Bulma.

"First, eighty percent of our time? Of my time? When am I supposed to develop the weapons that-"

"You are not supposed to," snapped back Bulma. "I'm sorry, doctor, but I'm just the messenger here. As Black put it, there are a lot of worries here. One is that he doesn't want us spreading ourselves too thin and achieving nothing. He'd rather have us work on a single, solid idea that will give the Ribbon a significant edge. The second is that, at a difference with most weapon ideas, the HEP prototype is versatile. It can allow for superiority in combat-"

And here she significantly nudged at the wreck of the mechanical arm she had smashed to pieces just a few days before, which still lay in a corner of the laboratory waiting for repairs.

"-but it is also good for a number of other situations. The same can not be said of highly specialised weapons, which by the way, can be captured by the enemy much more easily."

"Finally, there's the matter of politics. Capsule Corporation will not cooperate on weapons development, but we're quite happy to help with this, as it's already been ours - well, my - area of work for some time, and will retain partial ownership and thus control of the technology, which sits better with the King's government."

"The data," noted Lazuli.

"Exactly. I didn't go into details when we were brainstorming earlier since I still didn't know how it would end but I guess now I should show you," said Bulma. She pulled up the lower edge of her shirt, exposing her midriff, where an elastic belt kept tied the small electrostimulator. She unhooked it from the belt, disconnected the electrodes' wire from the plug, and put the device, on its own, on the table.

"This is my Mark I prototype," she explained. "As a device, it is tremendously simple. All it does is send certain electric signals to a specific area of my body corresponding approximately to my solar plexus chakra - please don't make those faces, yes, it was weird for me too - in shapes and frequencies codified to stimulate the release of ki."

"So that's how all those things work," joked Lapis. "I guess that's better than going to the gym allright."

"You're not even that wrong." said the girl. "The principle is the same. It's just that the signals involved are much more complex, and instead of your muscles, you're stimulating-"

She trailed off, there, because to be frank, she wasn't exactly sure what was it stimulating really. The soul, possibly? Somehow the idea that her soul was located in her spinal column, roughly at the same height as her stomach, didn't really appeal to her. She ended up just making a vague hand gesture and saying nothing.

"How ridiculously primitive," snarled Gero. "This is your big secret? I can't believe this thing is all there is to it."

"You want me to demonstrate again?," replied Bulma. "It's not all there is to it. It took me months, millions of Zeni and a world class martial arts tournament to figure out how the signals work, and sorry, that knowledge isn't going anywhere for now."

"So what am I supposed to do!," exclaimed the other, throwing his hands into the air. "You've got it all down pat, don't you?"

"Not really," she said. "You are right, doctor: it is primitive. It is vulnerable, and unwieldy to use. Absolutely unviable in a real fight. You have a great amount of experience in building biocybernetic interfaces - why, I'd easily say you're the foremost world expert on the topic-"

He wouldn't beam or show pride, Gero, not him. But he did calm down and slightly relaxed his frown, which to Bulma said, her flattery was indeed doing its job.

"-and so I'd expect for you it would be a trivial task to help me in miniaturising it and making it an internal device. A subcutaneous chip or something like it."

Gero sounded sceptical. "And Black is okay with this?"

"Why, yes, of course he is. It's a relatively small affair, for a big gain. People can be more amenable to this sort of thing if you don't start by asking them to have their heart teared out and replaced with a mechanical pump, you know."

The scientist grunted. "I guess it's all right," he said finally. "It will be way too easy for this much time, though. I'm being underestimated."

"You and me both," said Bulma, "but that suits my purposes just fine."

"What?"

"Think about it, doctor," the girl smiled. "There's one other project that Black did not approve, and that, I wasn't happy about. But if we have some free time..."

Gero appeared genuinely puzzled for once. "What's the catch?," he asked. "I'm not falling for it."

"No catch, doctor. As I said, my personal ends go a bit beyond simply winning this battle. I'm not thinking about just tomorrow, but what comes afterward. I would hope this... apprenticeship, if you'll allow me the term, to be a fruitful learning experience. And hopefully produce something more than just a new and improved version of my little toy."

She turned her head to the side, and nodded in the direction of the transparent mannequin traversed by wires that still stood on one wall of the laboratory.

The doctor stared at her silently. Bulma forced herself not to look away, even though his eyes, a bit too wide open, a bit too liquid and injected with the red of too many sleepless hours, were all but comfortable.

"What would these be?," he asked, finally. "These purposes of yours?"

"You enjoy toying with the human body, doctor," she replied, deflecting the question. "I think I see a common thread in all your research. Cybernetic enhancement, bioengineering. Topics that normally would hardly go hand in hand, unless you had some... specific objectives in mind. Plus, a certain disdain for the weaknesses of the flesh, which if you ask me is a bit excessive, but I can see your point. Tell me, doctor, what do you plan to leave to the world as your legacy? Once your time on this Earth is over?"

"Nothing at all," said Gero. "I do not plan to die. I have better things to do."

The girl nodded. "Then we have something in common."

The doctor remained silent a bit more, inscrutable. Then a wide, wolfish grin spread on his face - the first thing Bulma could say she'd seen on his face truly resembling a smile.

"That we do, perhaps," he said.

Now

The coastline was a thing of beauty - a granite wall falling straight into the ocean, meeting it into a crash of rocks and waves, where erosion had dug out a fascinating and dangerous network of caves and tunnels over millennia of patient, tireless toil. Hie lost himself often in admiring its infinite detail and intricacy, as well as the wonder of the many ways in which the sun painted the sky with light as it dived down into the ocean, here, at the eastern end of the world. But if the sun's work was to paint with light, his required brushes and color. He looked away from the ocean and focused back on the canvas in front of him, which stayed obstinately empty.

Thing is, this place would have been far more awe inspiring if not for all the tourists.

He was used to them, of course. These shores were an attraction, though he took care to always position himself in spots that were a bit off the beaten track just to avoid the biggest groups. But today it seemed all travel agencies in the world had conspired to ruin the meditative atmosphere. For the last hour, a number of coaches had showed up from nowhere and parked around. Many of them seemed to come from far away, they weren't the usual local companies - West City Trips, really? - and all of them were packed with tourists.

Hie tried to ignore them, but it was frankly hard. First, because for some reason, they had all arrived and stayed in the same area. What was so special about this spot? Usually tourist buses tried to space themselves out, to give their customers a better sense of the beauty of incontaminated nature, insofar as that illusion could even hold when the grass was littered with the trash dropped by their predecessors. But these guys seemed to just not mind. Hundreds of them had come out of the coaches and were now roaming around.

Another coach arrived, and Hie felt like screaming at them, why are you even showing up at this hour? The sun is about to set!. It made no sense, by any standard. The bus didn't seem to know, though. It stopped and dropped out its own load, a few more dozens of tourists. Like all the other tourists before, this group seemed to be almost entirely composed of muscular, healthy, male youths, with a mean look on their face. Was this, like, a company trip? From a very big company. With a lot of angry employees.

Who travelled all together.

Well, no, there was one exception. One old dude, bald, with sunglasses and a very tourist-like shirt, who was walking casually towards him right now. Hie sighed. If there was anything he despised more than tourists, it was tourists who wanted to talk with him. Many fancied themselves artists too. One had once walked to him just to tell him his painting wasn't very good.

"Young boy," said the man, smiling jovially, "I think you'd best leave."

"What?!" Hie was outraged. This was the last straw. "Not only you guys show up from nowhere for no good reason - not only you ruin everything about this place - you even have the audacity to ask that I leave! It should be you guys who-"

He stopped himself. Another of the tourists had caught up to the bald man. This one was not smiling. He was a forty-something man, short, slim, with glasses.

And, discreetly, he was pointing a handgun at him.

"You're crazy," whispered Hie, eyes bulging out. "What are you-"

"Pack your things and leave immediately," said the man, very calmly.

The bald guy intervened. "Now, that is a bit excessive. I'm sure we can convince him in a more amiable fashion."

"There is no time for being amiable," replied the other, dry. "I'm just speeding this up. See? He's packing already."

Of course I am, thought Hie, rushedly jamming color and canvas in his bag and closing the easel. Of course I am, you damn psychos!

"Establish a perimeter, then call the rest in," said the younger man to another tourist who had come to speak to him. The new arrival nodded, gave him a military salute, and rushed off.

As he ran off, all around him, Hie saw the buses vanishing in so many puffs of smoke, reduced back into capsules. Then more capsules were thrown, and out of them exploded a very different kind of gear. Tanks, sandbags, barbed wire barriers begun appearing. Tents that had been produced the same way were secured to the ground with remarkable speed. Many of the "tourists" were entering them and coming out changed, into military uniforms that just on their left arm bore a very recognizable red ribbon tied around.

"Oh, shit," muttered Hie.

Planes started flying over. Dozens of them, large, bulky planes with big bellies meant for troop transport. But there was no space to land, and land they didn't; rather, out of them dropped soldiers who fell through the air, and when close enough, opened parachutes and glided the rest of the distance. The last one out of the plane would hang onto it from the outside, push a button, and have it turn into a capsule, then drop down with it following the others.

Hie stared, transfixed. The show of coordination and power was majestic. Like the waves crashing on the rocks below, here it was the power of man and technology that crashed from above, swallowing the land in a red tide. He felt an itch, the embryo of an idea, a need to grab his brushes, his canvas, do something to make this instant last forever-

"Hey, we said you can't stay here!," barked one of the soldiers walking past. Hie tried to object, raise an arm, but the brute would hear it. He was manhandled gracelessly. Someone took the keys to his car, pushed him into it, and then tossed them inside next to him.

"Now piss off," said the man, gesturing meaningfully with his rifle.

Hie nodded, meekly, grabbed the keys, turned the car on, and drove away.

"Ocra team is in place," announced someone at a communication console.

The links other than with the King and his room had been cut - the commanders were too busy deploying their forces right now. Ocra team was the first to reach their destination, which happened to be fortuitously close to their starting point. Still, it took them little over two hours to do so.

"Where are the others?," asked General Copper.

"All within twenty minutes to one hour from full deployment, sir."

"Very well. Keep us informed," he replied, and then, "I still find it ridiculous that we can not see their positions directly though," he added.

Bulma bit her lip. Commander Black was not listening in on the command room, and if he didn't reprimand his inferior, it wasn't her place to. Nor that she would be listened to, of course. In fact, as the only person in the room who actually knew the exact positions of the Dragon Balls, she would rather not draw attention to herself. She had her own doubts about the need for so much security, but here, it had been Commander Black who insisted. Information, he had said, would be on a need to know basis only, at least inside the Ribbon. Hiding it from her would have been impossible, though, since she had worked to calculate the optimal distribution of the decoys across the world to maximise the chance of hiding the real Dragon Balls. She had made use of her own knowledge from the previous hunt for that - though she reckoned that a 'fresh' start, in which all Dragon Balls were simply randomly dropped across the world, was a very different situation from one in which they'd been lying around for centuries and had occasionally been moved around or even found and collected by people. Still, she was the foremost expert on the matter; it just happened to not mean very much.

She looked at the screen in front of her. It showed the positions of all sources of radiation their satellite radar had identified - this included the Dragon Balls as much as all the decoys she had spread around the world. But remembering the positions of the decoys at a glance, she could tell which ones were not. Unfortunately, even with much better statistics it would have been impossible to start close enough to collect the balls right away, at least without fragmenting their forces so much they would have risked being overwhelmed by the enemy if they got beaten to the punch. The best they could do was uniformly distribute six teams across the planet's surface, have them spread advance teams on their territory, and hope that their targets would be close enough. She had then assigned one target to each team, and prepared the maps to send to their leaders.

The results had been middling - the two hours Ocra team took to reach their destination felt like the longest in her life, and it wasn't over yet. Still, she could breath a little sigh in relief. That they had one team in place already meant they would probably secure at least one Dragon Ball, and that was all they needed to begin with. Since the Instruments held the seventh there was no hope of granting any wishes without a direct confrontation anyway, so this was as good a start as any.

Still, this was nerve wracking. She could see the positions of both Dragon Balls and the teams. She knew Ocra team wasn't even the one who started closest to their objective. Clearly, it wasn't just a matter of distance - terrain had to be factored in too. But she couldn't ask out loud, or that would have been as good as revealing where exactly the Dragon Balls were, and she wasn't suppose to. She had wondered whether being safe from potential spies was worth having to fight this way, almost blindfolded. But Black had stated, firmly, that it was. He even hinted that some of their minor operations in the previous weeks had seemed to be subject to leaks, and that he was investigating the matter. The operation would be swift anyway, and he trusted his commanders to take the best decisions on the field on their own. In fact, mused Bulma, perhaps this was why he'd placed General Copper there at HQ - the most vain and incompetent man in the position in which he would feel more important and have less occasion to absolutely anything of real consequence.

Bulma stared at the dots on her display, hoping she could divine their story just from their slow, regular blinking.