Disclaimer: the idea and characters of Dragon Ball are owned by Akira Toriyama. This is a simple non-profit fan parody.

Chapter 22 - Dusk of War

A Red Ribbon base in the northern hemisphere

Colonel Green sat idly in the meeting room, browsing through a few printed pages. His long, clawed finger would follow the words, occasionally stop below one, to then skip ahead, creasing slightly the paper every time he turned a page. The report had been sent to him by his agent on the field just a few minutes before. He did not expect there would be much of use in it, but he was not in the habit of disregarding potentially useful information. Also, it was a good way to distract himself from the tension of waiting for the outcome of the mission. So much hung in the balance there, both for him and for the cause he had dedicated his life to. Being slightly tense was certainly warranted. In front of him, left on the desk, were a tablet, airing the images of the Tournament currently unfolding with a muted audio, and a small pager, with a keyboard and a green LED light that blinked at regular intervals.

The door slammed open, and in walked another ptero like him, a corpulent, younger one, wearing an officer's uniform and grades. He put himself on attention and beat his chest with his fist. "He is our Maestro." he said.

The other raised his eyes from the document. "And we are his Instruments." he replied. "Are we talking openly then, Cymbal?"

"There is no need for subterfuge any more, Piano." grunted the younger officer. "We have just received news that Violin has failed. Giran still lives and is now in the Tournament's infirmary. He will probably be guarded. Once he wakes up, and spills the beans, we're done for."

Piano eyed his pager. The light was still green; the device, silent.

"Curious." his beak curled in displease. "You say there is no need subterfuge any more, and yet you come bearing news I should have received directly. What is going on, exactly?"

More officers and simple soldiers came into the room. Another ptero, but mostly humans, and they freely sat around the table, after doing the ritual salute. Cymbal gestured at them all.

"We've decided your performance has been disappointing, Piano. Especially with this new toy of yours-"

"Violin."

"You've been soft. She'd failed already, and now she's failed again. It was a good thing we overrode her signal feed and took it into our hands."

There were some snickers around. Piano looked at Tambourine, the only other ptero, the second oldest of them, and saw him smiling innocently. It was apparent they had all turned on him. Well, such was the nature of their organisation. The world to the strong.

"So what did you order her to do now?" he asked, slowly.

"To assassinate the Commander." said Cymbal. "And then give the signal to begin the Concerto."

Piano laughed out loud. Around the room, not many seemed to find the notion nearly as funny.

"I'm sorry," he said finally, "I believe you're serious. So it wasn't humour, it was insanity. We still have four months to go before the Dragon Balls go back to being active. Why wouldn't we use every second of them to our advantage?"

Cymbal slammed his hand on the table. "Because if Giran talks, we lose the advantage of surprise! And that's worth way more than a few more soldiers brought to our cause."

"Then kill Giran. Violin can try again, if she's still alive. Or you can send some of your men. I know you've hidden a few among the escort. How many? Five? Six?"

"Actually, it's fifty." intervened Tambourine. "I took the precaution of infiltrating a few more as simple spectators. Commander Red and his lapdog have no idea, of course."

"How thoughtful of you." said Piano. "One might think you almost hoped that Violin would fail, just so you could pull off this little power play."

"We take out the Commander. We take the stadium." Cymbal explained. "At the same time, we strike in all the Ribbon bases, all at once. We're all ready to spring into action as soon as the signal comes - we've prepared for this moment for years. Out of eight main bases, we have the majority in four, this one being the safest. Two are contended, included HQ, and two are loyalist. Good enough odds, if you ask me."

The old ptero chuckled. "And one wonders why I never asked you. Have you seen that Tournament, Cymbal? Not very secret intelligence, the fights are on TV. That woman, Bulma, has most of those fighters dancing in the palm of her hand. If they're there to defend the place, do you think five men, or fifty, stand a chance? Subterfuge is the only hope we have, at this stage. Then we must strike quickly. If we do it now, they'll have time to prepare, and we'll never get the Dragon Balls, mark my words. We need a way to blindside them."

"Lots of words come out of your mouth," growled Cymbal, leaning in forward towards the officer, "yet all I hear is, I'm a coward."

For a long moment of tension no one spoke. The silence was as weighty as the insult that had preceded. Many hands were laid on guns, fingers ready to close around the handle and draw.

Then Piano chuckled and made a shrug. The rest of the bystanders relaxed as the tension was defused. "Fine, have it your way." he said. "Just don't come crying to me when things go south."

Cymbal spat on the ground, spiteful. "They won't."

"So I hope. Now, when is this genius plan of yours supposed to begin?"

"We're not idiots, Piano." said Tambourine, with a snicker. "It's begun right before we entered this room."

The old ptero didn't show any emotion from those words, but he checked quickly the tablet. The transmission had been interrupted; the stream of the fights had been replaced by an error message apologising for 'technical difficulties'. "Of course it did. So, given that Violin must have done her part now, would you let her leave the stadium now?"

"What, you still try to protect her?" laughed Cymbal. "That's beyond pathetic."

"She did her job, right?"

Tambourine raised a brow. "Commander Red appears dead, yes. But she can still be of use."

"She has a Dragon Ball." insisted Piano, irritated. "An inert one, for now, but that will change come September. Would you rather that fall in the enemy's hands now if the attack fails? If that happens, they could put it out of our reach, and it may as well be lost forever to us. Conversely, if we have it, we can force a confrontation with the enemy and stall them. Recovering it should be our number one priority."

"The attack won't fail. My men will take care of that."

"Then one less, incompetent soldier surely won't make the difference, right?"

Piano didn't flinch, even in the face of the obvious hostility of the others. This was all it was about. Never showing any weakness. He could not back down, or these idiots wouldn't just take his order feed from him.

"Fine." grunted Cymbal, finally. "Have it your way. Who cares. Look, I'll even give you back control of her feed, you can tell her to turn tail if that's what you want. What's done is done anyway."

"How kind of you. Now, if you'll excuse me."

Piano grabbed the pager and walked to the door. He had put his claws on the handle when he stopped himself.

From outside the room, a chaotic mix of sounds could be heard. There were screams of anger and fear, broken occasionally by the rhythmic cadence of an automatic rifle firing in bursts. The few loyalists in the base were being rounded up and dealt with. This was it, then, truly. No going back.

He drew his own side arm, pushed the door open, walked out.

The Tenkaichi Tournament

"What is happening to that boy?"

"I don't know, but if I were in you, I'd start worrying about paying up."

"Screw that, I will not count my money until it's over and done."

For all his bluster, Captain Teal knew all too well his subordinate was probably right on this one. This escort task seemed like a nice day out and a chance to have fun a bit, but perhaps going as far as betting half of his pay on the final match meant he'd let himself be carried away by the atmosphere. Still, this was really a bit of bad luck. The boy seemed to have just started faring better against that old fart, then there had been all that emotional nonsense with hugging and crying, and now suddenly he goes and does... whatever the heck it was that he was doing now. Wait, was that fur growing on his arm?

"Maybe they'll call the match off and have a redo," suggested Teal, tentatively. "He seems unwell."

Lieutenant Gray smirked. "Yeah, dream on." he said. "Unless someone dies, they won't interfere until the match is decided. That's just how these monks are."

He was right enough, and Teal knew it already. Still, the captain found his demeanour slightly annoying. Maybe it was the arrogance, that the lieutenant wouldn't usually display - he was one rank below him, after all. But this was a covert mission, and they were supposed to act and talk like civilians, lest someone notice. He sure did seem to revel in it. Most of all, perhaps, was that smirk of his. Teethy and wolfish, it always felt like it was mocking him for not knowing something. Like he felt better, and that ticked Teal off. But he couldn't much make use of his authority when they were in service to have some redress - that would have been unprofessional. And other than those vibes, Gray had never given him any reason to worry or complain. He was as exemplary an officer as they come.

There was a loud bang. Teal's hand immediately ran to his holster, all thoughts of gambling forgotten.

"What is going on?" he shouted, pressing his earpiece to be sure to catch properly any orders that would come through. "Have you seen where the shot came from? Do we have a sniper?"

Gray didn't answer; he seemed to be intently listening to his earpiece too. Strange, because to Teal, no orders were coming through. Then he lost sight of him for a moment, and next thing he knew, he turned around to see him holding his pistol to his own level, still the same self satisfied smirk on his face, as if this was the same as when he was gloating about winning a bet.

"Pity," he said, "seems like I won't get to collect that win."

He shot twice. Captain Teal slid back on his chair, a trail of blood on the backrest behind him, his fingers having just managed to grip his own gun's handle. His consciousness faded while he was still wondering what the hell had just happened.

The only answer he could see was that fucking smirk.

"DOWN!"

Staff Officer Black ducked under the chairs in front of him, and with a violent pull he wrenched Bulma down with him. The other boy, Yamcha, seemed about to protest, when another series of gunshots echoed from all directions.

"Idiot, stay down!" hissed Black. Then he pulled a little wire from his jacket's collar and asked for a report from his men. No answer came. He swore.

"Are they shooting at us again?" asked Bulma, panicked. "Why are they shooting at us?"

The man shook his head. "First one was a rifle. These were small arms. There's more than one shooter." he said. "Let me check on the Commander."

He moved a bit to the side to reach Red's seat, but as he suspected, there was not much to check. He was slumped over the chair, head dangling on one side, his bloody shirt so sticky and wet it now adhered to his chest, revealing the shape of the body holster underneath he kept his weapon hidden in. His arm was limp, and he had no pulse. Enough blood had pumped out of his wound that there must be more outside than inside his body by this point. The bullet had gone straight into his heart.

"Is he..." asked Bulma.

"Dead, yes. Probably as soon as he was hit."

The girl shuddered. "I'm sorry for, uh, your loss."

Black considered the answer for a moment. "Our line of work has its dangers." he said dryly.

The world exploded. The screams of terror, the people running about, the gunshots, all got lost in a shockwave that rattled Bulma to her bones and smashed her to the ground. When she rose up, she saw blood trickling down her face and onto her hands. Next to her was the body of Brother Wei, tossed to the ground by the same shock. Instinctively, she retracted her hand with a shriek, then extended it again to check if he was still breathing. Luckily, he wasn't dead, just out of it.

"Stun grenades!" shouted Black. "Keep under cover, or you'll just risk to be hurt more if another one goes off."

Bulma nodded, still almost without breath. Concrete dust caked her hands and face, and burned in her eyes. Around, it was all shrieks, shouts, gunshots. There was another explosion, more distant. She thought she needed to do something, get someone to help. She realised her phone was still in her hand, but when she checked it out, her heart sank. The fall and impact had shattered the screen. She tried pushing the on button, to no effect. The thing was dead. She tossed it to the groud, frustrated.

Another rifle shot reverbered through the stadium. Yamcha's body was tossed violently down on the pavement.

Black shook his head. "I had told him to stay down."

"Ouch! I didn't think it would hurt that much!"

The officer felt like pynching himself to check whether he was awake when he saw Yamcha, the boy who had just been hit by a sniper rifle, open his eyes, crack his neck, then look worried at his shoulder, where a bullet was only partially stuck into his flesh.

"Oh, shit, I'm bleeding!" he screamed.

Bulma managed a faint smile. "Welcome to the club." she said. "What's the situation with Goku?"

"Right, Goku." Yamcha yanked the bullet out, wincing a moment with pain. He was heaving a bit, but otherwise he seemed fine. "He's not there any more. The ring is empty."

"Yes!" the girl chuckled. "Goku's grandpa, I love you!"

"I am glad that solves that problem, whatever it was." said Black. "That only leaves a sniper, an unknown number of active shooters on the loose, and a mass panic to deal with."

"Mass panic?" asked Bulma.

Black simply gestured all around. The area had grown almost quiet, as most of the people had left. The screaming had become more distant, as people from all over the place had started running for the exits.

"They'll try to flee." he explained. "Everyone at once, without criterion. Panicking humans are scary creatures. There will be a stampede. People will die."

Bulma's face paled. "Oh, no. We can't allow that."

"Then I hope you put preventative measures in place when building this stadium." replied Black. "Now it's too late. Besides, they caused this on purpose. This is just a distraction, to keep us occupied while they pursue their real objective."

He raised his gun.

"Which is why we shouldn't let them."

"But I can't...! I am responsible for these people!" shouted back the girl. "Yamcha, go find Bandages and Spike, quickly. Help the people. See what you can do."

Yamcha hesitated. "Bulma, are you sure? You'd be left alone in the middle of this firefight. I can-"

"You would send away the bulletproof boy?" Black growled. "Are you a fool? He's our best hope."

"And until further notice, he works for me, not you." replied Bulma. "Yes, Yamcha. This is more urgent. Go. We'll be fine, somehow. There's still Muten, Krillin and the Ox King. If you see them, send them to join us, and we'll be safe."

The boy nodded, uncertain, then jumped away.

Black sent a sideway glance to Bulma. "If you'll be my only help in this, you may as well make yourself useful. Have you ever fired a gun?"

Bulma nodded. The man raised an eyebrow in surprise.

"Go get Commander Red's then. He doesn't need it any more. Avoid leaving cover at all costs. I'll wait."

Bulma nodded again, and she crawled up to Commander Red's seat. She could well see where the gun was, and what she had to do to get it. Slowly, she sent her hand up, looking for the opening of Red's shirt, unbuttoning it. Then she slid her hand inside, between flesh that was getting cooler than it ought to be and fabric sticky with blood. She bit her lip, trying to resist the instinct to retch. This, she realised, was a test Black was putting her up to. If she couldn't resist doing something like this, what use could she be in battle?

But she had sent away Yamcha, and now it was only her. It was her responsibility, her decision. She better live up to it.

Her fingers found the gun, gripped the handle, slid it out. She ran quickly away, back to Black, who looked at her a bit more approvingly now.

"Good. Do you have any experience of life or death fights?"

She didn't give much of a thought to that question. "Yes." she replied. "Don't look down on me just because I'm young."

"And a supposedly rich pampered heiress." added Black. "But I'm surprised. Perhaps you may indeed be of some use. What do you think their objectives will be?"

"Killing Giran." she said. "I don't know what's going on exactly, and clearly you don't either. But that was what Mai tried doing, and failed. That's why they're causing this whole mess."

"Yes, miss Bulma, I agree. But obviously, that may not be the whole story." replied the officer. "They are traitors to the Ribbon. They killed our Commander. And whoever they are, I am not privvy to their motivations, which makes me their enemy. So I can guess a good secondary objective will be to kill me too."

He signed her to move towards the right. Silently, they walked among seats, always keeping their head low. Bulma's heart was beating loudly in her throat. Then he signed her to stop.

"They're all around us." he whispered. "Five of them, if I heard right. And they're closing in. Since we're going to have to fight our own way out, miss Bulma, let me ask you just one more question. Have you ever killed a man?"

Someone vaulted over a chair right behind him. It took an instant for her to process the image - a man wearing regular clothes, looking normal in all ways, and pointing a gun at her...

Bulma's senses were flooded with adrenaline, and she felt like she could grasp it now, even if just a fraction of it, the feeling she'd experienced at the end of her battle with Puar. The clarity, the sharp perception. She could see the barrel, the flash, the direction of the shot. She could react. She shifted slightly to the right, lifted her hands, squeezed the trigger.

Bang.

It was a moment that felt like it hadn't even been her own; as if an external force had moved her body. Then it ended, and she was holding a smoking gun in her hand, and a few seats away, a body was tumbling down like a ragdoll. Her arms were shaking. She slowly lowered them.

"I believe that answers the question." mumbled Black. "Let's go."

"What happened? Huh? What happened?"

Pilaf looked around panicked, as if the walls of the room could possibly hold the answer. There had been a few sharp noises that sounded suspiciously like gunshots, so even he could figure out that unless the final battle had involved some serious cheating, something was off. The monks around him didn't seem to have many answers, though. The old witch was sitting in her own corner, looking into her crystal ball, gesturing mysteriously with her fingers and mumbling to herself. All very witch-like stuff, but even if she saw any news of import with her clairvoyance, she didn't seem much willing to share.

Now someone arrived at the door and mumbled into the ear of a monk. Suddenly there was a lot more mumbling and activity, but no significant increase in the sharing news part.

"Excuse me!" said Pilaf, tugging at the robe of one of the monks and trying to make himself sound as imperious as he could. "I demand some explanation. We were not placed here just to sit through... whatever is happening without knowing anything!"

The monk stared at him with the eyes of someone who thought he had been placed there exactly for that reason. "There is some trouble, mister Pilaf," he said in the end, "but please don't move from here. This way we can protect you best."

"Protect us? Those were guns I heard! What are you going to do if they come here to shoot us, kung fu the bullets back at them?"

"Please stay put." sighed the monk, and ran to his companions.

Pilaf went back to sit where he'd been until then, fuming. As a king, albeit one not officially recognised by any authority, or people, or anyone except for his closest associates really, going through such indignity felt outrageous, and certainly not the sort of thing he ought to deal with. He wished his good friend and future father-in-law, the Ox King, were there to defend his point of view more vigorously, but sadly, he was somewhere else, enlisted from that damnable woman into looking for that other even more damnable woman. Really, his life was a stream of indignities that he had to swim through at this point.

It was then that he noticed something different.

When he felt his robe tugged again, the monk turned around having lost his usual enlightened calm. "I said you are to stay put in this room, mister Pilaf!"

"I know you said that!" he shrieked back. "But then, why did the witch get to leave instead?"

The first thing Giran felt upon waking up was the distant echo of multiple gunshots, followed by a couple explosions. The second was the searing pain in his belly, where he'd been shot and was now all stitched up. Still, he pushed himself up, because as much as doing that sucked, he thought dying would suck much more.

"What's going on?," he asked, his voice still slurred due to the fading anaesthesia.

The doctor and nurse turned around suddenly, hearing him, and immediately rushed to him. One held a syringe with a thick needle full of a yellow liquid. Tranquiliser, probably. Even in his hazy state, it wasn't much work for Giran to just slap it out of his fingers, eliciting a quick yelp of pain.

"This isn't the time for me to go back to sleep," he growled. "Answer me."

"There seems to have been an attack." mumbled the doctor. The nurse was still massaging his hand and looking dejectedly at the smashed syringe and its contents that had poured out on the floor.

"Is that so? I wonder who is doing the attacking." said the ptero.

"Well, we still don't know. If I had to take a guess-"

"That was a rhetorical question, doctor. Now help me off this damned bed."

The man hesitated. "No." he answered, finally, mustering a bit of determination in front of the blue giant that was towering above him even while sitting. "You are wounded, and you are to stay still until you recover-EEEEP!"

Without asking a second time, Giran had simply clutched the doctor's shoulder and pushed against it to rise. He winced in pain, then hobbled towards the door.

"This is crazy!" said the doctor, whose face in turn showed his spine hadn't taken too graciously to being used as a crutch by a wounded pterosaur three times his size. "You are in no condition to fight!"

"I know. I don't intend to." replied Giran. Then, pointing at the nurse, "Now, you! Move that bed."

The man blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I said move it! Toss it against the door. You too, doctor. Push all the heaviest stuff you can find. Don't slack off, if you want to live."

Completely terrified by this point, the doctor simply nodded and scutttered away, immediately grabbing and starting to roll an oxygen tank.

"No, not that! That's pressurised, it can blow up. Pick something inert. Yeah, that machine is good. Put it there. You, toss the bed on the side, push it against the door, like a shield. Like that. Now add some random crap, I don't care what it is, just give it more mass."

Following his instructions, the two scared men ended up piling an incoherent bunch of surgical tools, blankets, vials and furniture from the infirmary room. Bed aside, the whole thing didn't look as much as a barricade rather than a mound of trash ready to be carried to the dumpster.

"All right, now make room, move aside..."

Giran walked in front of the improvised defense and took a deep breath. He then made a disgusting retching sound and spat a mucus-like substance out of his mouth. The purple, sticky goo splattered all over the barricade, merging it all with its rubbery consistence into a single... something. Something that didn't look pretty but that could probably absorb a fair amount of blows before coming apart.

"Merry-Go-Round Gum!" announced the ptero, triumphantly, still panting for the effort.

"That's not some kind of special move!" protested the doctor, indignant. "That's expectorating!"

"Mom! Dad!"

It had been such a fun day. They'd gone to sleep in a hotel - Takao loved that, it was the first time he had been in one. Then the morning they had come here, to watch the fighters. And they were all insanely cool. Takao felt like he was watching one of his favourite shows, the ones where the heroes would punch the bad guys until they exploded, except here, it was all real. It had been a great day, perhaps the happiest, most exciting one of his (still rather short) life.

Then the chaos had started, and it had turned into a nightmare.

Takao was not wounded, just scared, and stunned, and partially deafened by the explosions. His mom had grabbed his hand and had started pulling him towards the exit, but then the crowd around them had grown wilder, had pressed more, and in the tide of warm, scared humans he had felt that hand slip from his, pulled away. He had shouted, mom had shouted too, but so had thousands of other people, all the time.

"Mom! Dad!"

He couldn't see them, or hear them, or touch them. It was all people around him, all so much taller than him, all pushing and pulling and not even looking down, not even noticing he was there. Someone shoved him to the side, and Takao's already weak knees gave in. He fell to the ground. Someone stomped on his leg. He shouted in pain, but then again, so did everyone else.

He thought he just realised what that word he heard so often meant, the one adults would often say with a sad look on their faces. Die.

Maybe to die meant to be like this, alone and in pain and scared, forever.

"Hey kid! Up here!"

He looked up. He didn't see his mom or dad, no, but there were hands reaching for him. Strong arms lifted him up. And one moment later, he was piggybacking on someone he couldn't possibly believe.

"Yamcha?" he shouted. "You're the hero of West City!"

"That's not fair." grumbled a massive man next to him, all wrapped in bandages. "How come you get kids recognising you, but no one recognises us?"

"Because I'm handsome and you look like horror movie extras." replied Yamcha. "What do you think of the situation? Any ideas?" Bandages scoffed. "Not good. They're all panicking and pushing. Someone's bound to really get hurt at this pace. The exit would be large enough if only they weren't running, but these gunners are whipping them into a frenzy on purpose. Took a couple down on my way here, by the way."

He nodded in the direction of a long linen strip he had hung from a nearby pylon. Two men, bound and gagged, were dangling helplessly from it, struggling to get free.

Yamcha shook his head. "That's good, but it won't be enough to just stop a pair. The people won't even realise what's going on!"

"The tide is indeed out of control," said Spike, who had been perched up on a nearby wall as a lookout. "You can not stop the sea from crashing on the rocks; so you should rather break them yourself."

The other two looked at him puzzled.

"I mean, if we widen the entrance," he explained, "the crowd would leave more easily."

"Smashing things. Good plan, I like it." said Bandages. "I can use fabric to reinforce the walls too so we don't have to worry about the whole thing crashing on our heads."

"It just has to last long enough for everyone to go through anyway." Yamcha lifted the child he had been holding until then and put him sitting on the wall, right next to where Spike was. "Now, you stay sitting here and don't move, okay? We have to help everyone, then we can go find mum and dad."

Takao nodded silently. Then he very intently started to suck on his thumb.

"Let's go!"

Yamcha, Bandages and Spike jumped in different directions. From his vantage point, the child could now see the stadium, and the people moving around it, creating an intricate shadow theatre in the mixed light of the twilight, the full moon, and the floodlights that were turning on one by one. Alone, Takao waited for his mom and dad to come get him.

Despite her first lucky shot, Bulma had not it in her to do much more than defend herself. Crouched on the ground, her back to one of the seats, she mostly kept rethinking about that moment, and about the one time she'd been on the other side of a bullet, and feeling a shiver every time. Black realised what was going on all too well - he'd seen it happen to fully trained, adult soldiers their first time on a battlefield. But it was fine, after all. It would have been shameful if the second in command of the whole Red Ribbon army needed the help of a novice girl to take down a few small fries.

These traitors had really underestimated him if they thought these guys could kill him. Five of them, perhaps; but now one was dead thanks to Bulma, and another had moved too soon and he'd managed to get him himself. That left three, approaching from different directions.

"Stay here." whispered Black to the girl next to him. "And be prepared to defend yourself."

The girl nodded, her eyes retrieved a bit of focus, and her grip on the gun seemed to get surer. She was reacting better than most soldiers did, thought Black. She would have probably been a natural, had she gotten a bit of proper training.

He took off his jacket, bundled it and left it on a seat next to her, pushing down the spring mechanism that usually kept the empty seat up. Then he started slowly walking away, as silently as possible. He needed to be careful, alerting the enemy that he was changing position would make the entire exercise moot. Slowly...

There was a sudden clang as one of the seats' spring mechanism went up. The three terrorists immediately turned their eyes to the direction of the noise, guns stretched.

Gotcha, thought Black, with a smile.

The gunmen found themselves puzzled as from the seat they were pointing at a white jacket sprung up. A few seats ahead, their target rose from cover, knowing already where to aim.

Bang.

One was down. The other two realised what was going on and turned immediately to react.

Bang.

The second fell, discharging his weapon into the air. The third was ready to fire now. Black considered for a fraction of a second whether the risk was worth it, or if he should go back to cover-

Bang.

From next to the jacket's seat Bulma had rose up, and she'd taken the man by surprise. Her bullet had lodged itself in his side, and the wound was bleeding, but he was not falling.

"You bitch, I'm gonna-" he shouted, as he turned around to fire on her.

Bang.

Black's third shot was efficient and precise. The enemy fell down, instantly killed after the bullet pierced his skull.

He ran back to the girl, who was still trembling slightly, this time in simple fear for her life. "That was close." said the man, lowering her gun with a gesture.

"I didn't want to kill him." she explained. "I tried to aim towards the side, I was hoping I could wound him without-"

The other shook his head. "That's not going to fly. Miss Bulma, this is a battlefield. Guns can always kill, but most importantly, people can take horrific wounds and still react. He would have died bleeding from that shot too, you know. He just would have taken you down with him."

"Well, this would be just a day's work for someone like you, right?" Bulma flashed him an angry stare. "Sorry if I'm not as cool headed about killing people."

"Someone like me, Miss Bulma? Do you mean a fighter? A soldier? A mercenary?" Black didn't flinch, looking straight back at her. "I'm afraid you got yourself a bit too deep into trouble to get to make that distinction. You have quite the menagérie following you to be squeamish about violence now. We don't all have bulletproof skin like your friend."

"Well, maybe if you're strong enough, you don't have to kill anyone." she mumbled.

"Said everyone who ever started an arms race. I will be happy to discuss the moral philosophy of war with you over a nice coffee when this is all over, Miss Bulma. At the moment, however, I believe it is paramount to make sure that we're both alive to get to drink it. Please focus on that."

Bulma nodded. "Right. I'm sorry." she said. There was a deep exhaustion in her voice. "This is not the moment, and you did just save my life. And at least now we know we've both been blindsided by a common enemy. It's just that this is all... very sudden."

The man smiled bitterly. "You tell me. Believe me, I know this must be hard for you. I'd like to say it doesn't get any easier, but the truth is, it does. Take that as you want."

She shuddered. She'd held a gun many times by then, but still, none had felt as heavy as the one in her hand right now.

"So, what do we do?"

"What else? We plan, and we live another day. Here, help me out."

Black grabbed back the jacket he'd used as a decoy, dove into its pocket and drew out a folded sheet of paper. It turned out to be an aerial photography of the stadium, taken right after it had been built, displaying clearly the layout of the entire structure.

"We're here," he said, pointing at the middle section of the spectators' stands, "and I believe these guys were the only enemies that had remained in the area. Most people fled towards the two side entrances, here and here, and the gunners made sure to make a lot of noise in the central area so they'd drive them towards those. However a good number of people found their way blocked and ended up being pushed towards the ring."

"There's the barriers, though." observed Bulma.

The man shook his head. "I only caught a glimpse, earlier. But they've clearly been smashed. The crowd pushed them down and shattered them, and then must have poured onto the ring and in the building behind it. It'd be a shorter way for those in the front rows than reaching for any of the exits."

"But Giran's in there. Do you think-"

"I'm sure it was on purpose. A few more of the shooters probably mixed up with the crowd and went that way too. They'll sneak in and attack when they have the best chance of succeeding."

"So we must go then!"

"But we can't. The sniper that killed Red might still be watching these stands. And if we don't want to risk our head being blown off, we'd better not show it too much. Obviously, if you hadn't sent away the bullet-proof boy..."

"I was not about to let these people die without helping as much and as quickly as possible." retorted Bulma. "And that is that."

"Then I have nothing." concluded Black. "We might as well hide here and wait for all this to be over."

Silence fell between them. Bulma knew that couldn't be it, but when she considered peering out of cover, walking down, risking exponsing herself, an icy fear clutched her. She just couldn't do it, but couldn't ask someone else to do it either. Yet this couldn't last long. By her inaction, she was allowing Giran to be killed, and whatever nefarious plan had been set in motion to succeed. Every second that passed was one less second to turn around the battle.

There was a booming sound. Not only in the air; the structure itself of the stands under her vibrated powerfully.

"What is going on?" asked Black.

Again the sound, rhythmically, propagated towards them from some indefinite point below, resonating down to their bones. Like a giant's hammer hitting the anvil.

"I think I might know." said Bulma, allowing herself a smile.

"Out of my way, ya scum!" roared a familiar voice, just below. There was an acute scream, and another armed man flew over their heads, tossed like he weighted nothing, landing with a crash among the chairs three rows above.

With heavy, rumbling steps, the Ox King made his way to where Bulma and Black were hiding, offering his back to the ring. His massive body made a better shield against any sniper than the poor cover offered by seats made of plastic and fake leather ever could.

"Ya okay, miss Bulma?" he asked, bending over.

"We're fine." replied Black for both of them.

"I wasn't asking ya Red Ribbon scum!" roared the giant back. "I oughta send you flying with the others lackeys of yours."

"It's alright, mister... huh... Ox." intervened Bulma, getting on her feet. "I know that you don't like him, but right now, these guys have betrayed him too. We've got a common enemy to worry about. Glad that you got to join us."

"I was standing guard near like you asked me." explained the King, "Then all that mess happened. I saw Yamcha and the others jumping around like crazy, asked if he needed anything, but he told me they were enough, to come help ya instead. That Mai had shot someone. Where's that wench?"

He turned his head around, looking in every direction, under the chairs even, as if she could just be hiding anywhere.

Bulma shook her head. "Not here, I'm afraid. But we're going to get her. First thing, let's get down to the ring."

Piano to Violin. Disengage all targets and stop providing cover to the remaining forces. Recovery of spent Dragon Ball is absolute priority. Abandon your current nest, adopt a civilian disguise and find a way to leave the theatre of operations as fast as possible.

The human tide that had poured down the stands and then onto the ring, pushing and crushing under its feet the transparent protective barriers that had been put before it, wasn't as big as the two that had moved towards the side entrances, but it was big enough. Clarinet had no need to give orders to his men there - anyone who had a chance to mix with it had done so, and now they all were in the antechamber of the main building, the same space where fighters would wait before their encounters. He'd managed to get through thanks to no one noticing when he had shot Captain Teal, his companion on the Red Ribbon side of his mission. The chaos had been too much for his quick actions to stand out, and he had not joined the small teams designated to raising panic or trying to finish off Staff Officer Black. Here was the biggest, most important objective of the mission, and he needed to be right at the centre of this effort.

He signalled his men, one by one, and they progressively, casually gathered in a certain part of the room, chatting in pairs like they were regular civilians. A quick glance revealed that it'd be hard to go any further while keeping the pretense. The monks that ran the place had organised themselves very quickly when the chaos had started, and now they guarded all entrances to corridors that departed from that hall. The only free way was out, back on the ring, and that wasn't much use.

There was not much mystery on which door led to the infirmary - there were very helpful signs on the wall for that sort of thing. The door wasn't especially well guarded either. The question, pondered Clarinet, was the distance. How much time would it take to get there? This was a matter of seconds - whether they would be able to kill Giran before the rest of the monks were on them. They had assault rifles in capsules, but without showing their hand, all they could do for a first surprise attack was use the small arms they'd managed to conceal under their clothes. And the guards currently in front of that corridor were enough to slow them down critically - if only with their corpses, once they'd shot them.

"What do we do?" asked one of his men, walking up to him as if by chance.

Clarinet thought about it for a moment. He considered the rest of the people in the room. Twenty or so men of the Instruments, disguised as civilians. Another hundred actual civilians, at most, of all sexes and ages. He'd counted twelve of the monks, three pairs of which were stationed in front of the same number of doors. And two of the participants. The old man, the one who'd inexplicably worn a wig when fighting while now displayed his bald head without shame, but it was pretty obvious it was the same person, and the other kid, the one who had not started roaring in the middle of the ring and then had been tossed away by his opponent. Jackie Chun and Krillin, if his memory didn't serve him wrong. The old guy was chatting with one of the monks, clearly worried, while the kid followed him like a puppy on a leash.

Clarinet decided.

"We use plan #54." he replied. "You do it, Oboe."

The other hesitated for a moment, before asking: "On who?"

"The bald kid."

With a silent nod, the other acknowledged the order and paced away, as casually as he'd come close in the first place. Clarinet begun gathering the others, and quietly signalling what was going to happen. The strategy, really, was quite simple. Shoot someone, create a decoy, then as everyone is distracted by that, the rest gets to break through before everyone realises what's happened. And all at the mere cost of a single man of theirs who would inevitably get captured or taken down. For the purpose of such a plan, a child would be the best possible target. More people would run to his help, and given that it was a contestant, it would also remove a potentially dangerous variable from the equation.

The designated shooter was in position. Clarinet readied to bolt down the corridor as soon as he heard the shot. And then...

BANG!

There was a moment of panic, a moment of confusion, but not enough. The monks were about to jolt, but remained in their place. When Clarinet turned around to see what had happened, he saw Oboe with a gaping open mouth, his smoking gun in hand; the bald kid sitting on the ground, unharmed if taken a bit aback; and the old man with one arm stretched, and a bullet caught between index and thumb of his left hand.

"That," said the old man, calmly, "was a mistake."

The shooter scrambled to fire again, but was instantly swarmed by three monks who grabbed him and disarmed him. Clarinet saw them walking towards him too, and remained for way too long a fraction of a second wondering stupidly why that was before realising that both him and his men had drawn their guns as soon as they'd heard the shot.

"FUCK!" he shouted, pointing the gun at the oncoming monks and firing. "Let's get out of here!"

The old man jumped forward. Or rather, "jumped" didn't really do justice to what he did. He disappeared and reappeared instantly a few metres ahead; what his motions in between had been was just speculation. Each and every bullet Clarinet fired ended up grabbed by him.

There was a burst of air behind him. A few of the others had pulled out their capsules and grabbed their assault rifles. The fire came in fast and from multiple directions this time, but the old master still wouldn't yield. What he couldn't grab he dodged, and what he couldn't dodge, because it would end up hitting someone behind him, he at least deflected, with some casual flick of his wrist or even just a raised leg, so that it went to jam itself inoffensively into the wood planks of the surrounding walls. And the bald kid behind him had gotten up too. After a moment of stupor, he had acquired a determined grimace, and was slowly walking towards them. If his ability was anything close to the old man's...

"Retreat!" barked Clarinet, turning around. "Let's push through right now!"

The firing was redirected towards the entrance to the infirmary. One of the monks posted to guard it dodged out of the way, but the other, taken by surprise, was hit across his chest and fell down, a line of bloody spots cutting the front of his robe in two like the stroke of a calligrapher's brush. His body was immediately trampled by the first of the Instruments who ran towards the corridor.

Yet the old man was closer now. Clarinet had run amidst the bunch of his own men, and two behind him had already fallen to surgically precise hand chops to their necks. There was no hope of beating him. There was only one thing that would get him away from his current objective - a more pressing one.

Clarinet turned around. "Oboe!" he shouted, angry. "You fucking weakling - make yourself useful!"

The man was restrained by three enemies, tossed on the ground, his arms held behind his back, disarmed. The order made him flinch, but it was just an instant. "He is our Maestro," he said finally, "and we are but his Instruments."

There are few uses for capsules smaller than the standard issue Capsule Corporation size of around three centimetres of length. This is because, due to a quirk of the fundamental physical laws they rely on, for smaller capsules the size and mass that can be contained within decrease dramatically. A capsule of half a centimetre can barely contain an object fifty times its size; and one smaller than one millimetre would not be able to contain anything that wasn't smaller than itself, making it virtually useless. On the other hand, there are a number of nefarious uses conceivable for such small devices, which is why Capsule Corporation never sold any such models. Still, the science of capsules is a well known enough matter that a decent technologist with some good equipment and a few normal ones to reverse engineer could easily produce them anyway.

That is to say, it was well within the Red Ribbon's capabilities to produce the kind of capsule that Oboe squeezed open in that moment with a click of his jaw - as big as a single tooth, installed in place of one of his molars, and only able to contain a relatively small object, such as a live hand grenade. Which, upon encapsulation, had been frozen in time at the beginning of the count to its explosion.

One.

The puff of smoke and expansion of the capsule was accompanied by Oboe spitting blood and quite a few teeth. The monks who had been keeping him down realised what was going on and let him go, horrified, to seek refuge.

Two.

The man scrambled to his feet, finally free, and in a desperate run, he tossed himself towards Krillin, who remained too surprised and shocked to defend himself immediately, and was about to be grabbed...

Three.

Muten was a flash. He jumped back with a somersault and immediately landed behind Oboe, facing Krillin. His leg hit mercilessly upwards, without any of the care that he'd showed his other opponents. Oboe's bones were crushed under the impact, and he was dead even before the rest of his body, and the explosive he was carrying, could jam itself into the ceiling and explode there, causing a shower of wooden fragments and straw from the roof, mixed with a more gruesome kind of remains.

"M-master...," stuttered Krillin, trembling, "I'm sorry... I didn't..."

The old master shook his head and walked to him, to pat his shoulder.

"It's quite all right. You could not expect that. Only opponents whose thirst for blood far exceeds their talent would sink that low, and I didn't train you to fight that kind of people."

His eyes, lighting up with anger, flashed towards the exit where the monk lay dead. Sure enough, the rest of that pack of murderers had scuttered away, taking the chance that their companion had granted them with his own life.

Divination was a tricky business; and by no means anything as sure or all-powerful as most people would believe. Baba the Sybil, of course, knew better than to let any of this on to her customers. Her mystique was part of her brand. Still, having such powers was far from being useless. For example, faced with an uncertain situation, danger all around, and the risk of either being killed prematurely or being dragged into the drudgery of whatever enquiry would follow the incident, it gave her an excellent way to do a bunk in an efficient and relatively safe manner.

Leaving the room had been easy enough, because when her targets were so close, seeing through their intentions was trivial. And it's not like she needed to read anything complex. One head or eye movement, an instant of distraction, and there was always the opportunity to slip away unobserved. Even a short glimpse of the future wasn't too hard, in those conditions. The future is, after all, just a relatively straightforward function of the past, give or take a few chaotic phenomena.

Now came the hard part, though, because the way out of the building was longer, and the dangers more real than just getting caught and brought back. At least that was her guess, judging from all the gunfire and explosions she could hear. She jumped down from her crystal ball and waved her hands a bit, using the sphere to focus her sight in a consistent manner. Visualising complex images became tiring if all she had to keep them in was her own head.

She could get a glimpse of what was in a short radius from her position, and it seemed safe enough. For a longer range view, however, her experience told her that the safest method was anchoring to someone else's senses. Deriving images just from environmental cues and seemingly random background noise got exponentially harder with distance. She could perceive a large mass of people in a direction right in front of her, so she tried seeing the scene from one of their eyes. There it was - a large room, crowded with people, but with visibility reduced by smoke and debris. There was some sort of panic, and her brother seemed at the centre of it all.

Baba scoffed. Typical of her brother, to just take a chance to show off and act cool. Not many situations outside of one where he could punch the lights out of people would afford him that. Next thing he'd try to milk that attention to hit on some random girl, if she knew him at all.

The scene wasn't very helpful, so she moved closer, to what she thought was one of the attackers, running from that very room. They were in a dense group, running like the devil himself was chasing them. The witch felt a tinge of amusement at the thought that it was her brother who was probable to follow them, so, not entirely inaccurate. Still, they were coming her way, and basically through the only straightforward way out she would have had.

She concentrated and probed other directions. In not one of them she could find a way to the outside that was completely unobstructed. If forced, she'd rather take the monks than the criminals, of course, but then again, she doubted their ability to keep her safe anyway. Her next best bet was someone who didn't belong to either faction, but that she could trust to stay silent, or better, enlist the help of. Someone who could act as her scout if necessary, or even just be taller and fitter than her, really, would be incredibly useful.

And there she was, an excellent candidate. Someone in a bathroom just a few metres away, a woman, and one she could reach without meeting any of the others - at least if she moved in the next 7.53 seconds, after which, all roads would be closed to her. There was not much time but to get a quick glance in her consciousness. Her self image seemed reassuring enough - a young woman, less than thirty, athletic, but tired and in pain. She was changing clothes, putting on an airy, colourful sarong. Her main current drive - to leave the Tournament grounds, as quick as possible. The perfect ally.

Baba would have prodded more, but as things were, her options were quickly shrinking, and she did not have the time. She jumped back on her crystal ball and floated away, silently, turning the corner just one instant before Clarinet and a group of his followers ran through the corridor.

Preceded by the Ox King's massive bulk, Bulma and Staff Officer Black walked into the antechamber of the main temple building. What lay before them was a half-devastated room. A crowd of people, most scared or huddled together in corners; a few monks hurrying around, some lending medical assistance, others tying up prisoners with ropes, one respectfully covering with a blanket what Bulma feared must be a corpse. A lot of debris and wreckage. Krillin, huddled to one side of his master, visibly shaken, while the old man kept a stoic, unreadable expression. And in the middle of the floor...

Bulma suddenly felt an impulse to retch.

"What has gone on here?" asked Black, walking forward with his usual commanding attitude.

"An attack," explained Muten. "By some fanatics who had mixed in with the crowd. They only made one victim, but not for lack of trying."

The man pressed on. "Where have they gone now? Quick!"

"Ya shut your mouth and show some respect to the master!" growled the Ox King, shoving Black aside with a push. "Yer not in charge here."

"It's all right." replied Muten. "They ran down that corridor. They were very interested in it, and we were just considering if we should pursue."

"We should." said Bulma, recovering from her initial shock. She still tried to divert her eyes from the ground right next to Muten. "We believe they're trying to kill Giran. Finish the job that Mai wasn't able to do."

"I thought as much." confirmed the master. "But if Giran is a warrior worth his salt, they won't have an easy time doing that, even if he's wounded. Still, I agree, we should hurry. I just hesitated leaving Krillin behind at the moment."

Hearing his name, the kid raised his head. "Behind?" his lips were slightly trembling, but pursed in a determined expression. "Master, I can come with you! I will help!"

Muten frowned. "Krillin, do not overestimate your abilities. A strong technique is nothing without a steady heart."

"We don't have time for this." said Black. "I'm going. Anyone who feels like helping, follow me."

"Let the kid come, master." chimed in the Ox King. "Ya can tell he's got the guts in him. Whatever happened here, he won't fall for it again."

"You can be... damn sure I won't!" exclaimed Krillin, jutting out his chest.

Muten took a moment to consider it. "Very well," he concluded, "just stay behind me at all times, and however dangerous you think this is - make it twice as much."

The kid gulped. Then all together, the group of three martial artists, one soldier, and one distressed but very stubborn girl ran in the corridor, on the trails of a squad of armed terrorists.

Clarinet cursed under his breath. It'd been a good day. It'd been a great day. A glorious, long awaited one. Hearing that the pretence would be over had thrilled him. Subterfuge was not something he was fond of - he'd rather be in the open, and shoot all the hypocrites that stood next to him in the Ribbon full of holes, like he'd done to Teal earlier. Stopping pretending had been what he'd always wanted, why he'd joined the Instruments. Today ought to be the best day of his life.

"Run! To the right!"

He wasn't afraid. He wasn't. Fucking. Afraid. Fear was just not a thing someone strong experienced. He'd trained the fear out of himself, through hundreds of battlefields. That was just adrenaline, that he felt, giving him more edge, making him even stronger. The thing that pumped his heart faster and made his breath shorter and made him feel like his whole body was being dipped in icy water.

The old man had crushed Oboe with a single kick. That was not possible. That was not even fair.

"This way, you fuckers! This way!"

Not a good way of thinking about it. Fair didn't exist. Fair was just a lie, and the truth was, that old man was just one more of the liars - the worst kind, the ones who would lie to themselves. Otherwise, he'd be on their side, fighting next to them, not pursuing them. To claim the world; the world to the strong, that was their battle.

But lies in the long run made the liars weak. In that, Clarinet believed firmly.

"Here!"

There were two monks standing guard to the infirmary. They assumed fighting positions, but must have known it was hopeless. You could tell their hearts weren't in it. Clarinet left one to his men, but the other, the other he personally unloaded half a magazine into. He might have shouted while doing so, while the torso of the man was literally cut in two by the repeated hammering of bullets from his rifle. That made him feel better. All those years of training, that will to fight, destroyed, in an instant, by him. An act of strength. The old man may be freakishly powerful, but it wasn't like when he killed people they'd get any deader than this.

The terrorists all came to a stop in a small room, an antechamber to the infirmary, with waiting seats all around the place and a terrified nurse huddling in a corner. Clarinet inspected the environment with a quick glance, then signalled his men to open the last door. It would be done in a few seconds.

"It's locked!" shouted one of his underlings, helplessly shaking the handle up and down without moving it.

Clarinet shoved him violently aside and tried it himself, to no avail. He took a bit of a run-up, then tried to knock it down with a shoulder hit. It didn't budge.

"Open this!" he shouted, towards whoever was inside.

Back came a thin, terrorised voice. "We can't!"

"Damn right you can!" Clarinet walked away from the door. The nurse had retreated to the further corner of the room and was fidgeting with something on a metal table. She had long blond hair tied in a ponytail. He violently grabbed her by them, and pulled her towards him. The woman screamed as he dragged her back to the door, then pushed a gun to her head. "Open this door or I swear this bitch dies now!"

"But we can't!" answered the doctor from inside, anguished. "We literally can't! It's stuck!"

Only then Clarinet noticed the strange, glue-like substance that had seeped under the door, solidifying in place like a frozen puddle.

"They're coming!" screamed one of his other men, alarmed, from behind.

"Shut up, you idiot! Hold to your hostages, they won't hurt us! Giran!" he roared, still angrier. "I know you can tear whatever you put into place down! Do it now!"

There was a pause from inside. "Normally I could," said the ptero's voice, finally, "but see, someone shot me, and I can't overexert. I would risk opening my stitches."

"Don't play games with me, lizard! Open it up now, or she dies!"

"And lose all leverage you have? I don't think so."

"That's it! Men, get the explosives! We're blowing this door up!"

"But Clar-" answered a voice, and ended in a gargling sound, followed by a thud.

Clarinet turned around, still holding the gun to the nurse's head. Behind him, in the archway between the antechamber and the corridor they'd come from, were the old man, his pupil, Staff Officer Black, a girl with blue hair, and the giant who had fought in the tournament earlier. The thud from earlier was from one of his underlings who was now lying on the ground, knocked out by a single well-placed hand chop.

"Give it up," said the girl, keeping a gun level to his level, she was shaking, the little thing, "you've wreaked enough havoc for today. It ends now."

"Not at all," replied the man, sneering. "You will back down instead. I don't care how fast and strong you are. All I need is one instant. I see one wrong movement, one gesture, I shoot. You want this girl on your conscience?"

"Drop the act, Gray." said Black, dryly. "Let me give you another offer. You let the civilian go, and I don't have you all killed for your treason. You'll get the honour of staying alive to tell me exactly what the fuck is going on here and why."

"You think I'd take betrayal over death? I'm offended, Black. I am loyal. Just not to you."

Clarinet took their measure. At a glance, by numbers and raw strength, they would have had the upper hand. And yet, he thought with a tinge self satisfaction, they were unable to win. They were tangled by it all, their morals, their submissiveness, their lies. Black worried to make the first move and appear too ruthless in front of his new allies, whom he desperately needed. The girl, bold but ultimately all bark and no bite. The kid and the giant, deferring to the old master, chained by his judgement. And the master himself, preoccupied with who knows what concerns. Perhaps just the life of the hostage, as if she'd ever get alive out of this anyway. He didn't seem to have any sense of urgency, in fact, he was slightly smiling. That'd go away, thought Clarinet. All he needed was to order one of his men to do it, like he'd done Oboe. They would have to act then, take a wrong step, and the path to victory would open.

"Flute!" shouted Clarinet. "You-"

And he stopped. The sharp, thin pain of a needle being stabbed in his flesh jolted from his leg to the rest of his body. An annoyance, but not one he expected. He turned to see the nurse he was holding look straight into his eyes, hateful and terrified in the same glance. The syringe was deeply jammed into his thigh, at the right spot to find a vein.

"What was tha-" Clarinet tried to say, but his mouth wouldn't respond, his tongue heavy like a stone. His trigger finger didn't have feeling any more, his arm fell limp. Around him, he saw the enemy zoom around, his men falling one after the other, panic, try to run disgracefully. The old master didn't even need to take part in the crushing of his forces. He was still smiling placidly. He had noticed. He had known.

Clarinet didn't know what exactly was in the syringe. But judging from how he felt as he tumbled to the ground, deadly cold creeping across his now numb body, he suspected it had been entirely too much of it.

"Coffee?"

"Why, thanks, yes. I really need it."

Bulma took the mug Black offered her and stared into the dark liquid for a while in silence. A few minutes after they'd confronted the terrorists who were trying to get to Giran, the police she'd called from the mainland had finally arrived, and that had been it. The rest of the criminals had either been mopped up or had managed to escape. The day, however, would still not be over for a while. After all, they'd all been at the heart of a major terrorist incident that also marked the possible beginning of an internal conflict within the most powerful mercenary organisation in the whole world. No one was going home until the King's police got some answers.

"Don't worry," said Black, "I will not consider this the trigger for our promised moral philosophy discussion. I suspect you're entirely too worn out for it. If I can be frank, so am I."

Bulma chuckled. She took her first sip, and the warmth nicely spread finally through her body. She wasn't cold; but she'd been shaking a lot, and feeling almost as if she was.

"Do they have the final balance?"

"It could have been much worse. Seventeen dead, counting Commander Red, the three men of the escort the turncoats killed at the very beginning, three monks, and nine terrorists we killed among us."

We killed. Bulma's feeling of cold seemed to return, despite the coffee.

"That's sixteen." she said. "Who's the last one?"

"A spectator." blurted out Black. "A young man. He was trampled to death at the very beginning of the panic, when no one knew what was going on. Miss Bulma, I realise this must feel awful to you, but do believe me when I say it is almost miraculous. Your men took the situation in their hands efficiently and prevented a disaster by saving individual people and redirecting the flow of the crowd. Our own takedown of the attackers was amazingly fast, thanks to the martial artists that helped us. You have nothing to blame yourself for; you could not see any of this coming. I should have, and still did not."

Black stood silent on his own for a long time. Bulma reflected about what seeing something she'd spent her life building undo itself overnight because of betrayal and lies of people whom you'd previously trusted would feel like, before reminding herself that the something in question was an organisation whose job was basically killing people for a price. Still, she asked the question.

"What has been of the rest of the Red Ribbon? Should you not go to assist them?"

The other shook his head. "From the news I've received, it's all done, either way. We've lost a lot today. And of course I will go, but right now, the police are especially loathe to let me leave, and I can see why. The Ribbon has always existed in a precarious legal condition, and perhaps more than a bit of that has been thanks to the fact that the King didn't have enough military might to be sure they could even defeat us. Now, that has changed. Some responsibility will need to be taken, and I'll have to do my best to convince them to not disband us entirely. A lot of that may be giving them intel on the bases and forces the traitors have taken from us. I will not shirk from that, if it's what I need to do. I do not know if the Red Ribbon can survive this, but the very least I can do is guarantee to avenge it if it does not."

There was a mighty crack from somewhere a few rooms ahead. A couple minutes later, still limping, helped by a nurse to stand, Giran came through. He didn't seem in good shape, but he certainly was alive. He turned to look at Bulma, even, though she couldn't say if that beak of his had been smiling. She waved in his direction.

"Mister Black, huh," started Bulma, a bit embarrassed, though she really thought she ought not to be, "my parents will be here soon, and they're likely to be already extremely upset. I believe it would help the matter if they didn't find me chatting amiably with someone my mother has once called, huh, 'a bloodthirsty mercenary'. They will need me to disclose the details very gradually. No offense."

The man chuckled. "None taken. We'll have a chance to talk later anyway, I suspect."

Bulma nodded, and still holding her cup of coffee, she rose up and trailed off. All around her were a few cops and a whole lot of traumatised, shocked, or just completely drained out people. Very few seemed to be entirely fine at the end of this day. One of them was Muten, but even he, she'd gotten the impression, would have something trembling in his voice when he retold the tale of the man who had tried to take Krillin down with a suicide attack. Bulma had wanted to make this an unforgettable day, and boy, had it been one. Somewhere, a monkey's paw finger must have curled. Shenron would have been much better at interpreting her wish.

"Bulma!"

She turned hearing the two voices calling her in unison. Dr. Briefs and Panchy stood together at the entrance, accompanied by a cop. "Mom! Dad!"

She ran to them, and for a moment she could feel herself hesitate in touching them, rethinking of all she'd seen and done during the day, but it was only an instant because they certainly didn't wait for her permission to just grab her and hug her as strongly as they could.

"Bulma, what did I tell you about trouble?"

"Oh, shut up, dad." she replied amidst her own sobs, that she didn't want but really couldn't shut down in any way. "I told you I don't look for it."

"I suppose not. This time, you really did not."

And still, trouble had come. There would be time to tell all the details of it, and even more to discuss their implications, and what would happen. Bulma had the impression that the consequences of today would ripple and dominate their lives for quite a while. Whatever was going on here, it involved Mai, and that meant it probably involved the Dragon Balls, and so it probably involved her. Just her luck, really. One merely looks for a magically granted boyfriend, and here not even one year later she finds herself at the centre of a worldwide terrorist uprising. But still, there would be time to consider all that. At the moment Bulma was happy with just letting herself be hugged a bit. She really, really needed the feeling.

"But Bulma, sweetie," started her mom, as soon as her own sobs had subsided enough to allow her to, "what happened to Goku? Why is he not here with you? He seemed unwell when the TV program got cut."

The girl shook her head. There was no telling where Goku was now, and the police probably wouldn't let her just go look for him. But still, she didn't feel worried at all.

"It's fine," she said, "he's in good hands."

There were flames rising all around, like a storm, a tornado engulfing it all. The old palace burned, the bricks cracked and turned back to sand, the papers flew, carried by the hot drafts, and withered into ashes, and amidst the laughter of a thousand demons, Baba could feel the fire turn to her, eat up her skin, char her flesh, bleach her bones, and all through the process, she was alive. She just had nothing to scream with any more.

The judge and king of Hell laughed and laughed. Your day has come at last, he said, I told you it would come, it comes for everyone. You should have known better, old witch, you should have known, but you were not less of a fool than the rest of them, fools, the lot of you...

Then there was peace, a moment of bliss as the flames withdrew. A gust of wind from above parted the fire. A path opened up, leading into a distant light. Hesitant, Baba stepped forward on it. Behind her Enma's rant blurred into gibberish as he cursed her for trying to escape his grasp, and the witch left him to it. She walked on, and the flames seemed to turn into as many trees and flowers and blades of grass of glowing crimson, the path now a walkway through a blazing garden. Ahead of her, leading the way, was a woman, with dark hair, an airy mantle flapping around in the wind. The cloth left her right flank for a moment and revealed it bare, missing the arm that should have been there.

Come with me, said the woman, salvation is this way.

Baba hesitated, because even here, even now, she could not help but be suspicious, there always was something that people wanted from her, nothing comes for nothing.

What do you want, she asked. Who sends you, who is your master.

The woman smiled, and pointed to the sky. The witch's eyes followed that finger - and it looked like it took much more than it should to look above, as if there was much more above than usual - and then she finally saw it, something she'd only heard about, something that usually lay outside the reach even of her sight, an ancient visage of green gazing with a tinge of melancholy above the world...

"Are you all right, ma'am?"

Baba came to her senses with a start. She was drenched with sweat, slumped on the back seat of a taxi, her crystal ball comfortably nestled next to her in a stable position. It took her a moment to recover and remember that she was still alive, and where. The Tournament, the attack, and the exhausting and narrow escape from the stadium, which had led to her being on this taxi that was driving her to the heliport so that she could finally leave this place of madness.

"I'm fine. Just think about driving." she croaked with a sore voice. "There's more money for you if you manage it before the rush of traffic that will come in-"

She tossed a quick gaze at her crystal ball.

"-five minutes." she completed.

"Aye, ma'am. On it."

Yes, Baba remembered it all. Everything that had happened, and the woman.

The woman was sitting next to her, with her usual empty expression. She had not said a word since they'd left the compound, and even then, she'd never spoken more than she needed to. A dangerous shared experience is said to create a bond between two people, and Baba could say with certainty that wasn't true at all, because for all that they'd helped each other she cared nothing for this woman and the woman obviously cared nothing for her. But they were going in the same direction, and, well, taxis can be expensive. Especially when you have to toss some hush money on top of the standard fare.

Then, having remembered life, Baba's mind turned back to the dream. She was not one for flights of fancy, but having the kind of abilities she did, well, one might only wonder. After all, she had never had a dream of her own in the last one hundred twenty seven years.

"You know, your abilities," suddenly said the young woman, as if she'd been the one awakening from a mystical trance, "sure are something."

Baba pondered it for a moment. Then she dug her hand into one of the pockets of her loose robe and drew up a small square of cardboard.

"Have my business card." she said. "In case you may need my services in the future. Rates are pretty good. This year I'm giving a 20% discount on spousal surveillance."

The woman smiled, barely. "Thanks, I'll accept it. Who knows what the future has in store." she said. "Well, besides you, I guess."

If only, thought Baba, but that was the kind of thing you did not say in front of prospective customers. She offered the little card that had her name, business, and address on it - or rather, more than address, a set of coordinates. She didn't exactly live in a very populous area. The woman extended her arm and took it into her hand.

Her left hand.

"It's getting hot in here," said Baba. "I'll pull down the window."

The woman didn't object, which was as good a yes as she'd get. The breeze from outside rushed into the car, ruffled hair and clothes, which to Baba was a bliss, as she still could feel it, the heat and the fire, right on her skin. The gusts of air sent the sarong that the young woman next to her was wearing flopping around like a wind sleeve.

On her right side, the witch noticed for the first time, like an empty one.

The taxi sped away, while in the distance the wail of police sirens marked the end of the 21st Tenkaichi Tournament.

This one I managed to publish quickly! Also thanks to the fact that next chapter is pretty short. It's not the end of the arc yet, I needed to split in two because otherwise this would have been a really, really long chapter. And besides, the next part is very different in tone. As a side note: this chapter's title is supposed to reference the Warhammer 40K Dawn of War games. I enjoyed the first one quite a lot (still haven't played the second).

Rafinius: I suppose you may be the same person who asked this question on Reddit, but the long and short of it is, in my canon Red was just a lucky (?) heir who grew up with a silver spoon. The Army was grown by his father who was quite competent, so he's mostly the object of residual loyalty. Besides, most low level soldiers don't really have enough occasion to interact with him to appreciate his incompetence, and his immediate staff is pretty skilled.