Chapter 3 - The best laid plans of pigs and men

The road seemed to stretch unending among the slightly hilly terrain, occasionally turning around in big lazy curves, never really getting challenging. Bulma was driving a small but stylish convertible - one of her most pricey capsules - and Goku was sitting next to her, his gaze lost in the sky. The sun was high, the wind mild, and if there was any speed limit on this road, they sure were not respecting it. Heck, it's not like she was supposed to know how to drive at her age in the first place, forget having a license - but then again, what cop would police this forgotten countryside? Good thing Goku didn't know much about road safety, or he might reprimand her for it.

"So, this scientific method you talk about" said Goku out loud, still looking upwards "basically consists of making a guess about how things work, and then checking if they really do work that way?"

"More like checking if they do not work." answered the girl, keeping her eyes on the road "We make a prediction, we try, and if it does not work, it means the guess was wrong. If it works it means it was only possibly right about that. Could still be wrong a million other ways."

"And you can never be sure that it will keep working."

"Say you punched and broke a thousand rocks. How do you know for sure you will manage to break the next one?"

"Fair enough. So you keep just guessing?"

"Guessing has gotten us pretty far. We all guess all the time anyway." Bulma steered for a tighter curve, taking it at full speed. It was not every day she got a passenger who was unfazed by her style of driving by sheer virtue of ignoring how an actually responsible person was supposed to do it.

"As my father says, we keep guessing until we die. Guess well, and that may happen a bit later."

"I get it." the boy nodded "It's a bit like fighting. You need to understand your opponent, how they think, what they will do next. Catch their patterns."

"Precisely! I think given enough time, you'll become really good at this. You just need to learn the basics."

She grinned.

"Now, here's a practical example - if the theory I used to build my radar is right, I predict we will find a Dragon Ball very soon."

"We've arrived?" Goku inquired, looking at the screen of the Dragon Radar, where a dot was blinking slightly off centre.

"We're within walking distance, and it's better if we approach more carefully. Hold on tight."

The tires screeched and a cloud of dust was lifted from the ground as Bulma braked suddenly. The dust was still settling when they got down and the car went back to being a capsule in her multi-purpose case.

They walked for a bit, Bulma holding her radar and checking it against a map (integration of the two was one of the first features on her to-do list), Goku taking the chance for a bit of training and moving while doing a hand stand. He'd do even weirder things now and then for the sake of packing as much exercise as he could into daily activities, so Bulma barely noticed it any more.

"There!" she announced finally, pointing a finger "It should be in that village."

The village, they found as they walked in, was as plain a bunch of houses you could find, but there was still something very weird to it. Most of it seemed empty. Bulma even managed to pin down the house in which she was sure the Dragon Ball must be held - a low muddy hut with a small front garden and an orange cat dozing off amidst the salad leaves - but to her great frustration, it was locked. Good thing the place was so tiny the owner couldn't be too far away.

"There's noise coming from up ahead." pointed out Goku.

"Let's go check."

The noise was coming from the village's main and only square. A crowd of a few dozens people - so probably everyone - was assembled around a small stage. A two man band was playing music, flowers were hung all around the walls, a girl stood in the middle wearing what passed for an elegant dress in these parts, and everyone looked like they were attending someone's funeral, or possibly their own.

"Well, here they are. We need to talk to someone," commented Bulma "but they all seem pretty busy with whatever's going on."

"So. Much. People!" slowly uttered Goku, in disbelief "Is this what you called a city?"

The girl laughed out loud.

"Silence!" admonished her a nearby old woman, turning brusquely with a gloomy frown "Do you have no respect?"

"I'm sorry." Bulma composed herself, while the boy was still confused as to what did he say that was so funny "I should not have laughed at this... huh..."

"Wedding." finished the other, gravely.

"Sure. Wedding. Who laughs at those, right?" she confirmed "Grim affairs."

The crone did not deign this of an answer, she merely scoffed and turned around.

"So, who is going to the gallows... I mean, getting married?" asked Bulma after a while.

"Sherman's daughter." grumbled the woman "Poor girl. It seems yesterday I would babysit her when her father was away working the fields."

"And now she's marrying! They grow so fast, right?"

"She's eleven!" bawled the old woman, and unable to hold her tears, she just started crying and noisily blowing her nose in a cotton handkerchief.

"Bulma," asked Goku "what is a wedding? It seems like a very sad occasion."

"Usually not this much. Something's wrong."

The woman turned around furious, hurriedly stuffing her handkerchief back in her pocket.

"That damn Oolong! That's what's wrong!" she growled "Have you never heard of him? That crook keeps kidnapping our little girls! He comes around every few weeks and threatens to raze our village if we don't give him whatever girl struck his fancy that time. Then he takes her away and we never see her again. And soon it all repeats. Now he asked for sweet little Pocawatha, poor thing. Says he wants to marry her."

"That's... terrible." said Bulma "Could you really do nothing against him? How strong is he?"

"Oh! Very strong! He has magical powers, and can transform in anything he likes." she answered, the terror audible in her voice.

"Can he really?" Bulma was intrigued now.

"You bet! He becomes the most horrible, invincible things. He can become very big, and very scary!"

"And hideous!" chimed in someone else.

"And full of spikes!"

"And with eyes like embers!"

"And with a roar that's like an earthquake!"

"That is all very intimidating," intervened Goku, candidly "but what can he do?"

An uncomfortable silence spread throughout the crowd, as everyone seemed stunned by the question.

"He can become... very, very big?" suggested tentatively someone.

Goku seemed curious but genuinely trusting of the accounts of the villagers, and probably interested in such extraordinary strength. Meanwhile, however, Bulma started having a creeping suspicion, and she did not know if it made the matter hilarious or much, much more tragic.

"Has he ever hurt anyone?" she inquired.

"No!" answered one of the villagers, completely baffled at the suggestion "Who could possibly dare confront him?"

"Destroyed any property?"

"Not really."

"Did he ever, I don't know, lift something heavy?"

"Did he?" asked someone, and soon the whole crowd was murmuring and mumbling.

Bulma sighed, shaking her head. Then she drew a long breath, and spoke as loud and clear as possible, to be heard by the entire square.

"Attention everyone! I think I have a solution to your little kidnapping problem."

Silence fell on the crowd, and all faces turned towards her.

"However, I will not give it to you for free. All I ask is a certain item that I know is in possession of one of you. Would you be willing to give it to me?"

"Whatever!" screamed someone "We'd do anything to get rid of him!"

No one protested at that, so they probably all agreed.

"Perfect. Remember, you promised!" begun Bulma "In exchange for this little object that you surely would have no use for, I will tell you my little theory about what Oolong is doing, and how to get rid of him and his tyrannical ways forever. So listen up..."

When the large silhouette of a man in a threatening dark suit of armour walked into the village, the silence was total. The warrior looked around, then stepped quickly forward amidst the crowd, which quietly parted, allowing him to walk towards the centre, where the girl in a wedding dress was waiting.

"I'm sorry that this is going to be a bit rushed," a cavernous voice came from inside the helm "but let's try at least to make it cheerful, yes?"

No one seemed to listen. Everyone kept staring, without saying a word, and they didn't seem neither cheerful nor scared. In fact they seemed outright furious.

Before the man could reach the girl, the crowd closed in front of him. A few men stared at him with a grimace, arms crossed. For some reason they had brought pitchforks, which were now leaning on their shoulders.

"Hey, guys, I'm sure you don't realise this, but I can't reach the bride this way..."

He turned around.

The crowd was closing behind him as well.

This was not going according to plan.

"I'm sorry..." he said, his voice now reduced to a mere whimper "Maybe I'll get the bride another time... now I should really... go..."

"GRAB HIM!" roared one of the men, and suddenly the crowd went wild. Screaming, insulting, they started spitting and tossing stones towards the suit of armour. Various rocks hit him, and instead of making a clanking sound they made a wet thud, like smacking on flesh. Oolong screamed in pain and disappeared in a puff of smoke, to reappear transformed into a bat, but it was too late - the crowd was already pressing on him, over him, there was no room to fly. Someone grabbed his wings and started to pull. He turned again before they could rip them, and now he had reverted to his true form, a small pig-man in a military suit.

"BRING HIM TO THE BARN!" screamed again the ringleader, that Oolong now vaguely recognised as the one who would have become his father-in-law today had things not gone so very wrong. Next to him were two people that Oolong was sure he'd never seen in the village - a girls with short blue hair, who would have been quite to his liking had she been a bit younger, and a boy with messy hair and a monkey tail. The boy just looked a bit disappointed as he was easily overpowered by the crowd and dragged away. The girl instead rushed next to the leader - Sherman, was that his name? - and whispered something in his ear.

"DON'T HURT HIM!" ordered the man, obviously repeating the girl's suggestion "WE NEED TO GET HIM TO TELL US WHERE THE OTHER GIRLS ARE! DON'T HURT HIM YET!"

Yet, noticed Oolong, as cold sweat started dripping down his forehead.

They dragged him inside a barn, on a chair that was prepared in advance with leather straps, and bound him. He could have transformed into an insect and escaped, but with that much people around, someone would have stomped on him for sure in the confusion - by accident or on purpose. He considered a mouse or another small animal until he saw the orange cat that was hissing threateningly at him from an old lady's arms. Anything bigger would be easily caught.

"Form a circle!" ordered the girl, who had now stepped into the barn with a very bossy attitude "Drop sandbags around the chair to form a barrier, and close all windows and doors! Kids, go around the chair, and have your glass jars ready - if he becomes an insect, capture him immediately! You two, toss the mosquito net on top of him! It must be impossible for him to transform into something and run away!"

The girl clearly had thought this through. The net prevented him from flying away, and when Oolong managed to touch the floor with his feet, he suddenly felt something sticky under them - they had poured molasses all around the chair, making the surface an inescapable trap for anything small enough to try and go that way.

"Bring me the tools!"

A briefcase appeared and was handed to the girl, who now moved decisively towards him. Oolong did not like at all where this was going.

"The girls are fine!" he screamed as loud as possible so that everyone could hear him "They are kept in my house, hidden in a cave under the north mountain. You can find the entrance by following the stream that comes down from the mountain and turning away from it when you meet a tree split through its trunk. The cavern is walled and there's a door with an electronic lock. The passcode is 56183!"

As he spat everything out, Oolong's words sounded more and more like a plea. There was a moment of silence, and the pig could swear he heard someone mumbling in disappointment.

"You, and you, with me!" finally ordered Sherman "Let's go get the girls. Write the instructions down and bring a rifle in case this guy has accomplices!"

The three men left at a speedy pace. Oolong sighed in relief. In this situation, cutting his losses had been the right choice. Maybe they would even be a bit more clement now.

He turned to see the girl still coming closer with her briefcase.

"Hey, what are you doing? I told you everything! I swear! Everything!"

"Oh, I know." the girl said nonchalantly "But this is not for that."

The briefcase clicked open. It revealed a full set of chronometers, thermometers, calibres, dynamometers, and other high precision measurement tools.

"These good people called the cops from the closest city, but even with a plane, it will take them at least four hours to arrive and arrest you. In the meanwhile, to kill the time, you're going to transform for me, precisely in the ways that I will tell you to. And we're going to do some science."

She pulled off a devilish grin.

"This is going to be fun."

"I can't believe that old lady! Even after all I did for their village, I still had to give her a vacuum cleaner from my portable house to convince her to give me the Dragon Ball. Apparently simply telling them that they had been duped like a bunch of idiots by a random jackass wasn't heroic enough to deserve a reward."

Bulma kept mumbling under her breath, annoyed, as she fiddled with the control panel of the airplane. The cockpit's glass darkened a bit at the turn of a knob, making the blinding light of the scorching desert sun somewhat more tolerable.

"No point in getting angry. The Dragon Ball is still much more valuable, is it not?" suggested Goku.

"Yes, of course you're right." sighed the girl "Like always."

Goku didn't react at that, showing neither annoyance nor coyness. The difficulty of reading him was one of the things that bothered Bulma the most.

"Do you believe more in magic now that you could perform some other experiments?" he asked a moment later.

"Well, I have to resign myself to the evidence." Bulma frowned a bit, and her hands clenched the control stick slightly harder "He was definitely using magic. I can't really even try to explain it away. But on the other hand, studying him gave me some ideas about what magic should be. Not a full theory, mind you, but some general directions. Actually, do you mind listening to my reasoning and giving me your opinion?"

"It's fine. Tell me."

"Ok." the girl stopped a moment, collecting her thoughts "So, the first thing that bugged me was, what even is magic? What is there in common between all these phenomena that makes them a single thing rather than a bunch of different laws? And the answer I came to is, they all have to do with the mind shaping reality, directly."

"The Nyoibo responding to my will. That pig person transforming into what he wants."

"And of course, if they work, the Dragon Balls turning the wish of the user into reality." confirmed Bulma "It makes sense, right? But it's also very vague, so I am not sure how to try and falsify it. I guess a form of magic that worked without any sentient being involved at any point would disprove it. I could see if using your voice recording to order your stick to extend works even without you being present."

"I don't think that would work." intervened Goku "I know it doesn't work even if I say it myself but am too distracted to really think about it."

"Which fits with the theory. Oolong said the same thing - that he has to make a conscious effort to keep his form, to the point where he can only last for five minutes before he has to revert. It's possible that this could be overcome with better discipline and mental fortitude, but it goes to show anyway that there's an effort involved in maintaining magic, not just summoning it."

"So you think the substance of the mind can alter the world - but only through certain specific items or techniques that we call magic?"

"Yes. And mind you, it creeps me out to just say this out loud because until yesterday I never believed there was a specific 'substance' of the mind at all, or a soul. But I guess it's a possibility on the table now."

"What else?"

"Not much. The pig had limits on how big or small he could become. I suspect these are more limits of his knowledge and imagination than of the magic itself. He did not seem very well-versed in his own art. It beggars belief that not only he conceived such a stupid scheme, but that it actually worked for so long."

"So you think someone else might be more powerful, just by learning to use those abilities better?"

"Who knows? If it's really just a matter of state of mind, it's possible. We should test a bit with your pole, see how long or short you can get it, and how that relates to your expectations of how much you think a pole can be long or short while still counting as a pole."

"You could have done more experiments if you'd brought him with us."

Bulma laughed: "Goodness, no! I may have liked the idea of experimenting more, but I know better than carrying around a little creep like that right next to me, especially considering how hard his transformation skills would make it to keep him in check. Hell, he was kidnapping little girls and keeping them prisoner in his house! Even though it turned out he never hurt them and they were all quite fine, that twerp deserves all he's getting. He's lucky I was there to stop the villagers from outright lynching him, in fact."

Bulma went back to focusing on piloting the little airplane again, checking the route against a digital map to make sure of their direction. The landscape under them was flat and barren, just a vast dried-out desert with the occasional rock formation, and provided no points of reference. Goku stuck his face back against the cockpit window, looking below. It was the first time he experienced flight, without the notion having ever even crossed his mind before. He was starting to feel a little sorry that Muten's weird cloud did not manage to carry him.

"So, I was thinking," started Bulma "there are two Dragon Balls left. One of them is on Mount Frypan, and honestly, I've read up a bit on it, and it looks like a pretty awful place. The mountain is constantly on fire, and it's guarded by some local crazed warlord known as the Ox King. Everyone says he's really strong and I don't think we can just waltz in and get lucky like we did with Oolong."

"I will not fight to steal any Dragon Balls from a legitimate owner." said Goku, frowning.

"I did not mean to ask. But apparently this guy has attacked people who were just passing by on suspicion that they were thieves, so it's dangerous anyway, and you might have to fight in self-defence. Still, I'd like to plan a bit better, so maybe we should leave that one for last. I'm correcting the route and going towards the other one, which should not be anywhere special."

"That makes sense. Where are we going then?"

"First, a little town south of this desert to refuel and stock on some other necessities, then we stop for the night, and in the morning we travel five hundred more kilometres down, to the site of the other ball." explained Bulma, pointing to the spots on the map "We should get there before noon tomorrow."

"This airplane thing is fast." commented Goku, looking down to the ground that was quickly zipping by.

"Yeah, you can say it out loud!" laughed the girl "Good thing too I thought of bringing this capsule along. Can you imagine traveling by car across that desert? It would have been a huge pain. And who knows what dangers lurk inside it, too!"

The hideout was quiet, except for the buzzing of the A/C keeping the desert heat outside. Curtains were drawn, keeping the air cool and in half darkness.

Long hair tossed all around, mouth half-open, gaze fixed on the ceiling, and a sword carelessly tossed next to him on the floor, the bandit lay spread out on a couch. He was not asleep, this was a state going beyond that. One of complete, utter, boredom-induced apathy.

"Puar," he asked "any prey in sight?"

"Nope!" said happily a squeaky voice from another room "Like yesterday. And the day before."

The voice paused a bit.

"And the last two months."

The bandit groaned loudly. A blue cat floated in from the door and hurried next to him.

"What's wrong, Yamcha?" he asked "You sound frustrated."

"I am frustrated, Puar, my loyal friend! The great Yamcha can not just wither away in this forgotten hole in the middle of nowhere. Action calls me! Adventure! Greatness!"

He jumped up from the coach, grabbed his sword and randomly swung it around a couple times. Puar floated back by a few steps for safety.

"I don't mind staying here." it said, its little eyes fixated on Yamcha "I get to spend time with you."

"I am happy you feel like that. But I'm sorry, this is not enough for me. I barely even make a living here! Whose plan was it to just wait in the middle of a freaking desert for someone to pass by and rob them, anyway?"

"Yours." pointed out Puar "You said at least out here you would not be likely to run into girls and be embarrassed by them."

"Well, I don't know what I was thinking then. I should overcome my fears, not succumb to them! I can conquer my shyness and make it big with my strength and skill. Pack up, Puar! We're leaving! We'll go make a living in the great urban jungle of West City."

"West City," said the cat, in a worried tone "There will be a lot of girls there."

"Yes, of course. That is the whole point. Grab your things. I will stuff everything useful into storage capsules and leave the rest of this junk here."

And so determined, Yamcha started going through the vast amount of used clothes, worn out weapons, and looted goods strewn around the floor of the house and kept in chests and drawers, tossing some in a tall heap that constituted 'everything useful' and others in another, completely indistinguishable heap that constituted 'the rest of this junk'. During this process, Puar would only stare and float around in mild distress.

"A lot." he repeated feebly.

"I'll have a couple kilos of those cabbages. Put them in the refrigerating capsule, thanks. Also five kilos of potatoes."

"Sure thing, miss. That's a lot of greens you're buying."

"Well, I have a kid with me. Wouldn't want to stunt his growth."

"Oh, I see." the grocer smiled "Guess it will be hard to get him to eat 'em, right?"

"Wrong. Not only he gobbles them down happily, you wouldn't believe how much he bothers me about healthy eating. His grandpa apparently taught him how a martial artist takes care of his body like a temple, and keeps all his nutrients balanced. He's dragging me down this hole by nagging me so much, lunch and dinner."

Bulma sighed.

"I miss fries." she concluded, longingly.

The grocer laughed.

"Well, if you want to indulge into sin," he said, lowering his voice "I believe I have some bags of crisps for sale."

"Yes, please!" exclaimed the girl "Give me twenty of those."

They kept chatting about as she loaded the provisions. She would drag out one of her storage capsules, make it puff out into a big box to stuff with food, then re-encapsulate it and label it with a marker to remember what contained what. Meanwhile, the grocer was keeping a meticulous bill, and promising generous bulk discounts if she bought just some more. At this rate, he might have to close down shop for the next two days waiting for restocks, as he basically would have nothing left to sell. Not that he'd complain about that.

Bulma went through a shopping list, striking out things as they got loaded.

"Right," she asked "next I'd like some carrots."

The man stopped dead in his tracks and gave her a rather gloomy look.

"We don't sell carrots here." he said, gravely.

"I'm sorry, are you giving me the you-outsiders-should-not-get-involved-in-the-business-of-our-town look over freaking root vegetables?" said Bulma in disbelief.

The man shook his head: "If it's root vegetables you're interested in, we've got onions, turnips, burdocks and parsnips. Not carrots."

"Well, that's rich. I'm going to bring my very abundant money somewhere else I suppose! What kind of grocery store does not stock on carrots?"

"You won't find them anywhere else. No matter how much you're willing to pay. In this town, we don't like carrots."

The curtain behind them tingled, and a breeze entered in the shop.

"Is that so?" asked Bulma, defiantly, her hands on her hips "And for what incredibly stupid reason would that be?"

The grocer did not answer. All colour faded from his face. Bulma heard a click behind her, and the cold metallic circle of a gun tip pressing against her back.

"Because we're the ones running the carrot racket here, rich girl." said a sneering voice "Now come out slowly, hands high, and don't try anything funny."

In the middle of the road, in front of the grocery store, ignoring the odd look from the occasional passer by, Goku was practicing one of his favourite exercises, debate pushups. Debate pushups, seen from the outside, were basically the same as regular pushups. The only difference was that, during each series of ten, Goku would argue internally in favour of one side of a given argument, and then he would switch sides and play devil's advocate for the next ten, and so on. It was good training for both body and mind, and it would often help him gain insight in his own opinions and reasons to hold them. Today, his topic of choice was the validity of subjective experience in grasping the essence of objective reality, and whether such a reality existed at all - a topic on which Bulma's ideas about the scientific method, if a bit rough around the edges due to her pragmatic nature, gave him a lot new material to chew on. He had just begun to have fun exploring the ramifications of the concept of falsifiability when he realised something was wrong. Bulma was coming out of the shop, but she wasn't alone. Two men and a, well, a giant rabbit, were right behind her. The giant rabbit wore sunglasses. One of the men was holding what he had learned to recognise as a gun against Bulma's back.

"Goku!" she called "Don't you think you could have done something when you saw two men with guns enter the shop?"

"What?" he asked "You had a gun too when we first met. Isn't that normal?"

"NO!"

"Ok, less chatting with your friend." ordered brusquely the bandit keeping her hostage "So, what do we do with her, boss?"

"Well, she claimed to be very rich." said the rabbit "Let's go through her stuff to find anything of value, and then ask her who is her family. Then we will demand a ransom."

"Ha! I don't think my parents even know what cash is." said Bulma, sarcastic "So I really hope you're willing to accept credit cards."

The rabbit seemed more amused than annoyed. He circled around the girl, then looked her up into her eyes.

"How very brave, girl." he said "I wonder if you realise your own situation. You don't act like someone with a gun to their back."

"I have my reasons. Do you see my friend? The kid in the blue gi with the monkey tail?"

"I see him," confirmed the rabbit, sounding bored "what of it?"

"See, I can guarantee you that in a few seconds he will intervene, and he will either kick your ass to the Moon and back, or talk you into thinking everything you've ever believed is wrong. Not sure which one is worse yet."

"Ha! Kick my ass!" the rabbit laughed. He seemed to find this funny. His henchmen, not so much, but after an appropriately encouraging glance they joined in the fun too.

"Honey, you don't get it. Nobody can 'kick my ass'." he patiently explained once the hilarity died down "As it happens, I possess a very special power. A magical ability bestowed upon me by fate, to defeat my enemies, and strike fear in their hearts!"

The explanation was getting heated up. The rabbit rose a fist to the sky, triumphant.

"For you see! I have been blessed by the most mystical gift of the rabbit God! The ultimate leporine enchantment! Know and fear, for everyone who happens to touch my body will be turned INTO A CARROT!"

"How do you mate, then?" asked Goku, out of the blue.

The rabbit and his gang stood still, completely muted. Bulma, instead, started laughing loudly.

"I'm... sorry. I don't think I've heard you right?" said the rabbit.

"How do you mate? I've seen rabbits in the woods and they definitely touch each other. Now, I realise that you are bigger, but I was just wondering if..."

"ENOUGH!" screamed the rabbit, stomping his foot on the ground. Goku stopped, clearly still unsure of what had he said that was so wrong. Bulma kept laughing, and laughing, so much she was basically bent over herself. The goons guarding her didn't seem too worried, and in fact were sort of chuckling themselves.

"STOP LAUGHING!" ordered the boss, walking to her.

"I'm sorry!" she said, almost crying "I can't! Give me a second and..."

"I SAID STOP LAUGHING YOU BITCH!"

There was a slapping sound, and suddenly there was silence. Goku could not believe Bulma would just calm down so quickly. He looked and realised she wasn't there any more. He blinked, did a double take. Bulma was not there.

Firmly clasped in the boss rabbit's hand was a carrot.

"That's better." he sneered "Now that's a good girl."

"Turn her back." asked Goku, calmly.

He walked towards the group of the three bandits, slowly, and finally stopped while still keeping some distance. He grabbed his pole and unsheathed it, then held it in front of his body, slightly reclined, in a defensive position. His mind was racing, flooded with adrenaline and worry. Was Bulma still conscious? Was she trapped in the carrot? Or was she rather effectively dead? Would she be Bulma again once the carrot was turned back? How could one even be said to be the same after their body was transformed into a carrot and then back?

What would happen if the carrot was bitten or damaged in any way?

"Don't be ridiculous." said the rabbit "You're just a kid, and there's three of us, and we have guns. Boys, shoot him dead!"

The bandits rose their guns and pointed them at Goku, except Goku was not there any more. He was already halfway to the first bandit when they finally started firing, panicking. He timed his steps so that he could push on his right leg at the best moment and jump to narrowly dodge the bullet shower. He could see them, the little pointy bits of metal flying through the air - they would probably pack a punch, but they were slow. Compared to his sight, at least.

He realised one moment later he had missed some of the second bandit's bullets, falling right into his blind spot. He was mid air, and there was no time to land again. He quickly whirled his arm and stick, gaining momentum to spin away from the trajectory of two of them. The third could not be avoided, so he took it with his arm, focusing on stiffening his muscle as much as possible. When it hit, it hurt like hell, but he was not wounded - rather, the bullet bounced off, and with the spin of the arm, its trajectory was aimed straight at the first bandit's leg. When it hit, and he screamed in pain, Goku was already upon him.

At this point he was not worrying about anything - he was pure instinct again. The bandit was falling, and Goku put his body between himself and the other enemy, so that he would create an opening. The other hesitated an instant, shifting the gun from left to right, expecting the kid to appear from either side. Instead, Goku jumped on top of the falling body, and came upon the second bandit from above. He was too slow to even raise the gun before Goku was already upon him. An axe kick straight to his head finished the affair. In less than five seconds from when the order was given, the rabbit's henchmen were laying on the ground, bleeding or unconscious, and Goku was neither shot, nor dead.

"Turn her back, now." he repeated.

"Don't dream it, kid!" screamed the rabbit. Now he was definitely scared, and as a result clenched the Bulma-carrot even tighter in his hand "This is my ticket out of here after all. Let me go, or I will eat her!"

"If I let you go, I will never see either you or her again." said Goku, calmly "Turn her back."

And he pointed his pole at him, holding it with a straight arm.

Theory: magic is a state of mind shaping reality. Its persistence is dependent on that state of mind.

"You have no choice!" the rabbit now was shrieking, as he hurriedly walked, stumbled backwards, away from the kid "Kill me, and she'll never turn back!"

Prediction: if the consciousness holding the state of mind that sustains the magic ceases to exist in this plane of reality, the effect will fade.

"That's a lie." said Goku, and he imagined his stick extending quickly right to the length necessary to pierce through the rabbit's eye socket and plunge straight into his brain, and it instantly was so.

When Bulma came to her senses, her first feeling was one of warm wetness on her fingers. She immediately worried it was her blood; but quickly she realised it was actually someone else's. Specifically, that of the rabbit boss, whose corpse was strewn next to her. The blood was pouring out of its broken skull.

She got up, shaken. Her legs felt weak. She looked for Goku, and sure enough, there he was, standing a few meters from her, frozen, and the tip of his stick red and dripping. She understood what happened, and walked to him.

"Hey." she called out "You all right?"

"I killed him." stated Goku, matter-of-factly. His voice was cold and trembled a bit "I thought it was the safest way to get you back at the moment. But I was wrong. I thought about it, there were a lot of ways in which I could have been wrong, and you would have remained a carrot forever, I took a tremendous risk. But it did not matter at that moment. I killed him because I wanted to kill him."

She put a hand on his back.

"Goku," said Bulma "right now I'm a bit too shocked to think about this too hard. We will have time later. But let me tell you, I'm not such a saint I would cry over the death of some jerk who wanted to kidnap me and turned me into a carrot, when all you wanted to do was protect me. So, if that makes you feel better: thank you. Really."

"The only person I killed before him" he continued, without looking her in the eyes "was my grandpa."

Bulma did not know how to respond to this. She immediately felt like drawing back from him, but did not do it. She hoped he didn't even notice the intent - it was clearly not what he needed right now.

"There is no other explanation. Grandpa had told me that there was a big monster who rampaged on the nights of full moon. But I never saw it - every time I would see the damage it was some night when I did not remember anything, not even going to sleep. One day he told me, and he was bruised, and bleeding, but he said he was fine, to just never go out with the full moon, because it was dangerous."

Goku started shaking. He had tears in his eyes.

"But one night, I went out anyway, because I thought, I thought I wanted to see it. And then I don't remember anything. And the next day, he was dead, squashed by a giant foot. Except I feel like I do remember something. I have dreams about it. I remember being angry, and huge, and powerful, and, and his bones, under my foot, cracking..."

"Hey, it's alright. It's alright."

Bulma got down on the ground and hugged him. It was not really alright - she did not know if she should feel terrified of this little boy who could squish her skull with one hand and apparently was a werewolf or something worse. It seemed like it would have been the sensible thing. But what the heck, had she been sensible, she would not have gone on this trip to begin with. And this boy had just saved her life.

"It's like there's something in me that is, just, always angry." said Goku, anguished "That wants to kill everyone. And usually I control it and almost forget it exists, but when I fight, it just, it just pours out. And if you're right, and magic depends on the state of mind, then it can't be the moon that transforms me into that thing that killed my grandpa. It must be me. My mind, that really wants to be that thing, big and savage, and destroy the entire world."

"Goku, you're being unreasonable!" snapped Bulma "It does not work like that. Mine was just a theory. Think about it for a moment. Maybe my theory is simply wrong. Maybe whatever triggers this transformation is not magic at all, and there is something else at play. And maybe whatever determines that form is just an unconscious, deeper, more animalistic part of your mind, but we all have one. Well, I must teach you evolution one day or another, but basically, we are all related to other beasts after all."

She tapped his forehead with her index finger.

"But the part that really matters is here, country boy. Prefrontal cortex, and all the works. Everything in your brain that thinks and analyses and reflects on itself. And yours works brilliantly. So don't lose faith in it. Whatever the other parts of you want, this is the one that holds the reins, as your grandpa taught you. This is what makes you human."

Goku's expression relaxed into a neutral one as his mind slid into ruminating about this.

"I understand your intent," he said "but really, you mean that it is what makes me capable of moral judgement. Unless you would suggest that among the many sentient creatures who possess consciousness and speech on this planet only humans have such an ability, which would strike me as quite speciesist. And in fact, I am not entirely sure I am fully human myself."

"And here we go! See, you've gone back to being your regular self. But yes, of course you're right. Like always. And anyway... you only have a monkey tail. I was just nearly killed by a giant rabbit who could transform people into carrots. At this point, by my standards, you're human enough."

This actually elicited a small laugh from Goku - the first one Bulma had ever seen. She kept hugging him and patting his back, and they stayed for a while there, sitting in the middle of a road, with the brained corpse of a giant rabbit next to them, as the people of the town started peering out of their houses again and begun passing the news that the bandit threat was finally over.

"Tonight's a full moon though," finally said Bulma, after a long silence "So you're definitely sleeping inside."

That evening they erected their usual capsule house just at the outskirts of the town - despite repeated offers from some of the best hotels to host them as thanks for getting rid the area of the formerly infamous Rabbit Gang. Part of it was that Goku would have probably felt even worse than he already did, being rewarded for killing someone. But it was also that, given what she'd just learned, Bulma felt safer keeping Goku in a more controlled environment. There was a room inside the house that had no windows - it was meant as a storage space, but they emptied it and Goku agreed it was best if he spent that night in there, so that no light from the Moon could reach him. The boy went to bed early; Bulma instead stayed up until late. She was too excited and shaken by the whole day to sleep easily anyway, so she decided to spend the time researching the location of the Dragon Ball they were going after now. All maps only showed another half-desert area where the radar pointed, and information about local fauna and criminal activity suggested it was not especially dangerous. However, when she checked the area with satellite imagery, she frowned upon discovering that, approximately at those coordinates, there was a castle.

So the Dragon Ball was likely to be in someone's hands.

It could still be bought or earned somehow, so this was not necessarily reason for despair, but Bulma had a nagging worry. She decided to look a bit deeper into the data at her disposal. Tracking back the owner of the castle seemed impossible - she could find no records of its existence until a few years ago, and even those were nebulous at best. Then she connected the Dragon Radar to her laptop with a cable. While the radar's display could only plot the present location of the Dragon Balls, its memory still held historical data from the last six months, recorded at a frequency of once per minute. Bulma loaded the data in a visualisation program, and started plotting the position of the Dragon Ball against time, overlapped on a map of the area.

It was constant until a while back. Before that, however, it had moved. In a perfect straight line, as if it was carried by airplane. And before that, it had travelled in an irregular fashion - that followed perfectly the road network.

Bulma checked the dates.

The last time this Dragon Ball had moved by car was on the same day in which she got her second one, two days before meeting Goku. It was then that it had taken a quick trip via airplane and then had been holed up in the castle and left there, obviously to look more inconspicuous.

"Shit." muttered Bulma, biting her thumb.

Someone else was looking for the Dragon Balls, and they had a radar too.

That's chapter 3 over! This was the longest one yet. It's also the one that marks the beginning of some major divergences from the original story, with multiple characters going in drastically different directions (as a way of reassurance: don't worry, this is not the last we see of the great Yamcha). The ending is also somewhat darker, which hopefully will give you a better sense of the kind of mood I'm striving for - generally comedic, but not without its serious moments. Thanks for the many follows/favourites and the reviews!