"Okay, not right now."
Bulma lifted a finger, slipping effortlessly into her boardroom voice — smooth, calm, just shy of manipulative.
"Let's talk first. Then you can say no with all the facts on the table."
Goku blinked.
"Doesn't change much."
"It does, trust me." She said, smiling through gritted teeth.
"Grandpa said not to trust strangers."
"Did your grandpa also tell you to eat dirt?"
"Once."
He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking.
"But only to see how it tasted. It's bad."
Bulma exhaled through her nose.
"Right. Let's try something more universal."
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a capsule, clicked the button, and tossed it between them.
A puff of smoke.
When it cleared, a briefcase sat on the ground.
Bulma crouched, flipped the latches, and opened it.
Stacks of crisp zeni notes, perfectly aligned.
"Money, let's see… ten million, give or take?"
She arched an eyebrow.
"Big number for someone who still counts with their fingers, huh?"
"It's just paper." he said flatly.
"Paper that buys things."
"I already have things."
"You live in a hut in the middle of nowhere."
"I like it."
Her jaw twitched.
This brat.
Bulma closed the briefcase, the metallic click sharper than she intended.
Okay. Plan A: fail.Time for Plan B.
She took a breath and forced a gentler tone, the kind that sounded like sincerity if you didn't listen too closely.
"Your grandpa… Son Gohan. I knew him."
Goku's ears twitched.
"Really?"
"I did. He talked about you — a lot."
"Did he say I was strong?"
"All the time. Said you were the strongest boy on the… mountain."
"Did he say I eat too much?"
"…That too."
His face lit up — a big, toothy grin that belonged to someone who didn't know how to fake one.
"So why do you want Grandpa's ball?"
"Because he asked me to keep it safe," she said smoothly. "Said it was important. Wanted me to hold onto it for a while."
"When?"
"Before he… left."
"Grandpa died a long time ago."
"Right, before that. Just before."
"He never mentioned you."
Bulma hesitated, then forced the kind of half-smile that could pass for sadness.
"He didn't talk about everyone. He was a private man."
...
Neither of them spoke.
Only the hum of the cicadas filled the silence between truth and whatever this was.
The wind rustled the leaves of the trees, whispering through the forest.
Goku tilted his head ever so slightly and took another sniff of the air, as if the wind itself could give him an answer.
His nose scrunched up.
"You're lying."
"No, I—"
"Yes, you are."
Bulma's patience wavered.
"And how exactly would you know, Sherlock Jungle?"
"Because you're a girl."
She froze.
For a moment, her mind wouldn't register the words of the sentence. Then it slammed home.
"…Excuse me?"
"Grandpa said city girls lie. They look nice so people trust them, but they lie."
"'All of them?'"
He nodded, his face as serious as a sermon.
"All."
"Not even his mother?"
"She wasn't from the city."
Bulma let out a brief laugh that was more like shock than laughter.
It wasn't funny.
"Your grandfather was a paranoid, sexist hermit."
"What's paranoid? What's sexist?"
"It means—ugh, never mind." She threw up her hands.
"It means he was wrong."
Goku shook his head in agreement.
"Grandpa was never wrong."
And there it was – the last straw snapping.
"Enough."
Her hand was in motion before she knew what was happening.
The pistol was out, shining in the angled light, the barrel pointing directly at his chest.
"I tried playing nice. You're done wasting my time."
Goku examined the gun. He was calm.
"What is that?"
"It's a persuasion device, it's what gets people to stop yapping nonsense and give me what I want."
Her finger located the trigger.
"The sphere. Now."
…
….
…..
He Just kept staring, his head cocked to one side, his expression unreadable.
Why is he staring at me like that?
"Still no." he said simply.
"You think this is a game?!"
Bulma's voice cracked like a whip.
She moved forward, her heart pounding, the gun jerking upwards—
ZAAAP.
A brief arc of blue plasma erupted at the muzzle, hissing like a torch cut.
She dragged it across a watermelon-sized rock that was only two meters away.
Lines of molten stone were etched through the surface as heat shimmered through the air.
The rock broke in half and fell apart in smoking chunks, its edges glowing red.
The PC-01 Firefly. Since the corporate drones denied me access to firearms, I rebuilt a plasma cutter into a pistol frame. It was never meant to shoot bullets—only to slice through reinforced bulkheads.
Goku examined the remains.
"You killed the rock."
"Yes, and you're next if you don't hand over the dragon ball."
"Dragon ball? Is that what you call my grandpa's ball?"
Bulma's eye twitched.
"That's not your grandpa's ball, you dumb kid! It's a source of anomalous energy capable of bending reality itself! It's far better off with someone like me—someone who can actually study it."
She drew in a sharp breath.
"Come on, I'll give you something else."
"My Grandpa told me to protect it. I won't give it to you. No matter what."
"Protect it from who?"
"I don't know. From you, maybe? You look mean."
"If I were cruel, I'd have already shot you in the back of the neck and taken the sphere from your corpse, brat."
Bulma steadied her aim at the center of his chest.
The targeting system flickered to life, a red reticle burning across her retina.
"I'm going to count to three," She said, voice level.
"You hand over the sphere, I walk away, and nobody gets hurt."
Goku shifted his weight to his toes.
"Hm…"
"One."
The air stirred.
"Two—"
Goku was gone.