Three years.
You can't tell it clean. Road doesn't sit still long enough. Deserts that tried to cook the skin off your back, mountain passes where the air went thin enough to make you stupid, villages where old women watched us from doorways with a hand on a broom.
We fought. Tournaments under fake names. Won most. Lost a few. Learned more from the losses, which is annoying and true. Took protection work when the coin ran low. Slept under stars more often than roofs.
Every week, same argument. Yamcha: instinct is king, system is a cage. Me: instinct with no bones is just fast chaos. Neither of us ever won it. Not once.
Wolf Fang found its teeth. Forward aggression got layered, combinations got longer, footwork got intentional without losing the animal that made it dangerous. Yamcha didn't know what he was building. He was just building.
Flux found its shape too. Slow and frustrating and occasionally maddening, but real.
I stopped owning one range. Long when it needed long, inside when inside opened up, ground when nothing else made sense. Could change rhythm mid combination, fast slow fast, and that change itself became a weapon.
The cost was three minutes. Three minutes of full Flux running at capacity meant processing six things at once, distance, timing, weight shifts, balance mine and his, environment, probable next moves. Then the headaches. Pressure behind the eyes at first. Then worse. Then the kind that made my vision pulse.
Three minutes on. Ten minutes to recover. Every time.
I hated it. Kept at it anyway. You don't get a style with no form for free.
---
Ki came in bigger.
Sixteen now. Six foot two, measured against a doorframe to settle a bet. Yamcha refused to believe it. The doorframe didn't care about his feelings.
Dense build, muscle sitting close to the bone, copper brown skin from three years under every sun the road offered. Long black dreadlocks I'd stopped cutting around year one. Scars across both forearms, one crossing the left collarbone from a man with a knife who had more conviction than judgment.
Ki matured past the stream flicker. I could fly now, not fast, but sustained, controlled. Simple blasts were reliable, three, four in a row before I needed a breath. Ki enhancement through the body, threading it into a leg before the step, into the arm before the punch.
Fifteen percent of what this body could do when I left the village. Pushing thirty five now. Ceiling was much higher than what I was touching. Fine. I had time.
---
Yamcha first mentioned the back thing about eight months in.
We'd been sparring hard at dusk, full speed, no pulling. He stopped mid combination and stepped back.
"Ryo."
"Don't stop now—"
"Your back."
I paused. "What about it."
He was staring between my shoulder blades like something had crawled under the skin. "Muscle. Looks like, faces? Eyes? It looks wrong."
I rolled my shoulders. "Sun cook yuh brain, bredren."
"Ryo, I can literally see—"
"We sparring or what."
He knew when I'd closed a door. It happened twice more in the following months. Always past a specific intensity threshold. I said "mi know" and nothing else.
I did know. Didn't have an explanation I was ready to say out loud. Some things you carry alone until you understand them yourself.
---
Three years to the month after the desert road.
Hill above a wide valley, afternoon going orange. Me on my back in dry grass watching clouds. Yamcha picking something out of his boot.
"You ever going to tell me where you actually came from?" he said.
"Around."
"Before around."
"Somewhere else."
He threw a rock at my chest. Bounced off. I didn't look away from the clouds.
"Tournament in the next city," he said. "Three weeks."
"I know."
We sat with that. Grass moving in slow waves below. A road running pale through the middle of it.
I was starting to drift when I saw the figures. Two of them, on the road below. Small. One with hair that had never once agreed to lie flat, moving with that specific energy that's hard to describe and easy to recognize once you've felt it yourself. Like the whole world was slightly less serious to that person than everyone else.
The other was a girl. Blue hair catching the orange light. Capsule case at her hip. Posture said this hadn't entirely been her idea.
I sat up.
Yamcha followed my gaze. "Travelers."
"Yeah."
Something in my chest went still. Not dread. Just quiet. The specific quiet right before something that matters.
"Come on," I said, standing.
Yamcha squinted. "Why?"
"Because something inside me is telling me that something over there is strong."
---
Valley floor was softer than the hill, grass thick enough to muffle steps. I walked with my pack over one shoulder, loose. Yamcha went quiet beside me, calculating, eyes moving. Good. That was his job.
The boy was crouched by the road poking at something with a stick, completely absorbed. Orange gi, beat up. And a tail, thick and furry, curling behind him when he shifted.
The girl saw us first.
Blue hair, sharp face, blue eyes that did a threat assessment in half a second and dismissed Yamcha just as fast. Then landed on me. And narrowed.
She was beautiful. That was just a fact, automatic and useless, like noting the sky was blue. The kind of pretty that came with a warning label, this person has opinions and will share them loudly.
She did not blush. She did not smile. She scowled.
"Great," she murmured, loud enough to for me and Yamaha to hear. "Bandits. Perfect. Exactly what today needed."
Yamcha lifted both hands, easy. "Whoa. Easy, princess. We ain't bandits. Not anymore."
"Not anymore is doing a lot of work in that sentence," she said. She stepped in front of the kid, which was stupid, because I could see from here he didn't need protecting. "What do you want?"
The kid looked up. Dark eyes, innocent and primitive at the same time. He looked at me, really looked, and his whole face split open in a grin.
"Whoa," he said. "You're strong."
"Goku, don't," the blue haired girl snapped. "Don't you dare start a fight with this giant man, I am begging you, for the love of god."
Goku was already on his feet. "Fight me!"
I looked at him. Twelve, maybe. Four eleven soaking wet. Barefoot. Grinning like someone offered him cake.
"No," I said.
"Why not?"
"Because mi nuh know yuh, and mi nuh fight children for free."
The girl blinked at the when she heard the unusual accent. She snapped put of it. "Good. Keep it that way. We're busy looking for something." She grabbed Goku by the back of his gi. "Come on. We're leaving."
Goku dug his heels in. "But he's strong! I can feel it!"
"Yeah, and so is the thing that lives in the cave three miles back, you wanted to fight that too."
Yamcha stepped in, smooth, that old desert bandit charm sliding on like a coat. "Hey now. No need to run off. Name's Yamcha. This is Ryo. We ain't looking for trouble."
She eyed him but still on guard. "Bulma. This runt is Goku. And trouble finds him finds this child." she sighed.
"You mentioned looking for something. What might that be exactly?" Yamcha asked, nodding at the capsule case at her hip, the radar shape barely visible under the flap.
Her eyes sharpened. "None of your business."
"Oh come on. We don't usually get to talk to other people plus we're bored."
Bulma stared at him a second longer, then sighed, annoyed at the whole situation, at Goku, at us, and especially that its taking so long to find the dragonballs. "Fine. We're collecting seven orbs that grants any wish, yes it's real and no you can't have them."
Yamcha grinned. "Damn. But any wish, huh? That's worth money to the right people."
"It is not for sale."
"Everything's for sale, princess. Question is price."
While they talked, Goku circled me. Literally circled, hands loose at his sides, head cocked, tail swishing slow.
"You really won't fight me?" he asked.
"…"
"Please?" he continued to beg
I looked down at him annoyed. "Yuh nuh stop, eh?"
He beamed, like I'd given him a compliment. Then he moved.
No tell. No wind up. Just exploded forward, fist aimed at my ribs, fast enough to blur.
I brought my forearm down hard, then caught his fist, and felt the impact all the way up to my shoulder. Rahtid!
The kid was strong. Stupidly strong. but not close to me, but way too close for something that size. If I didn't know better I'd think he was using ki enhancement without knowing what ki was.
He bounced back, grinning wider. "See!"
"Goku!" Bulma shouted.
He was already coming again, low sweep to high elbow, chaining together like water finding cracks. Sloppy, but fast, and the sloppy made it hard to read because there was no pattern to find.
I slipped the elbow, caught his wrist, tried to turn him, he twisted out of it like an eel, drove a knee into my thigh that actually made my leg buzz.
Alright.
I stopped playing.
Stepped inside his reach, because at six two against four eleven, our distance is a canyon for him.
Caught a wild hook on my forearm, felt it thud bone deep, and put a palm straight into his sternum. Controlled. Not a blast, just mass and drive.
He flew back six feet and hit grass hard, rolled, came up coughing and laughing.
"Again!"
"No," I said. My forearm throbbed where he'd connected. he left a mark and it pissed me off even more. "Yuh done." I said while gritting my teeth.
He looked genuinely offended, then thoughtful, then nodded once, sharp. "Okay. Next time. But i'll be stronger next time."
"Yuh say that like is a promise." I grumbled.
"It is."
Bulma marched over, grabbed him by the ear, dragged him back despite his squawking. "Are you insane? He could have killed you!"
"He wouldn't," Goku said, completely confident. "He's nice."
I snorted before I could stop it. "Mi nuh nice."
"Nice enough not to paste a twelve year old into the dirt," Bulma said, dry. She looked me up and down, quick, practical. Not flirting. Inventory. "You're strong. Obviously. Fast. You fly?"
"Sometimes."
Her eyes flicked up, interested despite herself. "Huh."
Yamcha cut in, smooth again. "Look, princess. You got a monkey kid who picks fights with mountains, a radar that every mercenary between here and the capital would kill for, and no muscle. We got muscle. We got time. We got empty pockets."
Bulma crossed her arms. "And you want what."
"Percentage," Yamcha said. "Finders fee. Plus food. Kid eats enough for three men, I can tell."
"Two," Goku said, helpfully.
Bulma stared at Yamcha, then at me, calculating fast. I could see the math happening behind her eyes. Risk versus reward. Two unknown fighters versus whatever was waiting down that road.
"You try anything," she said, pointing at me specifically, "I have capsules that will ruin your whole week."
"Mi nuh want yuh wish ball, girl," I said. "Mi want a road that goes somewhere."
She held my look a beat longer, then nodded once, sharp. "Fine. Temporary. You slow us down, you're gone. You touch my stuff, you're gone. He—" she jerked a thumb at Goku, "—tries to fight you at three in the morning again, that's your problem."
"Deal," Yamcha said before I could answer.
Goku cheered and immediately tried to race me to the road. I didn't let him win. He still shouted like he'd conquered a country when he got there half a step ahead because his legs are short and he cheats.
Bulma walked beside me, not touching, two feet of space between us like a line drawn in chalk. Beautiful, sharp mouthed, annoyed at the entire universe and specifically at me for existing in her eyeline.
Good. That I knew how to deal with.
Yamcha fell in on my other side, quiet. After a minute he muttered, low enough she wouldn't hear, "Yuh good? Yuh look rattled."
"Mi good," I said. "Kid hit harder than he should."
"Not the kid," Yamcha said. "Her."
I didn't answer that.
The sun dropped behind the ridge, valley going cold fast. Four shadows stretching long in the grass ahead of us. Goku ran point, shouting about dinner. Bulma walked with her radar out, muttering about signal strength, ignoring me completely except to snap "keep up, big guy" when my stride slowed.
I kept up.
The road ran pale through the darkening grass. Whatever I was becoming, I still wasn't finished. That was fine.
---
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