990Open Ocean, not far from Kame House
Gokū and Caulifla sat on Kinto'un eagerly awaiting their destination. The Somersault cloud knew where to go as it had been to Muten Rōshi's abode before, and gladly responded to Gokū's wish to travel there. All the while, Gokū was recounting the story of his adventure searching for the Dragon Balls, all the way up to their thwarting of Pilaf's plans.
"So, this Oolong guy interrupted Pilaf's wish to rule the world, and made a wish for panties instead?" Caulifla repeated, just to make sure she heard the story correctly.
"He's weird, isn't he?" Gokū answered, his expression blank as ever. "He could've wished for a bunch of food instead."
Caulifla sighed, knowing exactly what sort of person Oolong is. "Well, better Oolong's wish than Pilaf's I guess."
Their story was rudely interrupted by the growling of what sounded like two angry beasts, when in reality it was their stomachs. They both blushed from mild embarrassment at this revelation, and Caulifla spoke up. "You think this Kame-Sennin will have food?"
"I think so," Gokū replied, now feeling the hunger from earlier this morning catch up to him. "I didn't think to bring any food. Oh hey, there's Kame House!"
"You go on ahead," Caulifla ordered as she stood up, tightening her obi. "I'm gonna go catch some food just in case."
"Okay," Gokū responded with a smile. "Just don't catch Mr. Turtle."
"No turtles, got it!" Caulifla gave a thumbs up and dove into the ocean.
Gokū then ordered Kinto'un to stop at the shore of the island of Kame House and proceeded to hop off, carrying his things. He approached the door and knocked lightly but loudly. "Grandpa Kame-Sennin!"
No response. Maybe he wasn't home? Gokū set his futon and supply bag down on the porch and looked around the tiny island until he heard a small noise coming from the window. He looked through and sure enough saw Muten Rōshi at home, watching an exercise program on TV.
"One, two! One, two! One, two!" The girls on TV chanted as the old hermit had his eyes glued to the screen, oblivious to Gokū walking in through his open window.
"Grandpa Kame-Sennin?" Gokū announced his presence, only to be further ignored. The boy then took a deep breath and yelled directly into the old man's ear. "GRANDPA KAME-SENNIN!"
"ACH! JEEZ!" The hermit recoiled at the sudden loud noise tormenting his ear drums, only to look at the source and find it was Gokū. "Oh, it's just you. Don't scare me like that!"
"I'm here for training, grandpa!" Gokū exclaimed, barely able to contain his excitement.
"Hold on, wait a minute!" the old hermit gestured, still transfixed upon the TV.
Gokū tried to be patient, but his stomach was starting to fight against this wait. "Grandpa, I'm kind of hu-"
Before Gokū could finish his sentence, a large tidal wave rocked the island, fortunately not hitting the house and giving it water damage, and the hermit was broken from his perverted trance. Both Gokū and Rōshi immediately raced outside to see what happened, and were greeted by a completely soaked Caulifla holding a massive fish tail over her shoulder, connected to an absolute leviathan of a fish that dwarfed anything Gokū had caught back home.
"Oh, hi Caulifla! Nice catch!" Gokū greeted his new friend staring at the giant future fillet buffet.
"If this isn't gonna taste awesome, I don't know what will!" Caulifla announced, proud of her biggest catch to date. "I haven't fished a lot lately, so I'm gonna enjoy this one a lot!"
"Holy crap!" A stunned Muten Rōshi shouted seeing the small girl hoist a fish bigger than his own house from the ocean. "That could keep my fridge stocked for ten years!"
"Really?" Gokū commented, with a puzzled look on his face. "That looks like it could feed me for ten weeks at most."
"And here I thought I was the one with the monster appetite," Caulifla commented, adjusting the titanic fish's tail over her shoulder for better carrying. "This could last the two of us five weeks before we gotta catch another."
Gokū and Caulifla stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then laughed until Muten Rōshi finally came to his senses and spoke up. "So, Gokū, what're you doing here? And who's your friend?"
"Oh right!" Gokū hadn't forgotten, but his attention was fixated on the fish Caulifla displaced from the ocean. "This is Caulifla. We're here for that training you promised."
"Training? Oh right." Rōshi had forgotten about that offer, though it was only to get more opportunities to ogle at Gokū's friend Bulma. "Where's the cute purple-haired girl?"
"You mean Bulma?" Gokū confirmed. "She went back home to the city after we gathered the Dragon Balls. I brought my own futon by the way."
"Uh-huh," Rōshi nodded, feeling disappointed at this revelation. "Well, you should know that my training's gonna be reaaaally tough!"
"I don't mind! I want to try and become stronger than you!"
"Stronger than me, eh?" Rōshi laughed. "Well, my training doesn't come free."
"Well, what's the price, Gramps?" Caulifla spoke up, still carrying the fish over her shoulder and overhearing the conversation. "I didn't tag along just to find out I need money."
"Oh ho hooo!" Rōshi laughed at Caulifla's brazen attitude. "I'm not asking for money! What I want for you two to do is bring me a cute girl! Not too old, but not too young like you!"
Gokū's blank expression tilted to the side with the rest of his head, showing his confusion, while Caulifla immediately frowned grumpily, knowing what to expect. She turned to Gokū and voiced her complaints. "You keep some tasteless company, you know that?"
"What do you mean?" Gokū's confused face turned to Caulifla.
Caulifla turned to the hermit. "Is there any other option that doesn't involve holding someone against their will?"
The Turtle Hermit stood firm with his decision, but his thought process was rudely interrupted by a call from the other side of the island. Rōshi thought it was the turtle coming back from vacation, but the source of the call was from a bald child rowing a boat, with six distinct circular marks on his forehead. This boy then leaped from his boat carrying his own supplies doing several flips in an effort to look impressive, but failed to stick the landing and very clumsily landed head first into the sand, buried from the neck up.
"Who the hell is this kid?" Rōshi muttered. "Gokū, pull him up."
Gokū complied and pulled the bald boy out from the earth, who then coughed up the sand he accidentally ate as he dusted himself off, and quickly composed a guise of politeness. "Greetings! Are you the fabled Muten Rōshi?"
"Indeed I am, young lad," Rōshi answered, his expression almost as blank as Gokū's.
"I am Kuririn. I came from a village to the far east all this way to receive your training, sir!"
"Well, nice job getting here, but I'm not taking any more disciples at the moment."
Kuririn rummaged through his bag and pulled out an adult magazine, handing it to the hermit. "I brought this magazine to commemorate our meeting sir."
"Well, when you put it that way…"
"Gokū, hold this fish," Caulifla ordered while handing the fish tail to Gokū, who complied with ease, and Caulifla marched over to the new arrival. "Hey Pachinko head! What's the big idea?!"
"HEY!" Kuririn immediately reacted to Caulifla's words. "I'm not a 'Pachinko head!' True martial artists shave their heads to brace their spirits! Just look at Muten Rōshi!"
"I'm just naturally bald," Rōshi commented, still glued to the magazine offered to him.
Kuririn remained silent for a few moments and then spoke again. "Besides, I don't remember Muten Rōshi allowing artichoke-headed girls to study-"
Before Kuririn could finish his sentence, Caulifla launched a left hook into the monk's shiny forehead, causing him to skip across the ocean like a stone five times.
Gokū saw this and laughed. "He bounces like a pachinko ball too!"
Kuririn eventually scrambled back to shore, sopping wet from the ocean, a visible bruise on his head, and his face grumpily pouting with indignation.
Rōshi saw this and settled on allowing Kuririn to try and pay his fee. "Alright, I'll permit the three of you to train if you can pass this one test."
"And what is this test, Muten Rōshi?" Kuririn groveled, causing Caulifla to give the most 'really' look she could muster, and Gokū's look was ever blank, as they both knew what this test was.
"You will have to find me a cute girl if you want training!" Rōshi announced to the young monk. "But, I gotta make sure you know what I'm looking for."
Kuririn grinned mischievously and motioned for the Kame-Sennin to listen for a whisper. After three seconds of near silence, Rōshi jumped up laughing, visible steam escaping his nostrils. "Now you're speaking my language!"
"I finally get answers to something bothering me for the longest time, and this is what I have to suffer through as a result," Caulifla muttered, not pleased with her current situation. "Might as well get this over with."
"If Kuririn knows what we should look for, then this should be easy!" Gokū exclaimed with a grin.
"These two?" Kuririn scoffed, seeing Gokū and Caulifla. "How are these losers supposed to help me in this search?"
"We can use Kinto'un!" Gokū answered, gesturing to his primary mode of transportation. "If you fall through it, you could just use my futon as support!"
"You fly on a cloud?" Kuririn questioned with a look of disbelief. "Welp, might as well try it!"
As soon as Kuririn jumped up to take his seat on Kinto'un, he had returned to earth, his face eating the sand directly below the fluffy cloud. Muten Rōshi immediately took note of this and lectured the monk. "Only those pure of heart can ride on that cloud! Did you come here to train with impure intentions?!"
"N-No! I only want to become a strong martial artist to impress the girls!"
"And so far it's not working," Caulifla remarked, shaking her head in disdain.
"That is also what counts as impure," Rōshi added. "No matter. If you can complete this task with Gokū and Caulifla's aid, I will permit you to train."
Gokū proceeded to lay his futon atop Kinto'un, making it almost resemble a poorly made magic rug, and motioned Kuririn to try again. The monk jumped again, and much to his chagrin, the idea failed, and the futon was shunted through the cloud with a heavy thud.
"How about you just hold on to me while we fly?" Gokū offered, seeing that his futon idea failed.
"Why can't I hold onto-"
Before Kuririn could finish his sentence, Caulifla gave a dagger-filled stare that caused his spine to run cold. "S-Sure, let's go with that."
Gokū climbed atop Kinto'un after folding his futon away off the sand and Kuririn proceeded to hold on from his shoulders. Caulifla shuffled away from the two as much as the cloud's surface would permit, but before they could take off, Gokū had remembered something.
"Wait!" Gokū immediately shouted. "What about that fish? I'm still hungry."
"Tell ya what," the hermit declared. "I'll dice up this fish while you're gone, but I won't be doing the cooking. That'll be up to you."
"Sounds good to me!" Gokū replied gleefully.
With their objective in mind, and the promise of portioned fish, they set off across the ocean towards the mainland in an effort to find someone to sate the hermit's degenerate desires. As the party vanished over the horizon, Rōshi turned to the monumental fish and sighed. "Hope they don't mind if I have some of this. Ah, who am I kidding? I'm the one dicing it up for them!"
Brown Country, Valley Outskirts
The valley of this region of the world is normally peaceful, but the tranquility of the valley is violently disturbed by the sounds of revved engines, gunfire, sirens, and the shouting of curses - some of which were conjured on the spot - from a blonde woman with green, aggressive eyes driving a monocycle shooting back at the police officers in pursuit.
"PULL OVER OR WE'LL BE FORCED TO SHOOT!" a disgruntled cop shouted from his hover car, hypocritically shooting his firearm alongside the vehicle's mounted guns.
"Time to end this chase with a bang!" the blonde woman smirked, pulling a grenade from her monocycle's pouch and tearing the pin out with her teeth. She counted mentally as she spat the pin away and tossed the green explosive directly towards the chasing police hover cars. The grenade exploded just as one of the hover cars glided past, causing the vehicle to blast forward and land on its roof. The madwoman snickered as the officers crawled out, looking moderately worse for wear, and radioed for assistance, while the remaining cars continued pursuit. She veered right, driving up the side of the cliff to try and shake the pursuing cars, only for them to find a quick path to the top. Noticing this, the woman pulled out a sawn off shotgun, and cocked a shell, aiming it directly at the now panicking pursuers of the law.
"Yippee ki-yay, motherfu… ah, aaah-" the blonde began to shout, until some of her hair began to get into her face and tickle her nose, causing her to seize up, her nostrils flaring, until she let out a massive sneeze that launched her off her monocycle and landed her just behind the flying police cars. When she landed, her blonde hair was deep blue, and her once green eyes now matched her hair. Her harsh demeanor had drastically softened, and was visibly confused. "Where… am I?"
"Lunch!" one of the officers shouted, trembling and aiming his firearm at the woman, now called Lunch. "You are under arrest for destruction of public property, aggravated assault, unlicensed possession of firearms-"
"Who are you people?" Lunch interrupted, confused, and mildly scared. "When did I do any of that?"
"Are you mad, woman?!" a second, slightly shorter officer shouted. "You just threw a grenade at one of our squad cars! The Brown Country Police Department is gonna be hurting financially after what you just did!"
"But, I don't even know how I got here." Lunch responded, now shuffling back away.
"Listen, it's for your own good and everyone around you that we take you into custody." The first officer jabbed. "You are a complete menace to society!"
"Heeeeeeeeelp!" Lunch screamed at the top of her lungs, her confusion turned to fear as she was utterly clueless as to how she ended up in this scenario in the first place.
Skies above Brown Country
"You hear that?" Gokū asked, noticing a high-pitched voice echo across the valley.
"Hear what?" Kuririn answered, still not pleased with having to hang off Gokū's shoulders for this trip. "All I can hear is the wind."
"I heard it," Caulifla answered more helpfully. "It sounded like a scream for help, somewhere in that direction."
"Let's go check it out then!" Gokū motioned for Kinto'un to follow Caulifla's pointed direction.
"Wait!" Kuririn interrupted. "What about Muten Rōshi's mission?!"
"The voice sounded like a woman's," Caulifla retorted. "Maybe we could kill two birds with one stone by helping this woman out and… bring her to Gramps."
Caulifla struggled to voice the last portion of the sentence, but Gokū, being the clueless one that he was, went along with it, and continued to have Kinto'un follow the sounds of the screams.
Brown Country, Valley Outskirts
Before the officers could step forward to apply handcuffs to Lunch, a whirring sound came from overhead, and three children dropped from what looked like a flying marshmallow, the first being Son Gokū, landing neatly, with Kuririn landing not as gracefully, but far more than with his first introduction, and Caulifla, landing on her feet, but then falling flat on her face.
"Dang it!" she groaned. "Still not used to my new balance yet."
Kuririn immediately scurried behind a large rock and shouted to the officers. "Just for the record, this was their idea!"
The shorter officer spoke up. "Who the heck are you three?"
"I have nothing to do with them!" Kuririn shouted again from behind his rock.
"We heard screams for help, so we came to help," Gokū answered honestly.
"Y-You're here to help that menace to society?!" The taller officer stammered. "We're here to take her into custody for all the trouble she's caused! She blew up one of our cars!"
"How about we take her off your hands then?" Caulifla interrupted, dusting herself off from two more stumbles. "If she's that much of a menace, we know of a place where she won't cause trouble."
"Y-Yeah! We'll take her somewhere that works out for everybody!" Kuririn stepped out from behind his rock, attempting to save face.
The two officers looked at each other and then back at the trio, and then shrugged, the taller officer speaking. "Alright, as long as we don't catch her causing trouble here again."
The officers took to their cars and left the valleys, sirens finally off. Gokū muttered to himself. "I kinda wanted to fight those guys."
"Those guys weren't the fighting type anyways," Caulifla added. "They would be too easy to beat."
Lunch turned to the trio with glee. "Thank you so much! I was so scared, I didn't know what was going on! How can I repay you?"
"If you don't mind, we've been looking for someone for a… project of ours." Caulifla spoke first, struggling to find the words to hide Muten Rōshi's objective without blatantly lying.
"Grandpa Kame-Sennin wanted us to find a cute girl for him." Gokū clarified, immediately destroying Caulifla's attempts of a silver tongue causing both her and Kuririn to fall back comically, only for the former to spring back up and begin shouting at the naive boy.
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Caulifla's temper was similar to Bulma's in this one moment, her face tinted red and fuming.
"Sure, I'll go!" Lunch interrupted before Caulifla could lash out. "You saved me from those mean cops, so it's the least I could do."
Caulifla looked at Lunch with befuddlement. 'She's almost as clueless as Gokū.' She then snapped herself out of the bewildered trance and motioned for Lunch to test Kinto'un. It was bad enough to have one degenerate hanging by someone's shoulders. Fortunately the cloud accepted Lunch and she clamored on top ready to go. Everyone boarded - with Kuririn holding onto Gokū for dear life - and Kinto'un shot towards the sky, its destination being Kame House.
"So, where are we going?" Lunch asked, taking in the sights of the perspective Kinto'un was providing.
"There's a little island to the south with a house," Gokū answered, spinning in his spot to speak face to face with the new passenger, causing Kuririn to grip tighter so as to not fall. "So, why were those guys after you?"
"I'm not sure. I remember I was enjoying a soda at this local bar, and some dust caused me to sneeze, and I was immediately outside surrounded by those cops."
Kuririn didn't pay much mind to this, but Gokū and Caulifla were left stunned. This woman clearly didn't have a tail, but seemed to undergo some weird transformation whenever she sneezed. Caulifla spoke up first, choosing her words carefully. "Did this happen a lot?"
"Yes, actually," Lunch answered honestly. "Whenever I sneezed, I wound up either surrounded by things I didn't own, several guns, or any number of situations that seemed violent, usually in a completely different place. I think I switch personalities whenever it happens."
Gokū and Caulifla looked at each other for a moment, and then looked back towards Lunch. "We could try to help you figure out why that's happening," Gokū spoke up.
"Thank you!" Lunch bowed giddily. Gokū then spun back into his forward position, much to Kuririn's chagrin.
"Could you at least warn me when you're gonna spin on your spot?!" Kuririn shouted at his clueless lifeline.
"Sorry!" Gokū apologized, now seeing the distinct pink panelling and label of Kame House over the horizon. "There it is!"
Kinto'un began its descent to the small island as Muten Rōshi's training would truly begin in ernest.
And of course enjoy some fish.
Kuririn - Krillin
Lunch - Launch
A/N: Okay, this one was a doozy, because Roshi being Roshi. That said, I "THINK" I got the vibes down pat. Everyone's favorite bald monk is now here, and Lo and behold, Caulifla get's the first strike on the Krillin Owned Counter! (feel free to complain about that TFS joke)
Also, the giant fish was simply a fun bit for me to write. Enjoy! :)