What You Will

2024 Commentary: This is a previously unposted chapter.

Videl thought she must be in hell.

Someone had spilled the beans.

It was her fault, she knew it. There were only several of them who knew of the secret. But her father was on the other side of the world; Officer Miso would never open his flap, and he'd certainly flay his team of four if they even dared open theirs; that left Blue, President Moringa, and herself. And it couldn't have been Moringa. He'd never jeopardize the state of his institution.

Videl's mind whirled, trying to backtrack to each and every single day of the past three weeks, scanning her memory for any hint, any misstep that could have caused the rumour to spread. The documents? They were safely tucked away in the metal folder, hidden in the compartment of her luggage. Could someone have raided her possessions? That seemed unlikely. First they had to know that Del Natas was a fake. Did someone listen in on her conversations when she reported to Miso? Again, that would only be possible if someone had already known about Del Natas being a spy.

Dammit!

It was most likely her switches between Del and Videl. It couldn't have been anything else, could it? It would be the most obvious way someone could discover the secret. Someone must have recognized her as Videl, then seen her change to Del... and then... then what? They became curious? Then they went all the way to WCA, sit by her door, and then conveniently overheard her reports? All for the sake of curiosity?

It didn't make sense. None of it made sense.

But here she was, standing in the middle of the campus, watching dumbstruck as students whispered nervously about the stolen money. Some were huddled in groups, talking quite seriously, stealing anxious glances at the building where in less than half-an-hour, most of them would be making their way to their third classes of the day, marking the end of lunch. Others weren't quite so apprehensive, and they joked and poked fun of the school's disaster. And though Videl itched to head over and give those ones a good smacking, the students she worried most about were those who were flipping out their phones, and contacting parents.

No, she quaked inside. This was exactly what we didn't want to happen. And now it was happening. She had failed. She was useless. Three weeks, and all she had managed to accomplish were to get drunk on math equations, stalk a mountain boy, and play liar-liar with a childhood friend. She could feel her hope – and her dignity along with it – evaporate like the tournament stage during the Cell Games.

“Del, are you alright?” Gohan asked from beside her. His voice was jarring, and like those times when she'd been too irritated, too stressed, pulled in five hundred different directions at once, all she wanted to do was yell at him and tell him to go away.

Calm down, Videl! She reprimanded herself. She inhaled, one large intake of breath, that slowed the pace of her breathing, which had quickened in her panic. Calm down. This rumour isn't going to disappear if you lose your temper.

“Yes!” she answered, though even to her ears, she sounded agitated.

“You don't sound alri–”

“I am!” she finally snapped, but tried to cover for it by bringing her arms across her stomach. “I just think I ate something bad, that's all. And if I don't find a bathroom really soon, my state of being-not-alright would be dearly contagious.”

“Oh gee! That's not good!” Gohan remarked, beginning to head for the school. “I think the washroom near the library is the closest to the entrance. You can go there.”

“Actually, I'll head up back to the dorm,” Videl said. “Trust me when I say it won't be pleasant, and I don't want to ruin someone else's day.” That was an outright lie. The deeply human part of her wanted everyone to be having as bad a day as she was. “Besides, I don't think this would be quick.”

“Alright, go on. Don't worry about class,” Gohan called after her, as she took off running to the direction of their dormitory. “You can copy from my notes later!”

Videl sped down the private park where the students spent their leisurely time outside of school hours. She didn't wait for the lights to turn green when she reached the intersection at the end of the park, but jaywalked across the road, ignoring the shocked honks of cars. She continued, down West Rest street, east along Collared Boulevard, shrinking the ten minute walk into a three minute sprint. When she entered the dormitory, she pressed the elevator button, but the flashing lights told her it was still at floor eight. Damn. She ditched the elevator, and ran to the side for the stair access, and took the steps two at a time.

She slammed open the door to her room, then slammed it back close. Inside her closet, she had stashed the luggage she came with, the one that stored all the documents pertaining to her mission. She ripped the zippers open, reached inside the hidden compartment, and pulled out the folder. First things first. She had to make certain that none of the documents, not a single page, was missing. She browsed through them, hands shaking – gee, she'd never been this scared in her life, not even in the children's division of the World Martial Arts tournament – as she scanned each page.

Videl stowed them back in the folder, almost reverently even, when she finished making sure that she had not lost a single page. She dashed to her bed, throwing aside the pillows until her emergency phone was revealed. Picking it up, her fingers fumbled with the keys, mind ablaze with which contact she should call first. Miso? Her father?

No, she needed someone closer.

She dialed Blue's emergency number, and only a second later, the woman's voice came through the speakers.

“Videl?”

“Blue, we have trouble!” Videl said, fighting to keep her voice low. If she really had been the cause of all of this, her carelessness was the first to blame, and she just couldn't keep making the same mistakes again. “Have you heard?'

“Heard what, honey?”

Wait, what?

“Blue! Everyone knows!”

“Knows?” Blue sounded confused. “Wait... you don't mean–”

“Yes, that's exactly what I mean!” Videl lowered her volume even more, finding herself speaking merely at a harsh whisper now. “The secret is out. Everyone is talking about it. Everyone knows that the money has been stolen!”

“What?” Blue gasped, and Videl could finally hear panic seep into her voice. “When did this start happening? I haven't heard a single word of it!”

“I've no idea,” Videl admitted. “I was eating lunch, and then I started seeing a couple groups of boys huddling and talking. A few of them started running to other groups, as if there was something scandalous and juicy they had to share. Gohan and I asked a few of them what was going on and they told us that a rumour started going around this morning that more than 500,000 zennies were stolen from the school,” she explained.

That was the strangest part of it. It wasn't that the rumour said that some money had been stolen; the rumour also got the amount accurate.

And there was something even more odd, which Videl was now only realizing. Blue didn't know about this rumour. That meant that it had started among the students. At least, it started from a source that students were more likely to access than the staff of the school.

She fell to the bed, clutching her head in her free hand.

“Blue, I swear,” she started, her voice strained. “I tried my best to be discreet. I made sure nobody was following me when I made the trips down to the station. The windows and the door had always been locked tightly and securely when I make my on-site reports. Honestly, the only way someone could have gotten information out of me is if they already knew the truth about me, knew where to look, when to listen.”

“I have to tell Moringa about this,” Blue said. “He'd know what to do.”

Videl shut her phone when Blue's voice faded away after a beep.

Videl felt like... a loser.

She knew she hadn't had the makings of a spy. She was a fighter. A part-time law enforcer. Nothing about kicks and punches could be translated to sneaking and stealthy-information-retrieval. She knew from the beginning, had doubted from the beginning, and yet they'd still forced her.

Videl sighed. She threw the phone back under the pillows, and as much as she would regret it later, she lifted a hand and slapped herself.

Ouch.

Well, at least that brought her out of her self-pity.

There was no use going around blaming other people. Videl had been aware from the start of what this require, that it would take her away from her comfort zone. And she agreed. There'd been perks, but she hadn't been outright manipulated. If there was someone who deserved the blame, it could only be herself. She had agreed to help out a certain group of people, to take the job, and like all jobs, it was her responsibility to learn and adapt to her working environment. She'd been lax in her responsibilities. She had no right to act like the victim here. Especially when this hole fiasco today might as well be her fault.

What was important now was to try and fix it.

-o-

“There was no money stolen,” President Moringa said into the dozens of microphones directed at his podium. The click of cameras made a constant buzzing sound amidst the equally vocal reporters who fished for answers. “The financial handling of this particular institution is quite secure, I assure each and every one of you. To pacify your fears against this rumour, I am willing to release a balance of the Third Sector Funds account.”

The crowd erupted in cheers, seeing this bold move as a sign of transparency and faith.

It was already evening. Videl could spot, among the crowds, many financial investors who had personal and business interests in the welfare of West City Academy. She finally only realized why it was the Third Sectors Funds in particular that had been targeted. West City Academy kept their monetary assets grouped according to how they were received; the First Sector contained revenue from the students' tuition fees. The Second and Third, the two largest sectors, housed all the money provided by investors. Weakness in security in these sectors would make the investors less confident in their decision to deal with the private high school.

The thief, whoever he was, surely knew this. Videl began to feel as if the theft had been more calculated than they had all first assumed. It wasn't someone who just wanted money. What was special about 568,000 anyway? If the thief had gotten away with 568,000, why not a million? Whoever this thief was, he wanted West City Academy to appear flaky, to shake the confidences and trust of all the businesses who partnered with it.

Why? What was there to gain by making a fool of WCA? Was this related to the tournament? Propagate distrust of WCA, and there would be fewer companies who would sponsor it for the tournament? And then WCA would lose. Its reputation of being the ultimate school for the sciences would crumble.

Still. Videl felt a gnawing frustration grate against her mind. “Why?” she whispered. Why? None of her hypotheses answered this question.

Then, something in her mind sparked, an idea that she realized she'd never thought of before. The only prime suspects they had considered were those inside of the school, staff that could have only been just at the wrong place at the wrong time. And Miso himself said they'd been hard-pressed to find the right motives to think of accusing these people. But they'd been suspects simply because of their familiarity with the place.

What if Videl and the others in the team had been approaching these all wrong?

Should they have not started from anyone who might have had an ill-will against West City Academy, no matter how far, no matter how largely disconnected they might seem to the school? A thief wouldn't be obvious. But someone who really wanted to make the institution suffer would find a way to get inside.

They started off on the wrong foot. All this time, they were asking the wrong questions.

She shook her head. At least one of them was handling it well. Moringa was able to gather his wits about him, and send for a representative of Business Monthly, a reputable TV station and magazine publisher. Starting with them, he began to make statements against the rumours. Now, there were about three dozen other firms who had sent for journalists to cover this extremely scandalous and interesting turn of events.

Moringa would be forced to reveal the balance of the Third Sector funds not only to the public, but also to the professional finance ministers and accountants of the investors of WCA. She was only hoping that they wouldn't look at the history of the balance, or at least, not that far back. Seeing that the money was lost in the first place would be enough to curdle their trust – it wouldn't matter that the money was back.

She was going to be in deep trouble. With Moringa. With Miso.

“Del, where did you get that ugly bruise?” Gohan said from beside her, where he too watched the proceedings, just like hundreds of other WCA students.

“From the fiery depths of self-hatred,” Del shrugged in a self-deprecating manner, only really partially lying. “I had to give myself a lesson for devouring something nasty that would make my stomach hate me.”

“Aha,” Gohan said, nodding. “You know, usually other people would just try ingesting some medicine.”

Oh Kami, I wish I was like other people, Videl thought.

“This is certainly an odd thing to happen, don't you think?” Gohan asked. Videl looked up at him, finding the boy looking uncharacteristically concerned. It wasn't that Gohan was apathetic; it was just his carefree, cheerful attitude rarely ever gave her the opportunity to glimpse him in a more serious mood.

“Are you particularly worried about your standing here, Gohan?” she asked him. She'd heard of several students whose parents had pulled them out of the school, worried about the instability the rumour implied, not to mention the new reputation WCA would earn after all of this was done.

“No, not for myself,” he admitted. “I just don't like it when people steal. It's not nice.”

Heh, that was a very Gohan thing to say. And if her very vivid and strongly accentuated instinct that Gohan was Saiyman, then she could assume how he felt about the injustice of theft.

Videl shrugged. “It's quite normal,” she said, hating to admit it. But how many times had she been called over to help the Satan City Forces quell a heist? “Happens more frequently than we think.”

“It's only normal, because we normalize it,” Gohan whispered. “I don't think it has to be that way. Anyway, I'll probably visit Bulma and see what she thinks about this.”

Videl nodded. It was only a couple of days ago, after the World Science Tournament had been officially announced and Mr. Torque had visited them, that companies began to reveal who they were sponsoring for the event. Capsule Corps, with unabashed locquaciousness, not only reported the school it was funding, but also the amount. Ah, Bulma Briefs. A million zennies would go a long way, not only to flaunt CC's financial standing, but also to demonstrate their confidence in the school.

There were other investors too, like SciLabs. Mr. Torque was funding eight different schools worldwide. He wasn't as ostentatious as Bulma Briefs, of course, and never revealed the amount he was investing. However, being the benefactor of so many institutions, everyone pretty much assumed that the funds weren't as much as what Capsule Corps had given.

The proposals for each project were due in three weeks. That meant that the companies had to lock their investments in pretty soon, so that each group of student could be properly assigned the amount they needed based on the estimates they make during their planning stages.

Videl watched as Mr. Moringa began to pack up his stuff from the podium. He made a move down from the pedestal they had set up for the conferences, but he was blocked by the reporters who were each trying to get his attention.

“I gotta go,” she said. “I don't think there's anything else we can do here anyway.” There's nothing else I can do, at least. Miso and Moringa would dust up her mistakes, and they'd plan for something new. She hoped that her new revelation would gain them some steps forward. They'd just taken a huge step back today, not to mention, three weeks of making no progress at all. They were so behind, and she felt partially, if not wholly, responsible for that.

She moved away from the crowd, and exited the campus. She made her way to the plaza, where only three weeks ago, she had fought two rival gangs showering the city with bullets. White Snipe, one of the members of Miso's small team for this case was going to pick her up; she was a young intern who specialized in camouflage, and Videl distinctly remembered her from before the mission started as the one who taught her how to apply the makeup for her Adam's apple.

Videl found the car, a quirky orange hovercraft marked with an apple seal (that had been the clue), by the front of a convenience store. She went in, and Snipe gave her a sympathetic smile.

“Bad day, huh?”

Videl pushed the button by her door that lifted the windows and tainted it opaque. She snatched the wig from her head, rubbing her hands through her hair. Kami, that thing itched!

“You don't even know,” Videl answered. “Miso raging yet?”

“Hah!” Snipe laughed. “We got a mouthful. Three hours of it.”

“He's going to flay me alive,” Videl groaned.

“It wasn't your fault.” Snipe revved up the engine, and took off to the station.

“Oh, but it is more of mine than any of yours.”

They reached the station in just under an hour. Blue was already there, seated in one of the couches in their regular meeting room on the second floor. Moringa wouldn't get a chance to come by; he rarely ever could. It was too risky, which was why he sent Blue instead. The only time he had ever involved himself, physically, in the case was during that first night when the money was restored.

Videl braced herself for the verbal onslaught she knew she was going to get. And yet, when Miso entered the room, he only stood in front of her, arms crossed, feet shoulder-width apart. He frowned down on her, his portly figure a looming shadow by her chair. She wasn't scared. Oh no. Videl wasn't scared of Miso.

She was scared of having her failure rubbed in her face.

“Well?” he asked grumpily.

Videl sighed. She shook her head. “I'm not going to lie. I have no idea how it happened.”

“Well, that part is obvious!” Miso said. “Because if you did, you would have stopped it, now wouldn't you, Ms. Satan?”

“Of course, I would!” Videl snapped. Of course she would, for certain! Because that's what she was good at. She was good at stopping things the moment they were happening; she was even good at preventing things from happening so long as she knew what they were. Theft from a private high school? The spreading of a rumour about said theft? She might as well have predicted an alien invasion! Hey, who knew, maybe she was friends with one! She wasn't a fortune-teller. She had absolutely no means of predicting what, out of the millions of permutations of possibilities, could happen in the next moment; how would she be able to stop it?

“I'm just no good at this investigation,” Videl admitted. “I don't know the ins and outs of being a spy.” She took a deep breath. “But I promise from now on I will be better!” She said it with as much conviction as she could muster, not only to convince others, but also herself.

Miso slumped down in the chair in front of her. He rubbed his face with his hands, before burying his head in them.

“Bah,” he muttered. “To be honest, we're just as lost as you are.”

Videl was surprised. Was she getting off the hook this easily?

“Sir,” she began. “I have been thinking about our approach.”

Miso lifted his head, and motioned for her to continue with his hand. The usually laid-back officer looked so exhausted, his forehead creased with multiple frown wrinkles.

“Why is it that all our prime suspects are staff?” Videl asked.

“Like we've said,” Miso replied. “The only access to those Funds accounts were in the building themselves; both the database servers and the computers that have access to them. In order for that money to have been stolen, someone had to have known all the passwords to the datacentre in the basement of WCA.”

Videl nodded, “And then from those whom we think are most likely to have access to the datacentre, we picked the ones with the motives.” She stood up from her chair. “But don't you see? It's backwards! We should have started with the people, anyone from the staff, to the students, to the alumni and the investors, who have a motive to steal. And then we should have worried about who had the access.”

She looked at Blue. “Why would anyone want to steal from WCA? That's the question we should have been asking all along. The who would naturally come afterward.”

“I honestly don't know,” Blue shrugged in response. “I've been working there for quite a while, and WCA has always been well-meaning and careful. The alumni had always been rather grateful; some may be bitter out of stress, but the students who go there are already from well-off families so I don't see how stealing would benefit them.”

“See?” Videl pointed out. “That's what we haven't been thinking about. Most of the people that WCA deal with are already rich. So the theft must have been a means for something else.

“Someone wants to make WCA look sketchy.” Videl ended with a lame wave of a hand. It sounded so simplistic, and quite pathetic really, when said out loud. But it had to be the truth. At the very least, it would be wrong to disregard the possibility that the theft was only a means to an end. Now, it was looking very much that that end was going to be the ruin of WCA.

The others were quiet for a moment.

Then Blue stooped down to her handbag and pulled out her tablet. “I have a list here of all the current investors of WCA, and also the list of students and the companies they're affiliated with, whether it's a family business, or a benefactor or even a friend's company. Would these help?”

Videl nodded, and looked to Miso. “Starting with a list of companies would have to do for now. Perhaps we can find some kind of connection, a trend, or whatever. Hey...” she trailed off. “Do you happen to also have a list of all the companies that are sponsoring a school for the World Science Tournament? As well as the other competing schools?”

Blue nodded.

“Great. I was hypothesizing that it might be another competitor in the tournament who wants to make WCA lose credibility.”

The four of them worked well into the night, poring over the documents. Maroon Raccoon, another one of Miso's four-membered team came and joined them to transfer the files onto his computer to run a sorting query to help them categorize each data.

While the software was running, Videl was casually looking over the files on Blue's tablet, when she came across a name that rang a bell. Pencil.

She only realized that the top document she was looking at was Sharpner's. The Pencil family owned a supply and stationery company called Stilo Inc. It started out under rocky circumstances, but miraculously made a turn for the better a few years ago. That much she already knew from what Erasa had told her. The document also outlined several controversies related to the CEO and owner, Mr. Pencil, Sharpner's father, as well as Sharpner himself. Some of his competitors had sued him several times for slander and... larceny?

Larceny?

“Blue, what is the larceny they're talking about here about Stilo Inc.?”

“Oh that?” Blue came by her chair and sat on the arm. “From what I heard, it mostly involves blueprints of upcoming optimized pens that their competitor was going to release for their Back-to-School special. He stole it to reveal that there were compartments in there designed for a bug, and that the intended customers for those pens weren't really students, but high officials who wanted to spy on their rivals.” Blue shrugged. “Big guy like Pencil, you know, he gets into all sorts of stuff. He's got a funny way of trying to keep his business afloat. A lot of people do.”

Hm.

Videl closed the file, and began looking over the next one.

-o-

Sharpner thought he must be in hell.

Well, he'd never been in hell, but if he ever would be, he imagined this was what it would feel like.

There had been times in the past, like the one when Erasa found out about him, when he truly thought his life was in the mucks. And if he had to be completely honest with himself, sometimes the worst part wasn't even that he lost Erasa. Yeah, it was part of it, but the worst part had been that he could have done something, and he didn't. He could have told her, been honest with her, or at least broken up with her in favourable terms before pursuing the relationship with the girl his father told him to. But everything had happened so fast, and he'd been a coward.

He still was.

And at this point in his life, he knew that he would always be.

Sharpner Pencil, heh, what a joke. He should have been called Puppet Pencil. Nicer ring to it too. Initials P.P. What a great way to sum up his personality, to sum up everything about himself.

The rumour today was... well, as far as he knew, a success.

He'd gone and seeded it first with his first-period mates. It spread out quite quickly, like he knew it would. Starting from the higher ups would never have been an option; they would quell it as soon as the first words were even whispered. The students were definitely the way to go. And he knew some of the goody-two-shoes too; it was easy once he had them worried. Anyone else they consulted would naturally be swayed. Whoever said you shouldn't make friends with the good guys were completely wrong.

Sharpner laid his head back on his bed, shaking out his limbs, then finally relaxed his muscles bit by bit. He was still sore from his beatings from the mountains.

His father told him to spread the rumour.

He was thinking he wouldn't do it. But he needed more time. Two of the dragonballs were unreachable. Well, the four-star dragonball would take a suicidal mission, but at least he knew where it was. The five-star dragonball was flat out undetected. That damn man! He probably knew it was a faulty device from the beginning. It was a rip-off.

The worst part of it, the really really worst part, was that if he stopped doing whatever his father told him to do, he knew that the worst case scenario would probably be getting disowned. Kicked out of the house, with no possessions but the clothes on his back. Maybe not even that. People had survived from that kind of situation before, haven't they? How many people did he see each day in the city begging and panhandling? Quite a few. It wasn't like he was going to die.

And yet... Sharpner was not only a coward, he was also selfish. He didn't want that kind of life. Preppy kid like him? He'd never known what it was like to go hungry for even a day in his life.

So he played his cards. He was just stalling that's all.

And how many more people are going to get hurt just so you could save your skin?

Sharpner slammed the pillow down over his face, but it was not like he could block out his internal voice; it was internal for a reason.

But it was the safest way for him. He needed an advantage, a leg up. That was what Videl was supposed to be; proof that he can do something worthy by himself. The dragonballs were mainly back up. If his father saw that he was capable, his father would loosen his hold on him. And he could extricate himself from the family a little at a time.

He had to do it gently, and make sure he never burned bridges with his father. If the man could cut up his rivals and made sure they'd wish they were never born – and those people did nothing more than beat him 1% on the stock markets – what would he do to a son who turned his back on him?

Sharpner would suffer for the rest of his life, that's what would happen.

Aren't you suffering now?

Well. He hadn't reached his pain threshold yet. Maybe he could wait. Just a bit more.

If the dragonballs would take a long time to assemble, it would be wise to get back to Videl. Especially now that his father would have most likely found out that West City Academy never lost any money after all.

Dammit. That man was going to be furious...

-o-

Two days after the rumour circulated, Videl woke up only an hour after having gone to bed with her emergency phone vibrating. Sleepily, she took it from under her pillow, squinting at the screen to see who it was.

Blue.

“What is it?” she answered the phone.

“Videl, we have a big problem.”

She groaned. “Don't tell me. It's another rumour.”

“No. It's another theft.”

Videl shot out of bed.

-o-

It was a little late, but Gohan knew that Bulma wasn't one to shy away from pulling all-nighters. And for the Capsule Corps heiress, there was always work to be done. Gohan had originally planned to drop by CC a lot sooner, but he and Del got caught up with drafting up their proposal for the tournament; actually, it had mostly been him who had organized the draft. Del, for some reason, was distracted. He came late for classes the previous morning, missing the entire first period and half of the second. For a usually diligent and punctual student to miss that much, it was kind of worrying.

And yet, it was hard to nitpick at a time like that. There had been about a dozen students who left the school following the explosion of the rumour two days ago. Even the teachers seemed distressed and a little disorganized. If Del had other things to worry about at this time, who was Gohan to complain?

He shrugged the matter off. If there was any way he could help, he would. At the moment though, he was a little too uninformed to do much about anything. Which was partly why he came to Capsule Corps. He had notified Bulma in advance that he wanted to look at her demo lab again, but he also wanted to consult her about this mystery at WCA.

“Well, sounds like things are a bit exciting at your school,” Bulma came in, cigarette between her fingers, still dressed in her lab coat. Gohan had been waiting for her at her underground demo lab, checking out some devices similar to the dragon radar. Since their project was going to be a device that finds lost things, he figured he should start researching how other devices that were meant to locate resources generally went about doing so.

Gohan rubbed the back of his neck. “I wouldn't exactly use that word, but yeah. Things kinda became a little crazy.”

Bulma extinguished her cigarette in a nearby ashtray, and plopped down on one of the motorcycles.

“Are you worried about it, Bulma?” Gohan asked. He knew that someone like Bulma, who had to spend millions a month for the Gravity Chamber maintenance, would probably not worry too much about the amount that WCA was rumoured to have lost. But still, Gohan knew that the Briefs family didn't get to where they were now by ignoring and underestimating losses, no matter how small they seemed.

“Curious about it, more like,” she corrected, and crossed her arms across her chest. She had that look, the one that reminded Gohan of his time with her on Namek, a fusion between studious and devious. “The finance minister of West City Trust has already approved their claim of never having lost the money. If they say so, I'm inclined to believe them; they are, after all, the biggest bank in the city, and one of the bigger investors of WCA.”

“So if the rumour is not true, how would it have started in the first place?”

“It's a rumour!” Bulma threw up her hands. “Rumours don't need a reason for existence. One moment, they're not there. The next, they're kissing everyone's lips like a nighttime gigolo.”

Gohan blushed, but he knew what she meant. She, too, had been an object of rumours for many, many years.

“Usually when a rumour starts, there are three reasons for it: one, someone is bored out of their head. Two, someone wants to attack another person, or in this case, an institution. And three – and this is the least likely of all options – it's actually true.”

Gohan placed the metallic tube he'd been observing back down on the table. “Who would want to cause West City Academy harm?”

“Aha, now you're starting to ask the right questions,” Bulma shrugged off her lab coat, and hung it on the motorcycle's handlebars. “Who would, indeed? Well, from the top of my head... it could be anybody.”

Gohan almost slumped to the floor. Anybody? Really?

“I thought WCA was a reputable school!”

“Of course it is,” Bulma said. “Which is why it wouldn't surprise me if it racked up several bitter competitors.”

“You mean, the rumour was started by someone from another school?” Gohan said. “The next all-boy's private school is fifty miles away.”

The scientist shrugged again. “It's not just a competitor in the sense that someone is providing the same service as WCA. It could also be a competitor of someone merely affiliated with West City Academy. The school is rich with sponsors! And with the tournament coming up, more money is going in. What would happen to any of these businesses if the school is made to look unstable and insecure?”

“... they would lose credibility,” Gohan completed, almost in a whisper. For a moment, his mind blanked at the marvelous revelation of... politics. It was strange. For most of his life, the kind of enemies he'd had to battle were straightforward thinkers – someone wanted power, another wanted immortality, etc. They all pretty much had the same strategy for getting what they want: destroy anyone who was in the way. But humans. Humans were, in a strange, convoluted way, on a totally different level. What they wanted and how they acted could sometimes be so incongruent, that one could get lost in the maze of the human psyche. It was odd, how the diminutive power of humans could in turn, generate a more complex way of getting what they wanted, because simple brute force would not get them there.

“But hold on,” he continued. He looked up at Bulma. “Wouldn't that mean... it could be you!”

“Me?” Bulma's hand flew up to her bosom, her blue eyes wide with shock. “You think that I started that rumour?”

“Dende, no!” Gohan waved his hands in front of him in a panicked attempt to clear up the miscommunication. “What I meant was that somebody could be targeting you.”

“Oh.” She lifted a finger to her chin in contemplation. After a moment, she said, “You know, you could be right. Now that I think about it, it's kind of strange that the rumour started only after I had made a public announcement that I was funding your school for the tournament.” But then she shrugged again, her attitude seamlessly shifting from mildly concerned to nonchalance. “Or someone could be targeting him.”

She pointed to a rumpled up poster in the recycling bin. Though the main image was obscured by the folds of the paper, Gohan had seen it enough times to recognize the bright colours and the slogan written across the bottom. It was Hercule's endorsement of West City Academy.

“It's hard to say, these things,” Bulma explained. “We have very little to go off of. Besides, we don't even know if the rumour was true or not. Perhaps someone just had too much time on their hands. Maybe someone was just bored and wanted to start up some crazy conspiracy theories, which by the way, is exactly what we're making right now. People do this all the time!”

Somehow, Gohan was more disappointed to think of the possibility that this whole fiasco was nothing but a sham. He knew he shouldn't feel that way; it would be safer for everyone if this was all just a misunderstanding.

And yet... he couldn't deny the feeling of excitement that ran through him when he ruminated on all the different possibilities, 'conspiracy theories' as Bulma called them. He'd never been involved in one, not directly at least, and he was finding that it was quite a different kind of battlefield. But a battlefield nonetheless, and if he'd ever thought that his bookish wits were incompatible with fighting, well here was a chance to find out.

“So how do we know if it's true or not?” Gohan asked.

Bulma's brows rose. “Well, you'd have to check the history of the funds account to make sure. But it would be hard, because WCA doesn't put their money in the bank, at least, not an external one. You can say that they own a miniature bank. They call this their financial datacentre, which is composed of many servers that manage their monetary assets.”

“That's risky,” Gohan commented. “Putting all their eggs in one basket.”

“You could say that. On the other hand, they don't have to rely on external agents to handle the security for them, which if you think about it, also avoids a major threat.”

“Wow, you know all this?”

Bulma smirked. “Of course! I don't put all my eggs in the same basket, and any basket that I do end up using has to be thoroughly inspected.” She dusted off her hands, and gave him a self-satisfied smile.

“Wow...” Gohan blinked, speechless at first. And what he asked next surprised even him, since he didn't know his mind had already reached that point. “Do you know how I can access the servers?”

The blue-haired scientist laughed. “Amazing. Only a few weeks in the city and your mind has already gone to the rogue route. I don't think your mother would be impressed.”

The half-Saiyan blushed, and scratched the back of his head. Even he was shocked at himself. But he didn't see too much harm in it. He'd just have to look up the transactions, confirm whether the rumour held some truth, and be done with it. Who knew, maybe he would even be able to help out if things were actually serious.

“It would just be hacking, wouldn't it?” he asked tentatively.

“Hack? That would take you hours,” Bulma answered. “Now if you turn around, walk three steps to the right, you'd find a gadget I invented some months back that could dismantle any of the latest model of Whirligig 4.0 security systems, which is what WCA is using for their datacentre, so I have heard through the grapevine. I call it the Doorminator.” She spoke in a careless manner, though pride was brimming in her tone.

Gohan followed her instructions, and picked up a rectangular piece of metal as large as his hand. There were two metal flaps on either side of the mainframe that looked like they were to be used to clasp the locking mechanism. On the front was a small screen above a keypad.

“It's pretty easy to operate,” Bulma explained. “I don't think you'd have a hard time with that at all. Especially when you have quite the intuition when it comes to machines. Speaking of which, any updates on the radar at all?”

“Ah no,” Gohan answered as he tucked the Doorminator into his bag. “I visited Dende several days ago actually, and he said he didn't see or feel anything strange. Whatever's causing the radar from picking up the electromagentic waves of one of the dragonballs, I don't think it has anything to do Dende's powers. My theory is that something is intercepting the waves.”

Oh, and there was that man Dende mentioned as well. Gohan still had yet to look for him. From what he knew from the past seven years, it was not an alarming incident for someone to stumble upon the existence of the dragonballs; however, he couldn't recall a time when someone had managed to successfully assemble all seven together. It was practically impossible to find all of them without the radar, and as far as Gohan knew, very few people outside of Bulma and their circle of friends had access to that kind of technology. Sometimes they'd notice two or three dragonballs sitting together, or a dragonball moving from one place to another. But that was pretty much the extent of those endeavours.

Five was actually an impressive feat already. Gohan didn't know if he should be worried. What if this was another super being who was interested in infinite youth or strength? But Dende had said he was an ordinary guy, and if the god didn't seem worried about it, Gohan didn't think it would be a cause for concern. He hadn't seen any activity anyway, and it appeared as if the four star dragonball was still safely tucked away at his home in the mountains. (Gohan should know from Chichi who it was that tried to steal the dragonball).

Hmm... I wonder if the man who is trying to collect all the balls together would know anything about the disappearance of that one dragonball, Gohan thought. I should have asked Mom for more details about what the guy looked like. Maybe I can find him.

Bulma frowned. “Interception, huh? Well, I guess it could be done, but I wonder...” she trailed off without finishing her thought, then looked back up at Gohan. “Ah, it would be a discussion for another day, I guess. It's already midnight, and I may not be your mother, but I think you ought to get some sleep.”

Gohan chuckled, and hoisted his bag over his shoulder. “Thanks a lot, Bulma. I'll give you an update on what I find.”

-o-

Floating in the air like this in the middle of the night above the city was quite pleasant. West City didn't have the fresh breeze and the calming essence of the countryside, but it did emanate a different kind of buzzing beauty altogether.

For one thing, the lights never went out. And at this height, they seemed like a colony of fireflies crowding a particularly boggy lake. For a while, Gohan circled above the city lazily, eying the moon and fishing for a clear glimpse of the stars against the city's bright haze. When he was nearing his school, he saw a disturbance near Candy Splash, the store he and Goten frequented when they visited the city. Gohan landed on the roof of the store, and looked down at the alley below, where several people were crowded around something. A young man, it seemed, and he looked bruised and battered. He was dressed impeccably, however, with a suit that even Gohan's mother would admire, except for the light drizzling of blood splattered on the front. A punch came swinging from one of the other men surrounding him. The woman who was holding his bloody shirt spat to the side.

“We heard you've been telling tales about us, you snitch,” she said. “Now you got the dogs hounding us, and our families are going hungry. How about that for a bedtime story? Blood on your hands? You must love it. You drowning in it now.”

A kick came his way, and the young man spat out blood, coughing and choking. His head lolled to the side.

“Hey!” Gohan called, in the instant that his thumb found the button on his Saiyaman watch. His vision darkened with the tint of his visor, and he felt the pull of the cape on his back as it swung in the wind.

“Leave that boy alone!” he said, as he jumped down three storeys down to the alley.

The group exclaimed in surprise, and the woman released her hold on the now unconscious youth.

“Who are you?” the man beside her asked, disgust and fear mixing together in his voice.

“Only your worst nightmare,” Gohan said, remembering that Piccolo had once used that phrase before. It sounded cool and ominous, just like how he wanted Saiyaman to appear.

The woman placed her slender hands on her curvy hips. “Too late pal. My worst nightmare came in the form of this brat last night, so you're gonna have to come up with something else.”

Well, in that case, I won't have to feel bad about this.

Gohan, with great speed, slid between the group to throw the unconscious boy over his shoulder. Exclaims of alarm came up all around him as he rushed back to the mouth of the alley to gently settle the injured person down to the ground. Turning back, he gave each one of the thugs a quick jab to their solar plexus, leaving every one of them winded out, crouching on the ground.

The young half-Saiyan smiled, proud that he could clean up the city one mess at a time, and wouldn't even endanger his identity while doing it. He took out his phone and dialed the emergency line of the city, notifying them of what he'd seen and where. He waited several more minutes to ensure that the police and the paramedics were coming – as well as to quell any other attempts by the thugs to escape – before he took off.

He smiled, a light feeling on his chest. He definitely made the right decision to ask Bulma for this costume. He could practically fight bad guys whenever he wanted, and that was awfully convenient.

He remembered almost a month ago, before school started when he'd visited West City to arrange his papers for the semester's enrollment. He had also stayed till midnight, admiring the city and wandering around. And lucky he did too, otherwise who would have prevented the total chaos that would have ensued during that blackout?

The memory of it was still clear in his mind. He never took West City to be so negligent when it came to their power sources, but between one second and the next, the entire city shut down like the sun losing its fire in a blink of an eye. It was quite strange; he hadn't even noticed a backup coming to life at all. It must have been the main power source that got affected.

Then below him, crashes had emerged, and the grating sound of metal creaking and tires squeaking enveloped the downtown area, where even at midnight, many people had been traveling.

He had no choice then, but to transform into a Super Saiyan, to avoid being identified as he helped out. He'd lifted cars to prevent crashes, carried people out of the way, picked up fallen debris and overturned trucks to drag trapped casualties. He had tried to be as fast as he could, and yet...

Even then the glowing-humanoid rumours had started. Gohan supposed there was no helping it. People always talked; and if they could make such a big deal about weather that they dedicated an entire TV station to it, then just how much more attention would a strange circumstance like that get? In some ways, he considered himself lucky that rumours were the only remnants of that night; it could have been a video footage or something.

He released a sigh, easing the tension out of his shoulders. It was just a black-out. A terrible one, and many people would have died if it wasn't for his interference. He didn't do anything wrong. It had been a risk, but it was okay, as far as he knew. Nobody – except for Del – seemed that interested anyway. Yeah, what did that boy want about that night anyway? Gohan was a little afraid to ask, fearing that if the topic was brought up, he'd get carried away with the conversation and say something he shouldn't.

Gohan landed in front of his school. He was about to press the button on his watch again to switch back to his normal clothes, but he hesitated.

It might be a good night to take a look at the datacentre. The sooner he found out if the money had been stolen in the first place, the sooner he would know what role he would play in all of this, whatever this was. He knew it was located in the basement. He'd have to use his super speed to traverse the expanse of WCA's underground floor in so little time. If he was lucky, combining speed with stealth, perhaps he wouldn't even run into guards.

He climbed down the stairs leading to the basement. He came across a locked door at the end of the stairway, with a card scanner attached to the wall adjacent to the door. Slowly, Gohan took out the Doorminator from his bag, and positioned it over the card scanner. He turned the knobs at the junction of the two flaps on the sides, and the device clamped tightly over the scanner. He pressed the power button, and the small screen flared to life with a bluish glow, not too bright to attract attention, but bright enough that he could read the instructions.

It listed several different types of locks, from almost obsolete tumblers to the more advanced iris scanners. He selected 'card', and for a moment Gohan watched the screen blank out, with a spiral wheel notifying the progress. He tried to extend his senses, and from what he could gather, there didn't seem to be anyone in the basement. That was strange. He expected at least some guards to protect the access to what must be millions of zennies. Or perhaps whoever was inside didn't have enough energy to their life force for Gohan to detect. Most humans didn't, but he expected a little better from guards.

There was a click, and the Doorminator flashed back to the menu. Gohan smiled. Bulma was definitely a genius. Gohan detached the Doorminator from the scanner, and placed it back in his bag, before pressing against the door. He already suspected that nobody was on the other side, but he still used his super speed to enter the passageway and quickly close the door behind him. There could be cameras.

He sped down a hallway, following the grid-like pattern of the passages, stopping only momentarily in front of doors to read their labels. When he came in front of a large room at the heart of the basement, he paused. Across the door was the inscription 'Funds Account Database Lab' on a metal label, with a smaller text written underneath. 'Administrators Only'.

This must be it.

Before doing anything, he located the cameras set on the ceiling and gave the lenses a tap, enough to crack them and render them useless. Once he was finished with all this, he'd have to do something about the memory sticks in those cameras.

Gohan once again set up Doorminator over the lock, which was more advanced and computerized than the first one he encountered. When the Doorminator prompted him for the type of lock, he balked, unsure of what it was. He didn't see the normal slot for card swiping, so he assumed it must be password protected, and he pressed that option. It took the Doorminator ten minutes to process it, after which it prompted Gohan to select the type of lock once again.

Did it not work? He wondered nervously, but saw that on the side of the screen, there was a note that wasn't there before: Level Two.

Oh. It must have been a mutli-level lock. Damn. He'd have to guess. He tried each of the options listed on the screen, each taking a minute or two to detect if it was the right type of lock to dismantle. Finally, he selected iris-scanner, and the Doorminator began its process of dismantling.

After fifteen minutes, he was once again prompted for a type of lock. Damn this thing! This was the third level! Gohan sighed. Perhaps this was why WCA didn't hire any guards. After selecting each of the most likely options, Doorminator responded to a fingerprint scanner.

It was only after another fifteen minutes that Gohan heard a soft buzzing from the door. Then, it popped ajar from its frame, emitting a sound much like when a cork was first pulled from a bottle of wine. It was a sliding door. Gohan grabbed the knob, and pulled it to the right.

Inside was a large room housing a network of servers.

And two people.

One was a dark-blue-haired woman who looked up with horror-stricken eyes. And the other was...

“DEL?”

The room was dark, but he didn't miss the second that his friend's wide-eyed expression turned grim. What was going on? Had the theft been real all along? And was Del behind it? It couldn't have! Del was a good person. He might be distant...

Wait. He had always been distant. Was this because–

His thoughts were interrupted when Del jumped over the table where he and the woman were operating on a computer, and with a speed that Gohan would never expect of his classmate, with a speed he'd never expect for someone who claimed to have bad ankles and weak blood, Del sprinted towards him. And he delivered a punch, that although was nothing compared to the ocean of energy within Gohan, still thundered through his bones as he caught it with his hand. Shock tore through Gohan's body and rendered him motionless, leaving him to stare dumbly at the blue eyes that glared at him, and at the familiar and unmistakeable life force that he could now detect effortlessly.

“Videl?”

Del jumped back, snatching his – or her? – hand away from Gohan's block. Her eyes went even wider, not only with surprise anymore, but with almost something akin to fear.

“How do you know that?” Del whispered.

Gohan was rooted to the spot, his mind a tempest of questions. Then Del's faced closed off all emotions but anger, and he shot out a leg for a high-kick.

Gohan swerved away, but the toes of his feet caught the edges of Saiyaman's visor, and the force of his kick sent it sliding up his helmet.

“Gohan,” Del sneered. “I knew it was you.”

2024 Commentary: Rereading this fic was the primary reason I finally decided to repost my old DBZ fanfics. I found it funny, mysterious, engaging, and the voices of the narrators really pop. It's this type of voice that I'm constantly struggling to apply to my original stories.

Finding that this ends at Chapter 6 with no resolution was, surprisingly, disappointing! Back in late 2014, my interests had veered sharply into Fullmetal Alchemist, and I poured the new writing skills I was learning into The Heist. Shortly after writing The Heist, I gained enough confidence to tackle original fiction, and it wasn't until this year that I'm looking back on my fandom days.

Luckily, I found a document that outlined what was going on in these 6 chapters. There wasn't much in the way of a resolution for the second half of the story, unfortunately, as I hadn't yet kicked the habit of writing part of a story without knowing where it's supposed to go. But perhaps explaining the premise would help tie up all the questions posed in this first half.

The main villain is Sharpner's father, Mr. Pencil, who's expanding business is competing with Bulma's Capsule Corp. He needed funds for his expansion, but instead of stealing directly from his competitor, he stole from West City Academy. He believes this will obfuscate him as the perpetrator because his son goes there, and at the same time, it will ruin Bulma's reputation because she's one of the main sponsors of the school.

However, at the time Mr. Pencil's theft occurred, Hercule had also just endorsed West City Academy. Fearing for his own reputation if the news of the theft gets out, he teams up with the police forces of Satan City and West City to rectify the situation. He donates the exact amount of the stolen funds, and along with Videl, they secretly inject it into WCA's accounts. From an external standpoint, it looks like the stolen money was returned, when in fact, it was just a cover-up. They send Videl as a spy to figure out who really stole the money and how they can actually get it back.

That night when Videl and the others were putting in their own money, something went awry with their operation and they caused the 30s blackout. Gohan was visiting the city and he helped folks avoid accidents by turning Super Saiyan and speeding about to save them. This caused the rumours of ghosts and supernatural events.

In the last chapter, Mr. Pencil instructed Sharpner to spread the rumour that WCA lost money and were keeping it hushed. He's getting disgruntled that the news didn't break out in the first place. Soon after, he manages to steal some more funds, and in that last scene that Gohan walks into, Videl and Mrs. Blue were hurriedly injecting more of Hercule's funds for another cover-up.

I feel like so much of the mystery was due to the characters not being entirely honest, not only with each other, but with the reader. In chapter 1 I said that I wanted to play around with unreliable narrators (thanks to my numerous re-reads of The Queen's Thief series by that point), but it seemed like I might have gotten carried away!