(A/N: If you wanna read 10 chapters in advance, check out my Patreon. patreon.com/bucketofshirts)

 

 

…

Being chased by an alien slug was quite annoying. But Yamcha learned to see the positive point in these situations. For example, Bulma was building many new things in the ship and even extended parts of the ship to form a big one. 

 

To say he was surprised by how much she had learned and how far she had advanced during this time would be an understatement. 

 

Every day, she built new robots without a care in the world and even automated the whole process. 

 

Yamcha sat in a meditative pose inside a chamber with 350x gravity. He was trying to change his body to suit the heightened gravity and was quite successful with it. But that didn't necessarily raise his power level, just made him naturally stronger. Kind of like Saiyans being bullet-proof. 

 

He had tried training with his Future Sight skill, but it hadn't risen above Level 1. At least he learned how to turn it off and on on command, so it won’t start activating on its own. 

 

Suddenly, Yamcha felt the gravity on his rook turn off. Bulma walked in with a smile on her face. "Training hard, are we? I have already figured out how to debug Lucy."

 

"I thought we agreed on calling her Virgo?" Yamcha protested. He wanted his anime references in this world, and Bulma wasn't going to take them from him.

 

"You agreed. I didn't. And I'm her creator," Bulma puffed her chest.

 

"Her? You gave a robot a gender? Does she have normal lady parts?" Yamcha asked curiously. 

 

Bulma looked at him with a weird look on her face. "I never took you for that kind of guy."

 

"What guy? The kind who dreams of a robot? No thanks," Yamcha shrugged and went back to training. "I won't betray one machine with another. Though my Gravity Machine doesn't have sentience, one day it might."

 

He was speaking nonsense just to distract Bulma as he walked toward the button that increases gravity. He wanted to make her stumble a bit. But when he pressed the button, nothing happened.

 

Bulma noticed what he had done and smirked like an evil genius. "Already a hundred steps ahead of you. When I press the button on the outside, the gravity machine in here turns off and goes on a timer for ten minutes."

 

"Wow, what a party pooper."

 

"It's not a party if you're the only one enjoying yourself."

 

Well, there was one thing Yamcha enjoyed for sure, and that was the banter between them. 

 

This was how a relationship was supposed to be. Not just one person ogling over the other and doing whatever they wanted. That's called Simp behavior, and it isn't exclusive to only men. 

 

If you treat someone like a star, they will treat you like a fan. 

 

..

 

After some banter, Yamcha hoped Bulma would stay long enough and be distracted until the timer ran out. But she was smarter by now, and as soon as the timer got close, she got out of the room.

 

With her outside, Yamcha's mind started thinking about the future again. He went to the door of the spaceship.

 

Closing his eyes, Yamcha created an identical clone to himself. Unlike Tien's technique, this one didn't halve his power. But it had the drawback of absorbing all his Ki when created. 

 

Then Yamcha took Cui's space pod out of his inventory. Bulma had already removed the tracker on the thing. 

 

"You know what to do," Yamcha told his clone. 

 

The clone nodded and gave him a thumbs up. "I can't access the Gamer Interface. Also, Gamer's Body and Mind don't seem to affect me. So as soon as someone tries to read my memories, I will destroy myself."

 

Yamcha stared at his clone. "You're not gonna become evil and try to kill me, right? Because I can dismantle you with one thought."

 

"Okay. That's some clone-accusatory bullshit. That's clone racism right there," the clone looked disappointed as he got in the attack pod. "Just because you see shit like that in movies, don't go around accusing me of shit. That's stereotyping."

 

The attack pod closed its door, and the clone set off.

 

Yamcha couldn't help but think of one thing. ‘Was he joking or not? Is this how I act toward other people? I’m not that annoying, am I? No, the clone doesn't have Gamer’s Mind, so he’s probably an annoying version of me.’

***

Milly traveled through the seas, looking for Fortuneteller Baba and asking her where to find the Wolf Fang Fist School. However, her journey had been a little confusing. 

 

She had ended up in the middle of the jungle and a man in hand, with no idea where she was. 

 

"Well, I'm in a jungle and haven’t seen any civilization after crossing the continent. Did I stumble on an abandoned island?" Milly summarized while looking at the map. She was scared, but Yamcha wouldn't be frightened of something like this. So she had to be brave too!

 

Walking around a bit, the scorching heat reddened Milly's soft white skin when she finally saw a small town with a sign 'Demon's End Town' at the entrance. 

 

"Yes!" She rejoiced. Milly didn't want to be alone out there in the dark. It's scary. She wasn't scared, of course, but… the darkness would stay around, too… she didn't know what excuse to make for herself.

 

Walking around, Milly noticed an old man walking a dog. Old people were knowledgeable, she had read that in a book. "Hey, grandpa, do you know where Fortuneteller Baba resides?"

 

The old man turned around. His face had so many wrinkles that he looked like an alien. "Huh? You're looking for Baba? She doesn't usually work on Sundays. But you can stay in town until tomorrow. We might be a small town, but we live up to our name."

 

"Uhhh, not really interested, old man," Milly wasn't trying to be rude, but she didn't want to tell him she didn't care. If it didn't have something to do with Yamcha, then she didn't even want to bother hearing about it.

 

"Trust me, this will be an interesting story," the old man smiled, showing rows of lacking teeth. "It's a story of a demon attack, people dying, and then not even a year later getting revived."

 

"Revived?!" That last part had Milly's attention. "You're not lying, right?"

 

"Kids these days," the old man shook his head. But the look in his eyes said he was a little too excited to tell this story. "No. Now listen to my story. It all started during a sudden demon attack, and a young man came to help us. Together with Baba and her fighters, Vampire Man and Bandage Man…"

 

He continued explaining the story, and Milly was a little suspicious of Demons' existence in the world. Though demons weren't the most outrageous thing about the story, later on, it went on about how people woke up from death less than a year after everyone was killed. 

 

“It was a miracle!” The old man said with a smile on his face. “I swear all the people who died even met the kind of the afterworld!”

 

How was something like that possible? Even Milly, who grew up with a gangster rabbit who turned people into carrots, would believe something like that. 

 

Still, she was a polite girl and listened to the story and went to the local inn, paying them whatever money she had left. Milly wasn't too worried about money since she could just go and kill some beasts in the forest and eat them.

 

In her room, she started reading The Wolf's Temptations book. She read the part about Sights and Chaamy doing something indecent while Lulma was piloting their airplane. Chaamy was a fighter and had just won the tournament, which Milly respected. 

 

But what he did with Sights was scandalous and indecent! Especially with the detail, it was described. 

 

Yet, for some strange reason, her heart beat with excitement like a drum, and she couldn't stop reading the book. 

…

 

The next day, she went toward the place where the townspeople had told her, and Milly found Fortuneteller Baba's place.