//------------------------------//
// Chapter 13 
// Story: The Animation Bureau 
// by Chaotic Dreams 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 13

“We made it!” Lauren laughed out loud. 
Goku simply looked around, wearing a stunned expression, speechless. Bugs smiled broadly. 
“You see, Lauren?” Bugs inquired. “Embracing your Animated side is a good thing!”
Lauren shot Bugs a dark look, but didn’t say anymore—she’d talked enough about THAT today. 
“Now, to find those Dragon Balls…” Lauren murmured, turning to take a good look at the landscape of this new planet for the first time. However, the first thing she saw were a gaggle of what appeared to be other members of Piccolo’s race, green-skinned aliens with antennae. Understandably, they looked quite shocked to see a trio of what to them must be totally alien creatures who had suddenly appeared in front of them. 
“You’re after…the Dragon Balls…?” the tallest Namekian quavered. 
“Yes!” Lauren latched onto what could be a potential lead to finding the mystic orbs that would bring her friends back. “Could you direct us to them?”
“RUN!” screamed the tallest Namekian, and the others promptly obeyed.
“Wonder what’s eatin’ them?” Bugs scratched his head absentmindedly. “I guess that means we won’t be receiving any help from the locals.”
“We won’t need any help from the locals,” Lauren informed her godfather, squatting down to the rich soil of the melon patch the group had found themselves in. “With just a line of writing, we can bring the dragon balls all right here!”
Lauren scratched out the phrase ‘THE DRAGON BALLS ARE RIGHT HERE’ in the dirt, then stood up and looked around expectantly.
Nothing happened. 
“Huh?” Lauren wondered aloud. “Where are they? They’re supposed to be right here!”
“…Maybe your magic doesn’t work on the Dragon Balls?” Goku suggested. “After all, they’re magic too.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Lauren conceded reluctantly. “If I can’t make ponies come back to life, then why should I be able to affect things that can?”
“Don’t worry, Lauren!” Bugs said encouragingly. “With your power, Goku’s fighting skills, and my, well, being me, we’ll find those Dragon Balls in no time! I mean, it’s not like anyone else is looking for them, right?”
“Looking for what?” 
The team, or what was left of them, turned to see who had spoken and laid eyes on a small horned alien sitting in a hovering machine. Flanking the odd creature were equally odd specimens that were nevertheless vaguely humanoid, one being round and pink with a spiky head and the other being tall, green, and sporting long braided hair. 
But Lauren and the team weren’t really paying attention to any of that—because both of the aliens flanking the creature in the machine were holding two Dragon Balls apiece. 
“The Dragon Balls!” Goku laughed. “I didn’t think finding them would be that easy!”
“Oh, these?” the alien in the center inquired, raising an eyebrow. “They were actually a lot harder to come by than you might imagine. I had to go from village to village collecting them.”
“And they just let you borrow them?” Goku wondered. “Gee, the Namekians on this planet sure must be a lot friendlier than Piccolo.”
“Friendlier?” the alien chuckled. “Heavens, no. We had to kill them all.”
“WHAT?!” Lauren gasped. “But, why?!”
“Because they wouldn’t tell us where the Dragon Balls were unless we tortured and threatened the information out of them,” the alien replied causally, as if he did this sort of thing every day. “Why do you ask? Are you looking for the Dragon Balls as well?”
“Yes, actually,” Bugs answered uneasily. “You see, some friends of ours—”
“Then I suppose we’ll just have to kill you all as well to eliminate the competition!” the alien announced. “Zarbon? Dedoria? You know what to do.”
“Yes, Lord Freeza,” the two aliens flanking the central commander, who must be ‘Lord Freeza,’ replied in unison. The two aliens sat the Dragon Balls down next to their master’s machine and assumed a battle stance, eyeing Lauren and the team almost with boredom. Lauren supposed that to a bunch of genocidal killers, a few more corpses were probably just one more thing to cross off the day’s checklist. 
Well, if they were expecting an easy takedown, then they had another thing coming. Of course, that didn’t mean Lauren couldn’t try to reason with them first...for their sakes.
“Please, you have to listen,” Lauren spoke up as the aliens advanced and Goku and Bugs nervously assumed defensive stances of their own. One may have been immortal and one may have been Earth’s best fighter, but taking on a fighting force that casually slayed the people of a planet like it was nothing was still no laughing matter. Bugs could still feel pain, and Goku had no comparison to judge whether these foes would be anywhere near his equal or his superiors in battle. “We have a good reason for needing the Dragon Balls—if we don’t use them to bring our friends back from the dead, then all of reality is in jeopardy!”
“I must admit, that’s a new one,” Freeza smiled darkly. “And how exactly would your friends being alive again save reality?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” Bugs said. “But if you asked your friends here to not try and kill us, we’d be happy to tell ya.”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen,” Freeza’s grin only broadened. “You see, on top of not believing a word you’ve said so far, as I’ve come across some pretty creative excuses in my days as being a galactic warlord, I’ve never seen life-forms quite like you three. It’s always nice to gauge the power levels of new species before I crush them, to see which of my men I should send to bring their puny little planets under my rule.”
“Power levels?” Goku echoed. “Vegeta already scanned our power levels, and it didn’t end up well for him.”
“You killed Vegeta?” Freeza cocked an eyebrow.
“No, but we definitely defeated him, so I’d be careful if I were you,” Goku warned.
“But therein lies your problem,” Freeza grinned again as Zarbon and Dedoria crouched to spring into action. “You’re not me. Either one of my top men here could kill Vegeta in an instant, or I could kill him myself if I accidentally sneeze too hard. You, on the other hand, don’t appear to be the type that could stand up to Vegeta anyway, so I assume you merely escaped him. Alright, then, let’s get this show on the road—I’ve got other people to kill today!”
Zarbon and Dedoria launched themselves into the sky, zooming at the team with their fists pulled back for a punch. Goku leapt into the air and dodged the green alien, while Bugs whipped out a spring to catch the pink alien’s fist and send it flying back at him to crush his face in. 
The pink alien screamed in pain, staggering backward while Goku flew in and delivered a swift kick to his gut. Unfortunately, all this did was leave Goku cringing in pain at his sore foot as the pink alien continued to bemoan his face, apparently not even having noticed Goku’s attempted attack.
“This is bad,” Lauren gulped. “Wait a minute, what am I worried about? All I have to do is—”
Before Lauren could finish her sentence, though, the green alien whirled around from where he’d missed Goku and carried the continued momentum of his punch at Lauren’s neck. It connected, and the ear-splitting crunch of bones shattering exploded into the air.
The bones that were shattering, though, belonged to the green alien’s hand.
“MY HAND!” the tall fighter yelled. “I think it’s broken!”
Not only was it broken, it slumped as he raised it to his face, whatever bones that were once inside it having been pulverized to powder, making his hand akin to a bean-bag. 
Lauren, however, stood shocked and stock-still. She hadn’t felt a thing. She hadn’t felt the burn of Vegeta’s blast back on Earth, but these two fighters were supposed to be able to kill Vegeta easily—and she could grind their bones to dust without even trying?
“What the—” Freeza uttered, actually looking surprised. “Dedoria, stop your moaning and attack the white quadruped. I want to see something.”
“Y-yes, Lord Freeza,” the pink alien, apparently Dedoria, complied. Flying over to Lauren, who turned to see him coming too late to dodge, Dedoria smacked his other fist into Lauren’s muzzle—only for it to explode like a burlap sack full of blood fallen from a great height. Bone-fragments and oddly-colored internal fluids cascaded onto the team, leaving Dedoria wailing in pain.
“That’s not possible!” Freeza exclaimed. “What is your power level, anyway?”
Freeza pressed the button on the side of the device he was wearing over his eye, the same kind that the team had seen Vegeta using. When it beeped that it had read Lauren’s strength, Freeza’s face lit up in surprise and then went dead cold with fear.
“What are you, a Kai or something?!” Freeza blurted. “No, not even a Kai is THAT powerful—”
“I’m one of a kind,” Lauren replied with a smirk, fully enjoying the fear she saw on the genocidal tyrant’s face. It was nice to see the tables turned. “And if you don’t give us those Dragon Balls, then I’ll show you just what a ‘one of a kind’ can do when they actually TRY to fight.”
“Sure, here, take them!” Freeza agreed hastily and laughing in outright fear. With a flash, his machine sped up into the sky, to be quickly followed by the still profusely bleeding and equally terrified goons. 
“Well, that was a lot easier than I thought it would be after all,” Goku smiled as he touched down next to Lauren and Bugs again. “You didn’t even need to write anything, and we still found the Dragon Balls!”
“Only four of them,” Lauren noted, though she too was smiling. “Still, I can’t bear to see those monsters roving free around the galaxy. Let’s do a little writing after all, shall we?”
Lauren leaned down to the dirt again, and began to scrape out letters.
. . .
All across planet Namek, armies of aliens of all kinds abruptly vanished, leaving the peaceful green-skinned natives rather confused. Even Lord Freeza himself was nowhere to be found. In their place, though, were several hundred purely-golden statues, each bearing a plaque reading ‘Genocide isn’t nice. Don’t do it. Love, Lauren.’
. . .
“So how do we find the other Dragon Balls?” Lauren wondered aloud.
“That jerk Freeza said they were all hidden in villages,” Goku postulated. “So I guess we just go from village to village, explain why we need the Dragon Balls, ask for them nicely, and then we’ll have our friends back in no time!”
“But there could be thousands of villages across the planet,” Bugs pointed out. “It could take months, even years, if we tracked them all down one-by-one—even with Lauren’s teleporting and reality-altering writing. Freeza had an army of hundreds; we have an army of three.”
“I’ve got it!” Goku exclaimed in a eureka moment. “Back on Earth, Kami was the chief Namekian and knew more about the Dragon Balls than anyone else. I’m guessing that if we find the chief Namekian on this planet, he can tell us where the last three Dragon Balls are.”
“And with Lauren’s writing ability, we can find that guy in an instant!” Bugs agreed. “But seriously Lauren, you need a notebook or something. Writing in the dirt is getting a little old. You’re a royal goddess! You need to add some finesse to your work!”
“Alright then,” Lauren approved, at least of finding the chief Namekian and the notebook part. Writing in the dirt for a final time, Lauren spelled out ‘I HAVE A NOTEBOOK AND PEN’ and one appeared in front of her, ornately gilded with an image of an alicorn. After a few tries, Lauren’s horn sparked enough to hold the notebook telekinetically in the air, and she held the quill that had appeared with it in her mouth to write ‘WE ARE AT THE CHIEF NAMEKIAN’S HOME.’ 
In a flash, they were.
Though, to be perfectly honest, the chief Namekian’s home was a bit of a let-down. It was little more than a squat, domed white building jutting up from the grassy plains that were the only landscape the team had seen while on this planet. Nevertheless, the answer to getting their friends back lay within, and so the team hastened inside—
—only to be stopped by a tall Namekian bearing a striking resemblance to Piccolo. 
“Uh…Hello?” Lauren ventured after an uncomfortable moment of the green-skinned man’s silent stare. “We’re here to see the chief Namekian…”
The man continued to stare, his brow lowering.
“It’s really important that we see him!” Goku added uneasily. “You see, if we don’t see him—
The green alien suddenly flew forward and kneed Goku in the stomach, sending him soaring backwards and landing on his back.
“Nobody gets into see Lord Guru!” the alien roared.
“What the—what was THAT for?!” Lauren yelled. “We just saved your planet and this is the thanks we get?!”
“Saved their planet?” Bugs wondered aloud.
“Saved our planet?” the alien echoed skeptically. “You’re not from here! You’re the ones trying to take OVER our planet, not SAVE it!”
“Oh, so that’s what this is about,” Goku chuckled, getting up but still clutching his stomach painfully. “No, you see, we’re not with that Freezer guy.”
“Not at all,” Lauren agreed. “We just turned him and all his men into a monument against genocide.”
“So that’s what you wrote down,” Bugs announced. “I was wondering.”
“I…I don’t believe you!” the alien barked, rushing up and pulling his fist into a punch aimed straight at Lauren. 
Fortunately (for the alien) though, before he could connect a voice rang out from inside the squat white building, shouting “Nail! Stop!”
The Namekian, apparently named ‘Nail,’ complied instantly, his fist inches from Lauren’s muzzle.
“But, Lord Guru—” Nail called back.
“No buts!” the other voice, who must have been Lord Guru, commanded. “They speak the truth. I sense that the hostile presence has left the planet.”
“R-really?” Nail brightened up immediately. “I’m so sorry! You guys really did save our planet? By all means, please go right on in!”
“Nice to actually get some thanks,” Lauren muttered as the Namekian ushered them all inside the building. 
Once inside the place, Nail rushed forward before the group and bowed at the feet of the largest, fattest Namekian any of the team had ever seen. Lauren had actually seen far worse cases of obesity in her travels as an Animation Agent, and Bugs knew quite a few porkers on top of that, but Goku had trouble trying not to stare at the creature’s sheer immensity. 
“First off, I just want to thank you all for saving our planet,” the blob—er, Lord Guru—spoke. “For this, I will grant you anything our planet has to offer as a reward.”
“Thank you, uh, your majesty—” Lauren ventured, not quite sure what to call the leader of an alien race.
“Call me Guru, please,” the Namekian smiled.
“Guru,” Lauren echoed. “We seek the Dragon Balls to bring our friends back from the dead. It is most urgent that we do this, as so much depends on their being alive.”
“This wish is a noble one, and thankfully within our ability to grant,” Lord Guru spoke.
“Thank you, Guru!” Lauren beamed, happy to beg getting her friends back at last.
“However…”
No, no, NO! There was always something in the way! What could it be THIS time?!
“Our Dragon Balls can only bring back one person at a time,” Lord Guru cautioned. “How many friends do you wish to bring back?”
Lauren’s head fell and her ears drooped as she answered “Six.”
“That is unfortunate,” Lord Guru apologized. “Our Dragon Balls grant three wishes, but even then, only three of your friends could come back. It seems we face a conundrum. Unless…”
“What is it?” Lauren perked up instantly, latching onto any hope she had of retrieving her fallen comrades. 
“There is a way to bring them all back at once,” Lord Guru spoke, though there was fear behind his voice.
“Lord Guru, surely you can’t mean…” Nail blurted. “But, that goes against our most ancient laws! The consequences would be dire for all involved! It’s…it’s not natural! It goes against the very rules of reality!” 
“I know this!” Lord Guru thundered. “But still…it may be the only way. And with the three wishes, we may even be able to undo the abomination.”
“That is true,” Nail realized. “But to even perform such an action in the first place…”
“Sorry to interrupt, but what are you guys talking about?” Lauren interjected. “What are you so afraid of? If it brings our friends back, then how could it be a bad thing? And what is ‘it’ anyway?”
“It is one of our most ancient spells, more ancient than even the Dragon Balls themselves,” Lord Guru answered. “It is powerful, yet perverse, magic. It is against not only our laws as a species, but as Nail said, the rules of reality as well.”
“If we don’t get our friends back, there won’t be any reality at all anyway,” Lauren spoke up. 
“What?” Lord Guru questioned, surprised to hear this. “How could…but I sense that what you say is the truth! Very well, we MUST perform this spell. For the good of creation!”
“But Lord Guru,” Nail wondered again, even more fear creeping into his voice than could be heard behind Lord Guru’s. If his master was afraid of the end of reality, then how much more terrified must Nail himself be? “How can we perform the spell if these friends are all dead?”
“That is where you come in, Nail,” Lord Guru spoke up. “I am sorry it must come to this, but we must kill you.”
“WHAT?!” the entire team, and Nail, gasped.
“Only a Namekian can perform the spell, and Nail is my most trusted servant,” Guru explained. “He must join your friends in death to cast the magic. I can’t do it myself because without me alive the Dragon Balls won’t work. But rest assured, Nail; we can use the first wish to bring back these friends, the second to bring back you, and the third to undo the spell.”
“As horrible as that sounds, it doesn’t seem too different from what we had to do to send the ponies into this universe’s afterlife in the first place,” Bugs reasoned. “And if everything will be made right again with the third wish, then…”
“It does seem like the only way,” Goku admitted as well. “Sorry, Nail.”
Nail looked frightened, but he didn’t back down, saying “If you believe this is the best course of action, then I shall do it for you, Lord Guru.”
“Thank you, Nail,” Lord Guru nodded. “Now, stand back.”
The team complied, and Nail stood in the center of the room, alone. With what appeared to be a tremendous effort for the blubbery old alien, Lord Guru opened his mouth and let fly a beam of incinerating energy, completely obliterating the Namekian that stood before him. All that was left was a darkened spot on the floor.
It had happened so fast that Lauren hadn’t even had time to look away. She tensed, biting back tears—it may have been for the good of reality, and Nail should be back as soon as they wished on the Dragon Balls, but she prayed that this was the last time the team would have to kill anyone.
“Now, two Dragon Balls remain,” Lord Guru sighed, seeming to silently share Lauren’s sentiment. “I keep one with me at all times, but two of you must fly out to the Village of Green Rivers and the Village of Blue Grass to retrieve the last of them. Simply tell them Lord Guru sent you, and they should give you the Dragon Balls without hesitation.”
“Sorry to say this, Guru,” Goku said. “But I’m afraid we don’t exactly know where those villages are—”
“No problem,” Lauren announced, telekinetically pulling out her notebook from…well, she wasn’t sure where. She really must be beginning to become more and more Animated if she was pulling things out of nowhere like Bugs did. The thought made Lauren shiver, but she tried to ignore it and wrote that Bugs and Goku were at the villages. 
In a flash, Bugs and Goku had gone. 
Lauren and Lord Guru waited in silence, and when Lauren felt enough time had passed she wrote ‘BUGS AND GOKU ARE BACK HERE.’ In a flash, they were, and set the last two Dragon Balls at Lord Guru’s feet.
With great effort, Lord Guru revealed a Dragon Ball he had been keeping himself and placed it with the rest, forming a circle of the shimmering golden orbs. 
“Nail should have performed the spell by now,” Lord Guru announced. “It is time. O Great Dragon Porunga, I call upon thee!”
BOOM.
There was a crack of what might have been thunder and what might have a nuclear war, and the roof of the small squat building was blown into the air as a blast of light shone up from the Dragon Balls, illuminating the sky for miles around. The light shimmered and twisted, forming a colossal shape that dimmed and took on the appearance of a gigantic, monstrous dragon. Its eyes glowed red, and its muscles bulged, spines scraping the sky from its back as its twisting tail seemed to swish back and forth beyond the horizon.
“Whoa, you’re dragon is WAY bigger than our dragon on Earth!” Goku exclaimed, amazed.
“I’ve seen a lot of dragons on my day,” Lauren remarked, equally amazed. “And I can easily say that this one takes the cake.”
“I am the Great Dragon Porunga,” the dragon boomed, seeming to shake the very atoms of the planet as it spoke. “I will grant thee three wishes. What do you desire?”
“O Great Dragon Porunga,” Lord Guru yelled up to the behemoth. “With our first two wishes, we call upon thee to bring back from the dead the friend of these brave warriors and my servant Nail!”
“Friend?” Lauren echoed, having to yell over the whipping wind and violent humming of pure energy that accompanied the dragon’s presence. “As in singular? But we have six friends! What’s he talking about?!”
“I don’t know!” Bugs yelled back. “But we’re about to find out!”
The dragon closed its eyes, and when they opened again a blinding flash shot out from each of them and slammed into the ground in the center of the Dragon Balls. The two flashes dissipated just as quickly as they had erupted into being, leaving two shapes where they had once been. The ash left behind by Nail’s death had been swept away to reveal two figures.
They both stood uneasily, and the team saw that Nail had returned, having brought along with him something of vaguely pony shape.
But it wasn’t any one of the team’s friends. 
Instead, the pony before the team sported wings with both cyan and buttercream-colored feathers. Behind that was a tail of decidedly pink hue and curly, fluffy texture, though it had highlights of all sort of other hues. A Stetson hat adorned a mane of elegantly curling rainbow textures, while a lengthy horn with intertwining bands of white and purple spun up out of the pony’s forehead. The body, though familiar in shape, wore a coat with an army of colors like a field of wildflowers. 
Though the creature had both large wings and a long horn, it was clearly not an alicorn, for it lacked the familiar proportions and height—but that was far from the strangest thing about it.
No, the strangest thing about the pony was its eyes. They were at once alien and instantly recognizable; they bore lashes of varying lengths and curvatures with irises that sported flecks of all the colors one could dream of.
“Hey, guys,” the pony spoke once it saw the team staring at it slack-jawed. “Believe me—er, us—if you think this is weird to look at, imagine what it’s like to BE like this.”
No, what stood before the team wasn’t any one of their friends. 
It was all of them at once.
. . .