Idle Hands

[Failure-64]

Interstellar Market - Section D, Non-Goods Commerce

Anyone with anything between their ears had sensed it: That powerful force once lying quietly in some corner of Zoon, had arrived at Earth. Truth be told, she didn't even notice the travel considering everything that had been going on since that Android attacked her. She did notice the fight though. Explosive power igniting like fireworks in the far off sky.

One brilliant. The other barely a spec in the dark sky.

Any number of assumptions could be made about why it happened, but it didn't matter. It was a signal -- a warning in her eyes. Someone was on the move. Someone strong enough to give her pause.

Six months had gone by a in a blink. The first few she could justify. She had been comatose for over 16 years after being put in the trash when she was deemed unworthy a mere month after being created. Realistically, anyone would need the time to get their bearings. She barely had control over her own strength for the first three months.

But now, coming off the near-defeat against that Android, she felt different. Every motion was effortless. The world seemed sluggish and dull. More than ever that agonizing and relentless itch to do something other than sit on her ass became too much to bear.

Gehn saved her life, she wouldn't deny that. But what worth was a life that did nothing?

Those were the thoughts that filled Failure-64's mind as black heels clicked down the sidewalk. This was a quieter section of the Interstellar Market. One not filled with vendors and shops. It was meant for a very different sort of trade -- the sort that, in hindsight, she thought Gehn would enjoy. Perhaps the ones he worked with were here.

Daimon told her that he would be back in the Market by now. There wasn't a specific time, but this was within margin, she assumed. He told her, too, exactly the sort of place he would be putting his talents to good use. Who had more wisdom and knowledge than a Makai? One who could walk across the entire universe without batting an eye? Someone would sell their soul for the information he could provide.

She followed the directions he gave her well -- she barely knew this part of the Market and didn't want to get lost -- and found herself standing before a well maintained, nondescript building. The sort of one that you would only know its purpose if someone else had told you. A lot of buildings looked like that, here.

Glass doors hissed as they opened and the chill of air conditioned air gave 64 a shiver. Before her was a large space akin to a library, or perhaps a book store. Of course, none of the books and computers were free to use and everyone who walked in knew that. At the heart of the room were tables organized in a precise grid pattern, each spaced out enough to grant the other decent privacy. A few of the tables were filled, small groups talking among each other with hushed voices or utilizing devices the mute the sounds entirely to those not within a specific range.

She hadn't been in a place like this. She certainly didn't look like she belonged. That didn't stop her from striding in and after only a brief pause turning in the direction Daimon had told her. There, near the back of the building she saw him sitting at a lone table far from the others. Across from him was a Human man who talked a bit too loud and moved his hands a bit too much. They were mid conversation, but Daimon's eyes flicked to the side and met 64's.

He didn't react in any way that she could understand, but she decided to be patient.

A few minutes later, Daimon rose from his chair, the Human followed, and they exchanged parting words. As the man left, 64 pushed from the wall she had been leaning against and then made her way to Daimon's table.

"Interesting way to exercise the power of a hell-born god," she said. Sarcasm was implied by the words rather than her tone which remained flat. "I suppose that even gods need to pay rent?" The corner of her lips curled -- that was a joke.

"Is this your plan? Selling information to the highest bidder indefinitely?"

 

[Daimon]

The man had talked too much, which was fine. Talking was data. By the time he stood to leave, Daimon had learned three things he had not known an hour ago: the routing schedule for a mid-tier shipping collective, the name of their primary insurer, and the specific clause their policy used to deny claims originating in contested space. None of it was worth much individually. Assembled alongside six other conversations from the past week, it began to describe something.

He had noticed her the moment she walked in. Not through any technique — she was simply here, in the building he had described, having navigated a section of the Market she'd told him she didn't know well. The walk from the door to the wall. The pause. The lean. All of it registered with the same precision he applied to everything else, and with a quality of attention he would have attributed, if pressed, to the fact that she represented unresolved data.

The "nearly perfect" qualifier had not rested.

He waited until the Human's footsteps had faded before he spoke.

"No."

He remained standing, hands clasped at the small of his back, and considered her for a moment with the same expression he'd worn when she walked in: the faint, knowing smile, unchanged.

"This is how I learn what the board looks like."

There was a chair across from his. He hadn't moved to sit again yet. The implication was loose, not pressed — she could take the seat or she could keep standing, and he would hold the same posture either way.

"Two months ago, I could not sense the power of anything living. God Ki is invisible in both directions: I cannot be detected, and in return I detect nothing. I corrected that problem." A pause, small and deliberate. "I registered every power level in the Market this morning for the first time. The range of what I found was — " he selected the word with the precision of someone who had several options and chose the most accurate — "instructive."

His gaze moved, briefly, toward the doors she had entered through. Not the doors themselves. Something past them, or the direction of something past them.

"You were at the Market during the second quarter. I imagine you also found the range instructive."

He looked back at her.

"Sit. Tell me what you came to propose."​

 

[Failure-64]

He couldn't sense Ki before? This was the second time she'd run into someone like that. Was it truly a unique talent? Being so second nature for her, she never seriously humored the idea that it was something to be learned and honed.

No small part of her flickered with pride that this was something she had already surpassed Daimon in. An infinitely small victory in the grand scheme of divinity, but a victory nonetheless. Proof, in her eyes, that the Doctor had been onto something. That she was able to achieve her goal.

"Instructive." 64 echoed the comment with something caught between a chuckle and scoff. "That's a good word for it."

The legs of the chair whimpered against the hard floor when 64 pulled it out and toward her. It landed a few inches too far from the table, creating ample space for her to jump up without bashing her knees on the table. Enough, too, that when she sat down she could lean back and rock the chair on its hind legs.

"Did you correct it in time to sense what happened in the other sector here? The fight?"

By now everyone on the moon knew. The entire sector and parts of the ones surrounded were off limits. Countless dead, even more injured and on their way to dead. Destruction that would take years to fully rebuild. And a crater right at the heart of it where a broken Android had been permanently shut down.

Whether Daimon knew that had centered around her didn't matter. It was a leading question. But she let it hang for a moment. Just long enough for him to answer, if he even wanted to.

"Since then, I've been thinking about these first few months of my life," she said, chair bouncing in a rhythmic, up-tempo beat. "Rather dull period, don't you agree?"

Another leading question, though one ever so slightly more important.

"I've felt as though my body has finally woken up. Powers that had gone stiff and rusty while I was asleep. Now, everything feels effortless."

She was going somewhere with this. She suspected Daimon had already figured it out, but she continued anyway. Unfiltered and chatty, as she tended to be with him.

"There's that presence that finally left Zoon -- been there for a while, but made it's way to Earth. I'm pretty sure it killed their strongest warrior. Who knows what it's true intentions are, but isn't it motivating all the same? To see someone making ripples that reach us all the way out here on this pathetic moon?"

The chair rocked and leaned to the right as one of her arms moved to the satchel on her waist. The chair wobbled, uncertain on just one leg, but it didn't fall. The third leg clicked against the floor when 64 righted her posture and lifted her hand.

In her palm, a circular device with a surface made almost entirely of a screen. The washed out green coloring and grid pattern marked it as some sort of portable radar. Atop, a single button that could only be assumed to be an on/off switch.

"A friend of mine helped me build this. He called it a Dragon Radar," she said, eyes lifting to meet Daimon's. Curiosity burned in her crimson -- did he know what this was? She was too excited to wait for that answer. "This device can detect the presence of Dragon Balls on whatever planet it is on."

He certainly knew what those were.

"My friend and I plan to go to Namek to collect them. His ship will get there in about four months."

Her eyes remained on Daimon and she didn't speak anymore. There were no more leading questions. This, the unspoken offer, was what she had been building up to and she didn't need to spell it out for him. He was smarter than that.

 

[Daimon]

The question had a specific shape to it. Not "did you hear about the fight" — that was information-gathering at distance, impersonal, the kind of thing one asked a stranger. She asked if his correction had been active when the sector collapsed. She was asking whether he had been watching.

Whether he had seen her.

"I registered it," he said. "The fight. The aftermath. The power that moved through the wreckage when it was finished." A pause. "Thirteen thousand, by my estimate. The upper range of what I could resolve at that distance gave me some imprecision, but the order of magnitude was clear enough." He let the number sit without explaining what he meant by it. She had been there. She knew exactly which reading he was describing.

She had also, he noted, not asked him directly what he'd seen. The question was precise enough that she already knew the answer. She was measuring what he would volunteer.

He did not look away from her.

The device in her palm was a grid, a single activation surface, the green wash of a display calibrated for a specific signal. He recognized the design principle before she named it: Kanassan-derived spatial detection, probably adapted from the original scouter architecture, recalibrated to isolate a wavelength most instruments never thought to look for. There had been a soul in Hell who had spent thirty years as a Ball-finder before whatever had ended him, and the man had talked at great length about the signal, its persistence, its impossibility to mask. The knowledge had taken four days and two broken fingers to acquire. The soul had considered it a poor trade.

"Namek," Daimon said. "The second set. Seven balls, three wishes. Construction time runs ahead of a Space Cruiser's transit window to that system by approximately two months."

He had not needed her to explain what the radar was for.

"Your gatherer count is the actual constraint. Three collectors working across the planet simultaneously compresses the acquisition window considerably. Gehn's ship provides a base of operations. The radar provides position data. What remains is the third collector, who should not be arriving at Namek four months after the window opens."
His eyes moved to hers and held there.

"You came here to tell me what you intend to wish for."​

 

[Failure-64]

That was why she like Daimon.

During their first encounter she couldn't place it, likely because she was still trying to place everything about her perception of the world. Now, with the clarity of her newfound motivation, she could name it. A quality not too dissimilar from Gehn's, but not bogged down by the pragmatism. The worry. The back and forth debate.

Daimon knew the request. Immediately, he understood everything about it, risks included. And didn't hesitate in his answer. Even if it was to decline her, that confidence in his own actions is what resonated.

"I don't give away all of my secrets for free," 64 said. "Not even to the devilishly charming and attractive Makai."

She winked, but gave no indication on how much of that was flirting or just playful banter.

"What I will tell you is the deal: We each get a wish. No restrictions on each other -- I can't tell you to not wish for something, nor can you object to mine when the time comes. Not that I have any intentions on a wish that would negatively impact either of you, but it should be stated plainly."

The chair leaned back, then came forward. Its front legs clicked against the hard floor and 64 leaned forward. Her distance from the table closed. Elbows came to rest atop it and the back of her overlapped hands served as a resting place for her chin.

"I'd like, too, that this not be a one-time deal," she continued, voice lower and more cautious of who might overhear -- as if talking about all-powerful, wish granting orbs wasn't already confidential. "Once that dragon is summoned, word will travel. Others will be inspired to hunt them down, or hunt us. In either case, I don't want to stand by and wait for the consequences to come.

"I wish to gain control over Namek. Claim it and the Dragon Balls it provides before anyone has the chance. I'll already be there, fresh off my wish."

So will you.

"What could the Namekians hope to do when someone like me stands before them? What little hope would they have if two beings such as ourselves declared their planet under new protection?"

Daimon didn't strike her as the sort to be so public about his doings; she didn't expect this to land as easily as the Wishes. All the same, the hope was too much to pass up on. Not just the comfort of having another to help her wrest control over Namek.

But to, finally, be a proper ally to him. Not a face that he had a passing curiosity in.

She leaned back in her chair, a small smile on her face.

"Oh, and that power of about thirteen thousand? A Changeling by the name of Axar. He works as a bounty hunter, currently working on a contract out of Vegeta, as I understand it."

A freebie to sweeten the deal. Something she had picked up from that very Changeling.