The KidVegeta Anthology/Dragon Ball Z: The Forgotten/Characters

These are my thoughts on the characters in The Forgotten, ranging from what prompted their creation to how and why I implemented them into the story the way I did:

=Characters=

Zarbon
With Zarbon, his role grew a bit in the final edits of TF, but he was never a major character in any version of the story. Zarbon is interesting, though, because his role in the first saga is to mainly be a bit of a bother to The Benefactor. He also functions as the guy who gives Ledas and Prince Vegeta missions, sometimes. To that end, he is written based on how he acted in the Bardock special, in particular. He fawns over Frieza, and yet he hates Prince Vegeta and The Benefactor. He's a remarkably petty and jealous man.

In the final version, it became more clear that the aliens Ledas and Prince Vegeta fight in chapter 6 of the Prince Vegeta Saga are Zarbon's first team. He apparently doesn't know they were going to be used to test the boys, so this angers him greatly when he learns about it. Of course, they all die, so Zarbon blames The Benefactor for that. Zarbon is crucial in helping Frieza see that The Benefactor is dangerous and is a big reason why Frieza ultimately "executes" the alien. So even though The Benefactor gets the better of Zarbon at first, he does get Zarbon a new team (who are then used in the earliest saga of Hyper Zergling's fanon). He tries to amend things with Zarbon, but Zarbon will have none of that. He hates TB; he's jealous that TB is stronger than him and may be gaining Frieza's favor. So he does everything he can to quell that relationship. He ultimately succeeds, though it's not his doing. Zarbon's role in TB's fall was severely reduced in the final version of this story, and I did that mainly because I didn't think Zarbon should have much power over The Benefactor, physically speaking. It's fine if he has power over him in other ways, though, and that's how I changed his character in the final draft.

In Outbreak, Zarbon is quite jealous of the unnamed captain, just as he is jealous of The Benefactor in the first saga. Zarbon's jealousy gets the other captain killed and helps get him promoted. This, however, leads to Frieza finding The Benefactor, so that doesn't exactly go good for Zarbon. What I really wanted to portray with Zarbon in Outbreak was how petty and vain he was, not to mention the sheer level of desperation he has with nearly every action he takes. I'm not fond of Zarbon, so I did focus more on his negative attributes, but everything I did with him in Outbreak and in the Prince Vegeta Saga was based on and is accurate to his canon personality.

Lascon
I originally came up with Lascon, then named Noscal, for the early drafts of the Reunion Saga, where he would be featured in a flashback chapter helping Prince Vegeta and Ledas become conscious in their Great Ape forms. His role was similar to Nappa's and Layeeck's, though it was slightly different because he is not as insane as either of those two. Now Nappa and Layeeck have some problems, in different ways, but I won't be going into that here. Lascon is steadfast; he doesn't let his emotions guide him. He's a very straightforward teacher and this distinction allows him to impact Ledas in a different way than the aforementioned men. He's a more mature version of Layeeck (and also Nappa), with more experience and more to teach Ledas. It's also worth noting that even in the Reunion Saga flashback, he seemed to connect better with Ledas than Layeeck did. They had a better relationship because of Lascon's personality. As well, Lascon had a nice relationship with Layeeck in that flashback, where he played the role of the parent to his son. It's one of the few times where Layeeck's madness and egotism was checked by someone above him, so Lascon fills many roles and purposes in TF, even though he's only in featured in three scenes in the entire story.

I later added Lascon to the Prince Vegeta Saga as I did the final edits for that saga. He had basically just one scene with Ledas, which was a fight scene. This scene set up the flashback scene in the Reunion Saga, but more importantly, I used this scene to teach Ledas a lot about fighting. Lascon is a knowledgeable dude, so this allowed me to give Ledas some good battle info without making him a Stu. Lascon teaches him to not underestimate his opponents (for Ledas did that in their battle and lost to his grandfather, even though Lascon was much weaker than him), and this is a lesson that stays with Ledas for the rest of the story. It helps him develop his fighting form, his fighting philosophy and his personality. So the single scene with Lascon helps Ledas grow to a tremendous degree, and that's all because I portrayed Lascon as this knowledgeable and calm but stern individual. He breaks the mold of being a Saiyan somewhat, but his foundation of battle knowledge is certainly Saiyan-like and quite beneficial for his grandson.

Lascon's name comes from the word "scallion". He was originally named "Noscal" by Destructivedisk, but after some time, I flipped the name (almost completely) and called him "Lascon" because I wanted all of the males in Ledas' bloodline to have their names start with "L".

==Other Saiyans/Frieza's Soldiers== So with these guys, my influence from the anime is evident in how they talk, particularly with Layeeck's team seen in chapter 2 of the Prince Vegeta Saga. How the soldiers talk, how they interact with the main characters, was all written basically to mimic how lesser PTO characters interacted with one another and with others in canon. Layeeck's team in particular is interesting, for they were based on Bardock's team to a degree. All of these characters fulfilled roles on their own - they don't exist just to exist - and yet, their main purposes are to characterize the main characters. This is seen with how Layeeck's team comments on how Ledas performs on his first mission. Of course, for them in particular, there would be no reason not to have them - it's more logical to have them, actually. It softens the interactions between Ledas and Layeeck, having others there.

For lesser soldiers who are not Saiyans, there are not too many of them, so I won't be devoting too much time to them. These soldiers are mainly seen, but not heard, in this saga. This was not something I did on purpose - for the lesser characters have far more to say in Cooler's region - it's just how it turned out. One character I want to mention is the Saiyan Pod Commander, whose purpose is to try to reign in Ledas' attempt to just do whatever he wants. In the first saga, Ledas kills the Saiyan Pod Commander for annoying him, and this leads up to him being basically enslaved in the next few sagas. The Saiyan Pod Commander is a stern authoritative figure, but he was not strong enough to actually subdue Ledas, which characters in the second and third sagas were able to do.

Additionally, there was an alien captain in Outbreak who was a bit of a rival to Zarbon. I based him on the various Frieza soldiers seen in the Namek arc, who tried to over-exert themselves, which led to their deaths at Frieza's hands. That guy was textbook Frieza soldier. Zarbon's team in chapter 6 of the first saga were based on Dodoria's team in the Bardock special, to a degree. They were rough, arrogant, and loud, which is how many villains in DB and DBZ often are. So they were pretty standard.

Master Loriphim
Loriphim takes on the role of the Old Iyxan from the old versions of Outbreak: Paved In Blood. He's somewhat of a fatherly/parental figure for The Benefactor. He's not a good man, and he's not a bad man. He's a grey, complex character, and he's based on one of my teachers whom I never liked very much. The Benefactor learns from Loriphim how to hunt and how to kill, though in the end, he doesn't like how the man treats him, so he kills him. This would be like Ledas killing King Vegeta or Nappa. Loriphim does shape much of The Benefactor's personality, making the boy hate most living beings because of how terrible a man he is. That is The Benefactor's first major test in Outbreak. He exerts his own agency against Loriphim's and forces the man to kill his daughter before committing suicide. This was all done to hurt Loriphim emotionally as well as physically. While Loriphim fulfills much the same role as the Old Iyxan, his more complex personality is a good example of how my writing has grown throughout the years. He is the first major person to oppose The Benefactor, and he pays dearly for that. Loriphim's name was inspired by the Seraphim and Nephilim.

Nico
Nico is a foil to The Benefactor, showing how odd and out-of-place TB's bloodlust is. He's a normal kid, and I didn't develop his personality much. The fact that he's so young and relatively well-mannered makes his death that much more horrific, and all of these decisions were made in order to develop The Benefactor's character development and further the tone of Outbreak: Paved In Blood. His name comes from a person on my high school soccer team.

Igear
Igear is somewhat indistinguishable from Nico. Both are just boys who serve as foils to The Benefactor, and him killing them has massive character development and tonal consequences for the story. The two do have subtly different ways of talking, though, and I made Igear quieter, humbler, and a better speaker. His death is also more gruesome than Nico's in order to build up The Benefactor's development. I couldn't just have the same kind of death twice in a row - that doesn't show progress. Igear's name comes from a vendor in the Undercity on the planet Taris in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This name was originally a name for an unused Cardinal lackey, though I re-purposed it for TB's special after I realized I wasn't going to use that Cardinal lackey. It definitely sounds like an Iyxan name to me.

The Benefactor's Mother
The Benefactor's mother is an interesting character and one of the most enigmatic beings in TF. Because so little is known about her, even from The Benefactor's perspective, she is held in an idealized state of being. She is the ideal of the motherly figure, the missing motherly figure whose lost presence has caused her son to descend into chaos. She appeared to be the only one who could control The Benefactor, and her disappearance/death was the impetus leading to The Benefactor destroying his species.

Everything about her was ambiguous. Why she cut herself is ambiguous. What happened to her husband is ambiguous. Who killed her is ambiguous (was it TB, Frieza, or unnamed Iyxans?). But her influence over The Benefactor is profound. His cut himself up to mimic her and spent almost all of Outbreak looking for her. Indeed, he destroyed his species just looking for her. So that shows how much she mattered to him. In fact, she is the only person whom The Benefactor seems to have cared about. The ideal of her brings out the more emotional side of The Benefactor. But I was careful to never give specific closure to her character, for thematic reasons.

The Benefactor's mother also appears in a hallucinatory form in the Lauto Saga and is mentioned in the Stomping Grounds Saga. This was all done to give The Benefactor character development. Notice too that the main reason he went after Lauto and wanted to kill that disgraced Supreme Kai was that he brought up TB's mother. TB doesn't want to think about his mother. It's the one subject that truly hurts him, to the end of his life. He cared about her so much. He loved her so much. We know so little of her character, so how she has affected her son is the most important quality of The Benefactor's mother. The Benefactor's mother also serves to show how not every question in the universe is answered. She could probably be considered one of the "forgotten" as well. But to think that such a minor person, just a regular female Iyxan, could be the root cause of her species' near extinction, is very cool to me.

Ayale
Ayale is pretty much just a plot device. I wanted to build up to her having a romantic relationship with The Benefactor but then not paying that off for a twist. Her main purpose is to have Loriphim kill her to truly show the depravity of The Benefactor. It's a dramatic moment when TB uses his powers to force Loriphim to kill his daughter. The Benefactor turning on Loriphim would not have been nearly as dramatic without Ayale there. She's not a likable character, though. I made sure to not have her and TB get along so that the readers wouldn't feel very sad when she dies. It's unclear if she knows that what she tries to feed The Benefactor is poisonous to him. That ambiguity does make her character more complex.

Judge Sertung
Sertung represents the noble side of the Daman, and is one of the last vestiges of power of that dying species in Forever Alone. He is a dogmatic being, though he abandons his dogma when his species dies. He is one of the most important characters in the history of the Dragon Ball universe, as well, for if it wasn't for him, the Kais would not have gotten the training they needed to assume the mantle of the mortal gods of the universe. He sacrificed a lot at the end of the second chapter of Forever Alone to train them, and he's quite the noble dude, in my opinion. I'd like to think that he taught the Kais about the Spirit Bomb technique as well. Sertung is very nuanced, very subtle, so it's hard for me to really explain what I was doing with him without giving everything about this story's themes away. What I will say though is that Sertung is a god-like figure, both because of his power and intellect, and because of his role as a judge - a judger of worth. Sertung is remarkably steadfast in personality and countenance, and that was a deliberate choice on my part, so that he could assume that authoritative role as well as possible.

Suffice to say, I consider him one of the best characters in the series and think that he's quite the tragic character. There's certainly beauty in the austere desolation of his existence, especially after Verlate is put in her mind prison and most of his peers die. Sertung is one of the last Daman to die, and that was done as a sign of respect on my part. The Daman did not go out with a whimper in that regard. He was one of the greatest Daman in terms of intellect, power, and influence on the universe. I wouldn't put him as the best ever, or perhaps even in the top 5, but he's definitely one of the most significant members of his race, and it's fortuitous for the universe that he was alive at the time his species' empire collapsed... otherwise, the universe would have descended into chaos, had he not stepped in to train the Kais.

Sertung's name comes from the island Verlaten, an island in the Krakatoa island chain. Sertung's name is a pun off of the same island as Verlate's own name. Why have all these puns and references to Krakatoa? Well, The Daman in general are based off of the Rakata species from the Star Wars universe, and that species' name is a reference to one of the islands of Krakatoa.

Damani Delegate
These guys were purposefully underdeveloped. I wanted to give just a hint of the old Damani leadership. These are the guys in control of the universe, but they are petty, stupid, and corrupt. And they are dying. Of course, they die by the time Sertung's point-of-view section comes around, further showing their fall. They symbolize the passing of the guard, the fall of the Daman in general, and how the Kais are going to have to replace them. These delegates are a shadow of the former Daman leadership and empire (think of Anaku, who, for all his evilness, was a strong, willful leader - these delegates are neither of those things) The Kais turn out much different than the Daman, and that says as much about them as it does about the Daman, particularly this delegate of old dudes.

The Kai
This Kai is greatly symbolic in many ways - his meeting with Verlate being one of the elegant, reformed god meeting the base savage. He is also quite a complex character, seen by him getting a whole point-of-view section in chapter two of Forever Alone. That is significant, for he's the only character other than Verlate and Sertung who gets such a perspective. I wanted to show him as just a normal guy, a worker who's not very high up on the social ladder, but got a little lucky with absorbing Verlate's power. He doesn't know what to do with that because he's not a good - not in mind nor body. Later Kais will be considered gods, but this guy was not raised to think he was one. He later tries to get vengeance on Forty-three, one of his inferiors, and fails, leading to his death and to the deaths of nearly every other Kai. The Kai is deeply tied to this theme in TF of revenge and how destructive it is to all involved. But this Kai is not a bad guy. He made some mistakes and perhaps has some morally questionable moves. But even in his point-of-view section, it's clear that he's just a regular dude who got put into bad situation. He isn't innocent in the proceedings - he tried to take Verlate's power. But his end goals were just him trying to gain more agency, more liberty, and that is something I can't get too mad about.

Forty-three
This minor character is just like any fool you have dealt with in life. He's not based on anyone in particular. He's an archetypal character, I suppose. It's certainly maddening that he screwed up the Kai's life and then ultimately stole Verlate's power from that Kai. The fact that Forty-three did that is significant, for it caused the whole planet and most of its population to die not long after. It is not clear if the same thing would have happened had the Kai been able to keep Verlate's power. But yeah, this guy is a bitch and I hate him and his existence shows that there is no justice in the universe.

Savage
Savage was unnamed in early versions of Forever Alone. Either Hyper Zergling or Destructivedisk made this a con in their review of the story, being confused by who exactly Savage was. So during the later edits of this story, I gave Savage a name just to please them. The name isn't necessary, but I suppose it does make things a little clearer. He is not one of the previously seen Kais in the story, after all. Savage is representative of what happened to the Kais after Verlate's power was stolen. Savage himself has descended to a near-insane level of consciousness. He's like a drug addict. And his name itself speaks to the themes of colonization and the subversion of "inferior" species by the Daman, which are both hinted at in Forever Alone. Who Savage actually is doesn't matter. He represents what happened to his species after they gained access to power they shouldn't have. It's not all his fault what he does in Forever Alone, but he is also not entirely innocent either. A man chooses, and a slave obeys. Everyone, even Savage, had a choice in their actions, and he chose to give in to the power he got and become a maniac.

Little Purple
Little Purple's name is a reference to Piccolo's name from the AB Groupe dub of DBZ (his name in that dub was "Big Green"). I'd like to think that this little guy is going to be the first Supreme Kai ever. He doesn't have much of a personality, though he does have some cautious, violent tendencies seen with the other primitive Kais to make his personality consistent with them. Little Purple doesn't have much of a personality or role, though he does symbolize the resurgence of the Kais. Him being so young is important, for he is the first one whom Sertung trains to be a new caretaker of the universe. This shows how the focus is primarily on the newest generation of Kais, not the older ones.

=Deleted Characters= These are major characters who were deleted before the final version of The Forgotten. Some never existed in writing, some did, and others were never actually put up on this site.

Detective Ishida
Detective Ishida was going to be the person called in to find Ledas in the original draft of TF. He was going to work with Cardinal, though he wasn't necessarily politically-aligned with the old man. He was based on L from Death Note. I really loved that series and was watching it around the time I began working on TF, so I wanted to create a "Death Note" saga. This was going to occur after Ledas killed Mr. Kyokatoshi. After the man was found dead, Cardinal and Ishida would be called in and spend a very long saga (like 30+ chapters... it was really ridiculous) hunting down Ledas. I wrote several scenes for this saga and had it in my TF works document in 2010. This was all during the fourth saga of the time, known as the Kyokatshi Saga. It was written in brown text color (a text color later used for earlier drafts of the Fulfillment Saga). I wrote maybe 3-4 scenes involving Ishida in that saga before getting rid of the saga.

So Ishida was going to be this very smart man who was anti-social and didn't exactly get along with Cardinal. He would certainly challenge Cardinal. I wanted his arc to complete with him finding Ledas and then not wanting to go through with getting rid of Ledas. I never came up with what happened to him after that, though. He was supposed to be a good guy, and some of the stuff in his personality was utilized in how I characterized Cardinal in the final version of TF. He was going to interrogate people like Aka, like Ryori, maybe even Ledas himself, but he was never going to be the bad guy. He's like this guy stuck in the system. Part of his arc was going to be him rebelling against Cardinal and struggling with the ethical aspects of what he's doing and the moral responsibility he has to capture Ledas (to protect the world).

I realized rather early on, before I posted any text of the Kyokatshi Saga on this site, that this saga wasn't going to work. The idea of a "Death Note" saga isn't a bad idea, but it's just not one I felt was right for my story. So I eventually got rid of it. Ishida was completely eliminated along with it. He is the most significant character to be deleted from the final version of TF. His stuff was mostly about chasing down Ledas, hunting him down, in a thriller-like way. Ledas is still hunted down in the Planet Earth Saga, but Cardinal and the New Red Ribbon Army now find him within a few chapters. There was no place for Ishida in that final plot. Ishida could only exist if the hunt was stretched out over a saga or so. I think it was good that Ishida was eliminated, for as it stands, there are plenty of characters in the Planet Earth Saga already who have minimal roles. There didn't need to be another repetitive character. That said, I do like Ishida and do miss him a little bit. I think my later story called Spindlerun: The Tale of Yajirobe may have featured a character (named Elijah) who was slightly based on Ishida.

Aka
Aka was going to be Ryori's sister. She was also known as Aiko in some early scenes of TF that were never posted on this site. I actually wrote scenes with her and Ledas and other characters on my old Microsoft Works document of TF. I no longer have that document, and probably deleted her scenes on it anyway. So I don't have access to them anymore.

Aka was going to be roughly the same age as Ryori - perhaps even his twin. She was going to be a romantic interest for Ledas. She was also going to be involved in the plot with Cardinal and Detective Ishida trying to find Ledas. One of the scenes I wrote that involved her was actually a scene with Ishida interrogating her. I remember that much. With the removal of the Ishida plotline, though, Aka didn't really have much of a purpose anymore, and as I thought it over more, I didn't want Ledas to get romantically involved with such a young girl (I like it when he's with older females). So she was deleted. This had significant impacts on the plot, notably with Ryori's character development. His character would have been much different had he had a sister. Also, this removed any romantic plotline from TF, which is not something I regret doing. Romanticism was always very low-key in DB and DBZ (think of Goku/Chi Chi or Vegeta/Bulma).

When I realized I didn't want Ledas to end TF with a romantic partner, that made it easier to deleted Aka (as well, in 2010, I was less confident writing for young girls, so it relieved some pressure to remove her from the story). Sexual encounters for Ledas still exist with Nurse Yorokobi and Miki - two women older than Aka. As well, the mother of Nir, a girl I have yet to give a name to (though I do know at least that her name starts with an "A" like Aka's), will be somewhat based on what I originally planned on doing with Aka, although she will be years older than Aka. So even though this character was deleted, she existed spiritually in TF, to some degree, and will kind of be reborn to be the mother of Nir.

Ryori's Parents
In the original concept of TF, Ryori's parents were going to be shown. I removed them as I didn't see a place for them. Now, he still has parents, even in canon, since he's a human being. But his parents are never shown, and it's implied they are dead or gone. Shoekki was taking care of Ryori, and after he died, Ryori was scared he was going to be put in an orphanage. I chose not to delve into what happened to his parents in the text TF, though I imagine it's likely they are dead. They weren't going to be gone in early concepts of the story, and would have been somewhat involved in the Ishida investigation as well. But once that plotline was removed, there was really no reason to have them. It's thematically more interesting to have Ryori have this pain in his past that he doesn't talk about, like Ledas. It also makes Shoekki more interesting, knowing that he's raising his little brother. That's surely not easy and yet he never complains about it. So by removing Ryori's parents from the picture, I was able to give both Ryori and Shoekki some interesting character development.

Ledas' Other Earth Friends
I never named these characters, but they did exist in one or two scenes I wrote for later sagas of TF. One scene featured Ledas taking Ryori, Aka, and the others to Planet Cooler 92 on his space ship. By that point, the outpost is wrecked, but he takes them there primarily to show them where he came from. Additionally, other characters were going to exist in school. None of these characters ever panned out. In many different drafts of TF, various other Earth friends for Ledas existed. Even in the final version of the Fulfillment Saga, I prepared for two chapters to be about Ledas and Ryori at school, and that would have introduced several Earth friends. But those chapters were removed and replaced by other chapters, so that never came to be. Even in earlier drafts of TF, I considered having an expanded plot for Ledas at school. There just wasn't room for it, and as I wrote the story out, I thought having such scenes wouldn't add anything to the story, so these characters were never put in. Now, had the Kyokatshi Saga been written, more human friends would have been introduced. Many would have, probably. But that saga being deleted meant that all of the fluff was removed - all of this extraneous stuff at school wasn't put into the story. There were still of course scenes at school, but those were few and deliberate, so introducing new characters who have no further plot relevance wasn't something I wanted to do. Some of Ledas' and Ryori's other Earth friends may be seen in the first couple of chapters of my (as of writing this commentary) unnamed story about Cooler's children, Raimie and Haimaru, which also heavily features Ledas. But that story won't be written in the near future (I'm writing this commentary in mid January 2016), so I can't promise anything.

Old Iyxan
This Old Iyxan existed in the old version of Outbreak: Paved In Blood, the special about The Benefactor that was nearly completely re-written during the final edits of TF. And during those final edits, the Old Iyxan was completely removed from the story. He served the role as a parental/guardian figure for The Benefactor, similarly to how Mrs. Fanshi served that function for Ledas. This guy's role was supplanted by Master Loriphim and by The Benefactor's mother, though they both served slightly different roles than this guy. That's just how the story developed during the final edits. He was a bit too static, too soft, to interest me, so I did something different with his successors, though they both died just like he did, in the end.

Genocide Monster (TF Special villain)
I had remarkably little planned for this monster even when I began writing his special. Hell, the main reason I got rid of his special is because I couldn't visualize what he looked like and couldn't think up a good backstory for him. He was supposed to be an animal, though, not a sentient being. I don't think he would be able to talk, either. He was just going to be some clever animal preying on a planet that The Plantains go to in order to see what's going on. When they find him, they battle him, and the rest is history. So the setup for this guy was a lot like any DBZ movie, although I didn't even come up with a backstory for the monster, which even the worst DBZ movies did. I didn't get any inspiration for what he would end up looking like, either, and that prompted the special and this character to be abandoned. In my mind, all I can picture is a sinewy, tentacle-clad, red mass. But I just didn't have the drive to develop him into a more coherent villain, so he was abandoned.

Stomping Grounds Instructor
This guy was going to be somewhat old, harsh, and a little fat. He was going to be a man past his physical prime, and he was based on a math teacher I once had. He would help both Guva and Banas, though, to show his sensitive side. When the Guva special was abandoned, so too was this character. A bit of his harshness and charisma bled over into Digranite's character. I didn't plan much for this character, but he was going to have a complex personality so that he could be a mentor to Guva and Banas and shape their view of life, to an extent. That said, I was planning on having Cooler kill this guy at the end of the special (for a reason I never came up with, for I never wrote the special). He was also going to have purple skin and be balding, though he was not of the same species as Guva. He would have looked like an anthropomorphized plum.

Cardinal's Other Assistants
Shortly after I came up with Dewberry and Kindler and File, I created a list of the other potential associates of Cardinal in a notebook of mine. I do have that notebook still, and if I ever find it, I'll upload a picture of the associates list below. The concept was that each associate would be tied to a letter of the alphabet, though if my memory serves, I don't think I went past the letter "L". Kindler, File, and Dewberry took up three letters, but that leaves quite a few others. The associate for "I" was Igear. This name was later used for the name of an Iyxan child whom The Benefactor killed. Now as to if these characters actually exist, beyond the mythos of just TF, I cannot say. I will consider using them for my Death Note story, though. I did consider that the ones who didn't appear in TF would appear in my Death Note story and vice versa, but I never got that far in the planning to make that happen. There are only three Cardinal assistants in TF. Surely, he had others, and they may appear in my story about Haimaru and Raimie, two children of Cooler, which also features Ledas. In that case, I will adhere to this idea that each assistant's name starts with a different letter. And if I ever write my Death Note story, I will also adhere to this and have his assistants be people whose names start with unused letters, with a priority on letters coming before "L".

Just from the way TF played out, though, there wasn't a need for more assistants than the three who exist. Even File is a bit tenuous as a character. Had there been more of a need, I would have used the aforementioned method to create more of them. I did name Igear, and I may have named one or two others (I seriously do not remember, though), but they were not given personalities or histories or any of that stuff. So if I need anymore for future stories, I will basically need to create them from scratch. I will probably use a different name for the "I" slot as well, since Igear became a name I used for a different character.

Dodoria once existed in the old version of Outbreak: Paved In Blood, though he never had a very large role. He was deleted from it when the special was mostly rewritten during the final edits of TF, for I didn't have any purpose for him. He could have also been in the Prince Vegeta Saga and/or in the flashback chapters of the Reunion Saga. However, I saw no purpose for him in those sagas, either. If I had had a need or place for him, he would have been in the story. I had no need for him, so he was not put in the story. However, Frieza does reference Dodoria a few times, and the scene direction in the Prince Vegeta Saga at one point does hint that he may be just off-screen for one scene. So Dodoria is out of the spotlight of TF, just to the point where he never actually appears. But I'm sure he's "around" Frieza's space ship during the Prince Vegeta Saga. Just, as luck would have it, he was never seen in the flesh.

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