The Destructivedisk Anthology/One

One was never intended as the start of a new collection of stories. Of all my spontaneous stories, One was probably of the most importance. I wrote during a brief return to Dragon Ball Fanon in the Summer of 2013, a return that was originally intended to be dedicated to finishing some of my older stories, such as A Front. I found myself unable to write these longer stories, however, but also felt a need to create something.

I distinctly remember going outside and playing basketball while listening to music, a habit that I’ve always had when trying to brainstorm. I racked my brain for characters that I had seldom written about before. As I often do, I started with the five human characters that are most interesting to me - Krillin, Tien, Yajirobe, Yamcha, and Chiaotzu. I neglected to write about Krillin, Tien, or Yajirobe, as I had already written about them in A Front, Tien: Origins, and Why Bother? respectively. I eliminated Chiaotzu too, because I couldn’t think of anything interesting for him - I reserved his story for a later date. Thusly I settled upon Yamcha, and began to think of a storyline.

A plot point that I had previously introduced in Tien: Origins was that Yamcha was secretly torn up over Bulma leaving him. I felt like that character point had been underplayed in Tien: Origins after the second chapter, so I elected to write a story about that. I knew at the time that I wanted to write a fairly short story, and that I also wanted it to be about Yamcha’s isolation and how the world had left him alone. I chose the story title “One” to depict this, because, as the saying goes, one is the loneliest of numbers.

A lot of the other touches involving this number followed thereafter. The number “one” is used no fewer than six times throughout the story, and the story is also 1,111 words long. This was never intended to be a trait that would be replicated in future stories - it was instead planned as a one-shot with a couple of fun easter eggs inside. However, a lot of the easter eggs in this story would later be carried over to future stories in the collection in order to provide a sense of connectivity between the stories.

I wrote this story very quickly, probably in the span of about 45 minutes. I did not listen to music at all while writing the story, something that is very rare for me to do. In fact, this may have been the only story that did not feature music in the song-writing process. The basic theme of the story is that Yamcha is no longer suited for human society and is therefore relegated to a life of relative seclusion and isolation.

One
This story's theme is Booze Me Up and Get Me High by Ween.

The door swung shut behind Yamcha. The bar was dimly lit, smoky, and the air smelled distinctly of damp wood. Yamcha slumped over to the barstool, before pulling out a stool and seating himself on it.

“One shot of whiskey,” he called out, gesturing to the lone bartender.

The bartender got out a small cup. He fetched a bottle of whiskey, unscrewing the top and tilting it over and letting the liquid rush out of the bottle. He stopped when the cup was full, before screwing the lid back onto the bottle and putting it away. After putting a small toothpick into the glass, he brought the whiskey over to Yamcha.

“That’ll be 510 zeni,” the bartender told Yamcha, who took out his wallet. As he pulled out the money, he noticed a small wallet photo of Bulma. He grabbed the picture along with the money, taking both out of the fold in his wallet.

Handing the money over to the bartender, he quietly asked, “You guys have a trashcan?” The bartender took the zeni and pointed over to a corner of the room, where a dustbin lie. He took the small photo and dropped it into the bin, watching it float down to the hole and into the trash. He put his wallet away and moved back to his stool. Sitting down, he swirled the whiskey around with the toothpick. Glumly, Yamcha stared into his one murky reflection in the whiskey.

He noticed that his hair had grown longer and that the origins of a beard were forming on his chin. His scars had not started to heal yet, which was of no surprise to Yamcha. As he swirled the whiskey again, his image disappeared, mixing into a blur of yellow and black colors.

Turning his head to the left, he saw a man physically dominating a girl. He had her backed up against a wall, leering over her. He was a large man, very muscular, and clearly was about to engage in some less than savory acts with the girl.

Yamcha’s instincts took over, as his heroism came immediately to the forefront. He stood up and walked over to them, before calling out, “Come on, man, let up on the girl. Nobody needs that.”

The man turned over to Yamcha, smirking a little bit. “Yeah, go bother someone else, big guy. I’m in the middle of something,” he scoffed.

“Come on, just let the girl go and we won’t have any trouble.”

“What’s that? You wanna fight? Come at me, big guy. I’ve got time for you.”

Yamcha sighed. He didn’t want to have to use violence against this guy, but he would do what he had to do. It wouldn’t be his first bar fight. He used to get into them quite often, getting into tussles before he was even old enough to drink. He and Puar would go around, stealing from people and scrapping with all sorts of folks. This was just another fight, just another scuffle.

Faster than anyone in the bar could see, Yamcha pinned the big man to the wall, causing a large dent in the wall. This would have been enough to stop the man – he had a genuine look of terror on his face – but Yamcha was angry. Maybe not at the man, but he was angry and dissatisfied. He needed an outlet, he needed to go off on someone, and this was the man who had been asking for it.

Yamcha raised his fist, mostly out of muscle memory, and laid a right hook across the man’s cheek. He crashed down to the floor, blood leaking out of his cheek.

It took Yamcha a moment to realize what he had done. He bent over, checking the man’s vital signs. There were none. That was all it took – one hit, one moment of indecision, one second of weakness, and a man was dead. Yamcha knew this before coming to the bar, he knew that a single bad decision could take a life. Why he kept trying to be a part of this society, he didn’t know. He knew that he couldn’t fit into the world of normal humans.

Looking around the bar, he noticed that all eyes were on him. Yamcha didn’t have much time to think about the morality of what he had just done – he wasn’t concentrating on the present and he wasn’t thinking much. He walked back over to the barstool. Swiftly, he grabbed his whiskey and drank it down. The bartender was on the phone behind the counter, presumably calling the police. Yamcha wasn’t too concerned about them.

He waited for the bartender to finish his call.

“Was that the police?” Yamcha calmly asked.

The bartender had started crouching behind the counter. “Yea – yeah! Get out of here!”

Yamcha calmly nodded. “Can you fix me another whiskey?”

“No! Leave! You don’t belong here!”

This line made Yamcha particularly angry. He walked away, back to the door. He kicked the door open, causing it to fly off its hinges. Looking around himself, he saw that he was alone. Silently wondering where the nearest desert was, Yamcha leaped off the ground. He took flight, and he started flying to the north.

Yamcha soon found the ground again. As his feet made contact, small puffs of sand came up into the air. He looked around, seeing an oasis to the left of him and more sand to the right. The stars were more visible here than they were in the city, and they all shone brilliantly in the dark sky. For a moment, Yamcha thought he saw the moon, but it was only a mirage. His memory of the moon was only a relic of the past, a faint image of what once was.

Well, what was Yamcha supposed to do? He couldn’t train with the Z Fighters – they were too much for him. He couldn’t live with the other humans – they weren’t enough for him. He had traveled to King Kai’s planet, fought against the Saiyans, seen the murder of Frieza and King Cold. There wasn’t much left in normal society to interest him. He was just a bug, a predator, in the normal world.

Maybe he could go back to being a bandit, stealing from clueless travelers in the desert. He had never felt unsatisfied back then, he had never felt anything less than happy back when he had done that. How was it possible that seeing so much more had left him so much less fulfilled?

“All right, Puar, I guess we should find our old base.”

The only response Yamcha received was one, single gust of wind.

Endnotes

 * 1) Booze Me Up and Get Me High was not originally intended as the theme for the story. Fittingly, the theme was originally going to be One by Metallica. I only added Booze Me Up and Get Me High as the theme after I decided that the story would commence a collection, as I wanted all of the story's themes to be ween songs.
 * 2) The dialogue in this story is a lot shorter and more concise than most of my previous stories. I had re-read a couple of my older stories, such as A Front and Tien: Origins, and had come to the conclusion that most of the dialogue was wretched because the characters spoke too verbosely. Consequently, I made a conscious effort to keep the dialogue short and simple. It all contributes to giving the story a more somber, quiet mood than many of my earlier stories.
 * 3) The unit of currency in Dragon Ball, the Zeni, is equivalent to the real life value of a yen, the Japanese currency. 510 Zeni, therefore, is equal to roughly $4.35 in American money. I don't remember what the original amount was, but using today's conversion rates that's what it comes out to. This is a shot at bars, because $4 is a ridiculous amount to pay for one shot of whiskey, but bars are notorious for overpricing their drinks.
 * 4) It took me like 10 minutes to decide whether to use the word 'lie' or 'lay' when describing the dustbin. I specifically remembering looking up a guide to grammar and everything to make sure I got it right.
 * 5) I really like the imagery of Yamcha staring at his reflection and then erasing it by swirling the drink around. It's almost like Yamcha can't stand to look at himself, and therefore feels compelled to erase his own image.
 * 6) Yamcha reminiscing on his time with Puar is a lot like how I imagine Yamcha's life pre-Dragon Ball. I've always wanted to write a story about Yamcha's life as a bandit in the desert, but I've never quite had the drive to do so nor have I been able to come up with a coherent plot to make for a compelling story.
 * 7) Yamcha killing the man with one punch is probably the clearest representation of the story's theme. A lot of the story is about how Yamcha has to come to terms with being essentially super-human. He is no longer like the other people around him, he no longer fits in. Consequently, even a small moment of indecision and anger can result in him causing irreversible damage to someone else. He recognizes that he poses a threat to those around him and therefore seeks to get away from everyone else. It's almost like how Bruce Banner isolates himself from the rest of society so he won't hurt anybody if he turns into the Hulk.
 * 8) Yamcha seeing the moon as a mirage is an idea that is later revisited in All Good Children Go To Heaven. It's a commentary on how people try to cling onto the past even when it's long gone. It's one of the best pieces of symbolism I've ever written, and I'm glad I was able to write it in a way that blended so seamlessly into established Dragon Ball canon.
 * 9) "He was just a bug, a predator, in the normal world." - This is one of the most subtle but important lines in the whole story. The contrast between the two terms cannot be understated. Compared to the rest of the Z Fighters, Yamcha is just a bug that they could easily stomp out, but he is a giant compared to the rest of human society. As a result, Yamcha doesn't really fit in anywhere. He's stuck in a weird, in-between spot that leaves him feeling quite alone.
 * 10) The use of the word "one" in the last sentence also set a precedent where every story in the collection would feature the title of the story, excluding the last two stories in the collection.

Overall, I'm really happy with the way that One turned out. The writing is really sharp in this one and the dialogue was definitely the best that I had written up to that point, and possibly ever. My main complaint is that the pacing in the middle of the story felt a bit off, as Yamcha's murder of the man and the subsequent encounter with the bartender felt slightly rushed. If I were to go back and rewrite the story now, I would probably add a few hundred words to it and include more build-up during his fight with the guy in the bar and maybe some foreshadowing to it earlier in the story. Nevertheless, I really enjoy this story's characterization of Yamcha and I think that a lot of the subtleties in the story contribute to making it one of my strongest stories overall. I would give One an A rank.