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Merely a year and a half ago, Emperor Pilaf had begun his noble quest to once more collect the Dragon Balls. Nobody else seemed to be going for them, so it was an opportune time to sneak in a wish. Through sheer brilliance and perseverance, he had already collected four of the balls. Mai and Shu had been sent to a volcano in the southern islands to collect the fifth ball. Partaking in such a dangerous affair would be unbecoming of an emperor. They had taken their Pilaf Machines with them, so they would be fine. And if some tragedy befell them, he could always find replacements on craigslist.
One of his long-distance spies, a swarthy, sneering fellow named Dim, had alerted him to this ball’s location last night. Supposedly a man named Oscalermo Tahne, the head of a small village in the northern mountains, was in possession of a Dragon Ball. Pilaf would be able to deal with him well enough on his own.
It was cold up there, so he wore his scarf. He had landed on a snowy path overlooking the village. There were no more than thirty people living amongst a few log cabins. Smoke was rising from most chimneys.
He called up Dim. “This is Emperor Pilaf. Tell me, Dim, which house does the village chief live in?”
The spy gulped audibly. “Oh yeah, you know, boss, it’s the, uh, uh… the, uh, the big one.”
He scanned the houses, making sure. Blinking rapidly, he tried to contain his emotions. “They’re all the same size. You never watched him go into his house, did you?”
“Well, uh, boss, he’s wearing it around his neck–”
“Fool!”
He hung up, biting his tongue. He would be sure to fire Dim on the morrow. His blood running hot, Pilaf made his way into town, taking his trusty binoculars from his Pilaf Machine with him. He began to whistle, so as to not draw attention to himself. It was cold as a night in the desert. He hated this place. It was awful; he wanted to go home. He had to think about his future self, and what he would think of giving up now. That simply would not do. He could not disappoint Future Pilaf. He had to go on.
In the first house, he spied an elderly woman sitting in a recliner, watching television. There was a grey-and-white cat on her lap. She was sipping a drink and talking to her cat with great vigor. The old bat leaned in and started bathing her feline with her tongue. Gagging, Pilaf decided to move on.
In the second house, he spotted not a soul. A pot of soup, or something similar, was simmering on the stove, neglected to high hell. He waited for a few minutes, hoping to watch it boil over. Instead, after a time, a middle-aged man rounded the corner, singing to himself about having his favorite soda, cherry red, holding a ladle and a cup of vanilla pudding, the top having just been ripped off. He was as naked as he was fat. The emperor fled with haste.
The third was home to at least five different people. None of them was wearing a Dragon Ball around their neck. He ground his teeth. In the cold, Pilaf was forgetting his imperial kindness. Why did he always have to be so unlucky?
In the fourth home, he noticed a wrinkly old woman calling for someone to come look at the daily paper. As her elderly husband lumbered over, she cried out, having opened it to find a heaping pile of cat litter and shit inside. It spilled all over her. The man slapped his knee and guffawed, his cheeks turning rosy with pleasure.
He was starting to shiver bad. Moving on to the next house, he spotted an older gentleman sitting at a computer, working at something fierce on his lap. Pilaf did not understand, but the man was almost entirely naked (save for his socks), so he didn’t stay long.
His nose drippings had begun freezing over; he couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering. The emperor was of half a mind to fly back to his castle to fetch another jacket. The ground was hard as asphalt. This snow had been here for a while. He did not understand how people could live in such a place.
The emperor couldn’t take it any longer. Pilaf retreated to the only convenience store in town, hoping to find some relief.
“Hello sir, welcome sir, how are ya doing sir?” the cashier asked him as he entered.
Pilaf took a moment to stop his teeth from clacking. “I-I… I’m here for the interview.”
The store clerk had an overly pleasant, almost poisonous voice. “Now, what interview would that be, sir?”
“With the village chief. Yes, I’m sorry I’m late, but I’ll make up the time, don’t you worry!”
The cashier cocked his head sheepishly. “I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir.”
His mind was racing. “I’m a, um, reporter! Yeah, that’s right.” He plucked his shoe off, holding it up like a camera. “I’m here to interview Chief Tahne. He’s done such, um, a great job managing this village that KTUM has decided to run a story on him.”
“Oh, that’s special, sir!”
Pilaf gave the red-haired bloke the sneak eye. “You wouldn’t happen to know which house he lives in, would you?”
“Oh certainly, sir.”
“Which one is it?”
“Oh sir, I can’t tell you that. It’s confidential.”
Pilaf drew himself up, acting haughtier than a dog with all three bones. “Very well, in that case, I’ll take my investigative reporting to the next town. And I may leave in a short blurb about the rudeness I experienced when meeting this town’s residents.”
“Oh my!” the cashier said, sucking in air as he tried to remain professional. “Oh sir, that’s unnecessary. Please, forget what I said earlier. I’ll tell you. Chief Tahne lives in house #8.”
“Excellent.”
“Will I get to be in the promo, sir?”
Pilaf was already gone, having nicked a sweater on the way out. The hapless cashier hadn’t so much as noticed.
With courtly manners, he knocked on the door of house #8 and pulled out a piece of paper, staring at it so as to keep the charade going a little longer.
“Yes, who is it?”
“Good afternoon sir,” Pilaf began in a dramatic voice. “I have come a long way searching for my Great Granddaddy Pilaf’s ancient heirloom. Maybe you have seen it? It is an orange ball with two stars.”
“Why, that’s odd. I found this here ball about five weeks ago down by the frozen lake,” the man said, tugging on his necklace, which invariably had a Dragon Ball hanging from it.
“It’s my Great Granddaddy’s ball! Oh, good sir, you are a life-saver. Thank you for finding it. I am forever in your debt.”
“Hang on a second,” the man said, his face wrinkling over in thought. “How’d your Great Granddaddy’s ball end up down by the lake over there? There’s no one in this village by that name.”
“He lost it two years ago while out on a midafternoon stroll.”
“Your Great Granddaddy was out here walking about in the mountains? I find that hard to believe. There aren’t any other villages within twenty miles of ours.”
Pilaf scoffed, showing him the paper. “Here’s the documentation if you don’t believe me.”
The man read Great Granddaddy Pilaf’s certified, verified, and very official-looking paper stating, unequivocally, that he owned that two-star ball. He shrugged and handed back the paper. “I don’t care about that. It doesn’t mean anything to me. I found the ball, and I like it. It’s mine. Unless you have anything else to say to me, we’re done here.”
He stepped back inside, preparing to close the door on the emperor.
“Wait a minute… I’ve got something for you.”
Out came the switchblade. The man who was ten times his height could do nothing but laugh. “Do you want me to bury you under the snow?”
“I have money!” the emperor said desperately, pulling out bricks worth ten thousand zeni and throwing them at the man’s feet. “Please, I must recover my Great Granddaddy’s ball. It means the world to him.”
“Mmm.” He kicked one of the bricks off his stoop. “Fake zeni. Nice touch.” With that, he slammed the door in Pilaf’s face.
So the story goes, that night, there was a wicked avalanche, and while most of the townspeople were snowed in for a few days, it was a week before they found the body of the village chief, whose house, despite being located in the center of town, had been hit the hardest. The roof had caved in, the second story had collapsed on the first, and every room had been filled with fresh snow. It goes without saying, but when they found him, buried underneath a sheet of ice on the kitchen floor, he was no longer wearing the orange ball with two stars around his neck.