The morning was quiet. Too quiet.
Onigiri stood barefoot on the cool stone tiles of the Capsule Corp garden, bathed in the soft light of early sunrise. Long shadows stretched across the courtyard, and a faint breeze drifted through the cherry trees, carrying nothing with it. No scent of flowers, no warmth from the wind. Just stillness. Too still.
He moved through the forms of the Eightfold Motion slowly. Purposefully. The rhythm of his breath matched each transition—Pull into Push, Twist into Flow, Drop into Lift. Each step was smooth and practiced, a meditation more than a fight.
Stillness wasn't about freezing. It was about feeling. Being completely there.
But something felt wrong.
As he shifted from Flow to Stillness, the calm snapped. It didn't break with sound. It broke with weight—a pressure that pressed between his shoulder blades, cold and unseen. Like someone was staring through him.
He opened his eyes.
The garden looked the same. Empty. Quiet.
But it wasn't.
No Ki signatures. No movement. Nothing obvious. But something was there, just outside the edge of his senses. Watching.
The leaves above him shivered. A bird burst from the tree and flapped off into the sky.
He shifted his weight without thinking. Muscles braced. Shoulders tight. His instincts didn't trust the silence.
"You hiding?" he asked softly, more to the air than anything else.
No answer. Just the wind, and even that didn't feel right.
After a long moment, the pressure faded. Whatever had been there moved on. Or hid better.
He exhaled. Slow. Measured. Forced.
Peace settled over the courtyard again, but it wasn't the same. Not anymore.
"Something's coming," he said quietly, like admitting it made it real.
And for the first time in a long while, he wasn't sure if Stillness would be enough.
He lowered his stance and rolled his shoulders, shaking the tension from his arms. The breeze came back, brushing his skin with a chill that didn't belong. Beneath it was a different smell now—faint traces of oil, metal, and something that reminded him of an empty engine room.
He glanced up at a passing security drone buzzing along its patrol path. It blinked green and moved on. The rooftop cameras tracked as usual. Nothing out of place.
Except everything.
He reached up and let his fingers graze the heavy inhibitor rings on his wrists. Familiar weight. Chosen weight.
He flexed his hands and brought them to his sides. Eyes closed. Breathing steady.
But he didn't sink back into Stillness.
Not this time.
This time, he stayed alert.
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Inside the Capsule Corp main lab, the usual buzz of machines filled the air—a symphony of soft whirs, blips, and the occasional hiss of hydraulics. Bulma sat at her workstation with a half-drained cup of coffee clutched in one hand, her other flicking through a stack of blinking diagnostic windows. Her eyes were sharp, but her movements had a tired rhythm to them, like she hadn't slept quite enough.
She frowned. Backed up. Scrolled again.
There it was.
A small spike buried in the logs—barely there, easy to miss. It had skimmed the edge of Capsule Corp's outer defenses just before dawn. Too fast for the standard sensors, but not too fast for her custom net. It had bounced between three security nodes, curved past the south-west dome, and disappeared without a trace.
"Not a bird. Not a drone. Definitely not one of ours," she muttered, leaning closer to the screen.
Bulma pulled up the data packet. No origin signature. No ID tag. Just an unfamiliar string of code wrapped in a ghost signal. The kind of thing that didn't show up by accident.
She started building a new scan pattern around it, a targeted probe designed to catch the next intrusion.
The door behind her slid open with a soft hiss.
"You ever get the feeling you're being watched?" Onigiri asked, his tone low but steady.
She didn't turn around. "Funny. I was just about to ask you the same thing."
She spun her chair and motioned for him to come over. The screen behind her displayed the trace—a thin spike on a horizontal readout, surrounded by stillness.
"Something fast. No energy signature. No comms traffic. But it was there," she said, tapping the point.
Onigiri leaned in. "This happened right before I felt it."
"Felt what?"
He looked at her, serious now. "Presence. No Ki. No sound. Just this... pressure. Like something sliding past my senses, just out of reach."
Bulma leaned back in her chair, letting that sink in. "Whatever it was, it didn't trip any alarms. So either it knew how to avoid them, or it was never meant to trigger them in the first place."
She walked over to the main display and pulled up the 3D model of the compound. Three blips marked points along the perimeter, forming a near-perfect triangle around the main buildings.
"It wasn't just passing by," she said. "It was scanning. Measuring."
Onigiri crossed his arms. The weight of his inhibitor rings clicked faintly against his skin. The usual comfort of them suddenly felt heavier.
"Then we're being tested," he said quietly.
Bulma didn't argue. She didn't need to.
They both stared at the data trace on the screen—a tiny disruption in the pattern, the ripple that comes before the wave.
Outside, West City carried on under a brightening sky. But inside Capsule Corp, the shadows were already gathering.
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Onigiri stepped out of the Capsule Corp compound a little after midmorning, the lingering unease from earlier still simmering under his skin. He hadn't mentioned it again to Bulma—no point in saying more until there was something to act on. Still, his eyes kept drifting to rooftops and alley corners like his instincts were waiting to catch the silence blinking.
"Hey!"
A familiar voice cut through his thoughts. Yamcha jogged up from across the street, tossing a half-eaten rice ball from one hand to the other. His jacket was slung over his shoulder, and he had that same cocky half-smile that always made him look like he was trying not to admit he cared.
"You look like you saw a ghost," Yamcha said. "Or worse—ran outta food."
Onigiri gave a dry look. "Not funny."
Yamcha bit into the rice ball and chewed exaggeratedly. "You sure? You've got that whole brooding samurai vibe going again."
Onigiri didn't answer at first. Then: "Something's off. Can't prove it yet."
Yamcha finished chewing and gave a short nod. "Alright. Then let's not sit around and wait for it to prove itself. Come on—walk with me."
They wandered into the city's market district. West City was alive in the way only big cities are—bustling streets, loud food vendors, people shouting over each other with no real anger in their voices. Onigiri didn't usually like crowds, but being in motion helped. Watching people live their lives normally helped too.
Yamcha snagged two sticks of grilled meat from a cart and handed one over without asking. "Eat something. You look like a statue."
Onigiri accepted it without a word.
They walked a few blocks like that. Quiet. Casual.
Until Onigiri stopped mid-step.
Across the street, leaning casually against a building, was a man in a clean gray coat and dark glasses. Nothing about him screamed suspicious—he wasn't watching them openly. But he wasn't doing anything else either. No phone, no bag, no movement. Just standing there.
Onigiri didn't blink. "Yamcha."
Yamcha followed his gaze. "You know him?"
"No."
"...But he's watching us?"
"He's trying not to."
They kept walking. Onigiri didn't turn his head again, but he caught a glimpse of the reflection in a shop window. The man was gone.
Gone without moving.
Yamcha looked over. "He split?"
Onigiri nodded once. "Yeah. But he was creepy"
Yamcha tossed his empty skewer into a bin. "Alright. So what's the play?"
Onigiri's voice was quiet. Firm. "Next time… we won't let him leave."
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It didn't take long.
Later that afternoon, as Onigiri and Yamcha took a back alley shortcut toward the Capsule Corp compound, the man was there again.
He stepped out from between two buildings like he'd been waiting all day, hands in his coat pockets, head tilted slightly like he was sizing them up. His expression was flat. Calculated. Almost bored.
"Didn't expect you to double back so soon," he said casually, like they were continuing a conversation he never started.
Yamcha stepped forward, hands already curling into loose fists. "Who are you?"
The man ignored him. His eyes were locked on Onigiri.
"You're slower than the data suggested," he said. "But more aware. That's good. You adapt quickly."
Onigiri's posture shifted—weight settling low, breath evening out.
"You're with Red Ribbon."
"Not officially," the man replied. "This is a field test."
That was all the warning they got.
He moved fast—faster than anything without Ki should have. His coat whipped back as he launched forward, revealing the dull gleam of reinforced plating under his clothes. His first strike was a jab, clean and fast—meant for the throat.
Onigiri blocked it, barely. The force rattled through his arm like hitting a steel beam.
Yamcha flinched, taking a step to the side, but Onigiri raised a hand. "He's mine."
The fight was brutal in its silence. No yelling, no wasted movement. The cyborg didn't posture. He tested. Fast combos. Precision kicks. Elbow strikes thrown like machine-calculated code. And every move was being recorded—Onigiri could see the blinking node embedded just below the man's collarbone.
Onigiri stayed in the flow, his Eightfold Motion absorbing the impact, redirecting force. He twisted under a hook, dropped into a sweep, rose again with a crashing palm. But he was still wearing his rings. Every blow he landed lacked the full power he wanted to unleash.
A knee slammed into his side. He grunted, breath rushing from his lungs.
"You hold back," the cyborg said, his voice clipped and even. "Even now. Curious."
Another flurry came—one-two-three punches, a feint, a twist into an axe kick. Onigiri dodged two, caught the third on his forearm, and rolled back.
Blood touched his lip.
He exhaled.
Then his stance shifted.
No more redirection. No more restraint.
He let the next attack come—and met it head-on.
Drop. Twist. Crash.
He dropped low, twisted into the man's side, and drove a fist straight into the cyborg's core with enough force to lift him off the ground. The alley shook with the impact. Crates behind the cyborg exploded in splinters as his body was hurled into them.
Sparks flew. Metal groaned.
The cyborg lay sprawled, chest sparking, one eye flickering. A small device on his wrist blinked rapidly.
"You're good," he said, voice glitching, digital static creeping into his tone. "But they'll come better."
The blinking turned red.
Onigiri moved forward—too late.
With a burst of heat and a sharp flash of light, the cyborg vanished. Not vaporized—retrieved. Extracted. Clean.
Silence returned.
Yamcha stepped in beside him. "What the hell was that?"
Onigiri didn't answer right away. He stared at the spot where the man had stood, knuckles still curled.
"A warning shot," he said finally. "And a measurement."
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Back at Capsule Corp, Bulma sat at her console, eyes locked on a feed scrolling lines of data too fast for most to follow. The lab lights buzzed overhead, but she didn't notice. Her focus was on the ghost trace from the cyborg's disappearance.
"Got you," she muttered, fingers tapping rapidly. "You didn't explode. You got yanked."
The energy spike wasn't a detonation—it was a signature. A short-range recall pulse. She scrubbed the data, then overlaid a satellite feed. A faint blip pinged off the map, far to the north.
She zoomed in.
"Underground. Hidden under snow and rock. No registry. No comms traffic. That's our guy."
Behind her, footsteps. Onigiri entered quietly, still scraped from the fight. Yamcha followed.
Bulma spun her chair around. "Tracked the cyborg's exit point. Northern facility. Off the grid. Definitely Red Ribbon."
Yamcha raised an eyebrow. "And we're just gonna knock on the front door?"
"No," Bulma said. "We're gonna kick it down."
Onigiri didn't respond right away. He walked over to the workbench where his gear was laid out. His fingers hovered over the inhibitor rings still clamped around his wrists. Familiar. Heavy. Limiting.
He unfastened them slowly.
One by one, the rings hit the metal bench with a soft, solid clunk. The sudden absence of their weight made his arms feel strange—lighter, but more dangerous.
"I wore these to learn restraint," he said quietly. "To keep myself in check. And it worked. I learned control. I needed that."
He paused, eyes on the rings.
"But control isn't the same as hesitation. That cyborg was meant to push me. And I let it."
Bulma didn't say a word. She just listened.
Onigiri looked over at her, then at Yamcha. "I've been fighting like I'm still in training. Like I'm still figuring things out. But we're past that. If I hold back again, someone's going to get hurt. I can't let that happen."
Yamcha gave him a nod, quiet and serious for once. "Then let's hit them first."
Bulma handed him a capsule case. "Jet's fueled and prepped. Coordinates are loaded. Get there fast, get in clean. I'll keep scanning for backup activity."
Onigiri slipped the capsule into his belt pouch, then turned back to the rings one last time.
"You helped me find balance," he said. "Now I need to show them what that balance made possible."
As the trio headed for the hangar, Bulma's console let out a sharp beep. A new signature flickered onto the display—fainter, deeper, buried under the northern facility.
She frowned.
"That's... new."
The screen pulsed with unfamiliar energy. Whatever the cyborg had been, it wasn't the worst thing waiting up there.
She didn't say anything. Not yet.
Outside, the hangar doors opened with a hydraulic hiss. Cold wind spilled into the hallway.
And Onigiri stepped into the light, his steps quiet, his mind clear.
"No more holding back."
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