Chapter 81: The First Scroll
The morning sun did little to warm the perpetual chill of the Inkwell District. I walked beside Laron, a thick leather satchel slung over my shoulder, its weight a comforting promise. Inside was a universe. Briza trailed a step behind, a silent, armored shadow, her presence a constant reminder that our venture was now a target, even if we couldn't see the archer.
Laron was chattering nervously, his ears twitching. "She will be impressed, I am sure of it! The sheer volume of work! The clarity of your vision!"
"I think 'impressed' might be aiming a bit high," I muttered, my hand resting on the satchel's flap. "Let's shoot for 'mildly less disdainful.'"
We reached Elara's scarred door. Before Laron could knock, it swung open, revealing the cartographer herself. She looked exactly as she had the day before, hair in its brutal bun, face a mask of severe expectation, as if she'd been standing there waiting for us to be late.
"You are three minutes past the agreed time," she stated, her accent sharp enough to cut glass. She stepped back, allowing us to file into her chaotic sanctuary. Her eyes swept over Briza. "Must the hired muscle track filth into my workspace?"
Briza didn't dignify that with a response, simply taking up a post by the door, her arms crossed.
Elara's gaze then landed on me and the satchel. "Well? Let us see if your night was spent in productive genius or childish doodling."
Okay, game on.
I didn't say a word. I walked to her large, scarred central table, carefully pushing aside a half-finished, breathtakingly detailed map of what looked like Silveridge's sewer system. I opened the satchel and began to lay out the contents, one by one.
First, the character sheets. I placed the rendering of kid Goku right in the center. Then, flanking him, I set down Bulma, Oolong, Yamcha and Puar, and the comical trio of Emperor Pilaf, Shu, and Mai. Finally, with a sense of ceremony, I placed the majestic, terrifying image of Shenron, the Eternal Dragon, at the head of the table, the dragon's ink-green form seeming to coil in the dim light.
The room fell silent, save for the faint hum of the city outside. Elara didn't move. Her eyes, those pale, critical orbs, scanned each image slowly, meticulously. She leaned in close to Goku, her nose almost touching the parchment, examining the line work of the Power Pole. She studied Bulma's pigtails and futuristic gear, her expression unreadable. A faint, almost imperceptible twitch touched her lip at the sight of the cowardly Oolong. When her gaze fell upon Shenron, she actually took a half-step back, a sharp intake of breath the only sign of her awe.
"This… is the cast?" she finally asked, her voice slightly hushed.
"This is the beginning of it," I confirmed. "The story starts with a boy, Goku, living alone on a mountain. He meets a girl, Bulma, who is searching for seven magical orbs called Dragon Balls. When you gather all seven, a dragon, Shenron," I pointed to the drawing, "appears and grants you one wish. Any wish."
Elara's head snapped up from the drawings, her eyes wide with a mixture of horror and fascination. "Any wish? That is… that is an appallingly powerful….. The narrative implications are… staggering. And reckless."
"It's the engine of the entire first arc," I said. "They're on a quest to find them, and so are these jokers." I tapped the drawing of Emperor Pilaf. "He wants to wish for world domination."
"A goal both cliché and ambitious," she sniffed, but she was still looking at the drawings, her fingers itching to touch them. "The artistic style remains consistent. A bizarre fusion of the simplistic and the hyper-detailed. The creature designs are… imaginative. I will grant you that." She pointed a long, ink-stained finger at Kuririn. "This one is bald. Why?"
"Because he's a monk-in-training," I said, fighting a smile. "It's a whole thing. Forget about him for a minute, he is not important yet and only gets introduced for the second arc of the story."
She made a sound of disgust deep in her throat. "Absurd." But she didn't look away.
Next, I placed the stack of written pages next to the drawings. My handwritten plot outlines, dialogue snippets, and scene descriptions. "This is the story. The first major arc. From Goku meeting Bulma to the brink of the first World Martial Arts Tournament."
She picked up the first page, her eyes scanning my messy script. Her brow furrowed deeper with each line. "The dialogue is… juvenile. The humor is base. A pig who turns into things? A turtle who teaches martial arts? It reads like the ramblings of a fevered child."
Laron, who had been watching this entire exchange with mounting panic, finally squeaked, "But the heart, Mistress Elara! The sense of adventure!"
She ignored him, her gaze locked on me. "You expect me to lend my talent, what remains of it, after being associated with this to a story about a monkey-boy and a wish-granting dragon"
I'd had enough. "I expect you to do the job you agreed to," I said, my voice dropping, losing its patience. "I'm not asking you to like it. I'm asking you to help me build it. You said you wanted artistic integrity. Well, the integrity is in the spirit of it. It's fun. It's exciting. It's about friendship and getting stronger and going on an adventure. Maybe that's a concept that's been beaten out of you by your precious Guild and their 'sacred geometries,' but it's what makes this work."
Her face flushed with anger. "How dare you…"
"I dare because I'm the one with the story," I cut her off. "You're the one with the technical skill. That's the partnership. You think Evander is doing this because he finds it intellectually stimulating? He's doing it because he sees power in it. And he's right. But the power isn't in making it stuffy and 'respectable.' The power is In this." I slapped my hand down on the drawing of Goku's determined face. "It's in that look. It's in the dream of a wish. It's in the thrill of a fight well fought."
I pulled the magical scribe from the satchel and held it out to her. "So, here's the choice, Elara. You can stand there and sneer, and we'll find someone else who's hungry enough to see the potential. Or you can take this damn quill, swallow your pride, and help me create something this world has never seen. But decide now. I'm done wasting time."
The silence In the room was absolute. Laron looked like he was about to faint. Even Briza had uncrossed her arms and was watching intently.
Elara stared at the quill in my hand as if it were a venomous snake. I could see the war raging behind her eyes, a lifetime of conditioning and elitism battling against the raw, undeniable call of pure, revolutionary creation. She looked from the quill, to my face, to the earnest, adventurous eyes of the boy on the table.
With a sound of utter exasperation, as if she were capitulating to a terrible, degrading fate, she snatched the quill from my hand.
"It will require storyboards," she said, her voice tight. "Proper panels. We cannot just have images floating on a page. There must be a flow. A visual narrative. And the inking for mass reproduction will be a nightmare with this… chaotic style." She was already thinking, already problem-solving, her disdain now channeled into a thousand technical criticisms.
A slow grin spread across my face. "So you're in?"
She fixed me with a glare that could freeze lava. "Do not mistake my professional curiosity for approval. This is still juvenile nonsense. But…" she paused, her gaze drifting back to Shenron, "…the dragon is well-rendered. And the narrative structure, for all its idiocy, is sound. Now, get out. All of you. I need silence to even begin to comprehend the logistical nightmare you have dropped upon my desk."
We didn't need to be told twice. Laron practically dragged me out of the workshop, babbling with relief. Briza followed, a ghost of a smile on her lips as the door slammed shut behind us.
We stood in the dim alley, the sounds of the Inkwell District washing over us. The first, most difficult bridge had been crossed. The artist was on board. The story was in her hands.
The creation of "Dragon Ball" on the world of Ros had officially begun.
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