Part XII - The Blueprint for a Bound Book
Isaiah woke up cuddling with Maria in the low light of her room. Her arm was draped protectively across his small chest, a warm, familiar weight. He carefully eased himself out of the warmth, sliding silently off the worn mattress and onto the cool, splintered floorboards. He quickly dressed in the pre-dawn quiet.
Before returning to the kitchen table, his eyes fell upon a small, dusty box beneath Maria's nightstand—a relic of her own youth. Inside were several brittle, dog-eared comics: a classic Spider-Man with ripped webbing, a worn Wonder Woman issue, and a heavy volume of Spider-Man. Isaiah ran his small fingers over the glossy, faded covers. This was the benchmark. These were the sprawling, decades-deep empires he was truly fighting—the world of mainstream comics built on legacy and big budgets.
He went straight to the small kitchen table. Before the sun had even touched the windowpanes, casting the room in a dull, blue light, Isaiah was sketching. The early morning silence was broken only by the faint, rhythmic scratch of his pencil against the paper. The table was covered in his zine blueprints—the final drafts of the first eleven chapters of his Pilaf Saga.
He wasn't merely tracing existing stories; he was refining a legend, working to strip away what he considered the original's inconsistencies and elevate its foundational myths. He studied his own revised chapters:
Bloomers and the Monkey KingNo Balls!Sea MonkeysThey Call Him...the Turtle Hermit!Oo! Oo! Oolong!So Long, Oolong!Yamcha and Pu'arOne, Two, Yamcha-Cha!Dragon Balls in Danger!!Onward to Fry-Pan......And into the Fire!
He mentally compared them to the loose, episodic structure of the original work. Kid Goku couldn't just be a simple monkey boy with an overpowered stick; he had to breathe with a primal innocence that made his vast, inherent power inevitable, linking his strength to his pure heart. Bulma couldn't just be the rich girl genius; she needed a depth of ambition that equaled his own strategic hunger, making her quest for the Dragon Balls feel driven by desperation, not boredom.
"If I flesh them out," he muttered, the words barely audible in the quiet room, "make every choice count, every laugh and struggle real... this could be huge. Bigger than the originals. Better than anything anyone expects."
Maria woke to the soft, steady rattling of the table. She found Isaiah already at his post. Isaiah stared at his work, his rubylite eyes shining like they held cosmos in them, while his silvery white hair caught the faint room light, shining like stars. The sheer force of his concentrated will seemed to heat the cold air around him.
Maria: "Morning, mi vida. What has the Titan been working on before the sun? You should sleep."
Isaiah: (Not looking up, his voice tight with concentration) "I'm fixing the lines, Mama. The story needs to be stronger. The original Pilaf Saga had weak plot points and mistakes in the power scaling. I can't let my empire make mistakes. I need them to be perfect for the drop."
Maria: (She walked over and gently brushed the hair from his forehead) "Then build it, my love. Build your perfect world. But remember to breathe. Your eyes will burn through that paper if you don't slow down."
Isaiah paused, running a small finger over the stack of eleven chapter drafts. "Mama, I need a new kind of book. A blank book with hard covers. I need to draw all eleven of these chapters together, so people see it as one big story, like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—the ones you read to me like a bedtime story. I need to go to the store and get it today."
Maria smiled, nodding. "A master volume. You're serious about this, aren't you? It's my off day, mi corazón. Let's get you cleaned up. I'll drive."
Maria quickly ushered Isaiah into the tiny, cracked bathroom. She stood over him, her silhouette soft and maternal in the low light. She used a worn cloth to carefully wash the ink stains from his small hands.
Once his hands were clean and his face wiped, Maria dried him with a quick, firm towel pat. They exited the bathroom together, the heavy morning silence of the small apartment settling around them once more. Maria then retrieved his clothes—a pair of patched denim shorts and his best shirt, faded blue but intact.
She was wearing a simple cotton sundress over a pair of worn Keds, dressed for her off day. She guided his small arms into the sleeves and knelt to fasten his tiny shoes. Every button fastened, every lace tied, was an act of profound, physical surrender. Once dressed, he marched straight to the front door, the urgency of his mission overriding the awkward intimacy.
The Confidential Exchange: The Secret Ambition
Maria and Isaiah exited the house, the cool morning air hitting them immediately. They walked quickly down the cracked concrete path, passing the tall, dusty hedge that divided their property from Malik and Jahill's house. The house, owned by Ms. Johnson, was a mirror image of their own shack, but with two bicycles permanently chained to the porch railing. The neighborhood was a mix of small, single-story homes with peeling paint and chain-link fences. Isaiah's house was a simple shotgun shack, distinguished only by Maria's careful maintenance: the paint was faded blue, but the window trim was recently scrubbed, and the porch light worked—a beacon of ordered, strained stability.
Maria opened the rattling car's door for Isaiah.
Maria: "Go ahead, mijo. Get in, and make sure you pull that door closed tight."
As Isaiah focused on the task of pulling the heavy front door shut from inside the car, Maria looked up. Marcus was walking by on his way to his car parked half a block down.
Maria: (She quickly walked toward Marcus, lowering her voice) "Marcus, hey. Listen, Zay and I are heading out for a supply run. He's talking 'master volumes' so I need a minute. Just drop Rico's box now and tell him to hold tight on the hustle for an hour, then send him to the north side. And Marcus..." She glanced back at the car, her gaze serious. "I'm not stopping with zines. This is about that vision, remember? I'm taking his Pilaf Saga to the next level—a real, bound book. I need you to handle the proposal and initial print run through your shop. This is about publishing, not just hustling. You understand? This is our endgame."
Marcus: (His jaw slightly dropping, then a low, impressed whistle)"Publishing the Pilaf sage, Maria. That's the real deal. I've got the house. The secret is locked down—I know he needs to stay focused on the street game for now."
Maria nodded firmly, giving him a quick, grateful pat on the arm before rushing back to the car. She put the key in the ignition and pulled out of the driveway, the mission to obtain the foundation of the new empire officially underway.