"I'm so sorry! If I'd looked more carefully and noticed that you were Master Roshi's student too, I never would have attacked you!" The Ox King kowtowed in front of Kakarot and Bulma, apologizing profusely.
"Don't worry about it! That was fun! You're really strong. We should do that again, sometime." Kakarot replied with a laugh, "So-"
"DON'T JUST BRUSH IT UNDER THE RUG! I ALMOST DIED, YOU IDIOT SAIYAN!" Bulma screamed.
"I'm so sorry!" The Ox King's head went lower.
"WHY WOULD YOU JUST RANDOMLY ATTACK SOMEONE LIKE THAT! THAT AXE WAS BIGGER THAN KAKAROT! WHAT DID WE DO TO YOU!?" Bulma screamed.
"I acted rashly! I thought you were here to steal my treasures, and I overreacted! I beg your forgiveness!" By now, there was probably a fair-sized crater in the ground beneath the Ox King's head.
But, honestly, he kind of deserved it, even if he'd only attacked the monstrously strong Kakarot, showing no interest in harming the weak Bulma, he'd still attacked them without a real reason. Kakarot didn't dare risk Bulma's wrath by standing up for the horned giant.
The blue-haired girl huffed. "...Fine. We can forget about it. We just need the Dragon Ball, anyway." She decided after a long period of thought.
"As long as you promise to stop attacking people unless they really deserve it!" Kakarot added.
"Yes! I promise! From now on, I'll give up my bandit-ey ways and become a model citizen! No! A guardian! I'll protect these villages surrounding my castle with my life, I swear on the name of the Ox King!" Immediately, the bandit king who'd been terrorizing this mountain and the surrounding areas for around a decade, maybe more, did a complete 180, swearing on his life to protect, rather than harm.
This may have seemed strange, but it honestly wasn't. Not really.
The Ox King was actually not a particularly bad guy. Stealing just happened to be the best way for him to earn a living. Then, over time, the surrounding villages simply 'decided' that he was some sort of Demon Lord or something.
In all honesty, he was so strong that it was rare for him to even need to hurt people in order to get what he wanted. Most of the time, all he had to do was shrug off a few gunshots, wave his axe around, and they'd give him everything that they had.
With how long he'd been doing so, he had a massive hoard of funds that neither he nor his daughter could probably hope to spend in their lifetimes. He didn't really need to steal anymore. By now, it was just a 'because why not' scenario. He acted like a bandit because it was what was expected of him.
Honestly, meeting Kakarot, a fellow student of Master Roshi, made the Ox King feel embarrassed for himself. Something along the lines of 'this is the best I could do with my life? Really?'
It honestly felt worse than losing to the boy, realizing that he'd strayed so far from the path that Master Roshi had wanted for him. He may not have promised to use his strength to do good, promised to refrain from oppressing others and hurting innocents, but he should have.
So, the Ox King didn't have a problem with turning over a new leaf, right then and there.
But he did have one problem.
"You're here for a Dragon Ball? A little orange ball with stars on it like that one? Yeah, I think there's one rolling around in some corner of my castle somewhere." The giant man explained.
"Really?! Great!" Bulma pumped her fist, "So, how do we get into the castle to get it?"
"..."
"We can get to the castle, right?"
"..."
"There's no way you built a castle on Fire Mountain without a way to get past the flames. Right?!"
"It wasn't on fire when I built the castle!" The Ox King defended, "Don't worry, I sent my daughter, Chichi, to look for Master Roshi and borrow his Bansho Fan. One wave summons wind, two summons rain, three waves summon a great storm! It'll put the fire out for sure!"
"The Bansho Fan?" Bulma and Kakarot said in unison, the same exact tone of 'I vaguely remember someone once mentioned something about that to me, when I was a kid.'
"Of course, you must have heard about it, training under Master Roshi! Wait, do you know exactly where he lives nowadays? I just remember that he lives on an island, somewhere." The Ox King asked.
"You sent your daughter to look for a guy that you don't know where is!?" Bulma shouted, shocked and annoyed once again.
"...Well, I don't think it'll really matter much… I don't think Master has the Bansho Fan anymore." Kakarot managed to remember.
"What do you mean?!" Ox grabbed the boy by his shoulders, freaked out.
"...Bansho… Bansho…" Bulma thought to herself, unable to remember exactly where she'd heard that word before. It was bothering her badly.
"A few years ago, Master Roshi spilled something on it. It started to smell really bad, so we tossed it into the ocean." Kakarot remembered.
"You… tossed the Bansho Fan… Into the ocean… It's gone…" The Ox King sat back on his haunches, looking devastated. He stared up at the castle, inaccessible on top of the flaming mountain. "My home…"
"Don't worry! I think I can put the fires out myself!" Kakarot assured the bandit king after a moment's thought, calculating the power it'd require to put the fires out. He was probably strong enough, he decided. One Kamehameha at full power would do it. If it wasn't, then he'd just break his limits.
"You really think you can? That's a lot of fire, you know." The Ox King looked up at the mountain warily.
"Don't worry!" Bulma said, rubbing the younger Saiyan's hair affectionately, "If Kakarot says he can do it, then he can do it."
"Yeah. One good Kamehameha will be enough to put those fires out. You want me to do it now?" Kakarot offered.
"You can really do the Kamehameha?! Maybe my castle really can be saved!" The Ox King realized. "Wait… can you find my daughter first? She didn't leave that long ago, so if you go that way for a while, you should run into her." He asked.
"Sure. What does she look like?" Kakarot agreed easily.