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 a soft, steady rattling from the kitchen. She found Isaiah already at the table, his small back ramrod straight. His silvery-white hair seemed to catch what little pre-dawn light there was, looking almost like it was glowing.
He was so intensely focused on the paper in front of him, his small hand moving with such purpose, that the whole table vibrated with the effort. He was lost to the world, completely consumed by the page. A mix of awe and a familiar pang of worry tightened in her chest. He was so small to hold such a fire.
She leaned against the doorway, her voice soft so as not to startle him.
Maria: "Morning, my little artist. You're working before the sun is even up. You need your sleep, mijo."
Isaiah: (Without looking up, his voice tight with focus) "I have to fix it, Mama. The lines aren't strong enough. The story... it has to be perfect."
"The story is bigger now, Mama," he said softly. "It needs... a real book. A hard one." He hugged the pages to his chest. "I need to draw it all in one place. So people see it's all connected. Like you read to me... The Hobbit and then the other one. It's all one world."
He took a small, nervous breath. "We need to go to the store. Please?"
Maria looked from his intense, pleading eyes to the stack of drawings that represented weeks of obsessive work. She saw not a childish whim, but a deep, unwavering purpose. A slow, warm smile spread across her face.
"A master volume," she said, the words full of understanding. "You're serious about this, aren't you? It's my off day, mi corazón. Let's get you cleaned up. I'll drive."
A wave of relief washed over Isaiah, so potent it almost made his knees weak. The Titan's mind registered it as a successful negotiation for a critical resource. The child just felt the profound, grounding weight of her belief in him.
With the mission approved, Maria gently took his hand and led him into the tiny, cracked bathroom. She stood over him, her silhouette soft in the low light, and used a worn cloth to carefully wash the ink stains from his small fingers.
Once his hands were clean, Maria dried them with a quick towel pat. She then retrieved his clothes—a pair of patched denim shorts and his best shirt, faded blue but intact.
She guided his small arms into the sleeves and knelt to fasten his tiny shoes. For the Titan, the process was a frustrating delay, a moment of forced dependency that chafed at his pride. For the child, it was simply the familiar, grounding ritual of his mother's care.
The second his laces were tied, the mission took over. He turned and marched straight to the front door, his focus absolute, leaving the quiet intimacy of the moment behind.
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.