The party wound down the way good ones do — gradually, without a formal ending, people drifting off in ones and twos until the compound was quiet. Smith returned to Brotherhood HQ.
Most of what he'd drawn from the Cycle 4 lottery was already in play. The Vegeta integration had reshaped his baseline entirely, and the spacecraft was with Bulma for analysis. Of the three draws, only one remained unused — the partner card.
Dende.
Smith turned the card over in his hand. The system had aimed for the Grand Elder and landed on his most talented student instead. In the source material, Dende had eventually taken over as Earth's guardian and upgraded the planet's Dragon Balls twice — once adding a second wish, later a third, and removing the restriction on resurrecting the same person multiple times. Whether any of that applied here was an open question. The version Smith had drawn had never been to Earth. He'd lived his entire life on Namek, untouched by Frieza's campaign.
Smith activated the card.
The materialization was quiet — a soft light, and then a small Namekian standing in front of him, looking around the room with wide, attentive eyes. Young. Smaller than Smith remembered from the source, because this Dende hadn't spent years as a guardian with the attendant slow growth of the role.
The boy looked at him for a moment.
"Mr. Smith."
Smith studied him. "Dende. Were you on Earth or on Namek before you came here?"
"Namek." Dende's head tilted slightly. "I've never been to Earth. I felt your call."
Smith nodded. That settled the timeline question. This was Namek-arc Dende — before Frieza, before the evacuation, before everything. He filed it and moved on.
He raised one hand. From storage deep in the compound's secure holding, the seven inert Dragon Balls flew to his palm, the smooth stone spheres arranging themselves in a cluster. He extended them toward Dende.
"Can you examine these? I'm curious whether you can improve or activate them."
Dende accepted the stones carefully, turning them over in both hands, examining each one with the quiet focus of someone who understood what he was looking at. Then he looked up.
"Mr. Smith — could I see the dragon model? The creature these were made for?"
Smith shook his head. "There isn't one. When the Dragon Balls came to Earth, there was no model attached to them."
Dende absorbed this, his gaze drifting back to the stones, then to Smith himself. He circled him once — a slow, examining walk — with an expression that was more scientific than anything else.
"It's unusual," Dende said. "Mr. Smith isn't a Dragon Clan Namekian, but you have the ability to create Dragon Balls." He held one of the stones up. "You made these, didn't you?"
Smith didn't argue the point. The technical answer was complicated — the balls had arrived through the system rather than being forged by his hands — but the connection between them and him was real. They strengthened as he strengthened. They were bound to him. Close enough.
"Can you modify them?"
Dende set the stones down gently and shook his head. "Only their creator can change them. If any Dragon Clan member could modify another's Dragon Balls, the Grand Elder's work would have no integrity." He paused. "These are yours, Mr. Smith. I can't alter them."
Smith had expected this, more or less. The same logic explained why Dende had been able to upgrade Earth's Dragon Balls in the source — after the original guardian fused with Piccolo and the balls went dormant, Dende hadn't modified existing balls. He'd created new ones, building on the previous design as a foundation. The upgrade came from authorship, not modification.
"Could you make your own set?"
Dende considered this for a moment with genuine concentration. "It's possible. I am Dragon Clan — the ability is there. But I need the right materials, and I've never done it before. Without inheriting an existing set as a starting point, building from raw materials takes time." A pause. "It's not quick, and I can't guarantee the first attempt will work."
Smith's Dragon Balls would keep evolving. The current configuration was strong, but the day was coming when they'd be the size of planets, when scattering them across the solar system would be a logistical nightmare. A separate, stable, Earth-scale backup set — one that could handle the unexpected while his own balls were in recharge — was worth the investment.
"I'll have materials brought to you. Whatever you need. Start whenever you're ready."
Dende nodded, accepting this with the matter-of-fact quality of someone who took assigned tasks seriously. Then Smith pulled up an image on a nearby screen — a frame from source-material reference, Shenron fully manifested, coiling through a darkened sky.
"Your dragon should look like this."
Dende looked at the image. His expression shifted — the professional focus dissolved into something younger and more open. His eyes went wide.
"He's beautiful," Dende said. He looked genuinely delighted. "I love him."
Smith noted this with quiet satisfaction. Design commitment established.
"One more thing." Smith leaned against the wall. "My training. I need a healer on site."
Dende looked up cautiously. "Mr. Smith — I'm not a combat Namekian. I can't spar or—"
"I know. I don't need you to fight." Smith paused. "I need you to heal me. Repeatedly."
Dende processed this, then exhaled with visible relief. "That I can do. Healing is straightforward."
Near-death training with reliable on-site recovery. The Zenkai boost methodology — push the body to the edge of its survival threshold, let it rebuild stronger than before, repeat. It had been theoretically on the table since the Dende draw, but unusable without a healer present who could manage the aftermath. Senzu Beans were too scarce for sustained use. Medical pods worked but were slow. Dende changed the equation entirely.
The only question was location. Running full-output Kamehameha exchanges inside the compound would register on every scouter in the borough and rattle windows from here to the river.
Netherheim. The training ground outside Odin's sealed zone — the same territory where he'd run the Great Ape tests. The runes absorbed everything, and the uninhabited stretch outside the seal could take abuse without collateral damage.
Smith began drafting the logistics in his head.