I watched as the jet landed, the engines shutting down, the roar of the engines slowly softening until it was finally silent.
"Daddy, I don't really get why I had to come. They're just birds. This just feels like a big waste of time, flying halfway across the country just to look at a bunch of birds!" The first one who jumped out of the jet plane was a little girl about my age, with blue hair tied into a braid that flowed down her back.
Naturally, Bulma was already complaining.
Her father jumped out of the plane next, a cigar in his mouth, which somehow stayed put as he spoke. "Bulma, be polite. We owe these people a lot for the research that they sent over, and we were invited here. Besides, isn't it fascinating? An entire extinct species of theoretically immortal birds?! I know I'm excited."
"They're not immortal. Just close." I cut in, waving the two down.
"Wow. Now someone's drinking their milk, huh, big boy?" I rubbed the back of my neck, a little uncomfortable from Bulma's praise.
Naturally, I was in my Super Saiyan Primal form right now, which meant that I was about a foot taller and much more muscular than I normally was. In this form, I looked like I was around ten years old and literally ate barbells as snacks.
I was also wearing my new shirt, made from the material that Doctor Hyperion had recently invented over the last two months. He'd given the shirt to me for my eighth birthday earlier this week.
Currently, it weighed around 50 kilograms. Just over a hundred pounds. Just enough to make me a little uncomfortable, but not enough to put much strain on my day-to-day life. After all, it was just a prototype. There were still some kinks to work out, but it was working out rather well for me so far.
"You're the one who contacted me, right? Uhh… Table?" Doctor Briefs asked.
"Tarble, and yeah. Everyone else is inside with the birds. You're not wearing anything too hot, right?" I asked respectfully.
"Don't worry, we heeded your suggestion about the temperature. This is my summer shirt, you know!"
I raised an eyebrow at that. It looked like a normal shirt with a lab coat over it to me, but if he'd already known about the temperature specs that I'd shown him, then it wasn't my problem.
"We'll only be going into the first chamber, so it's not that big of a deal, but…" I beckoned the two to follow me.
"Oh, wow! Triple-reinforced titanium alloy. You really followed my specs to the letter, huh?" Dr. Briefs noted as we walked toward a gigantic metal building, the only structure on this fairly small island.
"You haven't seen anything yet." I replied confidently, ushering them through the door.
Only for Bulma to immediately need to jump backwards, as a giant, ostrich-like bird raced right in front of the door. "Hey!"
"Yippee! Ride em' cowgirl! You're a fast little birdie!" Pepper whooped in excitement, riding one of the juvenile Fire Eaters.
"Peps! Be more careful!" I shouted, but she was already gone, rushing toward the innermost chambers, where most of the birds liked to gather, on birdback.
"Oh, let her have her fun. The birds really seem to like the girl."
"You spoil her and the birds, Doctor Hikase." I replied with a crooked smile.
It'd really shocked me how smoothly Project Fire Eater had come together once I looped Doctor Briefs into the mix.
To be clear, Capsule Corp's role in the project was strictly advisory. He'd offered a bit of advice, but the actual legwork was entirely on us. In fact, we'd mainly asked him for technical advice. He hadn't had any hand in actually cloning the Fire Eaters themselves.
Basically, what I'd offered was a deal. In exchange for thirty-five percent of the profits from whatever he sold based off the principles of our work, Doctor Brief and Capsule Corp would have access to the majority of our research, which basically meant everything except the sensitive stuff that I didn't want to share, like the Saiyan genetics research that I was doing, or the thing that Zeck was working on, which he hadn't wanted to share.
As a result, within two weeks, Doctor Briefs had completely finished the theoretical groundwork behind the cloth that Doctor Hyperion was working on, and had even gone on to tinker with the fundamentals of utilizing Hyperion's research, combined with the space-altering principals of Saiyan spaceflight, to tinker with gravity on a fundamental level.
Hyperion and Briefs were still working on it, but we had the theoretical groundwork for a Gravity Chamber, and were now on the way to bringing that possibility into reality.
That had freed Hyperion up to deal with my cloning project, as Briefs ran through my own requests like they were fun little side-toys that required little to no effort or thought to figure out.
The guy really was a genius. I suspected that Bulma was offering him casual advice, too.
And once Hyperion had the time to deal with my cloning project, all we needed to do was put it into action.
That meant getting DNA samples and providing the environment.
We'd chosen to use a small, barren island near our own for the environment, and contacted Doctor Hikase, the guy who'd been caring for the egg, for his advice and help.
With the three doctors working together, we'd designed the perfect environment for the birds. A gigantic, fully-enclosed terrarium. Then, all I needed to do was dig into the ground until I hit magma, and you had a sudden lava pool, ripe and ready for the birds.
Doctor Hikase had been absolutely thrilled to move to the island and become the birds' official caretaker.
The terrarium had two separate chambers. The outer chamber was fairly hot, but still only around 35-40 degrees Celsius, or around a hundred or so degrees Fahrenheit. Insanely hot, but perfectly survivable. This was the chamber where the birds and the people could interact safely.
Then, there was the inner chamber. While there wasn't a door or anything keeping the two chambers separate, there wasn't anyone stupid enough to actually go in there without a Saiyan biology and some really heat-resistant clothing.
After all, it was the site of the lava pool. Between the metal walls and the lava itself, the temperature in the second chamber hovered between 70-100 degrees Celsius.
Notably beyond the normal survivable limit for humans. While the Fire Eaters, both cloned and non-cloned, very much preferred it, normal humans would die within minutes inside the inner chamber.
Except for Pepper, who'd gone swimming in the lava with the Fire Eaters once, using a ki barrier to keep her clothes intact.
Apparently, the Fire Eaters respected that or something, because they'd come to love the girl, not shying away from her at all. She had a gift for interacting with them.