Dragon Ball Z 1. Prologue: Council of the Four Winds

_Good Morrow dear DBZ fans and welcome! A few things before we begin:_**  
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_1) I have checked this chapter for the usual bumph, spelling, grammar and tense errors but I am currently functioning on 4 hours sleep and a Terry's chocolate orange so if I've missed anything, apologies. I will come back to correct errors when I'm feeling more human than machine XD  
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_2) I am aiming for this to be quite epic so stick with me k?  
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_3) Toriyama is the man and I own nothing...cept this awesome 4 star Dragonball hoodie! (shows screen)  
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**Prologue: Council of the Four Winds**

He could feel it building inside him, the guilt, the anger and the raw un-kneaded power, still developing even after his leap of progression during the Cell Games. At first, he had himself convinced, with the help of his friends that this was natural following the death of his father but as time trickled on, he started to realise that something was amiss.

While the others slowly seemed to be getting over everything that happened, he still thought about it all the time, clinging to the empowering anger that had flooded him when he had finally broken through the limitations of a Super Saiyan, using latent gifts he had no idea he had possessed. And with the constant stream of anger, his powers seemed to be manifesting much quicker than they ever had before, much quicker than he could ever hope to control.

He took the only sensible course of action open to him, leaving home to find and train with Piccolo until he had managed to contain the beast growing up like a monstrous flower within him. He stayed with the demon lord in the mountains for months learning the subtler arts of meditation alongside the anger releasing techniques of further martial arts.

But even that wasn't enough.

One night, Piccolo found Gohan sitting by himself, his veins humming with Super Saiyan power. He was sitting in the meditation stance, legs folded and fists pressed together. It was supposed to be a stance associated with calm, serenity and balance but what Piccolo saw made him recoil.

The boy's eyes were closed, his brow was furrowed. Sweat was trickling down from his forehead to pool at the tip of his chin. There was a light crunching sound on the air as he ground his teeth and his fists were pressed so hard together, it was like he was trying to fight himself.

'_Just what is going on here?' _Piccolo thought to himself as he stepped forward. Warriors instincts told him not to touch the boy but something else, something far less rational urged him on. Concern was etched into his features as he laid a tender hand on his pupil's shoulder.

"Gohan?"

The reaction was instant. Piccolo couldn't follow the movement but he felt as something iron hard ploughed into him. There was an explosion of pain in his stomach and he was flying through the air. For a moment, Piccolo's world was a confusing wrench of stars and mud as he shot backwards, his stomach reeling from the blow and the sensation of uncontrolled flight.

He hit the cliff with a sickening thud and dropped like a stone to lay in a crumpled heap, battered and broken. It took a few seconds for the shock to subside and for him to realise what had happened. He could hear the muffled voice of the boy as he called his mentor's name but Piccolo wasn't sure he had the strength to answer the boy.

A quick mental assessment told him that he was done for. The impact of Gohan's fist had crippled his organs and he had suffered crucial internal haemorrhaging. Bitterly, he laughed to himself, unsurprised when he coughed up blood.

In the end, it was his own stupid sentimentality that had gotten him killed...again. He'd done the very thing he had sworn never to do, ignored his warrior's instincts for the sake of finding out if someone he cared about was alright. To think it all seemed so far away now, the demon Piccolo intent on destroying the Earth...throwing his life away for the sake of that damn kid.

"Piccolo?"

He could hear the muffled sobs but it was fading fast, he struggled to hold on to consciousness though it constantly slipped like a fish in his grasp.

"Gohan…" he was struggling to remember what was important, something important that he had to tell the kid before he left. What was it?

But all he could muster as he fell away was the faintest of smiles outlined by the moonlight, an expression still foreign on the face of the demon.

Gohan watched as his mentor's chest went still and for a moment, nothing moved.

Time stopped.

The universe pitched.

And in Gohan's ears a ringing.

The ringing grew up and out of the grief swelling in his heart, quiet at first and then louder and louder. Gradually, the sound of his heart beat accompanied the tinnitus, beating out a rhythm, counting the seconds until the end of it all. He kept his eyes on the face of his friend and surrogate father until they clouded over, consumed by the blood rampaging though his veins.

There was no stopping him now, no holding back the power that had been manifesting inside him, no consoling him as this newfound grief took root and dwarfed the emotional baggage he had carried with him since his father's demise. His power spiked, his hair shot upwards and stiffened. Sparks of electricity ran across his bare skin, darting out to shatter the ground beneath him.

Miles away in West City, in a space ship specifically designed with a gravity enhanced training room, Vegeta paused mid-lunge to clutch at his chest. An irrational panic was sparking within him as he sensed the awakening of something catastrophic.

His pupils were small as he glanced back over his shoulder and his hands shook.

"Kakarot?" He whispered, as though sensing the ghost of his fallen rival, but as he felt the power continue to escalate, he frowned.

"No…not Kakarot…but his…son?..."

Synapses fired in Vegeta's brain as he gauged the mounting Ki.

'_It's mind-boggling…and totally out of control…if the brat keeps this up, he's going to blow up the whole planet.'_

Vegeta grunted, choosing his course of action in an instant and vaulting towards the dial on the gravity machine to turn it back to normal. Once the all clear was given and the air lock at the front of the ship had opened, he shot out like a bullet from the barrel of a gun, hurtling through the air and straight through the ceiling of the room where his girlfriend and tiny son were sleeping in the main house of Capsule Corp.

Bulma woke with a start, grabbing her son on a reflex as rubble flew about the room. Icy fear gripped her but that slowly ebbed away as she saw the silhouette of Vegeta standing above her. A flare of anger replaced it in a heart beat.

"What the hell do you think you're doing you ass? Are you trying to get the mother of your son k-HEY!"

Vegeta didn't wait, hoisting both the woman and the baby over his shoulder, he took off in a sling shot manoeuvre back to the ship, dumping them unceremoniously on the tiled floor, sealing them all in.

"What's going on?" Bulma screamed at him as he worked on setting co-ordinates. The baby in her arms wailed and the sound of the infant's panic grated on Vegeta's nerves as much as his girlfriend's shrieking.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll shut up woman!" Vegeta commanded, seating himself in a launch seat as the count down began.

Bulma felt her hot temper flare but there was something about Vegeta's movements that stopped her acting on the impulses that were so much like second nature. He was far too agitated, moving far too quickly. He had the same quirk in his brow that he'd had during the 3 years of training he'd undertaken before the Cell Games. Something was going on.

"What is it?" she asked, softly this time. Hearing the change in his mother's voice, baby Trunks stopped crying.

There was a pause before Vegeta answered but then finally:

"The brat's gone super nova so we're getting out."

It took a couple of seconds for the impact of those words to sink in but when they did, Bulma understood everything implied within an instant.

"Gohan? We're getting out…no! What about mum and dad? What about the others?"

He sensed her intention to head for the air lock before she had even turned and was pushing her down into one of the launch seats before she could protest.

"There's no time," he said simply, restraining her in the seat so she couldn't escape.

"No, NO, VEGETA! PLEASE!" Bulma howled, struggling against the buckle that had been pulled across her waist. Sensing his mother's panic, Trunks started sobbing as loud as he could. The sound of his struggling family drilled into Vegeta as the space ship took off and as it cleared the first layers of atmosphere.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the unmistakable glow of Ki being pulled towards a central point, being pulled towards the magnet-like power of the demi-Saiyan, Kakarot's abomination child. He felt a stirring of something within him. Awe, pity, envy, he wasn't sure but as his ship shot out into the vacuum of space, he knew one thing, whatever the feeling was, it was strong.

The planet was disintegrating around him and he didn't notice. He had been consumed by the overwhelming intensity of his power. Nothing but an overloaded shell of the half Saiyan warrior that had fought so hard for his friends and family only months before. Through the haze of fire and electricity, he thought he heard his father's voice but the wisp was there and gone before he could latch on to it.

The force of his power grew until it had eaten the matter of the planet around him, stretching out into the galaxy and further, further, further…

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Shorai blanched as the vision faded, leaving him gasping in the grass, clutching at the thin green blades like they would anchor him to reality. For a few moments, he focussed on regulating his breathing, relieving himself of the feeling of asphyxiation that always followed one of his visions. As the air circulated through his system, replenishing him, his mind cleared.

He was back in his field, and though the vision of the enraged demi-Saiyan was still tattooed on the black of his eyelids, he took comfort in the familiar scent of the foliage, of the stream winding a path to his right, the sun on his skin…

"Master Shorai?"

The seer let his eyes drop down to the boy beside him, his most brilliant and trusted pupil, and smiled a reassuring smile.

"Did you…" the boy gulped. "Did you see the future?" he asked tentatively, fearfully.

Shorai thought carefully about how to answer, putting a hand on the boy's green mop of hair as much for his own comfort as for the boy's. He had chosen Tonbo for a pupil because he was the only one that had ever shown the proper respect for the art of future sight.

He nodded mutely, his mind half occupied with noting the details of the vision for later recollection.

"Yes, I saw the future," he admitted, keeping his hand on the boy's hair. "And I must say, it was quite dramatic."

"Is it bad?" The boy asked, ever the worrier.

Shorai toyed with the idea of lying to the boy but the string of complications that could arise from that single act alone was endless. In his mind's eye, Shorai picked up the thread and followed the possibilities, judging as Tonbo became angry and refused to be his pupil any longer should the course of seeing the future be littered with lies, understanding as he lost the edge of caution that would aid him so heavily in his chosen art in a second possible course because he was suitably unprepared.

He sighed.

"It was the end of the universe," The seer told the boy bluntly, almost amused as the boy's eyes widened comically.

"We must inform the Four Winds at once," Shorai told the boy, standing up and pushing the small of his back until it cracked. He wasn't sure exactly how long he had been caught in the vision but the stiffness in his limbs told him that it had been quite a while. He watched as the boy beside him uncurled, yelping and nursing a stiff leg, and smiled a mentor's smile. He knew without asking that Tonbo had stayed beside him for the duration of the vision, be it hours or days. A glance down at the grass confirmed his suspicions when he saw the dent the boy's butt had made.

He started walking, motioning for Tonbo to follow. They didn't have far to go but Shorai was still grateful for the distance. It let him view the full, beautiful extent of the land the Four Winds had made for him, a dimension outside of anything else entirely. It was specifically designed to encourage his unique gifts as a seer and to calm him should his visions yield bad tidings. It was slow going at first as the two eased the stiffness out of their bodies but by the time they had reached the gateway, they were quite limber.

The gateway itself was triangular and oddly out of place in the natural backdrop of Shorai's dimension. The boarder was made of a dark wood, polished to a shine and the gate itself was made of a specific type of Ki, something Shorai knew little about. It provided the necessary link he needed to move between his pocket dimension and the larger home of the Four Winds and it also functioned as a communicator.

As he keyed the destination into the number panel by the side of the gate, Shorai glanced over at his pupil who was standing resolutely in front of it. Inwardly, he rolled his eyes. Bringing a young boy to a council of the Four Winds was unheard of but he could see the determination in Tonbo's face. He wouldn't be left behind.

Another reason that Tonbo would one day make a fine seer.

Static over the communicator told Shorai he had the floor and he cleared his throat nervously.

"I've seen something," he said simply, unwilling to elaborate much further outside of the secure walls of the Council itself.

There was a pause over the communicator and then a click as someone cut the line. Then the gateway opened in front of them and Shorai found himself looking into the vast white void of the Council room. Apprehensively, he stepped through, uneasy as the settling sounds of nature were abruptly shut off to make room for a crushing silence. Tonbo clung to his leg causing a ruffle of fabric magnified tenfold through the nothingness.

"What is this place?" The little boy whispered, his voice carrying through the void like a shout.

"The Council Room," Shorai explained. "Now not another word, do you hear me?"

Tonbo nodded mutely meriting another smile from his mentor. Together, they shuffled into the void until they came across a set of white table and chairs. Tonbo almost missed it, walking as they were through endless white. It was only as Shorai sat down that he realised there were solid objects in front of him.

His mouth formed an o but Shorai brought a slender finger up to his lips to motion for silence. Tonbo complied by clamping his mouth shut as tight as he could.

"Well, well, well, Shorai the seer calls a council at last."

Shorai couldn't help the frown that knitted his eyebrows as he turned to greet the impressive form of Sensou. A warrior god clad in shadow black armour, he was exactly the opposite of Shorai and Tonbo in their free-flowing robes. Where Shorai was lean, Sensou was muscular, his body ruthlessly trained into submission and where Shorai's eyes were full of wisdom, Sensou's eyes were alight with the glorious glow of battle. The only thing the two had in common was the wild, charcoal black hair inherited from their mother at birth.

"The Four Winds called on you?" Shorai asked incredulously, fearing what the elders were thinking.

Sensou's patented smirk widened, loving how the all-knowing seer was at a loss to what was truly going on for once. As much as the warrior loathed to admit it, it was hard to get a tactical advantage over a brother that could predict all the major changes in the universe.

"Not likely, I've been keeping tabs on you brother," Sensou admitted, enjoying the expression of horror morphing on his brother's face.

Shorai let the ball of dread expand within him unheeded. There was no point in trying to hide his emotions from his violent big brother who would just beat it out of him should he try and act composed. So Sensou had been keeping tabs on him, obviously hoping for something like this to occur, a major change, a fluctuation that he could use to his advantage. Shorai half hoped that the Council would have the presence of mind to eradicate Sensou from the proceedings.

By Shorai's feet, Tonbo looked from Sensou to his mentor, recoiling as the sinister eyes of the older brother fell on him.

"Bring your snivelling brat to work day huh?" Sensou asked, punctuating this sentiment with a wicked laugh. The sound reverberated in the void and sent Tonbo reeling, moving himself so he was planted firmly behind Shorai's chair. When he finally mustered the guts to look back at the big brute, he was met with cold, disapproving eyes.

"I see all you seers are the same," Sensou said darkly. "Cowardly, dishonourable, never want to get your hands dirty."

"That is enough."

The new voice cut across the harsh comments and filled the void. From his safe position behind Shorai's chair, Tonbo's head whipped around as he hoped to catch a visual of the newcomer.

"My Lords," Shorai muttered, dropping his head in an honourific bow. To Tonbo's immeasurable surprise, he watched as the warrior god grunted and lowered his head as well.

For a few seconds, there was nothing and then Tonbo thought he caught something out the corner of his eye, a wavering shape in the distance. It almost looked like there were fours shadows on a white wall though the shadows were cast from nowhere.

"I have seen a vision," Shorai began. "And before I continue, I would like to ask if Sensou's presence is really necess-

"Fate requires that he is present," the voice said and the authority in the tone of that voice was so absolute that Shorai didn't question it further.

Sensou's grin widened again and he sat leisurely in the chair opposite his brother, propping his muddy boots up on the pristine white table. Such a blatant mark of disrespect irked Shorai.

Tonbo watched as his mentor's eyes flicked to the shadows wavering on the edge of reality. He fully expected his master to start explaining but to his surprise, Shorai was stoically silent. In confusion, Tonbo made to ask him what was going on but in an instant the white void flashed. Tonbo had the brief sense of displacing time, a nauseating feeling that left him drained as the backdrop changed dramatically around him to reflect a place not unlike the pocket dimension his master used.

He glanced around, awed at the rocky mountains he could see, the wind he could hear blowing through crescent peaks and fresh air he could smell. Staring up at Shorai in awe, he let out a small squeak of surprise when he realised his master was sitting beside him on nothing solid at all.

Across from him, still seated in the same position, Sensou looked like he was floating with his feet still angled on the now invisible table.

It took a while for Tonbo's mind to wrap around what was going on, his eyes tracking through his mentor's legs to the image of two figures, one a boy not that much older than himself, the other a tall green man, both of them wearing appropriate gear for fighting.

He watched events unfold in stunned silence, witnessing as the boy was disturbed from his aggravated meditation, as he turned on the green man, ramming a fist into his gut so he was sent hurtling through the air. He observed the tearful goodbye and the explosion of power ripping away the very fabric of the universe.

The replay of Shorai's vision ended and the white void once again appeared before them. A grave silence followed.

Tonbo sat back against Shorai's chair, reeling from what he had seen. So much Ki, so much energy to be unleashed as a savage blast on the universe. Everything would end in fire and electricity…

On the other side of the table, Sensou pulled his feet down, leaning forward instead to rest his head in his hands.

So much power. Power like he had never dreamed. With a power like that he could…he had to have it. He had to be the one to control it. There was no way he could let a chance like this slip through his fingers.

"This…is a calamity indeed," the shadows said eventually. The voice was laced with despair and urgency. Shorai winced as he listened, unused to the sense of unease now hanging over the Four Winds.

"How long do we have?" The voice asked and the four shadows glanced up as one, each fixing Shorai with a glowing stare. Shorai did some quick mental maths and when he looked up again, his face was grim.

"9 years," he said. "This is accounting for the questionable variables…should things go according to the most likely situations…we have 9 years."

Quickly, he let his mind tug at the threads of various solutions, trying to follow their destined pathways so that he might be able to pick the most appropriate but it was tricky. Power like that made it difficult to get an accurate reading on the future.

Sighing, he opened his mouth, prepared to offer something of a pro-active approach to the situation but his brother beat him to it.

"Give the boy to me."

For the first time that day, Shorai let out a guffaw, taking the insidious look his brother shot him across the table with barely concealed amusement.

"Brother, I know what you're trying to do and it's nothing short of stupidity. You mean to try and train the boy and use him as a weapon but this is something that neither of us can control."

Sensou kept his eyes levelled on his brother's, a warrior's intensity matching a seer's amusement but he was the first to brake eye contact, leaning back in his chair once again.

"And I know what you mean to do with him, lock him away, keep him in stasis so his power will be unable to manifest. For a Saiyan, that's nothing short of unethical. And who is this boy anyway? With a power like that, I'd wager that he is connected to other universal events. How will these change if you remove him from them completely?"

Shorai opened his mouth to shoot down his brother's assumptions but even as he was forming the first word of an argument, he could see that his brother was right. The demi-Saiyan known as Gohan Son actually had a major part to play in several of the universes possible catastrophies, always providing a pivotal output that would help to save everything.

Sensou saw the defeat in the eyes of the seer and knew he had the upper hand. He turned to the shadows, an appeal in his mind.

"Give the boy to me, let me train him in the art of control. If we know this calamitous event is on the horizon, we can work with the goal of containing it in mind. I can teach him techniques his masters could only dream of and throughout his training, we can drop him back into his respective dimension should he need to provide the deciding factor in any important event."

There was a pause as the winds considered and as Shorai followed the line of fate should they decide to agree to Sensou's proposition.

Strangely, it seemed to work just as Sensou said. He would go as instructed to provide the input that would keep the destiny of the universe on track and then he would return. As Sensou suggested, the destruction of the universe currently waiting at the end of 9 years was averted through this course of action though the boy's future beyond this became foggy, as often happened when the wind's decided to intervene in fate.

"Well?" The voice of the winds was saying as Shorai was stirred from his revelry.

"Uh…" Shorai managed, blushing and clearing his throat. "It works surprisingly well…actually…"

He gave his brother a suspicious look which his brother refused to return, always a bad sign.

"A warning for this course of action though, the future becomes foggy around the time the boy turns 14," Shorai added uncertainly.

"We will take note of this and check on the boy's condition at that time," the voice conceded with a nod and Sensou felt a rush of elation tingle through his skin.

They had given their permission.

The boy was his.

Like giving a soldier a bazooka.

"We will arrange for Ma to drop him into the correct dimension when the need arises," the voice continued, speaking now to Sensou. "Ma will also take you to collect the boy. Shorai will inform you of the correct time to proceed."

Shorai bowed his head in a solemn mark of acceptance and Sensou followed suit, vibrating with excitement like a kid at Christmas, promised the ultimate toy.

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_Has Gohan's fate been decided? Can the disaster due to befall the universe at the hands of the demi-Saiyan be averted? FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON..._

_MINECRAFT! (swings shovel at screen)  
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_Reviews are good for not only the environment but for my actual physical and mental health. (nods seriously)  
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	2. Gohan's Disappearance

_Wow…another chapter up already (fear). Perhaps my writing prowess is finally OVER 9000 (falls over laughing). _

_Nah, unfortunately the fast update was the product of a weekend at home, something I don't really get too often. Still though, I'm having a lot of fun with this so I'm hoping I can keep to updating this one quite quickly._

_A few notes before we get to the good bit:_

_1) I have in fact used a couple of episodes for references here and have quoted text directly. I tried to weave it seamlessly into my story and hope that I've done a good job but a warning here for that anyways in case you guys are like: 'Waaaaait a minute…'_

_2) Once again, I have checked for spelling errors etc and am aware that I probably need to go back and check again because I have the attention span of a flea and tend to forget what I'm doing while I'm doing it._

_3) Fun fact 'Shorai' means future in Japanese, 'Sensou' means War in Japanese and as far as I can figure 'Ma' means universal (or something very close) in Japanese. Neat huh?_

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**1: Gohan's Disappearance**

Piccolo shot through the sky, clouds parting before him in a swirling mist as he made a bee line for his home amongst the mountains. The boy, Goku's son, was tucked neatly under his arm, out cold for the time being.

He tried his best to keep his temper in check as he flew.

He had always been sure of himself as one of the strongest fighters in the world. He was only ever bested by Goku and he knew, he just knew that with a little more training, the gap in power between the two of them would be breeched and he would challenge his rival to a re-match. Then Goku had to up and die. Sure, it was Piccolo that had fired the fatal shot but it hardly counted as a victory given the circumstances.

Then there was the boy.

Piccolo had never seen such a display of raw, untapped power. It was awe-inspiring and if he was truly honest with himself, a little frightening. After all the many years in training as a martial artist, after all the time he had taken to push himself to the limit and further, his power was dwarfed by the potential in a brat throwing a tantrum at his violent uncle. That fact alone was enough to make Piccolo's blood boil.

'_Enough,' _he told himself sharply. '_For now, it doesn't matter how strong the boy is. All that matters is that he can help to defend my planet from the Saiyans…'_

Piccolo had no doubt in his mind that if left un-checked, the boy could become a threat to him in the future, a sure-fire way for the Earth to avoid the dictatorship he had in mind but he had to focus on the here and now, assess the advantages that nature had provided him with. As the future ruler of the planet, it was these sorts of decisions that Piccolo would have to face constantly.

The familiar sight of the mountains calmed him as he flew over the wild lands he called his home. Descending down into the shallows of a creek, Piccolo pulled the pint-sized form of Goku's sleeping son out from under his arms, turning the boy to face him.

"Wake up you little tender foot, boot camp starts now," Piccolo demanded, giving the small boy a good shake. Much to the demon's chagrin, the boy slept on, as oblivious as his damned father. A knot of aggravation formed in his stomach and without so much as a second thought, the threw the boy into the cold water face first.

There was a spluttering, a struggling as the boy flailed and then the water works began. The noise cut straight through Piccolo's sensitive hearing and set his teeth on edge. What the hell was this kid's problem?

'_I won't tolerate this,' _the demon thought to himself.

"Quiet! I can't take that noise anymore. Do you understand?"

The wails subsided into gentle hiccoughs as the boy took in Piccolo's serious glare.

"Good," Piccolo stated. "Now, do you remember your power?"

The boy stared blankly at him, not daring to answer, an eyebrow half raised in confusion.

"Well, do you?" Piccolo snapped, not used to waiting for a response.

"My power?" The boy asked. "What do you mean by that?"

Piccolo's disapproving glare warped into a wicked smirk. The boy felt the sink of dread in his stomach.

"Let me show you," Piccolo told him.

Before the boy could react, Piccolo had placed a firm hand on his head, gripping locks of black hair in clawed fingers. The boy gave out a small whimper as the demon lifted him up, as he took aim and then shrieked as Piccolo threw him towards a small mountain.

For a moment, all Gohan could comprehend was the rush of wind as it sped past him, the visual of the very real and very hard rock jutting out of the ground and the jolting feeling of free flight as it churned his stomach. Then the world became white. He could hear a ringing in his ears and could feel the stirring of something inside him…

Piccolo glanced up on impulse when he felt the gravity of the power the kid was emitting. He watched in sick fascination as a blue aura flared up around the child and as he fired off a natural Ki blast to completely obliterate the land mass in front of him. Dust and debris littered the air. Automatically, Piccolo pitted his feet and held fast against the repercussions of the explosion.

When the dust cleared, Piccolo felt himself brake out in a cold sweat.

"What? No way!" He exclaimed, staring at the crater where the small mountain had stood, a huge blast mark scorching the land like a scar. The boy sat in front of it looking suitably alarmed and completely clueless.

'_What in damnation is this kid?' _Piccolo thought to himself as he stepped forward.

"What happened?" Gohan wondered aloud, staring at the smoking hole just inches in front of him. In the back of his mind, he automatically pegged it as his dad's work and on a reflex, he started looking around for signs of his father, the telltale wild hair or the orange gi. Instead, all he found was Mr Piccolo wearing the same stoic look as before.

"You did that little trick all by yourself with your own power," Piccolo explained as though this was something obvious. Gohan felt a small sting of disappointment in his gut, where was his daddy?

"It's rare to have such power at your age," Piccolo was saying, "but, you need to know how to control it. That's why we're here. I'm going to train you. I'm going to teach you to use that power of yours so you can help us."

"Huh? How come?" Gohan asked. "I mean, I'm just a boy…you're the second strongest guy on Earth next to dad."

Piccolo smirked.

'_Well at least Goku's been teaching this snivelling whelp something.'_

"Is that so? Well, either way kid, the guy your dad and I fought was even stronger. Now there's two more just like him on the way. Your dad and I need your help Gohan."

Piccolo didn't wait for a response, choosing instead to hoist the kid into a standing position.

"Now, remove that silly overcoat you've got in. It will only impede your manoeuvrability."

Gohan hesitated, noting the chill in the air but when he saw the harsh look in Piccolo's eye, he did what he was told. Carefully, he removed the overcoat, wondering briefly where his hat had gone and wishing that his dad was there to take him home, back to his mother who preferred to keep her young son wrapped up.

"I-I'm ready Mr Piccolo, w-what do I do first…for the training?"

Piccolo folded his arms, making up his mind in an instant.

"Live, you just live Gohan."

"Huh? Just live?" Gohan repeated, fear and dread colliding in his system as he realised just what the demon meant by that.

"That's right," Piccolo confirmed. "Survive our here a little while. If you can do that, then I'll train you."

Gohan took a step back, his face a perfect picture of petrifaction.

"What? Oh no! I can't stay out here by myself!" Gohan told his tormenter, his eyes darting out over the landscape for any sign of escape.

"Quiet!" Piccolo commanded, his temper wearing thin. "Don't be weak, there's a great power sleeping inside of you. Use it, rely on it."

Gohan's eyes were already filling up, his pupils were small and obscured by forming tears. A snot trail ran down his nose and Piccolo turned his head away in disgust.

"But I'm scared to," The boy confessed, completely vulnerable. Piccolo wasn't sure if he wanted to train the boy or destroy him. Instead, he turned, chuckling sadistically.

"You'll laugh at your fears when you find out who you really are."

"No, please don't leave me by myself," the boy begged, panic mounting as he saw that Piccolo was perfectly serious about leaving. There was nothing in the world that scared the 4 year old half Saiyan as much as being left to his own devices in a strange, unforgiving place.

"I'll come with you, I'll do whatever you say, I promise…k Mr Picollo?"

"Sorry kid," Piccolo replied with his back turned. "It's time to grow up and handle things for yourself."

Without another word, Piccolo took off, knowing that Gohan would be unable to follow him if he travelled by air. For a while, Gohan followed, running after the demon in a blind panic, begging him not to leave. His voice carried over the open landscape, probably attracting quite a lot of trouble Piccolo mused as he streaked on ahead and out of sight.

* * *

Morning dawned bright over the mountains, bathing the bushes and trees in a filter of yellowing light. In the farthest field, Piccolo was sitting in a meditative pose, preparing himself for the morning barrage of training that he would endure before going to check on his young ward. A few months had passed since he had first brought Goku's offspring into his territory and as much as he was loathe to admit it, Piccolo was impressed.

Though the boy had struggled in the first few weeks to keep himself fed and to avoid getting himself killed, he had soon started to pick up the basic skills required for the higher level training that Piccolo was planning. It had been a risky move to leave the child on his own for the first few months rather than starting him on the demon style of fighting immediately but as Piccolo had watched his progression, he knew he had done the right thing.

While Gohan was, by no means, a martial artist, he was already developing his own style, his own way of doing things that would prove an infinite advantage once those Saiyans arrived. This way, Gohan would learn to be independent in all aspects of life. He would learn to develop his own style of martial arts and would be able to adapt to the changing fighting styles of the Saiyan warriors.

At the moment he was sure that the child was asleep, tucked up in the cave that he called home. The kid didn't usually get up until the sun was well up. Little did he know that Gohan was wide awake and had been for several hours.

'_That should do it,'_ Gohan thought to himself as he tied the last of the home-made rope down on the land surfer he had built. It had taken him weeks to find the raw material and manipulate it all to build something useful but now that he looked at it all, he figured it was time well spent, even if it had detracted somewhat from his main project, the raft waiting down by the beach.

He gave the surfer one last critical examination before bolting into the cave to grab the supplies he had gathered for his trip, smiling elatedly as he picked up the berries and the dinosaur meat he had stored in the coolest part of the cave.

Today was the day, today he would finally be going home to see his mum. He'd be able to tell her that he was alright, would be able to get a home cooked meal…

He hopped onto the surfer and kicked off, using the wind to help pick up speed and a small part of his Ki to stabilise the whole thing. He shot across the land much faster than he was usually able, into the barren desert in no time, weaving pathways across the dunes.

Everything was running smoothly for a little while until a dark shadow fell over the boy and the land surfer. Gohan's eyes automatically shot upward to meet the yellow eyes of a large buzzard. The two held each other's gaze for a moment before the colossal creature flapped its wings, sending a torrent of wind into Gohan's sails, causing him to pick up speed. Seeing the opportunity for faster travel, Gohan pulled a face at the bird, dodging this way and that over the sand to provoke the bird to chase him.

It had the desired effect, the bird gave chase, using its wings to beat a favourable wind into Gohan's sails. Every now and then it would swoop down in a predatory dive but it was nothing Gohan couldn't out-manoeuvre.

The first bump beneath the smooth surface of the surfer caused Gohan to start paying more attention to his surroundings than the bird but by then it was too late, he was heading straight for the rockiest part of the desert. As if in response, the bird swept its wings forward, urging Gohan into the sharp path of the rocks, forcing him to stay on course.

'_Damn it,'_ the boy thought to himself, yelling out as he hit a particularly sharp rock and felt the crunch of splintering wood under his feet. Almost immediately afterward, the land dropped away down a steep hill and Gohan was forced to cling onto the mast of the surfer, his feet taken quite happily away from the mangling rocks beneath him. Powerless now to control the surfer, Gohan was left to ride it out, his mind working overtime as he tried to think of a way out. Just as he'd managed to figure out the principles of a Ki blast that might slow him down, the surfer shot over the edge of a cliff and Gohan was thrown through the air.

A million images flashed across his mind as he tumbled down, his mother's face, his father taking him fishing, his uncle hitting his father into the ocean and plucking Gohan up like he weighed nothing more than a paper spit ball. The last thing he saw before he hit the ground was the gold of beach sand coming up to meet him at an astounding speed.

The impact buried him in sand but he was surprisingly unhurt. As he dug himself out and cleared the sand granules out of his clothes, he found himself face to face with the sabre tooth tiger he had befriended.

"Look, I'm fine!" Gohan said proudly, standing and showing himself to the huge, tan cat. "I must be getting tougher."

The tiger simply stared at him, a bored look in its eye. Gohan smiled good naturedly and looked around, gauging where he had landed. Luckily he'd fallen near the raft and most of the supplies he had strapped to the surfer had made the journey in tact though he had to dart around gathering everything back up before he could pull out the raft and get to work on putting the finishing touches on the structure.

It took him the rest of the day to string up the sails, pack the supplies and make sure everything else was ready. By the time he had hoisted the raft into the water, the sun was starting to set over the horizon, bathing everything in liquid fire. The tiger had been watching him all day and padded forward to sit on the edge of the beach as the little raft started moving out into open water.

"Don't worry, I'll be back!" Gohan called out to the creature, waving.

'_I wonder if mum will let me keep him,' _Gohan thought whimsically as he disappeared into the water.

Mentally, the boy thanked his father for teaching him how to navigate his way home using the position of the sun and when night fell, the patterns in the stars. He sailed heartily until the light of the sun was snuffed out and he got hungry. Braking into his supplies, he sat back and watched the inky black sky, wishing that the moon was still around so he would have at least _some _light to see by.

He wasn't sure what sort of time it was when he fell asleep, lulled by the gentle rise and fall of the boat around him. All he knew as the first drops of rain woke him was that it felt like he'd only been asleep for a few minutes.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to figure out why he was awake, not noticing the ominous cloud in the sky until it was too late. The rain fell in droves as Gohan tried in vain to secure his sail. The wind whipped around him, tugging the little raft here and there across the water, pitching it into huge waves that seemed to swallow Gohan up. When his sail ripped and the mast snapped, Gohan gave up and focussed instead on pitching the water leaking into his raft over the side, all the time muttering to himself.

Through the turmoiled clouds of the storm, he didn't notice the figures hovering above him in the sky, unbothered by the rain and the wind. One was an impressive figure clad in black armour, the other was a thin, hooded individual. Both stared down at the little boat with mixed expressions.

"That's him?" Sensou asked, staring at the tiny figure of the boy below him. He watched as the boy struggled to hold his raft together and frowned in confusion. Why didn't the little Saiyan use his Ki to hold it all together? Surely he was aware of just how much he had to tap into?

The hooded figure nodded, causing Sensou to raise an uncharacteristic eyebrow.

"You might want to try a verbal response Ma, its hard to see through the rain." Sensou spat at his companion.

Ma said nothing, the perfect response to further aggravate the warrior god. Sensou was about to make a further cutting comment when he stopped, sensing the shift in power not far from them. Someone else was out looking for the boy.

Piccolo hurtled through the storm, using the currents of the wind to guide himself through it, all the time searching for Gohan's flickering power signature. Emotions that he had never considered beyond the basics were coursing through him in complicated waves making him clumsy, irrational.

He had never felt so angry before.

What made it worse was that he wasn't sure if he was angry at the boy for attempting to escape or himself for letting it happen. How could he have not foreseen that, should the boy become competent enough, he would try to go home? How had he not noticed that Gohan had managed to build himself a raft? Sure, he was aware that Gohan had a variety of building projects, who wouldn't in the same situation but it had never crossed his mind that Gohan would be building something to satisfy anything other than an immediate need.

In a way, he was proud of the boy, it showed that the kid had initiative, that he had what it really takes to be an accomplished fighter.

That feeling alone was enough to promote confusion and that wasn't even the worst of it.

Worst of all was the crippling fear, the gnawing discomfort in the core of his being that started up like nausea every time he thought about what could happen to the boy out in the open ocean in the storm. At first, he tried to convince himself that this reaction was just because he didn't want to lose the project he had been working on for almost 6 months now, a weapon he would use to help destroy the threat to his world but as he continued to fly frantically through the storm, he began to admit that it might just be something else.

Was he…was he developing some sort of emotional weakness for the boy?

Positioned as he was below the skyline of the storm, Sensou growled. How dare someone else try to lay claim to this perfect, un-moulded weapon, how dare they threaten to take what was rightfully his by decree of the Four Winds.

Next to him, Ma let a smug smile cross his pale face.

"Better get in there quick Senso-

Before he could finish his sentence, Sensou had disappeared, re-appearing before the shocked face of the little half-Saiyan who was still clinging to the last bits of raft debris.

"Ah!" Gohan shrieked as a tall, muscular figure appeared before him. Taking in the tangle of wild black hair and the dark armour, Gohan automatically assumed it was his uncle and shot a reflexive Ki blast at the man which he swept aside without so much as a blink.

Gohan simply stared.

'_Wait…it's not my uncle,_' he thought but that was as far as he was able to take this observation as a wave crashed down on top of him, sending him into a spiral underwater where he couldn't determine what was up and what was down.

Piccolo paused mid flight, angling down so he could catch a glimpse of the raft debris floating across the surface of the water. Unfathomable panic gripped him and his eyes automatically darted out over the water, searching for any sign of Goku's son. There was a pounding in his ears as his heart rate increased and he fought not to hyperventilate as his airways constricted.

Surely the kid couldn't have…

He could wish the boy back with the Dragonballs but then there would be nothing to wish Goku back in time for the Saiyan invasion…

No, he just couldn't have…

Something skimmed the edge of his vision and his eyes fell back to the place that he had seen it, a tiny orange splotch in the ocean.

Gohan.

Relief flooded him as he realised that the boy was okay but as his eyes focussed through the rain, he could just make out a dark figure holding on to one of the kid's boots.

"Gohan!" Piccolo called out but his voice was swept away in the storm.

He started to streak towards the duo, putting on a burst of speed but at the last possible second, the two of them vanished.

Piccolo halted himself immediately, following the energy signatures until he found the dark figure, Gohan under arm, rendezvousing with another figure above them. There was a moment where the two figures just stayed in mid-air before they winked out of sight.

Piccolo was about to try and find them again but as he searched for their power signatures he realised something terrifying.

There were no power signatures.

Even the familiar feel of Gohan's power had vanished with those two strangers.

Despite the storm around him, he pulled himself into the familiar meditative stance and stretched out, feeling his way through the greatest powers on Earth, touching on the locations of all the other Z fighters. Gohan was still nowhere to be found.

With the panic settling into his system once more, Piccolo did something he had sworn that he would never do. It was the only thing he could think of.

'_Kami…'_

There was a pause and then eventually.

'_Piccolo?'_

'_Look, I don't really want to do this but I need to ask a favour._'

The good thing about Kami was that he wasn't really prone to the episodes of pride that Piccolo was. He judged the urgency in his counterparts tone and his instincts as guardian of the Earth took over.

'_What is it?_'

'_I need to know if you can locate Gohan. I lost him off of the coast of the mainland because some guys picked him up._'

There was a pause as Kami searched and Piccolo waited, every second grating on his normally composed patience. Just as Piccolo thought he was about to go crazy, Kami responded.

'_I…can't seem to find him anywhere on Earth…I'll check again._'

Piccolo growled under his breath.

'_No, don't bother, it'll be a fruitless exercise for someone as useless as you. I never should have asked for your help._'

Piccolo severed the telepathic communication between the two and took off, shooting through the storm still searching for any sign of his young charge.

From his position on the lookout, Kami watched the form of Piccolo in his mind's eye, marvelling as his evil counterpart took it upon himself to continue the search for the boy unaided, caring only about the boy's safety. He wasn't sure if Piccolo was really aware of the goodness of this act or of the changes that were already taking place in his heart. Perhaps…perhaps there was hope for redemption after all…

"Kami?"

Kami shook his head and turned to face Mr Popo who had paused in watering the budding chrysanthemums to throw his wizened companion a concerned look.

"I can feel the darkness in Piccolo subsiding Mr Popo," Kami confessed, turning his attention back on the demon still moving desperately across the storm addled ocean. "But I confess I am worried. I think that Goku's son has been moved off world. If this is true, and this is the work of the Four Winds as I fear, there is nothing we can do."

"But how will Piccolo take it if he has already formed an attachment to the boy as you imply?" Mr Popo asked, alarmed. "And what about Goku?"

Kami shook his head and that was enough of an answer for the black jinn.

"Oh Kami…" he said, sympathy lacing the tone of his voice.

"I can only pray that the Four Winds will allow Gohan to come home once he has fulfilled whatever purpose he is meant to fulfill."

* * *

_Gohan…Gohan…_

A voice penetrated the sludgy darkness hanging over him and pierced his thoughts, pulling him into focus. The voice registered as the sound of his mother calling him for dinner. For a moment, he allowed himself to drift in darkness.

_Gohan…_

Slowly, the voice began to change into the frantic tones of his mentor's, whipped out over the wind by the storm. A jolting panic gripped the half Saiyan's stomach and he tried to call out, replying to his mentor's desperate calls. But all that came out of his mouth was a rush of gargling water, a voice half drowned.

Gohan's eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright, leaning over the side of something convulsively to spew up sea water. The salt in the water stung his nose and eyes, blurring the image of his surroundings. All he was able to comprehend was that wherever he was, it was bright, really bright. He stayed where he was for a good few minutes, gulping in the sweet air and trying not to hiccough up more sea water though he knew that it was still in his system, causing his stomach to churn.

"…can't say it's any of Shorai's business but if you've been ordered to report to him then there's nothing more I can say."

"The Four Winds have determined that the boy needs to be kept under Shorai's watch. Any unfavourable change in the course of the future needs to be noted so we can act accordingly."

Gohan remained motionless, listening to the voices outside the door, letting his body take a break from handling anything other than breathing for the time being. While he breathed and as he listened, he realised two very important things.

One was that he had been kidnapped.

The other was that this had happened right under Piccolo's nose so these guys were sure to be dangerous, whoever they were.

Mentally, he gave himself a little pep talk and sat up, using shaking arms. The world warped unpleasantly around him as the angle of his vision changed and he became uneasy when he realised just how weak he felt.

That wasn't going to stop him from trying to escape.

He took a moment to study the room he was in. It was bare and clinically white with a few complicated machines littering the corners. He had been laying on what looked like a table which explained the ache in the hollow of his back. Beside the table was a trey on a stand with wheels that looked like it had been recently cleared of anything useful like surgical tools.

There were no windows much to Gohan's dismay and the only door in or out of the room led into the corridor where the voices were coming from.

Gohan braced himself and hopped down from the bed, alarmed when he over-balanced and almost crashed into one of the walls.

'_Gonna have to take it slow,_' He told himself, trying to talk to himself like he imagined Mr Piccolo would talk to him.

Steeling himself, he walked to the door, deducing that the door would open if he pulled on the tear drop shaped door knob. Taking a deep breath, he heaved the door open.

Everything seemed to speed up.

There were two people outside, one, the muscular figure that had appeared above him in the storm before he'd been dragged under the waves, the other a thin, hooded figure. In an instant, Gohan had picked an escape route and had jumped, aiming a perfect arch over the hooded figure's shoulder to land on the other side.

"Ha!" he yelled, victorious, and took off at a sprint, skimming his way down the corridor.

Sensou stood tall and watched the boy, completely unperturbed by the escape attempt. On the other side of him, Ma seemed to be suitably impressed.

"Fast little guy," Ma commented, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stick up.

"Ha," Sesnou chuckled. "Hardly."

With that, he disappeared, hurtling along the corridor at speeds too fast for Ma to follow. When he re-appeared, he was at the far end of the corridor, waiting to scoop the kid up by the collar of his gi.

Gohan had barely sensed the shift in energy and looked up at his captor with a mixture of awe and fear. If he didn't know any better, he'd say that this guy was faster than his dad!

"An escape attempt like this," Sensou began, his voice dark and ominous, "is no way to show the proper respect for your master."

"Master?" Gohan asked, slightly indignant. "You're not my master, Mr Piccolo's already teaching-

"The Namekian known as Piccolo has taught you nothing," Sesnou barked, silencing the half Saiyan in his hand. "Shorai and I planned it carefully so you would have none of your former Earth influence. You are a clean slate and you belong to me."

Gohan started to struggle in the hand of the warrior god, focussing his Ki on the knuckle joints in his captor's hands, a trick he had learnt from the times he had been picked up by the huge birds that roamed the skies around Piccolo's home.

"I don't belong to you! I don't belong to anyone!" Gohan yelled.

Back along the corridor, Ma reeled as he felt the mounting energy. He had seen the potential in the child he had been sent to pick up with that brute of a warrior but he had never imagined that the child's power was so deep rooted, so potentially limitless. He had never experienced a power like it.

Sensou was also marvelling at the display, feeling excitement beginning to course through him. It really was like holding the ultimate weapon in his hand and the boy was young. It wouldn't be too hard to change the way the kid thought about that world, it wouldn't be too hard to inspire loyalty in a creature that could be so easily manipulated. But it all had to start now with some hard discipline and some hard learned lessons.

"Enough!" Sensou barked, throwing his arm out and ramming Gohan's face into the hard corridor wall. When he drew back there was a smear of blood and a crack that ran almost all the way back to Ma. The boy himself had a nose bleed, a cut lip and a black eye. His power had dropped back to what it had been before.

Gohan felt the grip of nausea following the burst of pain as he was pulled back out of the wall. The sea water still present in his gut was making him sluggish. It was so hard to try and fight something so strong when he felt so bad.

"Now listen to me kid," Sensou said in a sharp tone of voice. "You belong to me. This was decided by the Council of the Four Winds and is something outside of your power to change. Your purpose here is to train with me in the art of self control and martial technique. If you do as I say and behave in a respectful manner, your life here may be a contented one. If you feel the need to express the spirit of rebellion, I can make your life here nothing short of hellish. Do I make myself clear?"

Gohan remained silent, a frown gracing his features as he tried to take in the barrage of information. He remembered his dad telling him stories about the Guardian of Earth…Kami? Was this something to do with him? Was that what the man was talking about when he said that this was all decided by the Council of the Four Winds?

"Is this so that I can help fight against the Saiyans?" Gohan asked uncertainly, thoroughly confused.

"That is something I will prepare you for, yes," Sensou admitted, seeing a foothold to gain the kid's compliance.

"But Mr Piccolo-

"That green fool can only ever dream of attaining the levels of power you will reach under my tutelage," Sensou told him.

Gohan began to raise a disbelieving eyebrow but paused as he took in the man's expression. He wasn't kidding. He thought about it for a while, weighing up the believability of the man's claim and the idea that he could be more powerful than Piccolo when he fought against the Saiyan threat. If he was able to beat them, he and his dad could go home and everything would go back to normal…right?

"Will I…get to go home afterwards?" he asked uncertainly.

Sensou opened his mouth to answer but paused as he considered how to proceed. The fact of the matter was that as far as he was concerned, Gohan would never be going home. He was the perfect weapon, a way to gain some leverage in the course of universal events, there was no way Sensou was going to let that just walk away. But the Four Winds would only support him in his actions so far as it was to avert a universal catastrophe. Once 9 years was up, would they demand that Gohan be sent home? No, he would have to be careful to condition unwavering loyalty into the kid so given the choice, the kid would opt to stay with him and to do that, he would have to play it smart.

"That depends entirely on whether or not you do as you're told," Sensou replied diplomatically.

The kid gave the warrior god a heated glare but didn't try to struggle further. Things were happening far too fast and his mind was still muddled after the trauma of the storm on the sea. It was clear that whoever this guy was, he was an impressive fighter. What could it hurt if Gohan got to train under him before the Saiyans arrived instead of Piccolo? He would still be able to help and that was all that really mattered.

"That's better," Sensou said, placing the boy on his feet. "Now, follow me."

Sensou turned, opening the door to the next room and walking through. After a moment's hesitation and a glance back at the hooded figure at the end of the corridor, Gohan followed, loping slightly to keep up with the big man's strides. As he passed over the threshold, the world changed and instead of the claustrophobic corridor, Gohan found himself in a wide open space, walking over a hill that overlooked a ruined city. The sky was a dark, twisted black and the shadows that were cast over the city made the edges of the rubble look jagged and uninviting.

Automatically, Gohan glanced back at the door he had walked through and gaped when he saw that the door was attached to nothing, a frame simply standing in the centre of that open space though he could clearly see the corridor still visible through the opening.

"This is one of my training dimensions," Sensou explained as they walked down into the city. "You will live here until I believe you are ready to progress to the next dimension."

Sensou led Gohan over the debris of the city, past various buildings that looked like they had folded in on themselves or shattered altogether.

"For now, I expect you to rest and get a feel of the landscape. Tomorrow, I will return to train you."

Sensou paused and spun round, eyeing the child's battered attire with disgust. Gohan glared back, his black eye swelling shut.

For a moment, it seemed to Gohan that Sensou was just going to stare him down but he sensed the movement of Ki around him and when he looked down, his simple orange gi had been replaced with something similar in plain black. Beneath the gi he was wearing a grey shirt which made him feel unnecessarily heavy.

"Is this…weighted?" Gohan asked, shifting his feet out so he could concentrate on holding himself up.

"If you cannot move around easily in these clothes, you are not worthy to train. Get used to it," Sensou ordered icily.

He started to walk without so much as a backwards glance, fully aware of the defiant glare still turned on him as he left. He would have to do something about that defiance. He smirked to himself as he started hiking back up the hill towards the dimension door, listening to the sounds of the boy as he streaked through the deserted streets. Of course, he would discipline some respect into the boy but for now the training environment would lay the groundwork. As a reward for the boy's insolent attitude, Sensou had conveniently forgotten to mention the volcano on the edge of the city that spewed molten lava and thick ash filled smog every few hours.

Gohan Son, his fantastic super weapon, was in for a rough night.

* * *

_So Gohan has sort of agreed to training with Sensou, not that he had much of a choice. Will Gohan's training with the warrior prove to be enough to help stop the Saiyans when they arrive? How will things change for Piccolo and Goku? Find out next time on the next exciting episode of:_

_SOUTH PARK! (accidentally sits on Kenny)_

_And remember, reviews make the world a magical and awesome place._

_Edit: Spelling mistakes and grammar rectified.  
_


	3. Conditioning

_Smellutations guys! Another update for you because you're SUCH GOOD LITTLE BOYS AND GIRLS!_

_This is why I shouldn't write author's notes in the morning before Dr Pepper makes me rational. As always, a few notes:_

_1) There was something important that I thought I should note down but for the life of me I can't remember. _

_2) Spelling and grammar checked as always, continuity has been cross referenced once but I will check again when my life isn't so hectic so that I can be sure everything makes sense._

_3) 'Tonbo' means dragonfly in Japanese...which is neat._

* * *

**2: Conditioning**

There was an explosion of ash and liquid fire. The volcano belched a thick, tar like cloud into the air and then a second later, a tower of fire erupted from the top of the mountain raining down gold and red and heat.

"KYAAAAAA!"

The cry resounded through the crumpled buildings as the magma seeped toward the ruined city and Gohan ran full pelt, avoiding the embers floating down from the sky with difficulty in his weighted clothing. Adrenaline more than anything else kept him mobile as the molten rock spread through the rubble at truly terrifying speeds, laying over the previous waves of lava that had barely started to solidify.

It was like he had been transported to hell. Anything Piccolo could throw at him at home seemed like child's play compared to this place and unlike Piccolo, Gohan knew the armoured warrior wouldn't protect him should he make a mistake and perish.

Skidding round a corner, Gohan halted as he witnessed the tumble of glowing magma spreading around the next corner to block his escape route. The heat was unbearable, fogging his brain and making it difficult to determine what he should do next. His eyes darted here and there but the atmosphere stung them, making them water.

Instinctually, his eyes locked on to the crags and cracks in one of the toppling sky scrapers and, seizing his chance, Gohan launched himself up, throwing his hand out to grip the edge of one of those cracks.

He had no time to celebrate his small victory as the magma crashed together beneath him and he was forced to climb, willing his body onwards though it felt like it weighed a ton. He hoisted himself up as the boiling floor beneath him hissed, a torrent of dark pollution following him up to join the scarred sky and as he felt the building starting to collapse in earnest, he reached the top and vaulted. For a few moments, he was flying through the sky, the ash and embers whipping up a storm around him. Through the thickness, he could see the city as it was swallowed and as he started to fall, he realised that he had nowhere safe to fall to. Panic gripped his gut as the sensation of free fall overtook everything else and as he fell, he tried to comprehend in the way only a 5 year old can that this was the end.

A bright, white light enveloped him, smothering his vision and something profound within him moved. As it shifted, he tried to grasp the notion of exactly what it was but it was formless, fleeting. There one moment and gone the next.

At first he thought he was dead, a logical conclusion considering he'd just fallen into a veritable pit of lava, but as he came to, he could feel a pounding behind his eyes and the ache of his body. Surely if he was dead, all pain would be stripped…

"That was somewhat impressive," a dark voice said above him.

His vision was wavering but he still recognised the solid form of his new master hovering above him, his arms folded and his face a mask of disdain despite the words of praise.

Gohan had no idea what the warrior god was talking about. It took all of his remaining strength to heave himself up into a sitting position and what he saw made him gasp in disbelief. He was sitting in the centre of a huge crater. Little wafts of smoke and steam streamed upwards to join the overcast sky confirming that this crater was new. He let his hand rest on the ground and realised that it was burning hot.

The expression on Sensou's face shifted.

"I would move little monkey, the walls of that crater won't hold back the magma forever."

Gohan kept his eyes on Sensou's malicious grin as the warrior god levitated lazily upwards. Just what did he mean by th-

An ominous orange glow caught the corner of Gohan's eyes and he turned to watch in horror as a trickle of lava started flowing down the edge of the crater, heading straight for him to start forming a pool. Automatically, the demi-Saiyan edged back so he was climbing up the side of the crater, his mind working overtime as he tried to figure out what to do.

When the next trickle of lava melted through the muddy walls, Gohan had no choice but to take off, springing upwards and trying to ignore the strain the clothes were still putting on his system. As he jumped up, he glanced back at the crater, taking in the way that the crater had formed to provide a natural barrier against the molten magma.

'_Did I do that?_' Gohan wondered to himself.

As he started falling towards the bright, burning ground, feeling the pressure of the heat on his bare skin, Gohan made a conscious effort not to panic. Instead, he took a deep, calming breath and stretched out his hand before him, gathering Ki into what he could only hope would produce a successful blast.

Once upon a time, his daddy had shown him the Kamehameha wave. Gohan had watched in awe and fascination as the energy started to glow in his father's hand. He had felt a tug in the base of his gut as the energy pooled and then as his father's arms straightened, he felt the release of pressure on the air as the ball of bright blue light shot across the open plain, spinning into a nearby tree and disintegrating it instantly.

"Oops," his father had said, smiling that easy smile and putting his hand behind his head.

Gohan had never really managed to figure out how his dad had produced a blast as huge as that but then he'd never actually tried to perform it himself. Since he'd been living in Piccolo's survival camp, he'd discovered how to make small blasts to cook meat but he'd never tried to create something deadly enough to produce a crater.

It was now or never.

He waited until he could feel the telltale tug in his gut and tingling feeling of Ki in the palm of his hand.

His wrist flicked.

"HYA!"

A glowing ball of Ki appeared before him and shot down into the magma. There was a flash and then a rumble of ominous thunder. Gohan continued to fall into a chaotic world of smoke and fire but when he landed with his heart in his throat, he landed on something hot but _solid. _As the smoke cleared enough, he could see the crater he had created, not nearly as big as the first when he wasn't in control, but it was there.

"Yes, I did it!" Gohan yelled, jumping up elatedly and bouncing around the crater, intoxicated with his own achievement.

High above, Senou watched as the kid sprung out of the hole he had made, avoiding the burning sludge as it oozed back inwards. The kid was still laughing in mid-air as he shot another Ki blast down to produce a crater to land in and then another, creating a lily pad like pathway out of immediate danger.

He shook his head disbelievingly, silent as the kid finally dropped down onto a tall hill, one of the only places left more of less untouched by the magma.

"I did it, I did it," the kid sang, strutting around in little circles though the world around him was still being ravaged by the inferno.

Sensou tried to keep his excitement in check and ignored the twinge of unease that had crept into his system. The kid was not only powerful but innovative, adaptable, a perfect fighting machine if he could be persuaded to move in the right direction.

But with innovation came the strength of mind to think outside authority and that cast a grim shadow over Sensou's plans. The boy had to be taught obedience and he had to be taught now. Usually Sensou's new recruits were left in their new surroundings for a few months before they started training with Sensou but in this case, he was more than confident about his promise to train the boy the next day.

On the ground, Gohan plopped down on his butt watching the exhibition of orange and gold fire still cooking the land. He sniffed a little and yawned widely, excruciatingly tired after he had been awake so long avoiding the constant lava streams and after he had used so much of his power at once.

He glanced down at the foot of the hill where the magma was running like a river but he didn't get any further in trying to figure out if he would be swallowed by the fire or not if he slept before he flopped back onto the grass, snoring lightly.

The warrior watched the child from his safe distance in the air and smiled cruelly.

Let the child sleep, tomorrow, the real battle would begin.

* * *

Piccolo had searched until he was literally ready to drop out of the sky. He moved in a methodical, criss-cross pattern across the ocean and when that yielded no results, he'd taken his search to the surrounding land masses, hoping to catch a glimpse of the boy unconscious on the shore of some beach. While he searched, he let his Ki sense extend, hoping to find even the barest trace of the boy's signature.

By the time he finally decided to give up, he'd still not managed to sense even a remnant. It was like the boy had been moved out of existence.

Suddenly, Piccolo's head snapped up, a feral growl rumbled up from deep inside him, dispersing on the air as he changed course, heading now for Kami's lookout.

'_You know don't you,_' Piccolo accused and Kami winced as the mental shout cut across his training with the other Z fighters.

They paused as they watched the old demon freeze before them, Krillin was in mid-air preparing to bring a controlled chop around to meet Kami's neck. He blinked as he held himself.

'_What are you talking about?_' Kami asked and the fact that Kami was playing dumb with Piccolo only increased his rage. Despite the fact that he was almost completely out of power, the air around him began to swirl, creating a Ki based tornado as he surged upwards past Korin's tower.

'_You know damn well what I'm talking about. Where has the kid been taken?_'

Kami let out a sigh causing Krillin to jump and lose the hold on his position. He yelped as he dropped out of the air, landing upside down on his head.

From his position across the lookout, leaning against a tree and eating a dumpling, Yajirobi grinned.

"Cue ball, left pocket," he said, taking another bite out of the dumpling.

Kami turned from the Z Fighters, his hands linked behind his back to show that the fight was over for now.

Tien and Yamcha stared after them, aware on an intrinsic level that something important must be happening. Kami was the Guardian of Earth after all and with the Saiyan threat, he was a very busy demon.

'_I don't know for sure Piccolo, I can only assume that he has been taken by the Four Winds._'

Piccolo slowed in the air, the tornado dying off as the impact of those words struck home.

The Four Winds…

There wasn't much Piccolo knew about the Four Winds but he knew the essentials. The Four Winds were responsible for the continued existence of the multi-dimensional universe, much like Kami was responsible for the continued existence of Earth. They had the power to manipulate the lay-lines of the universe and change fate. If Gohan had been called away by the Four Winds, it was out of Piccolo's hands to bring him back.

'_What makes you think it was them?_' Piccolo asked in a dejected tone.

Kami could feel the fluctuations in Piccolo's heart, emotions that were all too new and real for the demon that was so used to solitude and cold cruelty. Despite the fact that he had not had prolonged contact with the boy, he had watched him almost continuously for 6 long months. He had watched the child change and grow and despite how the evil within him festered, he had started to grow proud of the kid, had looked forward to watching him, had started to form a sort of paternal instinct.

With the child having been taken out from under him, Kami wasn't sure what sort of detrimental emotional blow Piccolo would suffer. His evil counterpart had never had to deal with anything of the sort before.

'_The child moved off dimension so suddenly…it can only be the work of a select few throughout the universe. The only ones that would have known about Gohan are the Four Winds._'

Piccolo remained silent for a while but Kami wasn't surprised when he appeared over the edge of the lookout, his Ki vastly depleted after his long, useless search. Piccolo took care with his landing, not wanting to let the other Z fighters know how bone tired he was. Despite the fact that they were all training to play on the same team, Piccolo still didn't trust them not to try and take advantage of the fact that he felt rough.

"Whoa Piccolo, what happened to you? Step in front of any buses lately?" Krillin asked upon seeing the green demon.

Yamcha raised an eyebrow at his small companion. This display of confidence was rare and quite probably misplaced when dealing with Piccolo.

Sure enough, Piccolo shot him a death glare that made Yamcha's toes curl. It was a look that promised serious suffering should Krillin continue down that particular verbal route.

Krillin drew back, visibly shaken. He gulped.

"Sorry I asked," he said a voice a few octaves higher than normal.

Piccolo sighed, gripping the bridge of his nose.

"There's nothing you can do?" Piccolo asked Kami directly. Kami took a moment to judge his counterpart, noting with some suspicion his suddenly calm demeanour.

He shook his head, clarifying that he was powerless in this particular situation.

Piccolo grunted.

"Well then I guess my babysitting period is over."

Without so much as a backward glance at the other fighters, Piccolo took off, intent on finding a place to hide away for a while.

"Huh? Wait a minute," Krillin hollered, running forward.

Piccolo paused in mid air and turned back snarling. Krillin gulped and tried to keep himself together.

"What do you mean you guess your babysitting period is over? What happened to Gohan? If you've done something to him I swear I'll-

"You'll what?" Piccolo snapped. "Get blasted like Goku and take a trip to another dimension? Try it."

Krillin's expression morphed into one of rage. Before he could really think things through, he'd vaulted forward, shooting up to meet the green demon. Seeing this, Piccolo smiled a calculating smile and got ready to launch a counter attack.

At the last possible moment, a hand reached out and clamped around Krillin's ankle, slamming him back down into the floor of the lookout. Letting the monk go, Kami re-called his retractable hand and turned disapproving eyes on his pupils.

"That is enough. You are all fighting on the same side in this battle. I would expect you all to remember that."

There was a splitting pain in Krillin's side and his left arm was tingling with the reverberations of the impact. Against his better judgement he pushed up onto his hands and knees, flipping himself over so that he could see Piccolo.

"B-but Gohan-

"Gohan has been taken elsewhere. Where he has gone, we cannot help him. This is not Piccolo's fault," Kami confirmed.

Krillin blinked, glancing from Piccolo to Kami and then back to Piccolo again as he let those words sink in.

"But…then…who has him? Who would be powerful enough to take Gohan from Piccolo?"

Kami let out another sigh and for once Piccolo felt that he could sympathise with his irritating counterpart having to put up with these clueless imbeciles asking stupid, time-wasting questions.

"It is of little importance now. There's nothing we can do so put it out of your mind and focus on your training."

"But-

"In case you have forgotten, the Saiyan threat is very real and very nearly here. Do you think you are ready to face these beasts?" Kami snapped, glaring at each of the Z Fighters in turn.

One by one they all lowered their heads sporting varying expressions of acceptance. On the floor of the lookout, Krillin grit his teeth but kept quiet. However much it pained him that he was unable to do anything for Goku's son, he had no choice but to accept that his work on the lookout with the Guardian of Earth was more important right now.

"Sorry Kami," he mumbled, standing and dusting himself off.

Kami let out a rare smile and turned back to his students. Piccolo glared icily at the guardian's back but still took the exposure as a cue to go. He was in no real shape to do battle at the moment, his foolish challenge of Krillin the product of an irritable heart and prideful bravado. It had been one of his more imprudent mistakes, one he was sure he would not have made if the boy had still been safely tucked away in his territory…

'_Maybe it's a good thing he's gone if this is what he does to me,_' Piccolo thought coldly, trying to shrug off the unfamiliar gnawing in his stomach as he slowly descended back past Korin's tower.

But he knew he was only fooling himself.

As he moved slowly out across the now calm ocean, with the goal of home in mind, he stopped trying to fight all the confusing feelings battering his system. Through exhaustion and the strain of outputting more Ki, one thought filtered through, words he had never thought before in his life.

'_Gohan…I'm sorry,_'

* * *

"Wake up little Saiyan."

A sharp pain exploded in Gohan's side and he snapped awake in mid air, crashing heavily to the ground. As the pain throbbed through him in undulating waves, Gohan glanced up on a reflex to catch a glimpse of Sensou lowering his boot back to the ground looking monumentally displeased.

Gohan groaned and curled in on himself, trying to take all the pressure off of his new injury.

"From now on, if you cannot sense me coming whilst you are asleep and if you cannot get up in time to greet me properly, this is how I will see fit to wake you. Is that clear?"

"Is that…really necessary?" Gohan asked, his small frame quivering as he tried to get back up.

Sensou's eyes flashed making Gohan recoil. In an instant, Sensou was standing before him, hoisting him up by the length of his hair.

"Ah," Gohan cried out as his scalp was subjected to an agony he had never known before.

Feeling Gohan become perfectly submissive in his hand, Sensou strolled leisurely to the edge of the island, holding the little demi-Saiyan over the still boiling magma.

Gohan felt the prick of heat beneath him and let his eyes travel downward. His heart began to thud dynamically in his chest and in his ears.

"The next time you question me, I drop you," Sensou stated in an offhand way, lowering Gohan just enough so that the heat prickling his body became just a little unbearable before pulling him back in and dumping him on the grass.

This time when Gohan sat back up, his eyes were dark with newly forming hatred. Sensou analysed the emotion and considered it. If the boy hated him, there would be no way to inspire the loyalty Sensou would need to utilise the boy's full potential, yet if he was too soft on the boy, he wouldn't be able to insure that Gohan would remain obedient.

He growled under his breath. It was a delicate situation and one wrong move could set him back years. He had never had to be so careful with a student before, he had never had to use all his tactical skills to figure out how to mould one little boy.

Of course, every natural warrior had a typeset and what he really needed to do was figure out Gohan's. Sensou had been fighting long enough to be able to categorise opponents in a glance and as he thought back to his first conversation with the boy, the resolution presented itself.

He sighed, pasting a look of remorse on his face.

"I know this may seem harsh now, but I assure you, training you this way is the only way to be sure that you will be strong enough to help your friends against the threat to your planet."

The effect was instantaneous. Gohan's dark eyes cleared of hatred completely and his stance shifted. It was more relaxed than before, more willing. Sensou mentally slapped himself on the back. So the boy had a hero complex, even this early on. All Sensou had to do was keep assuring the boy that his actions were ultimately for the good of the boy's relatives and friends and eventually, he knew Gohan would comply with his every wish.

Sensou nodded as the boy stood before him, a look in his eye that confirmed he was ready.

"Good," Sensou said, shifting his own stance. "Now we begin."

* * *

There were days when Gohan was beaten into the dark and when he woke it was flying through the air, his bruised side screaming from the impact of Sensou's boot. There were other days where Sensou called the end of the session before Gohan felt he had really warmed up and he had watched his new mentor leave that fiery dimension with a bemused expression on his young face. At the time, he didn't think to question it, he just continued to exist and train as best he could, longing for the day when he could go back home with his mother and father.

* * *

Gohan felt the flickering presence and sat up bleary eyed, standing as his master came into view over the ridge of the island. In the few months that Gohan had been there, the molten lava had solidified somewhat and he was able to make running trips to neighbouring landmasses to find things to eat.

The place was a lot more barren than the wild lands he had lived in with Piccolo and the result was that he'd become a scrawny specimen, nothing but skin and budding muscle. Very occasionally, Sensou would bring something to eat with him, normally some meat or tough vegetables but most of the time, Gohan would just fend for himself.

"Ah, a good day," Sensou said as he approached the boy, a sneer in his voice that always undermined the compliment on his lips.

Gohan grunted in response, automatically gathering Ki in the palm of his hand.

Sensou simply held up an open palm, a signal for Gohan to hold off on the offensive. Gohan blinked at him.

"We are not going to train today," Sensou told him bluntly, turning around and motioning for the boy to follow. "Today we are going to see a…_friend _of mine. The Four Winds have specifically requested that you meet him before you return to Earth to fight the Saiyans tomorrow."

Before he could stop himself, a huge grin spread over the young boy's face, his eyes shining with hope and excitement. Fighting the Saiyans tomorrow? That meant he would be going home right?

Sensou felt the rage build inside him like a red storm and he vaulted forward, punching the boy across the face in a clean sweep before the boy could really get a foothold of the situation. Gohan went flying into the only tree on the island, colliding with the trunk of the plant and slipping down to the ground. When he stood up, a cut had opened up on his forehead.

"What have I told you about restraining your emotions?" Sensou asked. "You are to keep them in check AT ALL TIMES!"

Gohan blanched as Sensou barked out the last words and wiped at the blood as it threatened to roll into his eyes.

"Yes sir," he said quietly, breathing deep to disperse the excitement still flaring in his gut as he thought about the possibility of seeing his friends again. He didn't dare focus on the idea of seeing his father, that was too much happiness for him to try and reign in.

Sensou observed as Gohan quickly followed orders and nodded once, turning on his heel with a motion for Gohan to follow.

The boy fell into step beside him and Sensou was pleased to note that the boy's Ki was still poised for battle. He could feel the eyes of the boy on his back, analysing him for changes in behaviour and possible weak points should this be some sort of trick. It wasn't the first time that Sensou had tried to lure Gohan into a false sense of security.

'_Don't trust anyone,_' Gohan thought to himself, repeating something Sensou had told him. '_Even your friends might someday attack you. You must be prepared to defend yourself against them._'

Sensou led Gohan across the dry sea of lava. Since the huge explosion on the first day, the volcano had calmed. Though it still vomited ash and fire every few hours, the magma oozing down the sides of the thing never reached the outskirts of the now buried city where Gohan had taken up residence.

Eventually, Gohan was able to make out their destination, the dimension door standing so obviously in the middle of the barren field.

"I'm sure I don't need to tell you that you are to show the proper respect for my…_friend,_" Sensou commented as he placed his hand on the tear shaped door knob. Gohan frowned as he listened to the change in tone when Sensou said the word 'friend'. It was mocking, almost feral, like they really weren't friends at all, quite the opposite even.

Gohan wasn't really surprised. He wasn't sure that Sensou even knew what friendship was, he was probably even worse than Piccolo!

"Stop gawking kid," Sensou snapped as the door swung open. "Try to look like you have some intelligence buried somewhere in that thick skull of yours, alright?"

Gohan grunted his affirmation of the order and fixed a copy of Sensou's harsh expression on his face. The expression dropped completely the moment he walked through the door.

Gohan had almost forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by lush greenery. The sky was a beautiful array of sunrise colours, blending spectacularly into a backdrop of healthy, happy trees. He could hear the pleasant sound of rushing water and could smell the freshness on the air. Around him, delicate little flowers were in bloom, bringing more colours to the ground in a vivid display of splendour.

Gohan felt a flick on the back of his head and glanced up into his mentor's hard eyes. It was only then that he realised his face had lit up again. He tried hard to fix the acerbic expression back in place.

The two of them walked for a while, Gohan keeping a trained eye on his surroundings, searching for danger.

'_If I'm so easily distracted here, what's it gonna be like when I go back home tomorrow. I'll be useless…_' Gohan thought, making sure to be extra vigilant to make up for his mistake.

Eventually, they came across a meadow through the trees and Gohan caught his first glimpse of the water he had heard. It was crystal clear and lively with the telltale flash of little fishes. Gohan tried to hold the desperate desire for a drink within him until Sensou said it was okay. He was so intent on the refreshing sight of the running water that he almost missed the two figures sitting cross legged on the top of the hill, a man that looked strikingly similar to Sensou only leaner with longer hair and a young, alien looking boy that might have been about Gohan's age.

Beside him, Sensou grunted.

In a moment, the two on the hill had whipped round, both of them sporting inviting smiles though the boy's faltered a little when he looked at the warrior god.

"I bring the boy as requested," Sensou said, shoving Gohan forward gruffly. "I still don't see why you need to meet with him in person to do this."

To Gohan's immense surprise, the lean man sent a hostile glare to Sensou before turning his gaze back on Gohan. The boy could tell immediately that this man was kinder than his master. The eyes were soft and full, so unlike the harsh expression of the warrior god. Gohan smiled easily and bowed just like his mother had always told him to do.

"Pleased to meet you Gohan," The lean man said, bowing right back and Gohan felt a pang of longing hearing someone use his name. He hadn't realised until then that Sensou rarely used his actual name, it was always 'kid' or 'boy' or if Gohan made mistakes, 'monkey'. He hadn't really paid attention to how much he had missed his given name until now and he was so caught up in that yearning that he forgot to be surprised that the lean man even knew his name at all

"Shorai," Sensou's warning voice cut through Gohan's thoughts causing him to look from one man to the other as they stood facing each other like old enemies, like his dad and Piccolo.

For a moment, the lean man, Shorai, said nothing but eventually his eyes fell back on Gohan. The smile returned.

"My name is Shorai, I am a seer. I have been instructed by the Four Winds to read your future before the battle tomorrow. Will you let me?" Shorai asked the young demi-Saiyan before him.

"Uh…" Gohan said, not really following what was going on any more. Unwittingly, his eyes fell from Shorai's face to rest on the alien boy behind him. Tonbo's face was a mask of fear. He stood in the clearing like he was ready to run, his body poised like a rabbit. Making sure Sensou couldn't see his face, Gohan tried to smile disarmingly. Unfortunately, the result of this was that Tonbo took a step to the side so Gohan's vision was obscured by the form of Shorai standing directly in front of him.

"Sure, okay," Gohan told the lean man, nodding his head.

"Thank you," Shorai said, his smile widening as he motioned for Gohan to sit on the grass before him. A small shoot of hope was beginning to grow up inside him. He had seen the way Gohan had smiled at Tonbo. It was innocent, inviting and still so completely pure, despite the violence he was clearly subjected to at his brother's hand judging by the scabbing wound on his forehead. Already a plan was beginning to formulate in the back of Shorai's mind as he took the boy's hand and held on to it. He followed the repercussions of his plan as it effected the future and noted with some relief that if he was to interfere with Sensou's training program, the universe would still remain intact after 9 years.

Perhaps then, should his plan be put in motion, he would be able to preserve some of the boy's exceptional purity…

With that optimistic thought, he turned his attention back to the matter at hand, watching the outcome of the fight, gasping as he witnessed the unexpected twists of raw battle. He felt the rise and fall of Gohan's Ki and eventually opened his eyes, meeting the confused eyes of the boy in the present.

"Well?" Sensou asked, ever impatient. "Out with it brother."

Gohan's eyebrows raised in sudden understanding. They were brothers, that's what the tone for the word '_friend_' was all about and that's why they looked so similar.

Shorai's expression was grim and Sensou didn't miss it.

"Boy, go and take a drink from that stream," Sensou ordered. Gohan didn't need to be told twice, making sure to keep his face impassive as he darted up and sprang for the water as fast as his feet would carry him so as not to goad his mentor into more punishment.

"Tonbo, please would you go and show Gohan where the good berries are once he's finished at the stream?" Shorai asked, laying a reassuring hand on his young ward's shoulder.

Tonbo ogled his mentor, petrified by the mere suggestion. He was about to shake his head when he caught the look in Shorai's eyes and ran off, following Gohan's footsteps in the grass.

"Out with it," Sensou repeated once the two boys were out of earshot.

"It's tricky brother," Shorai said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "The child is still very much attached to the Earthlings and his father is as determined as they come. He'll survive the fight just fine but you may have a tough time bringing him back. You'll have to be quick."

"Does that mean that Ma and I should stay for the fight?"

Shorai shook his head.

"No, if you do that, Gohan will wonder why you aren't helping and the Saiyans might turn on you."

Sensou breathed in deeply and exhaled the stress on the air. While battling the Saiyans would be like swatting flies for the warrior, it would be like tempting fate. Should he kill the Saiyans in that dimension, a butterfly effect on the threads of destiny may ripple out across the universe. It just wasn't a good idea.

And that was without mentioning what the Four Winds might reduce him to if they found out he'd been involved with the affairs outside his own dimension when they had given their express permission for him to travel there.

"You will have to ask Ma to wait with you here. We can watch the fight and judge when the time is right for you to collect Gohan."

Sensou made a noise of displeasure. Prolonged exposure to both Ma and Shorai always took its toll on Sensou's nerves.

"And will us snatching him back to this dimension have a detrimental effect on his attitude?" Sensou asked, trying to make the question sound nonchalant though really this was the one he was most eager to have answered.

Shorai gave him a suspicious look.

"Not if you tell him the truth," Shorai said cryptically, meriting an eyebrow raise from Sensou.

Seers and their cryptic garbage. Why couldn't they just be straight forward about things like this?

Down by the stream, Gohan was sure that he must've sucked up half the liquid in that whole dimension. He dabbed some water onto the wound on his forehead, letting the coolness ease the ache, then he lay back on the grass breathing out freshness and feeling satisfied. As he soaked up the relaxing atmosphere, a flicker on the edge of his peripheral vision caught his attention. He glanced up automatically and caught the image of the boy that had been standing behind the seer known as Shorai.

He beamed and stood, waving for the boy to come over.

Tentatively, Tonbo shuffled forward, unable to lock eyes with kid in front of him. He knew that this was the boy with the power to end the universe…it was overwhelming.

"Hi, my name's Gohan," Gohan said, extending a hand in greeting.

Tonbo stared at it.

'_What does he want me to do?_'

Gohan waited for a few seconds before reading Tonbo's expression and realising that the kid had no idea what he was doing.

"Oh sorry, this is how we say hello back home." He grabbed Tonbo's hand, ignoring as the boy stiffened and very slowly and carefully shook the hand up and down.

Tonbo whimpered until Gohan let go.

"See?" Gohan said, his smile bright.

Tonbo let his eyes flick up and was astounded to find that Gohan wasn't intimidating at all if he ignored the stain of blood on the boy's head, nothing like the image of his future self, all rage and destruction.

"M-Master Shorai said I should show you where the good berries are," Tonbo stated nervously, waiting for Gohan's expression to morph into one of anger. Instead, Gohan looked elated.

"Oh really? That's awesome. I haven't had anything good to eat in ages! Where are they?" Gohan asked, his eyes darting greedily to the forest situated behind the stream.

Tonbo chewed his lip as he pointed, confused that this kid was really the same as the one in his mentor's vision. Was it possible they'd accidentally taken the wrong kid?

Gohan followed Tonbo's finger and took off at a sprint.

Tonbo's jaw dropped as Gohan literally seemed to disappear before him, re-appearing moments later by the bushes, searching high and low for berries.

"Wow!" he exclaimed to no-one in particular.

"Hey come on kid!" Gohan called back, waving his arm and smiling like a loon as he stuffed himself with currents and berries and even a few peaches from a huge overhanging tree. Tonbo gawped as he ambled over, wondering how Gohan had gotten those peaches anyway when they weren't quite ripe enough to fall. He hadn't seen Gohan attempt to climb…

"Want one?" Gohan asked, holding out a fat peach.

For the first time since Gohan and Sensou had stepped into his master's dimension, Tonbo grinned.

"Sure, thanks. My name's Tonbo by the way."

* * *

_Will Gohan be able to help in the fight against the Saiyans? Will he be able to remain on Earth when its all finished and done if he does survive like Shorai predicts? What are the answers to all the other questions?_

_I dunno, I'm only the writer heh._

_Reviews may help to save the whales...no...really..._


	4. Saiyan Threats

_Man oh man, this chapter was a nightmare. Whoever said that grief could kindle the flame of creativity…Anywho, there are a few things to note in this chapter:_

_1) The spelling of 'Chaotsu'. I can't figure out for the life of me how his name is supposed to be spelt so I've guessed. Apologies if this jars things a bit. If it helps, I've tried to spell it how it sounds using Japanese phonetics._

_2) In the original canon, Toriyama said that Puar was written as a boy. All my childhood memories of this series including some quotes from the anime have Puar as a girl, thus I have used the pronoun 'she'. If this really bugs people, I'll come back and fix it later._

_3) I'm pretty certain I've missed a few mistakes this time around in the editing process and will try to rectify these at a later date. Apologies if you manage to spot anything. _

_4) It may be obvious but I haven't used direct references for the fight against the Saiyans. This is obviously due to my own twisted changes. That said, you may notice some similarities where Gohan's absence makes no difference to how things might have played out. I've tried to be as realistic as possible but bare in mind that things will be changing…_

_Bare…bear…beer…curse the English language._

* * *

**3: Saiyan Threats**

Ma's eyes narrowed as he appeared on the backdrop of Shorai's dimension. The meadow he had landed in was bathed in the pink half light of sunrise making it difficult to discern one shape from another in the elongated shadows. Blinking rapidly, he started to search for a shape resembling the seer, finally spotting the solid form on the hill by the river bank.

The seer sat unnervingly still as Ma approached, his back straight and his eyes clouded. Beside him, the curled up form of his pupil snored on, dark rings bruising beneath his eyes indicating that he'd passed out some time during the night from exhaustion. Ma stared at the boy for a moment, reminded of the little demi-Saiyan he had helped to retrieve several months earlier.

In one slow, precise move, Ma bent down to lay a light hand on the shoulder of his friend. Shorai jumped comically and blinked, his eyes rolling forward until they cleared.

Ma simply stared in greeting.

"Oh Ma, thank the winds," Shorai muttered, his hands shaking as he lifted them to pat his chest and calm his heart.

"You wanted to see me before I went to collect Sensou and the boy," Ma commented, conscious that they had little time for small talk.

Shorai's expression was grave as he levelled with his companion's eyes. Ma read a great deal from that expression, comprehending that the conversation about to pass was one of vital importance.

"I was wondering if you'd be able to do me a favour," Shorai began, running a hand through his wild black hair. Ma took note of Shorai's haggard appearance, the dark circles under the eyes, the strain about the lips and wondered briefly if he had slept at all that night.

"I know you were intending to take Gohan straight to the battle field before the Saiyans arrive on Earth but I actually think it would be more…beneficial to drop him in later, once the fight has begun."

Ma's eyes widened slightly as Shorai's words soaked in. The seer wanted him to drop a 5 year old demi Saiyan into a fight that was already taking place _without ample preparation?_

"And if I agreed, who would this course of action benefit?" Ma asked a little coldly. Shorai understood what Ma was implying in his not so subtle change of tone and made a point of keeping a steady gaze as he replied.

"The boy."

Ma couldn't help the eyebrow raise and the surprise that flittered across his face.

"The boy is still pure Ma, even after all the time he's spent with Sensou. I want…to try and preserve some of that purity…for his sake."

Ma fixed Shorai with a judgemental look and the seer could almost imagine the gears turning as Ma considered all the angles of this request.

"Why drop him into the _middle _of the fight?" Ma muttered, shaking his head.

"Seer logic," he relented after a while.

"So you'll wait for my signal?" Shorai asked, aware of the position of the sun as it trickled slowly over the horizon, bathing the sky in a breath-taking mix of purple and orange.

Ma sighed his indecision into the air and followed Shorai's gaze to the horizon to watch the golden orb rising steadily up. Time was running out and Sensou would be expecting him.

"I'll wait for your signal," Ma confirmed with a barely detectable nod.

Shorai didn't bother to hide the relief that flooded through him, a smile cracking the harsh line of his mouth and his shoulders visibly drooping as he released tension he didn't even know he had built up.

"I should pick up Sensou and the boy now," Ma told the seer. "I'd take this interval to prepare if I were you. The Saiyans will be here in just under an hour."

Shorai nodded, tensing once again as he started to compartmentalise the tasks he would need to accomplish before the warrior god and the boy returned with Ma. By the time he looked up, Ma had disappeared.

* * *

Piccolo hesitated and got a fist to the face for his trouble. Above him, an exact and perfect replica of himself grinned until he felt it too, the swelling of power and the cold, cruel intent shooting through the upper atmosphere.

"They're here…" he whispered, glancing at his twin, the product of the tri-form technique he had been using to try and encourage progress in his martial arts.

"Better give the split personality act a rest then," the other Piccolo said, a wicked grin on his face. Piccolo glared at him. Clearly the split had taken away his censor to bad humour.

Hoisting himself up, he grasped hands with the other Piccolo in a perfect mirror image, ignoring the flash of light as the tri-form dispersed. A single figure was left floating in the lotus position, concentrating on maintaining a stable Ki level for the Saiyan warriors to detect. The idea was to lure them to his training grounds, a barren place devoid of life where the Z Fighters could focus on their opponents and not get distracted by the need to save countless civilians.

Piccolo didn't have to wait alone for long. The familiar feel of Krillin's Ki alerted the demon to the monk's arrival long before Krillin actually touched down on the soil. He opened one eye and scowled in greeting.

"Nice to see you too," Krillin said by the way of dispersing hostilities.

Piccolo grunted a response and closed his eyes, signalling that he was aiming to focus on his meditation. He expected Krillin to show the appropriate amount of distaste for their close quarters since the incident on the lookout and keep respectfully silent but there was no accounting for the way the man behaved, as if there was no bad blood between them at all.

"Any sign of Gohan?" Krillin asked companionably, peering around Piccolo and out into the deserted land.

Piccolo's eye twitched in irritation.

"Don't you think Kami would know if Gohan had returned?" The demon snapped, causing Krillin to hold his hands up in the universal sign of retreat.

"I just thought I'd ask," he said disarmingly. "Yeesh, you're in a worse mood than usual today."

"Is that really surprisingly considering our circumstances?" Piccolo spat, eyeing Krillin.

Krillin bristled, opening his mouth to retaliate but he froze before he could get the first word out, his eyes travelling upwards to rest on the two figures hovering confidently above them.

Krillin wasn't exactly sure what he had been expecting. Whenever he had pictured his Saiyan opponents, as Kami had tried to tell him was good practice, he'd always imagined a couple of Raditz twins bearing down on the Earth. Instead these two were completely different.

The first was huge, muscular and terrifying. He was bald, had a ruthlessly controlled moustache and a mean look to the eyes that made Krillin's skin crawl. The second didn't draw the eye as much as the muscular monster. He was short and skinny with a flame of black hair and a cold, calculating demeanour that was remnant of Piccolo.

But unlike Piccolo, there was an aura of arrogance about this Saiyan, a lack of respect for anything other than himself.

"Oh, you don't have to stop arguing on our account, it's been years since I saw a good soap opera," The smaller Saiyan commented, a mocking smirk flickering into place. The brute's smile was wider, meaner though it was clear by the way his eyes darted from the smaller Saiyan to his opponents that he was the subordinate.

They started to descend slowly, leisurely. If Piccolo hadn't been able to sense their colossal Ki, he might have taken this as an intimidation move, a way to show that they were confident in their abilities to dominate the upcoming battle. With these two, Piccolo knew the intimidation wasn't needed.

"Hey look Vegeta, that guy looks like he's from Namek, no wonder his power level's so strong," the big Saiyan said as the two of them touched down.

Piccolo felt his eyes narrow but decided not to comment. The less those two knew about their informational gaps, the better.

"Huh? Are they talking about you?" Krillin asked cluelessly.

Piccolo fought against the sudden urge to beat some sense into the bald monk, anger churning in his stomach and building to a pique. To his credit, he showed no visible change in conduct or expression. The only sign of his inward struggle was a slight eyebrow twitch which was gone in an instant.

"Ha, I suppose that would make sense," the little Saiyan chuckled. "I did wonder why there were Dragonballs on this back water planet of all places."

Piccolo tried to keep his face as impassive as possible but it was becoming more and more difficult. So he was from outer space? Like Goku?

He growled under his breath. It irked him considerably that the similarities between himself and his greatest foe just kept on presenting themselves.

In the back of his mind, Piccolo could feel as Kami reeled under the onslaught of information. He could feel the older Guardians surprise, a brief flash of joy as he realised he had a legitimate home somewhere out there and then a serious sense of foreboding as Kami realised that he had been sent to Earth with the design for his unique Dragonballs already laid out in his mind like a blue print.

'_More trouble than they were worth,_' Piccolo thought to himself as a picture of the Dragonballs formed in his mind's eye.

* * *

Sensou crossed the flaming ocean at speed. His blood was boiling, his fingers were itching and a smile kept pulling at the corner of his lips. Today, there would be a pivotal battle and even if he wasn't going to be a part of it, his pupil was. He knew that it was absolutely imperative that things go to plan and that he should be nervous. If things didn't go according to Shorai's predictions, he could lose his super weapon, a loss he knew he really wouldn't be able to stand.

But he just couldn't bring himself to feel the anxiety he knew he should. Today, he would get to see his little super weapon in action, he would be able to take a true measurement of what the kid was capable of…

Gohan was waiting for him as he approached, a resolute expression on his young features. He had been up for a couple of hours already, overcome with a mixture of fear, nausea and longing. At first he'd been plagued with nightmares of his vicious Uncle Raditz and he'd woken sweating and shaking, calling softly for his mother and father, even for Mr Piccolo when they didn't come.

He'd sat in the darkness, concentrating on controlling his breathing as Sensou had told him, trying to shake the petrifying fear that accompanied his thoughts of the Saiyan threat coming to Earth.

Once that had subsided, excitement had gripped him, filling him with brimming energy. He'd be going to Earth in a couple of hours, away from this place and away from Sensou and all his heartlessness. He'd get to see mum and dad and he'd finally be able to go home…

"What are you thinking little Saiyan?" Sensou asked callously as he approached, throwing a weak Ki blast to punctuate this which Gohan easily dodged.

Gohan frowned, a pout struggling to stay hidden.

"I'm not _actually _a Saiyan you know," he said defiantly, meeting Sensou's look with challenging eyes.

Sensou's smirk was instant.

"Your father was Saiyan boy, you know this. You share his blood so what does that make you?" he asked.

Gohan's eyes stayed level with Sensou's, black on black. The gaze was so steady, so sure that Sensou's smirk faltered slightly.

"My daddy is an Earthling. Even if he was born a Saiyan, it doesn't matter because he chose different. He's not like them."

Sensou's smile fell away.

"And I'm not like them either."

The warrior god regarded the boy who suddenly seemed so much older. It was a rare moment of psychological insight for a child so young and it intrigued Sensou. To have such a strongly rooted identity was, on the surface, a bit of a set back but Sensou was cunning. If he thought about it, he was sure he could use it to his advantage.

"Big talk," he said. "I'm going to be very interested to see how this philosophy of yours plays out."

He gestured for Gohan to follow him, moving back towards the dimension door where they had agreed to meet Ma. Gohan loped after him, frowning.

They walked in silence together, two warriors on the back drop of smog and fire. When Sensou glanced back at his pupil, he found Gohan's face a picture of confusion.

"What's the matter?" Sensou asked monotonously.

"Um…sir…what does…philo…philsof…philsophaly mean?"

Sensou spun, his muscles tensed and his hand shaped into a hard line. He had intended to back hand Gohan until the kid was thrown clean off of his feet but to his surprise, the boy caught his hand, struggling against the force of Sensou's Ki enhanced strength. They stayed together in a stale mate for a moment, Gohan slowly weakening against the onslaught of Sensou's power until Sensou decided that enough was enough. He withdrew, a malicious gleam in his eye.

"Don't ask stupid questions," he spat, turning from his gaping protégée to continue on towards the dimension door.

After a brief hesitation and a pout that he hoped the warrior god would not pick up on, Gohan followed, noticing the floating form of Ma waiting by the door.

His stomach automatically clenched, bad memories dredging themselves out of the recesses of Gohan's mind. The storm filled sea, the looming figure of Sensou above him, drowning…After all the last time he'd seen Ma, he'd been taken from his home…_again._

Ma nodded stiffly as the warrior god approached and Sensou offered a begrudging nod in return. The strained relations between the two was evident to Gohan as he stepped up and bowed low.

Without a word, Sensou grasped Ma's shoulder, indicating that Gohan should also hold on. Gohan gave the hooded man a questioning look, asking for permission and under the folds of fabric, the boy was interested to see his mouth part slightly in blatant surprise.

There was a pause as Ma remained motionless. Even for the few brief minutes he had spent in Gohan's company, he was beginning to see why Shorai was so concerned to preserve something of the boy's innocence. Despite his time with Sensou, the boy had picked up none of his master's cruelty, none of the arrogance and in just this one show of respect, he had kindled something inside Ma akin to a desire to protect.

Slowly, he closed his mouth, letting a small smile replace the gape and, lifting his hand, he pulled his hood up just a fraction so the boy's black eyes met with his vibrant yellow.

He enjoyed the flash of astonishment that shot across Gohan's features and the smile that followed as the young boy grabbed hold of his hand. Together, he, Gohan and the warrior god disappeared, only to re-appear a moment later in Shorai's dimension.

"Huh? What is this?" Sensou barked, letting go of Ma's shoulder as though burnt. "You were supposed to take us to Earth for the Saiyan battle."

Ma's voice remained calm as he replied.

"I have been ordered to bring you here first to watch the battle until the time is right for Gohan to go back."

Sensou growled, baring his teeth and marching forward, gripping Ma's collar and hoisting him up until he was dangling in mid air.

"And who gave you the order?" Sensou spat, his eyes sparking. "To exactly who's benefit is it that we wait to take the boy to the battle field?"

Gohan watched the exchange between the two of them, noticing that although Ma gripped at the muscles in Sensou's arms, he was powerless to defend himself.

A hot and ruthless anger started building inside of him.

"Hey, put him down sir!" the boy yelled, his Ki pulsing. Sensou's eyes remained glued to the struggling form of Ma until the boy's fluctuating power drew his attention. In the months following his capture of Gohan, the boy had shown remarkable talent for controlling Ki and learning the finer techniques of martial arts but this display of power was rare, gargantuan.

Grindingly, the warrior god lowered the limp figure of Ma and stared with cold eyes at his pupil as the mounting Ki lit up around him like a flame. Gohan met Sensou's icy stare with a hot glare of his own and only as Ma's feet touched the ground again did Gohan release the mounting power, unaware of just how much he had shown the warrior god.

Silence fell over the party, punctuated only by the occasional spluttering cough from Ma.

"I will not stand for being double crossed," Sensou said eventually, his voice cutting through the air. "You may trust this…weakling with your safety but that is not a risk I'm willing to take, do you understand?"

Gohan's eyes narrowed in confusion as he thought about it.

"I said, do you understand?" Sensou hissed authoritatively.

"Yeah but…did you really have to hurt him like that? He couldn't defend himself," Gohan muttered.

The edges of Sensou's vision burned red and he fought to keep himself under control facing the small boy before him. How could someone so young be so brutally stubborn against corruption? Why, with everything Sensou had been teaching him, did he not pick up the merciless state of mind? Was he Saiyan or wasn't he?

"Shorai," Ma gasped beside him, heaving himself up and breathing deep.

Before he could stop himself, Gohan's eyes tracked over to the seer and the form of Tonbo who grinned and waved, motioning them to come over. Gohan's face broke into a broad returning smile, all anger at Sensou forgotten.

The warrior god could feel his eyebrow start to twitch as Gohan darted over the grass towards his friend, calling out in a joyous, youthful voice.

He felt as Ma stepped close to him, rubbing his neck and watching the retreating form of the little demi-Saiyan.

"Kids today," he said simply and Sensou could hear the smile in his voice as he side stepped away and walked leisurely out to join the others.

* * *

The day was hot and humid on Kame Island. Master Roshi had thrown open all the windows and the screen door was wide, letting in the rolling breeze from the sea. Despite the weather, Master Roshi and his guests were all huddled around his tiny TV set, watching with baited breath as the two Saiyan warriors descended before the visible figures of Krillin and Piccolo.

"Huh? Where's Gohan?" Chi Chi asked, craning her neck as though this would afford her an off screen view of her son.

"Hey good point," Bulma said, peering at the screen.

Chi Chi could feel her heart pounding as the camera panned out, showing the distance between the two Earthlings and the Saiyans. Her eyes darted all over the screen, constantly searching for the telltale tuft of wild hair or the clothes she had last seen him in the day he and his father had set out to Master Roshi's.

The scene on screen suddenly cut to a close up of Piccolo's stoic face and the image filled Chi Chi with dread.

"Oh, he's not there. He's not there because that demon ate him," she muttered, her eyes starting to swim.

"Oh, no no, I'm sure he's there!" Oolong insisted, fearing a temper tantrum. If there was one person Oolong was afraid of (well, in this room anyway) it was Chi Chi. The woman had the rage befitting her royal title of princess and she wasn't exactly all bark and no bite.

"He's not, he's not, Piccolo ate him!" Chi Chi cried, launching herself into her father's chest.

"Now honey," The Ox King mumbled, patting her awkwardly on the back.

"You know Chi Chi, this might be part of Piccolo's plan to have Gohan stay out of sight," Master Roshi suggested, stepping bravely forward. "I'm sure if Gohan had been eaten, Kami would have seen fit to tell us at least that much."

Chi Chi's sobbing ebbed away into a few quiet hiccoughs. The room was uncharacteristically silent for a few minutes until Bulma drew their attention back to the TV.

"What was that they just said about Piccolo?"

* * *

"What was that?" Sensou snapped, shifting closer to the dimension window Shorai had created to allow them a view of the action.

He crouched low, a frown gracing his features, his mind working at a hundred miles an hour.

'_Dragonballs? On Earth? That's what the Saiyans came for? And Piccolo…he and Kami are part of the Dragon clan?'_

It was too much to take in. That his little super weapon had come from a planet that had _Dragonballs _of all things was just too much. Of all the fortuitous coincidences…

Beside him, Shorai's eyes flicked from the dimension window to his brother, reading the calculating expression as it crossed his brother's features. A ball of dread began to bloom in his stomach. The knowledge of Earth's Dragonballs had been purposefully omitted from any information gathering Sensou had undertaken, a specific request from the Four Winds who were sensibly concerned about the warrior gods ambition.

Looking at Sensou now, Shorai could see that their fears had been well founded though there was nothing he could do to take back what his brother had learnt on his own.

"Mr Piccolo's from where?" Gohan asked, leaning over Shorai's shoulder provoking a smile from the seer despite his worry.

"Namek," Sensou repeated. "Now be quiet, we need to hear what they're saying."

* * *

"I'm not surprised that Raditz was so easily disposed of, he was a fool to take on the retrieval mission alone. He should have known that something was amiss if Kakarot had failed in his mission to eliminate all life here."

The smaller Saiyan reached down, digging his hand into a side pocket in the main body of his armour to pull out a tiny vial.

"The Saibamen should be enough of a challenge for you two," he told Piccolo and Krillin, a sadistic gleam in his eye.

"How many of them are left?" the brute asked.

"Honestly Nappa, we really do need to get your memory checked when we get back to main station. There are 6 left."

"Oh…yeah…" the larger Saiyan muttered.

On the other side of the battle field, Piccolo sensed the oscillating Ki and shifted his stance ever so slightly.

"Get ready," he whispered to Krillin who also shifted his stance.

The smaller Saiyan reached down, planting what looked like ordinary pale green seeds in the soil. Piccolo watched them impassively, feeling very much out of his depths with this display, but not wanting to showcase his discomfort in case they could use it against him somehow. Beside him, Krillin's eyebrows were raised in confusion and expectant fear. He had no qualms about hiding his emotions to secure an edge against his opponents.

A few minutes passed and nothing happened. Just as Piccolo was about to speak up, he felt a sudden burst of Ki and a head popped out of the ground, scattering crumbs of dirt.

"What the-

"Ah!" Krillin exclaimed, jumping backwards.

The head was suitably grotesque, green skinned with a ridged dome for a skull and bright yellow eyes. Hard lines made up the facial features, skin stretched tight over thick, impenetrable bones. At first, the creature was suitably expressionless but as Piccolo watched it, a broad grin broke across its pitted face.

The smaller Saiyan chuckled under his breath as the other 5 Saibamen emerged, digging themselves out of the dirt and dusting themselves off. He took great pleasure in watching the Earthling and the Namekian squirm.

Piccolo found he was unable to mask his disgust. They were truly alien and terrifying for it, chattering in their own guttural language as they emerged fixing both himself and the bald monk with looks of hunger.

He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and felt out their Ki, noting with a mixture of relief and anger that they were relatively well matched.

"An even split?" Piccolo asked, thanking Kami that he had thought to train with multiple selves before the battle so he had experience of being outnumbered.

"Gotcha," Krillin replied, his eyes steely as he regarded the 3 Saibamen he would be tackling.

There was one last pause as the Saibamen stretched and regarded the two tense fighters before they launched. It was a deadly assault. They moved with precise and machine-like teamwork, gaining advantages for each other as they charged forward with a barrage of furious kicks and punches. Piccolo dodged well, refusing to be pushed to the defensive whilst throwing some swift moves of his own.

Krillin was not so determined to keep up an offensive, crossing his arms over his head to block several angry fists and being knocked back several feet. To the Saiyan's surprise, he did not fall, his feet anchored well on the soft soil, showing a practiced background in martial arts.

"Ah, they try, they try," Vegeta commented, shaking his head and smiling. He hadn't expected such a good show if he was truly honest. He wasn't complaining. Already the Saiyan blood within him was singing. His fingers were tingling with mounting excitement. Although they wouldn't prove much of a spar against him, watching them clashing with the Saibamen showed him that they had a few very interesting tricks up their sleeve which could make things more lively should they actually beat their current opponents.

The Saibamen continued to bear down on their victims, pushing Krillin further and further into a defensive trap until he was locked in the standard 'x' block leaving his stomach open for a hard, deep reaching punch.

The Saibaman fist flew through the air in slow motion. Krillin saw it but was unable to switch his block quick enough. The tip of the fist was just brushing the edge of Krillin's orange gi when a bright light erupted outwards, burning the Saibaman and singing the monk's eyebrows.

He leapt back, landing at the same time as Piccolo, patting his stomach where the blow would have landed and struggling not to hyperventilate.

Piccolo kept his eyes on his opponents as they fell back to their masters. An army of tiny terrors waiting for the command to continue their relentless cannonade. Gradually, his eyes flicked up to fixate on the distracted gaze of the smaller Saiyan who was looking up to the sky.

"Yamcha, Tien, Chaotsu!" Krillin exclaimed, waving cheerily at the three figures hovering high above them.

Yamcha gave a brief salute, tipping Krillin off to the fact that it was his Ki blast that had allowed Krillin to avoid some serious damage. Tien simply smiled his greeting, his eyes levelling with Piccolo's in an instant.

"Any sign of Goku's little boy?" he asked as he touched down.

Piccolo's glare was harsh and full of barely restrained hostility. He growled and turned away, muttering under his breath, his mood darkening considerably.

'_Why do they keep asking me about the kid when they already know the truth?'_

"Yeah, don't go there," Krillin warned, shaking his head.

"What are those things?" Chaotsu asked, his voice full of both revulsion and fascination as he took in the full visual of the Saibamen.

Standing above them, the smaller Saiyan smirked.

"Aw, look Nappa. They brought their little doll with them. Probably to comfort them as they pass from this world to the next."

Chaotsu bristled but knew better than to get angry. This sort of situation required one to remain rational.

On the left of the little fighter, Tien threw a heated glare towards the Saiyans and descended to stand with Piccolo and Krillin.

Without a word, the small Saiyan raised his arm up. Automatically, the Z Fighters braced themselves for whatever was about to be thrown their way. There was a moment of high tension before Vegeta executed his attack, his arm shooting down so the sharp of his elbow connected with the ridged skull of the singed Saibaman.

There was a blood curdling shriek and the creatures eyes bugged out before its skull caved in and it collapse in a crumpled heap at the Saiyan's feet. The other Saibamen looked to their masters in bewilderment, the Z Fighters gawped at the Saiyans in various degrees of shock.

"What was that for?" the big one asked, just as perplexed as the others as he stared at the broken body on the ground.

Slowly, Vegeta shifted so he was once again standing with his arms crossed, a confident smile in place.

"I wanted it to be an even fight," the smaller Saiyan confessed. "That way, I think we'll get a better show out of these losers."

On the other side of the battle field, Piccolo could feel his temper prickling. The Saiyans were treating them like nothing more than sport. Collectively, they made up the strongest team in the world and these two aliens were toying with them like kids with ants under a magnifying glass. It was infuriating.

After all their preparation, the new barriers they'd managed to brake in whatever areas of martial arts they aimed to perfect, they were still useless.

Where the HELL was Goku?

"We'll give you a special one time only offer," the smaller Saiyan called across, obviously enjoying himself. "You fight the Saibamen one at a time in a contest of sorts. It'll make this whole thing much more entertaining."

Piccolo growled despite himself and replied before any of them could stop to confer.

"We accept."

"Huh? But Piccolo-

Piccolo shot the bald monk a warning look.

"If we do this and fight those things one at a time, we can buy some time for Goku to get here," he explained simply.

Krillin blinked at him and huffed.

"Fine, but I'll go f-

"I'll go first," Yamcha cut in, stepping forward. "Krillin, you've already been wished back once with the Dragonballs. You've got more to lose than I have."

Krillin bit his lip but nodded, hanging back with the others to watch, a frown on his face. It just didn't feel right staying on the sidelines when there was a real possibility that the ex-bandit could be seriously hurt. He guessed it must've been Goku rubbing off on him. In the good old days, he probably wouldn't have thought to volunteer for the fight in the first place.

Yamcha stretched leisurely, wondering briefly if Bulma was watching him on TV back at Master Roshi's. If he was lucky and managed to live through the coming battles, perhaps he would have a heroes welcome waiting for him…

At Vegeta's nod, the first Saibaman stepped forward, a mad grin gracing its features. It crouched low in a starting position not unlike one of Piccolo's and Yamcha spread his feet, feeling the dirt move under his light shoes.

There was a long pause as the two regarded each other.

* * *

"Huh? Why aren't they moving?" Gohan asked, looking to his mentor for answers.

Sensou's eyes remained glued to the dimension window as he replied.

"When 2 experienced fighters meet on even ground, they will spend moments analysing each other before moving. They will be able to comprehend a great deal about the way the other fights just through a simple glance."

"Wow, really? How?" Gohan asked, awed.

"You'll figure it out in time," Sensou told him dismissively, his eyes widening as the two of them finally took off at exactly the same time, crashing together like behemoths in mid-air.

* * *

Whatever this thing was, it was strong, Yamcha had to give it that as he blocked a kick that left his arms numb and tried to launch a counter, aiming a roundhouse to the creature's neck that would open the way for a Ki blast.

The creature simply smirked and dodged, its back bending to an impossible shape as it avoided the tip of Yamcha's shoe. Yamcha grit his teeth in surprise and horror, unprepared as the creature righted itself and rammed into his exposed back, sending him plummeting to the ground. Through the torrent of ice and fire in his stomach as his Ki control flickered, Yamcha steeled his arms and legs, landing in a crouched position on the barren landscape.

He glared up at the thing with newfound anger, widening his stance.

"What's he doing?"

"The Kamehameha? Now?"

"Yamcha!"

Yamcha was oblivious to his friend's urgent cries. He knew that revealing his trump card this early in the game was probably a bad idea but the two Saiyan monsters didn't have to know it was his trump card. Maybe a display this impressive, if carried off with enough nonchalance would shake those two enough…

"Ka…"

In the air, the creature hovered, frowning slightly as it watched its opponent gathering energy slowly.

"Me…"

The scouter over Vegeta's left eye beeped and started throwing numbers at him.

"Ha…"

'_So these fools can hide their true power level. That really is a good little trick. Perhaps I'll keep one of them alive so that they can share this wisdom.'_

"Me…"

The others looked on, bathed in the blue glow of energy pooling in Yamcha's hands. Piccolo was the only one with his eyes on his enemy, warily watching the pensive expression as it grew on the face of the smaller Saiyan. Just what was his enemy thinking? It put him at a great disadvantage to know so little of his opponent.

"HA!"

Yamcha released the energy and a blue line of light shot upwards like a laser beam, pinpointed on the creature that was eyeing the iridescent blue with a mixture of fear and awe. There was a sickening slow motion moment where Krillin kept imagining that the creature had managed to dodge the attack, only to find that the little creature was still in the same spot, trying to act and failing as the light enveloped it.

There was a sound like thunder and a flash. Krillin squeezed his eyes shut and turned away from the sudden heat, waiting for things to die down before he chanced opening his eyes.

The creature was nowhere to be seen.

"Heh, too easy," Yamcha commented as his eyes re-adjusted to the light levels and he was able to glimpse the two Saiyan warriors.

To his dismay and discomfort, the smaller Saiyan was still smiling as he turned to head back to the others, aiming to tag someone else in.

And that's when he felt it.

Two short arms clamped around his arms and chest, squeezing his muscles like a vice. Equally strong legs wrapped themselves around his waist, their hold tightening until Yamcha thought he was going to lose what little breakfast he'd managed to eat.

He could hear his friends calling his name as his legs buckled and he was left on his knees in the dust. He wanted to call out but the pressure on his lungs made it impossible. Latched onto his midriff, the creature giggled malevolently and started to give off waves of heat.

Yamcha knew instinctively that he was done for and, as if responding to his predicament, his brain started firing off synapses on overdrive, barraging him with memories so vivid he felt like he was experiencing them all over again. He remembered living with Puar in the heat of the desert, delighting in a particularly successful steal. He remembered hitting his first home run, his legs pumping as he circled the bases, rising on the deafening roar of the crowd. He remembered the smell of Bulma's perfume and the way her hair would weave over her shoulders when a light breeze caught it…

"Yamcha…"

The Saibaman exploded, bathing the arena in a choking heat. The metallic smell of blood tainted the air and the Z Fighters felt as their friend's Ki dropped to nothing.

* * *

'_No…no, not Yamcha…'_

"YAMCHAAAAA!"

The tiny form of Puar launched towards the TV, burying her face in the fuzzy static of the screen as if it might bring her closer to the battle field and Yamcha's last stand.

'_No…not Yamcha…'_

Master Roshi reached forward, his hands pulling gently on Puar's shoulders and the little cat continued to wail.

'_Yamcha…'_

Puar's sobbing subsided into hiccoughs and her grip slackened on the edges of the TV, allowing Master Roshi to pry her away. The moment she was away from the TV, she passed out, as though the electricity pulsing through the machine was the only thing keeping her awake.

'_No…_'

Bulma sat rigid, staring at the screen, her hands clasped so hard together that her knuckles were white. An all encompassing, overwhelming sorrow had begun to fill her though none of it showed on her blank face.

'_The last thing I said to Yamcha was that he was a jerk, that he was the last person I would ever want to be with…'_

Her eyes swam, glistening with mounting tears. A lump formed in her throat but she refused to try and clear it. If she gave in and started crying in earnest, she feared that she might never stop.

But the pressure continued to build inside her until she couldn't stop her lower lip from wobbling and the first shining tear from spilling down her cheek.

"Bulma.." Master Roshi began but paused when his eyes caught movement on the TV.

* * *

There were things that Krillin envied about Yamcha, his height, his flowing hair, the way he was able to charm Bulma if he put his mind to it but despite that, he and the bandit had become firm friends over the course of the years.

As soon as he knew for certain that his friend was gone, a swirling rage engulfed his vision. Dimly he felt himself power up and knew enough from Kami's training to harness that power. He shifted ever so slightly and held his hands out in front of him, letting the energy gather in his tumult of system until he couldn't take it anymore.

The blast he fired was larger and faster than anything he had previously accomplished. It decimated 3 of the Saibamen, instantly reducing them to ash.

Vegeta raised an eyebrow, mildly impressed as he watched the last of the Saibamen foolishly try and take on the Namekian, only to get blown apart for its trouble.

The scouter blipped, giving him a reading on the bald monk at his pique and he had to frown.

It was true that it didn't exactly worry him that these Earthlings could conceal their power level, though this was a technique he had never come across before. What did worry him was that without an accurate reading, it would be easy to underestimate them which could result in foolishness that would dishonour them, a thought he couldn't abide.

"Vegeta…" the big Saiyan said, looking the prince in the eye.

"Ah yes, you can have your turn Nappa but be careful. Have you noticed how the scouter is constantly giving out numbers?"

"Yeah, I just assumed mine was broken," Nappa said shrugging. Vegeta resisted the urge to face palm.

"No my friend, it works just fine. These Earthlings are in control of their power level. They can increase and decrease it at will."

"But…how is that possible?" the soldier asked, unable to comprehend something so ludicrous.

"I'm not sure but it might be worth finding out the secret to that little technique."

Nappa recognised the order to leave at least one of the warriors standing before him alive. His eyes locked on the little monk and he grinned spitefully. He would try to follow Vegeta's orders but there was no helping it if he got carried away.

* * *

_So why is Shorai so keen to drop Gohan into the thick of things later than expected? What will Sensou do with his newfound knowledge of Earth's Dragonballs? Will the others be able to survive the fight with Nappa without Gohan's assistance?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON SHERLOCK HOLMES! (brandishes monocle)_

_Reviews provide food for the muses, feed a hungry muse today!_


	5. No Time to Think

_Chapters, chapters everywhere and not a lot to say XD. Behold my fellow DBZ brethren as I have produced…ANOTHER CHAPTER! (dances around) As usual, a few things to note before we get to the good stuff._

_1) A warning for violence and a little gore in this chapter just in case anyone is a bit squeamish. I may have to up the rating of this story but for now I'm not sure. What does everyone think?_

_2) I have checked for spelling, grammar, mis-used words and miscellaneous dinosaurs and as always, if I've missed anything, apologies._

_3) I'm pretty sure that I was supposed to remember something else quite important but as always, memory fails. Perhaps if Dragonballs were real and I managed to gather them, that's what I'd wish for, a better memory heh._

* * *

**4: No Time to Think**

Horror.

Pure horror.

He watched as the creature clamped around Yamcha's waist. He winced as the long haired warrior fell to his knees. He whimpered when the creature started to give out an ominous glow…

He grit his teeth, eyes widening as the little monster exploded, taking his father's friend with it.

There was a moment when he was frozen, sitting cross legged in front of the dimension window with Shorai and Sensou on either side of him, then Sensou felt the spike in his Ki and yanked him away by the collar of his gi.

The little demi-Saiyan's pulse seemed magnified. Blood began to thump through him. His teeth ached as he ground them together, fighting the animalistic anger and fear that seemed to be pooling inside of him. Somehow, he was aware of a shift within himself, of something limited opening up inside of him…

"Gohan."

The short, sharp bark of Sensou commanded his attention and his eyes snapped up until they were locked with the warrior god's.

"What have I told you about keeping control of your emotions?" Sensou asked.

Gohan had to concentrate to reply, almost as though the anger made it difficult to choke out the words.

"I…must…keep control at all times…but they killed hi-

"He died for a foolish mistake," Sensou interjected, his tone hinting at a disdain that Gohan didn't miss.

His Ki pulsed, the air became static.

"You said that you were going to train me to fight against the Saiyans, to help my friends! Why am I still here? I could have helped him!" Gohan yelled.

Sensou watched with hard eyes and a keen interest as the child's aura erupted outwards, pushing him back a little. He dug the heels of his feet into the soil. He couldn't remember the last time he had been pushed back, even a little.

"That…is something you can ask Ma," Sensou said quietly, watching with satisfaction as Gohan turned his dark eyes on the hooded teleporter.

"It's my fault you're still here."

Gohan's eyes flicked to the left and latched onto the serene gaze of Shorai. The fury within him faltered for a moment.

"I don't think you would believe me if I told you that your presence wouldn't have made a difference to Yamcha's fate, not feeling as angry and betrayed as you do. But as hard as it is to take, there are some things that honestly can't be changed."

Gohan felt the rage within him subsiding as he stared into the ageless eyes of his mentor's brother. For reasons he couldn't quite fathom, he believed that the intentions of this man, whatever they may be, were inevitably for some sort of greater good…which he couldn't really argue with, right?

"It's important for you to take your place in battle a bit later on," Shorai informed the child gently. "I've been looking into it very carefully and this way, we can save a lot more."

Gohan's Ki dropped to a stable level but his eyes remained narrowed as he fought the flow of grief and guilt ravaging his system. He didn't know Yamcha but to watch someone die like that when he knew he had the power to help…

What did Shorai mean some things couldn't be changed anyway? How did he know for certain if Gohan wasn't even allowed to try?

The boy's fists balled at his side and he felt a soft touch on his shoulder. Jerking involuntarily, he stared at the hand, following the arm up until he was once again looking on the face of the seer.

He blinked.

It was the first real gesture of kindness he'd been offered since the last time he'd visited and Tonbo had shown him where those delicious fruits had been. Shorai's eyes were dark with understanding and reassurance. Gohan was filled with appreciation and smiled tentatively.

"They're fighting the big one now!" Tonbo called, motioning for the others to come back and watch the action.

Shorai's reaction was instant, sharp. He darted back to his position in front of the dimension window, his breath hitching as he regarded the big brute.

Gohan followed at a slower pace, still thinking about Yamcha, making a silent vow to get stronger in the future so he would never have to just stand by and play witness again. So he _could _make a difference to tragedies deemed unchangeable. He plopped down on the grass at the same time as Sensou who was regarding his brother with barely concealed irritation.

Something was going on, he could smell it.

* * *

Piccolo made a point of glaring as the big Saiyan stepped forward. Immediately, his eyes slipped down to the Saiyan's tail which was wrapped aggravatingly around his waist, out of reach.

"Ready for some real fun?" The big Saiyan asked, not waiting for a response. He shifted his legs until his feet made a kedge on the ground. His hands fisted slowly and his Ki started to build.

Krillin had never felt anything like it. In a matter of moments this pillar of Ki had increased his power almost twice over. Before them, little rocks and clumps of dirt were starting to levitate, disrupted by the waves of power emanating from an alien output. The ground started to vibrate neatly under their feet and a slight buzzing could be heard on the air. Piccolo winced, not appreciating the assault on his hearing.

Veins started to bulge over Nappa's body, a static aura ignited around him. He smiled as he completed his power up, feeling the Ki flowing thick and fast. His heart was racing as he took in each of his opponents, choosing who to grace with the first attack. He couldn't wait.

Roaring, he charged, barrelling through the air like a freight train heading straight for the three-eyed freak.

They all saw him as he made his move, muscles taut as they pumped to get him moving, but after they'd seen him take the first step he disappeared.

Krillin's eyes widened as the huge Saiyan vanished, and then there was a cry of agony on his right side. With fear gripping his heart, he turned and beheld the carnage. Tien was clutching at his right arm…or the place where his right arm was conspicuously missing. A torrent of blood was cascading from the wound, creating a red waterfall as it pooled on the ground. His white shirt was slowly being stained a brilliant crimson. A mess of bone and muscle protruded from the remaining part of the limb and, despite the terror engulfing him, Krillin found that he was glad somehow that young Gohan had missed this.

All Tien could comprehend was a blinding pain. He could hear someone crying and knew instinctively that it was himself. Overlapping those cries was the voice of his best friend Chaotsu yelling urgently at him to stay conscious. Slowly, the white haze of pain cleared and he was able to make out the form of his doll-like friend staunching the blood flow from his arm with his own sash.

"Chaotsu…" Tien breathed, his head spinning from sudden blood loss.

Behind them, Nappa turned and examined his handy work, locking on to little Chaotsu who was glowering at him with barely restrained hatred.

"Aw, he looks like he's in pain. Think he might need a hand?" Nappa asked sadistically, a cackle escaping like a rumble of thunder.

Krillin felt the comment crack through him like a whip. The crippling fear he felt on seeing Tien's butchering gave way to new levels of rage.

"You…you monster!" he yelled, shooting forward, utilising his anger to increase his speed.

The big Saiyan turned his attention from Chaotsu to the bald monk easily, appreciating the charge and preparing a counter strike that could quite literally tear the smaller man to pieces. Using his heightened power, he raised his arm up over his body.

"Lookout Krillin!" Someone called but it was too late. Krillin was caught in the momentum of his attack and though he heard the warning, he was unable to change course.

Nappa fired off his attack, sweeping his arm back through the air, releasing a blade of Ki that created an explosion. Ash and fire rained down on the party, forcing them to take defensive positions against potential damage. At the last possible moment, Krillin was able to turn his attack into an awkward dodge, sending him flying back the way he had come until he was sprawled out in the dust.

The feeling of releasing pent up Ki seemed to go to the big Saiyan's head. He launched up into the air, laughing manically as he rose out of the inferno, searching the repercussive smog for any sign of life. As the smoke cleared, he could just make out the hunched up form of the Namekian and of the three eyed Earthling, still clutching at his missing arm, the weakling.

His target lay sprawled out on the ground but he could see the little man was still moving. As a soldier, he had to admit that he could appreciate the little guy's tenacity. It took a lot for someone to survive one of Nappa's more powerful Ki blasts.

His eyes darted out, searching for the tiniest form of the last doll-like fighter but there was nothing.

He must've been obliterated in the blast.

One down…

It was an effort for Krillin to breathe let alone sit up but somehow he managed it, peering through the ash to the place he had last seen Chaotsu holding on to Tien's bandaged arm.

"Hey, where's Chaotsu?" He asked.

Through the pain slicing through his system, Tien heard the little monk and glanced quickly over to his arm to find that his friend was absent.

"Chatosu?" he called out in alarm, automatically scowling up at the figure of the huge Saiyan in the sky.

"CHAOTSU!"

He saw his little friend before anyone else and the big brute was taken entirely by surprise as little Chaotsu latched onto the perfect place in the middle of his back. He spread his arms and legs and dug his nails into the hard Saiyan armour, remembering to lock down the tail so it couldn't unwind and pull him off.

"Hey, get off of me," Nappa complained, reaching back as far as he could to try and clamp onto the tiny form but it was just no use. It was like an itch he couldn't scratch.

On the ground, instinct was telling Tien to panic. Intrinsically, he knew what Chaotsu was going to try and do though he didn't quite believe it.

"Chaotsu, get off of him!" Tien cried, his eyes widening. He tried to punctuate this statement by lifting off to save his friend but the blood loss had drained his Ki substantially. He couldn't fly.

He was completely powerless.

'_Tien, can you hear me?'_

* * *

"No, what's he gonna do?"

Gohan was leaning forward, his nose practically pressed to the dimension window. His Ki was oscillating wildly creating a tumult of wind currents around them. Sensou had thought to tell him off but there was no accounting for the boy's control now. The display was unnerving. In all the time he'd trained Gohan he had never managed to provoke this level of output before. The child hadn't even met most of these people yet seeing them being so brutally beaten was bringing out a power that Sensou had only had very limited access to.

"He's so small…" Gohan whispered.

"So are you," Sensou reminded him.

Silence followed this but Sensou wasn't sure that Gohan had even heard him. He was watching the unfolding battle transfixed. After a few more moments, he turned to Shorai, a pleading look on his face.

"Please, can I go and help them now?"

Sympathy washed through Shorai's features. He wanted nothing more than to hug the boy but he knew that it was the boy that would suffer for that sort of display later on. Instead he sighed, shaking his head.

"But…"

"There's nothing you can do Gohan."

He wasn't sure if the child would accept it this time. He could see as the boy tried to lock down the tears that wanted to escape, turning back to the dimension window. How long before those tears turned to fury? How long before Gohan was unable to take this spectatorship? His resolve steeled.

'_I won't let you become a monster Son Gohan, no matter what it costs me to keep your purity in tact.'_

* * *

Nappa was grappling with thin air, trying and failing repeatedly to remove the little parasite on his back. Frustration made him flail wildly in the air, it would have been funny if the situation wasn't so grave.

Eventually, his eyes caught on a particularly rough rock mass just a below him and an idea began to form.

'_Tien I'm gonna try and self destruct and I'm gonna take this brute with me.'_

He'd known. He'd known what Chaotsu was planning but it still made his heart squirm unpleasantly. His breath stopped.

'_No Chaotsu.'_

'_Take care of yourself while I'm gone. Goodbye my friend.'_

The connection between the two was broken. The moment Tien felt his friend disconnect, he took a shuddering breath and ploughed forward.

"NO CHAOTSU!"

Nappa could feel something hot on his back and felt a twinge of fear, the first he had felt in a long time. Ignoring it, he pulled himself up and dove towards the rocks with the express intent of smashing the tiny body of Chaotsu into them.

On the ground, the Z Fighters could only catch a glimpse of the ethereal blue light emanating from their friend as it reached out around the huge form of Nappa. For one tiny moment, the huge Saiyan resembled some kind of fallen angel dropping like a stone through the sky.

The rocks came towards him at an alarming rate and he was beginning to overheat. Flipping himself over in mid-air, Nappa aimed his back towards the ground.

"CHAOTSUUUUUUU!"

The explosion lit the sky, throwing the surrounding landscape into stark contrast. Tien felt his friend's Ki blink out of existence and fell to his knees in the burning light, tears streaking down his face. His heart felt like it was swelling up and bursting inside him, his limbs ached with the weight of fresh grief.

How could Chaotsu do that? How could he be that brave, that selfless?...How could he leave Tien behind?...

The grief balled inside him until he felt like he was burning up, like he was being consumed by the fire of his own sorrow.

"Well I've got to admit, that one almost took my tail off."

There was a ringing in Tien's ears but he still heard the comment casually thrown out on the ash filled air.

'_No…no…'_

He peered up, all three eyes pinpointed on the dark mass emerging from the smoke.

The armour plaiting he wore was a little scuffed, one of the shoulder blades seemed to have been shattered. There was a small bloody gash on the end of his tail which he uncoiled briefly from around his waist to examine but apart from that, he was perfectly healthy. There wasn't even a scorch stain on that bald head.

'_No…not after what Chaotsu just did…'_

The big Saiyan looked over at the dumbfounded Z Fighters and grinned an ominous grin.

"Looks like your friend sacrificed himself for nothing, that's too bad," he said, echoing Tien's thoughts.

Tien wasn't exactly sure what happened next. His whole world became red and although he was still suffering from serious blood loss and his Ki had been cut in half, he vaulted forward, intent on making this monster _hurt _for what he had made Chaotsu do.

Nappa dodged the battery of punches and kicks with ease, grinning as Tien advanced on the larger figure. Every time the three-eyed warrior missed a kick, his rage increased. The burning feeling that had filled him since he had confirmed to himself that Chaotsu was gone was dispelling on the air as he fought. He had to avenge his friend, he had to.

He threw a punch at the huge Saiyan's face and feinted, allowing the brute to catch his hand so it could open a close quarters Ki blast and burn his palm. Nappa frowned for a moment as the blast connected with his hand, making it sizzle. He winced but said nothing as the three-eyed warrior followed this with an attack from behind, a chop aiming to connect with the pressure points in the Saiyan's neck.

He avoided it and they continued, moving across the ground in a heated display.

On the edge of the battle field, Piccolo watched with sharp eyes, searching for a weakness. Finding nothing in his martial technique, Piccolo growled and focussed once again on that tail.

"We have to get that tail, it renders them immobile," Piccolo muttered to Krillin out of the corner of his mouth.

"How?" Krillin hissed back. "He hasn't removed that thing from around his waist except for when he was purposefully examining it. It would be like trying to de-pants a demon!"

Piccolo gave Krillin the most ruthless scowl he could manage.

"I have a plan but you'll have to trust me."

To Piccolo's immense surprise, Krillin nodded, no second thought required. In the back of his mind, he wondered if it was really worth taking over a planet full of people that were so trusting.

"The way that Saibaman pinned Yamcha gave me the idea. If we can pin his arms and to a lesser extent, his legs, he might be forced to use that tail and we'd have an opening. The only problem is, you, being the smallest, would have to be the one to grab him around the middle. Can you do that?"

"What does me being the smallest have anything to do with it?" Krillin asked carefully.

"Because if I try to grab him, my head will be on a level with his and he'll try to head butt me which will defy the purpose of this exercise," Piccolo hissed.

"Ah…right…" Krillin consented, gulping.

"You're only going to have one shot at this. Wait for your moment…"

* * *

Shorai's eyes rolled back and for a moment he was lost in a vision that completely absorbed him. He watched with a sense of urgency as the next set of actions played out before him, the attack on the big Saiyan and his response.

He gasped as he realised that things were happening a lot quicker than they were scheduled to. There was supposed to be a 3 hour wait before this plan of attack was carried out. This was supposed to occur after Tien had passed on but as it was for some unexplained reason, Piccolo had come up with this plan much quicker than he should have.

Quickly, Shorai checked the ramifications of this and noted with some relief that nothing major was due to change. His plan could go ahead unchanged but he had to act now if it was going to work.

He could hear a strange groan and realised that he was trying to talk through the vision. Concentrating, he dragged himself back to the present only to find himself face to face with a concerned young demi-Saiyan.

"Sir, are you alright?"

"Gohan…Ma, its time," Shorai said, licking his lips. "Wait until they've finished attacking. Once Tienshinhan has unleashed his Tri Beam, drop Gohan in. Do not hang around."

Sensou growled darkly under his breath feeling seriously distrustful of both his brother and Ma.

"Gohan, complete a few warm up stretches and then remove your training weights," Sensou instructed, folding his arm across his chest.

Gohan jumped up immediately, his muscles tensed with anxiety and excitement.

"Yes sir," he chirped, stretching out his stiff joints.

* * *

Tien was starting to lose focus.

The edges of his vision were starting to warp nauseatingly and every time he fired a Ki blast, it felt like a spike was being rammed through his skull. Tien had been a martial artist long enough to recognise that these signs were all typical of the critical anaemia that followed mass blood loss. It was normal for him to feel like this following a wound so harsh.

The difference came when he tried to call on his tri form technique and he felt a chill somewhere in the base of his spine.

That wasn't normal at all and he recognised it as the breath of death, a warning. If he kept going down this path, he would end up killing himself.

But then his eyes would lock with the brute's and he would see the malice there. Goku had taught him to try and see the good in everyone but it was obvious, at least to Tien, that there was nothing resembling goodness buried in that malevolent stare.

His legs were shaking as he stood now and he had to lean against one of the cold surface of a rock for support. Sweat dripped down into his eyes and stung but he refused to give in, even if just blacking out seemed like such an attractive option.

No, he just needed a moment to gather himself, then…

"Oh how I wish you could see yourself," The big Saiyan said in a mocking tone as he advanced.

The rage that had filled Tien was still coursing through his system but he no longer had the strength to do something about it. Silently, he cursed himself and his weakness, wishing with all his heart that he had the strength enough to satiate his rage and the need for vengeance against this monster.

On the sidelines, Krillin watched, concentrating on acting at the right time. He was aware that Piccolo was counting on him to be clever, to only move at the opportune moment. That moment, he realised, would present itself shortly. Once the big Saiyan had moved another couple of steps forward, both Piccolo and Krillin would be able to advance in his blind spot. He waited, though it was killing him to try and figure this out.

Tien attempted to stand. His arm felt like it weighed a 2 tons but he lifted, concentrating his energy into his hand to initiate a one handed Tri-beam attack. It would be messy but he knew it would get the job done. It had never failed him before.

"Still got some juice left?" The big Saiyan asked, smiling tauntingly. He took one step forward.

Despite the pain and the touch of death behind him, Tien smiled cockily.

"You haven't seen anything yet."

"Oh?"

He took one more step forward.

There was a yell and Nappa's head whipped round. He'd forgotten about the other warriors in his dealings with the three-eyed freak but he remembered them as the little one clamped down over his huge arms.

"What the-

"PICCOLO!"

Krillin felt like he was trying to keep a pair of rhinoceroses at bay. The big Saiyan's arms pushed against him and he could feel his bones straining under the pressure. Somehow, he was able to keep them in though he wasn't sure how long he'd manage before the bones broke.

Just as Piccolo suggested, when the big Saiyan was unable to free himself quickly enough, the tail slithered out from round his waist aiming a slice at Krillin's exposed cheek but Piccolo caught it, tugging hard.

"Argh!" The huge Saiyan complained, a vein in his temple throbbing as he regarded the Namekian.

"Hah, gotcha," Piccolo said playfully, pulling as hard as he could, knowing that the reverberations of tension travelling through that tail would be absolute murder for the his huge opponent and he would be rendered helpless.

"Pic…colo…not…working."

Piccolo's heart missed a bit as his brain translated what Krillin had managed to tell him through grit teeth.

"What?"

"Heh, surprise!" The big brute exclaimed, ripping his arms out from Krillin's grip.

It seemed to take centuries for the next few seconds to pass. As the huge Saiyan freed his arms, Krillin was forced to use him as an anchor, springing from his chest and away. At the same time, Nappa yanked his tail in so that Piccolo's head was in the perfect position for his elbow to connect with his skull. There was a sickening thud as bones connected and Piccolo dropped the tail.

He fell to the ground with a crunch, his ears ringing and his temples pounding.

"That was an underhanded trick but you are dealing with the Saiyan elite, not some common third class wimps," Vegeta told the barely conscious demon, his eyes flicking back to the rigid form of Tien as his scouter blipped.

"Ooh, this might actually give me a few burns," the big Saiyan said, bringing his arms up into an unmistakable block.

Tien could feel himself slipping away in the torrent of energy, it was spiralling out of control and yet he knew that in a moment he would reach the limit.

'_Tien?'_

'_Chaotsu, I'm sorry it had to be the way it was. I'm sorry I just stood by and watched you die. If this is all that I can do…'_

'_I don't blame you for anything, I wanted to finish it but I know you have to do this. You can do this Tien…I'll be waiting for you.'_

He released it.

It lit up the scarred battlefield in a ray of stupendous light and engulfed the ground before it. Tien held on to it, no longer seeing as the blast shot forward and enveloped the huge Saiyan. On the ground before him, Piccolo had enough sense to curl into a ball to avoid being burnt to a crisp.

Nappa bore the brunt of the blast and felt his armour disintegrate around him leaving only the barest fabric. The pure feel of aggressive Ki licked at his skin and yet it barely felt like a tickle. The impact of the thing pushed him back quite away and refused to disperse, no matter how hard he buffered it. Eventually, he decided simply to move around the thing until it shot into the air, exploding harmlessly on the atmosphere.

He smirked at the form of Tien as the warrior dropped to his knees, not realising that he had already left his body behind. Whilst being ravaged by the impact of that impressive energy, he had managed to gather some brilliant energy of his own for a signature move that was bound to awe his opponents.

He grinned and released it at the crumpling three-eyed warrior.

* * *

"Now, go now!" Shorai shrieked.

Gohan grabbed onto Ma's hand at the same time as Sensou and they vanished. There was a sense of displacement and the calm breeze of Shorai's dimension was replaced with a rushing wind and a burning, irridescent light.

He felt Ma's hand leave his and turned in confusion, first taking in the dead weight of Tien as he continued to fall and then, he span to see the horrific energy bombarding the atmosphere.

_Heading straight towards him._

There was no time to think, no time to block, no time to try and figure out what was going on.

"Ah!" Gohan screamed.

Through the fire, Piccolo heard it, that small shriek. Despite the remnants of Tien's super blast and despite the hellish intensity of the big Saiyan's counter, he uncurled and gawped through the light to make out the small form now standing in front of a downed Tien.

Gohan.

His body reacted on its own. Before he really had time to process the fact that Gohan was there, he was running towards him, his limbs pumping. The heat was sharp on his skin, disintegrating the rough fabric of his gi until it was little more than thread but he didn't care. The only conscious thought he had as he hurtled forward was that Gohan was there and he was in trouble.

Gohan couldn't look away, couldn't breathe. All he could do was watch in brutal petrifaction as that awful, awesome light came towards him. He tried to brace himself mentally for the end but it was too sudden and he was too disorientated. Just as the light was starting to sizzle his skin, a shadow appeared before him, tall and imposing.

"AH!" Piccolo screamed as the blast collided with his body, shredding him.

Pops of light exploded behind his eyes and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the end for him. As he fell back, he wondered why the hell he had done it. What was this kid to him? A son of the enemy, a potential threat to his perfect plan to rule…

Yet as he fell, he was finally able to fully appreciate the fact that, for whatever reason, the kid had been returned and he realised that a huge weight had been lifted from his heart.

His back hit the dirt and he struggled to breathe, taking in huge rasping breaths.

The dust and air cleared though Gohan hardly noticed. His eyes were locked on the crumpled form of Piccolo lying millimetres away from Tien. He stood frozen, his face pale, his mind blank as he fought to repress this heinous turn of events.

'_It didn't happen. Mr Piccolo's fine, it didn't happen. This is another nightmare…'_

"M…Mr Piccolo?" Gohan's small voice filtered through Piccolo's tenuous consciousness and he fought to turn his head so he could see the kid though it felt like he was trying to move a boulder.

"Kid…" Piccolo sighed, his mouth flickering into an uneasy smile.

Gohan fell to his knees, fighting to keep the tears from falling into the dust. Crawling forward he laid a trembling hand on Piccolo's broken body.

"Why'd you do that, huh Mr Piccolo?" he asked softly. "You don't even like me."

Piccolo let a chuckle bubble up and out of his throat though it evoked a substantial pain in his diaphragm.

"On the contrary, you're the only one I've ever liked."

The revelation shocked the small boy who fell into patting dirt off of his first mentor's gi. A well of pain was filling up inside him, pushing out those tears until they trailed down his face.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to protect you…when you were taken," Piccolo coughed, blanching as an ache started to form in his chest where his heart was beginning to fail.

Gohan was barely holding back the anguish, hiccoughing slightly as he replied:

"I'm s-sorry I r-ran away."

Piccolo's smile widened and Gohan found he could no longer restrain himself, throwing himself onto the ground beside Piccolo and hugging him, pressing his face into Piccolo's battered shoulder.

Piccolo could feel himself fading. He'd lost all co-ordination with his limbs, they were starting to feel far away but he was still able to raise his arm, though with what strength he wasn't sure, to run his fingers through the boy's black tresses.

"Remember G-Gohan, you're strong…wish me back okay?"

Pressed so close, Gohan felt as Piccolo's chest constricted, as every muscle in his body tensed with sudden pain and as he relaxed, his last breath exhaled onto the air like a sigh of relief.

An unnerving quiet followed where the only sound was the sobbing of a little boy. The big Saiyan stayed exactly where he was, waiting, affording enough respect for the dead.

Krillin simply stared.

He could honestly say that he never thought he'd see anything like that, that Piccolo would risk his life for Goku's son…

He really had changed hadn't he? Hundreds of deaths to his name, indiscriminate of children, adults, innocent, guilty…and he'd given his life to save on little boy. He felt a surge of pity and grief within himself, intermingling with the grief already sitting heavily on him for Chaotsu, Yamcha, Tien…

The sadness was crushing him, Gohan had never felt so bad in all his life, not even when Mr Piccolo had confirmed that his daddy had died trying to save him from Raditz. Sensou's repeated instructions echoed in his head as he clutched what he could of Piccolo's limp form.

'_Control your emotions…'_

'_Don't be weak, stand up and fight if you want to avenge your friends. Don't just lie there and let them get away with it.'_

'_They've hurt your friends and they'll only keep hurting them.'_

Shakily, Gohan released his fallen friend and heaved himself up.

Vegeta stared at the pint sized warrior, wondering where the hell that kid had come from. He hadn't seen anyone approach from outside, had the kid been here all along hiding like a coward?

The scouter over Vegeta's eye sounded and numbers started to flick across the screen.

"Where have you been hiding?" Nappa asked as Gohan got to his feet, his shoulders shaking. "I think your friends could have used your help a little while ago kid, look you've only got one left now."

Krillin flinched as the big Saiyan turned to look at him, his grin bordering on manic.

'_Great, this is turning into a blood bath.'_

"Goku…where are you?" he mumbled.

Though it was a quiet comment, Vegeta didn't miss it.

"Goku? Who is this Goku?"

"Goku…is my…father," Gohan managed to spit out, his teeth clamped together in a grit as his burning gaze met the eyes of the huge killer.

"When he gets here, you'll pay for what you've done."

The ground was beginning to quake beneath Gohan's feet, a light was beginning to form around him, a physical manifestation of the Ki he was tapping into. Strands of dark hair began to whip over his face. Vegeta eyed the numbers on the scouter but they still hadn't stopped moving.

On the other side of the battlefield, Nappa opened his mouth tauntingly but closed it again when the kid raised his hand, a closed fist pointing directly at the big Saiyan's exposed chest. His other hand came up to support the fist, he concentrated, channelling the storm of anger within him as Sensou had taught him.

The numbers just kept going up, it was unreal. Vegeta had seen this to a lesser extent with the other Earthlings they had faced but the increase in this kid's power was just maddening. Was it possible they'd been saving this kid for the later stages of battle because he was something of a trump card able to gather energy in massive amounts but inexperienced because of his age?

He raised an eyebrow as it passed the 5,000 mark.

"Nappa, be careful. This kid actually has some serious power."

Nappa glanced back at his companion and nodded, taking heed of the prince's words. If Vegeta was warning him something was definitely up. He shifted himself and prepared to dodge or block.

Krillin was watching Gohan with awe, feeling his Ki climbing to piques previously unchartered even by his father. It was a mind boggling contrast to the Gohan he had been introduced to only one year ago and it was proof that what Piccolo had said about the boy being potentially the strongest person on the planet was possibly well founded.

Maybe…maybe with Gohan…they would have a chance to hold these monsters off until Goku arrived…

"Jin…"

The flaring energy pulsing around the boy was pulled inwards, creating a glowing Ki blast in the middle of his closed fist so rays of light escaped from the cracks and crevices in Gohan's skin. Nappa cocked his head to one side and tried to gauge it.

"Su…"

Gohan's fist opened out as the energy grew but the shape of his hand contained it, formed it. It was a crude technique but an effective one for someone still not used to handling high energy Ki blasts.

Vegeta could feel the little hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck standing on end as the boy's energy continued to grow. At this rate, Nappa would be obliterated. How did a _child _of all things have so much power? The scouter at his ear began to smoke.

"MI!" Gohan yelled, releasing the blast.

The numbers on Vegeta's scouter shot up and then the thing shut down, an automatic fail safe to power levels too high to measure. The prince snarled, observing the bright Ki the kid had released as it arced through the air, aiming straight for the Saiyan soldier.

Nappa stared as the ball was released, small from the kid's tiny hand but growing bigger as it sailed through the air. Feeling that it was too hot to handle on an intrinsic level, he opted to dodge it, leaping up into the air. He hadn't counted on the boomerang like turn it made, still shooting towards him like a heat seeking missile and in his surprise; he was unable to try another dodge.

The thing hit him.

On the ground, Krillin watched in awe as the ball exploded, wrapping the world in heat and light. He could hear the huge Saiyan screaming and felt the ground change shape around him, taking a hit from the repercussive shock waves radiating out of the blast zone.

He had never seen anything like it.

As the air cleared once more, he could just make out the small shape of the boy as he remained holding on to his now open palmed hand. He was pale and sweating profusely, taking in great heaving breaths. It looked like it took a great effort to keep standing.

* * *

_So just how strong IS Gohan? Has he managed to defeat Nappa? Was it really necessary to drop Gohan into THAT point of the fight, only to watch Piccolo get killed?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…uh…(hasn't watched TV this week)_

_Reviews provide electricity to the light bulb that flickers above my head._

_PS: A note for you – the technique that Gohan uses to blast Nappa is new, replacing the Masenko that he never learned. It's one of Sensou's crude techniques and the cry 'Jinsumi' which accompanies it is a badly mashed up form of 'jinsei' and 'umi' which roughly translates as 'life wave'_


	6. Goku's Anomaly

_Ah, updates really are for cool people XD. Thanks for the reviews guys and the favs and whatnots (I've forgotten to spread the love before now but I really do appreciate you!) Special shout out to Ky111 who's been something of a constant these past few chapters, thanks! As always, a few things to consider this chapter:_

_1) You might notice that I have refrained from using direct sources for the next part of the battle. This is mostly due to the subtler reverberations on the DBZ universe caused by Gohan's abduction. That being said, I have used one direct line from the anime (regarding Baba's crystal ball not being pay-per-view) just because this line made me laugh._

_2) I have measured the temperature on Master Roshi's island using degrees Celsius just in case all of you Fahrenheit people are confused as to why everyone's feeling so hot on such a supposedly cold day XD_

_3) Spelling and grammar checked though as always, as I have only done the preliminary edit, I'm sure there are some mistakes I've missed. Apologies if you spot any and if it interrupts the flow of things._

_4) Oh yeah, something I've been meaning to point out for a while as well - some chapter titles are underlined and others aren't. This isn't neglect on my part its just that for some reason my system doesn't like underlining and eats it every time I try and edit. Apologies!_

* * *

**5: Goku's Anomaly**

Sensou saw the oncoming blast and understood it in an instant but an instant was all it took for Ma to re-locate them, leaving Gohan at the mercy of that hellish attack.

There was a sensation of displacement and then the two of them were back in Shorai's dimension which was contrapuntally serene compared to the seismic anger coursing through the warrior god. His eyes were blazing as he turned to face his beloved _brother _and Shorai's expression was grim.

Sensou said nothing, a sure sign he was furious and that Shorai should be careful. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the events unfolding over his dimension window. He watched with baited breath as Piccolo launched in to take the brunt of the blast and as Gohan spoke to his former mentor, eyes full of fresh grief and compassion.

He smiled inwardly.

A hand brushed the edge of his collar and something heavy dragged him up so he was suspended above ground. As the fabric of his robe twisted, he came face to face with his brother and cringed.

"What was that in aid of?" Sensou asked, forming each word like a strike to the face.

Shorai gasped in response, feeling the edge of his robe cutting into his neck. Shuddering, he brought his fingers up to his neck and tried to create a gap in the tight fabric.

Sensou held his brother up for a moment longer before setting him down so he could breathe. His vice-like fingers stayed on the fabric of the seer's robe, even if they loosened a little.

Shorai spluttered uselessly for a moment before glaring at his brother and rubbing his neck.

"Mostly Gohan…You may see him turn into a heartless weapon…brother…but I won't sit by and let it happen."

Sensou's eyes narrowed to slits, his teeth were bared. There had been times in the past when he had thought about hitting his brother using elevated Ki, knowing full well that with his brother's lack of training, he would be completely annihilated. He'd held back those desires, knowing that the Four Winds would not take kindly to having such a valuable seer effortlessly murdered.

The desire to ignore sense and destroy, regardless of how the Four Winds reacted, had never been so strong before.

How _dare _Shorai interfere.

How _dare_ he use his advantageous future sight to manipulate and double cross Sensou.

"Oh brother, you don't know what you're getting yourself into," Sensou hissed, Ki sparking in orbit around him.

Shorai smirked cockily, an alien expression for him. Being a seer, he usually had a distinct lack of arrogance – a state of mind nurtured since childhood to ensure he would not abuse his powers and cause chaos. The appearance of it now only served to goad Sensou's fury.

"You won't do anything. We've been in this position a dozen times before and you won't risk-

He was cut short as Sensou's fist connected with the sensitive point of his stomach sending him flying back onto the grass. The pain erupting inside him was sharp at first but then it gave way to rolling waves of nausea as his stomach started working violently in reverse. He gagged and fought not to throw up.

"Tell me the implications associated with dropping Gohan into the fight at that point and I warn you to be concise," Sensou ordered, looming over his brother as Shorai fought to take in deep lungfuls of air.

"And next time you decide to play God, you might want to think about how much this means to me," the warrior god ground out, crouching until he was level with his sickly brother's face.

* * *

It took a while for the air to clear and when it had, Krillin's eyes flew to the spot he had last seen the huge Saiyan as if drawn by magnets. Amazingly, it was devoid of life so he started searching, his eyes darting frantically over the battle field trying to catch a glimpse of the huge tormenter.

They brushed a space about 30 metres from where he had last seen the big brute and his eyebrows nearly escaped into orbit.

The big Saiyan was lying sprawled out in a crater. Cracked webs seeped out across the rock, converging on the point where his face had obviously been slammed into the ground. His tail had been burnt to a bloody stump and one of his legs was lying at an awkward angle.

"No way," he murmured, watching intently for any sign of life.

From his position on the rocks, Vegeta stood, his expression one of mild disbelief. His eyes flicked from the prone form of Nappa to the exhausted boy who was still looking murderous.

Gohan was struggling with the burning feeling inside him. Despite the release of built up pressure, he didn't feel any less furious. Though the big guy was out of commission for the time being, he still had some unfinished business with the seer who had tricked him. Growling, he glanced up into the air, searching for the familiar figures of Ma and Sensou, only getting angrier as he realised they were nowhere to be seen.

The rage bubbled in his throat.

"COME OUT, I KNOW YOU'RE STILL OUT THERE!"

Vegeta frowned at the child, analysing him as he prowled around the edge of their arena, clearly searching for someone. Immediately, Vegeta re-booted his scouter and flinched when he realised that another strong power level was heading towards him. While it was, by no means, a match for him by itself, if it teamed up with the losers already littering his battle field, he might actually be forced to pull out his last resort.

He continued to stare at the kid, his mind working fast and as he stared he began to realise that this kid looked distantly familiar.

"Wait a minute…" he whispered, taking in the way the thick black hair stuck up in an unruly fashion, the angle of the nose and the precise colour of the eyes.

"He can't be…no…surely even Kakarot would never…"

Finally convinced that the brute was down for the count, at least for now, Krillin turned his attention to Gohan, gawping openly.

Just where had he come from? Where had he been? What was with the weird gi he was wearing? How on Earth had he managed to get so strong? Who had taught him?

The questions swirled in the bald monk's mind like a storm and he moved forward, tapping the boy tentatively on the shoulder. When the boy spun round, poised like a spring, he was taken aback by just how much this kid looked like the best friend he had known when he was younger, training under Master Roshi. Now that he was dressed in the proper fighting attire, he looked much more like Goku than he had when he had first come to visit them a year earlier…the change was quite dramatic.

As Gohan spun, a wave of spots broke across his vision but he steeled himself, widening his stance as Sensou had told him to when he was feeling light headed, to help him keep his balance.

"Whoa there little buddy," a voice said softly above him. He felt a steadying hand on his shoulder and realised that despite his change in stance, the correct response to this situation, he had still been tipping sideways and probably would have fallen if his dad's friend hadn't been there.

"Are you okay?"

Gohan nodded automatically and focussed on steadying his breathing, relieved when his vision returned to normal. Subconsciously, Krillin moved so he was standing a little in front of the boy, his eyes roving to Vegeta.

"So where have you been Gohan? You know Piccolo was worried sick about you," Krillin told the kid out of the corner of his mouth.

Gohan glanced up at Krillin dubiously but then Piccolo's last words came back to him, replaying on a loop like a broken record.

'_On the contrary, you're the only one I've ever liked.'_

"He was?" Gohan asked, his voice full of child-like incredulousness and hope.

Krillin grinned down at the kid.

"You betcha."

Vegeta stared them down, his mind racing. There was no mistaking him now, the kid was Saiyan or at least part Saiyan. When he frowned he had the same pensive expression as Raditz and his power level dwarfed that of his companions even at his age.

Kakarot was dead and yet the kid had said that his father was coming. Did that mean that there was another Saiyan? No…impossible. Had Kakarot been wished back with the Dragonballs? Just who was this 'Goku'?

"Hey kid," Vegeta barked, making both Gohan and Krillin jump out of their skin.

"Who is your father, is he Saiyan?"

Krillin flinched, pulling back and Gohan was left to meet Vegeta's inquisitive urgency with a defiant glare, opening his mouth to inform this enemy of exactly who his father was.

He paused with his mouth hanging open, his eyes widening suddenly.

"He's here…Gohan he's here," Krillin whispered, not daring to believe that he'd lasted long enough to see Goku's return. He'd thought for sure he would die before then just like the others and he realised that it was mainly thanks to the kid that he had survived.

Gohan's eyes filled with new tears. He hadn't seen his dad since he'd been taken by Raditz a year before, a whole year. How would his dad react to seeing him again? Would he be proud that his son had gotten so strong in his absence?

He could feel his father's Ki coming towards them at warp speed and turned to face Vegeta with newfound fire.

"You can find out for yourself who my daddy is," he said tauntingly, sinking into a defensive stance. "He'll be here in a minute."

Sure enough, as Vegeta checked, the scouter informed him that the big power level was coming straight for them at speeds almost inconceivable. He peered back at the kid and made a business decision, a malicious smile gracing his features.

"Sorry kid, you won't be around to see your dear old dad arrive."

He drew his arms back until the muscles were taut, gathering energy into his waiting palms. A malefic green light fell over the land, casting the rubble from the previous battles into shadow. Krillin stiffened beside Gohan and began preparing a defence.

"Hey Gohan, have you got any power left?"

Gohan smiled grimly and shook his head, his hair blowing about his face.

"I didn't think so. Do you know how to block?"

The boy nodded, using the last scraps of his Ki to make a shield that shimmered like a bubble in the electric green light.

"Okay, this is it," Krillin said, bracing himself.

In the quiet of his mind, he focussed in on Goku's streaking Ki, reaching out with everything he had.

'_I'm sorry I wasn't able to keep your son alive Goku…I hope you understand that despite everything, I'm just not strong enough…'_

There was a flash as Vegeta threw the energy and the twin balls of light flew towards them with ferocious acceleration. Krillin could feel the pressure in the air and the firm stance of the boy beside him. He really was impressed with the kid. Throwing around powerful blasts was one thing, staying firm against an attack this brutal made for a warrior's spirit. Goku would have been so proud.

Just as the energy was about to hit, he heard it.

'_Krillin?'_

The world exploded and everything was green. Krillin lost himself, completely disorientated, in a moment clasping at the air, in another unaware of his own limbs and what they may be doing. There was a sickening moment when he was sure that he had died again and in any moment, he would appear at Earth's check in station to be processed into the next life but then he felt the wind whipping around him and smelt the dust in the air as it fell to settle again and he knew that somehow, he had survived.

"Krillin, open your eyes, it's okay."

Gohan's voice. Carefully, Krillin opened his eyes just a crack, surprised when he found himself looking at blue sky and swirling clouds. His eyes widened into a gape, automatically shifting down so he was looking at a pair of twin craters about 20 feet below him.

He was flying.

But there was no Ki beneath him holding him up.

Panicking, he glanced up and found himself clinging to the butt of Gohan's gi. Gohan himself was struggling to hold onto the flying Nimbus which must have managed to save them at the last possible moment. Krillin blinked. How had the little cloud known to come and find them? Had Gohan called for it?

"You fell right through," Gohan commented good naturedly, dragging himself up a little ways.

Krillin let his hands fall away from the kid's clothes, catching himself in mid air, pouting comically.

"Yeah, can't say I'm as pure as you and your father," he muttered, eyeing the kid.

Once he was sure that they were both unscathed, his eyes scanned down to the place he had last seen Vegeta. Sure enough, the small Saiyan was still there, moving from one foot to the other in an agitated manner. As the scene settled, he could make out another figure below, waving heartily, the iconic shape of his unruly hair giving him away instantly.

"DADDY!" Gohan called excitedly beside him, waving down. "Come on Nimbus!"

The cloud took off without warning, carrying an excited young boy down to see his father.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Krillin yelled, following the golden trail left behind, plummeting to the ground to see his best friend.

As soon as he was close enough, Gohan hopped off of the cloud and bounded towards his father's open arms, crashing against the strong muscles as his father pulled him close.

"Hey Gohan," Goku whispered, hugging his only child close, breathing in his scent. In all the time he'd been away, in the moments that he hadn't been concentrating on his training with King Kai, he'd thought of Gohan and Chi Chi wondering how they were doing, knowing that they would be missing him. He had hoped that Gohan wouldn't remember too much of his ordeal with his barbaric uncle but as soon as he'd made it back to the lookout, he had sensed his son's energy growing exponentially near the catastrophic alien signature and he'd known that his son had been training.

"I missed you my little man, you're so strong now," Goku said, pride apparent in his voice as he set his son down.

"Who trained you?" he asked, examining the gi the boy was wearing in bewilderment.

"It's a long story daddy," Gohan said, his eyes sharp on Vegeta's as he repositioned himself slightly. The boy was aware that his father had his back to the Saiyan prince, completely exposed but Goku seemed unperturbed, gazing down at his son with those same loving black eyes. He had missed his daddy so much, a whole year really did seem like an eternity.

Krillin landed beside them, his own eyes lingering on Vegeta as he came across to greet Goku. He was expecting the Saiyan to move at any moment but he recognised the calculating expression on Vegeta's face. He was analysing Goku rather than rushing right in, a good and bad move in equal measure. By analysing Goku, he would be able to respond better to moves executed in a sparring match but by waiting to make his move, he lost his element of surprise and with the way Goku was standing, he was a prime target.

"Goku," he said, beaming despite himself as he grasped hands with his best friend. "You really do have a knack for coming just in the nick of time."

Goku grimaced slightly, lifting his hand to scratch the back of his head.

* * *

Shorai glared at the dimension window, sweat running down the edge of his forehead threatening to slip into his eyes. Gently, his pupil pulled a cloth from his robe and dabbed at his mentor's perspiration.

Just what was going on here?

Somehow, the boy's father had managed to turn up hours before he was supposed to. This was an anomaly. Although Piccolo had managed to subvert the natural course of things by coming up with his battle plan earlier on than expected, this could easily be attributed to the fact that did not have the kid to worry about. Goku's journey on Snake Way should have been unaffected by Gohan's absence. He still should have taken exactly the same time to get from A to B.

What was different? Was this a signal that the cosmos had been too disturbed by Shorai's intervention? Had the very course of destiny itself shifted?

His mind raced, thoughts falling together and colliding in a never ending, circumventing loop. With the utmost caution, he tried to check the reverberations on the future, checking on the outcome of the battle and then on, always searching for signs that Gohan was going to fulfil his previous predictions and destroy the universe.

When he found that nothing seemed to have changed from his last prediction, he sat back baffled. Normally an alteration of this magnitude was a marker to a pivotal shift in the waves of the future…yet here Goku had appeared three hours before schedule _with no obvious side effects._

Something was seriously amiss.

"What's going on?" Sensou demanded, regarding his brother through mis-trusting eyes.

"I…I'm not sure…" Shorai admitted, staring blindly at the dimension window as Gohan flew into his father's embrace.

"What do you mean?" Sensou growled, not daring to believe that his brother's future sight had failed him.

"I mean that…Goku wasn't supposed to arrive for another 3 hours. As far as I can tell, nothing's changed…either that or…I just can't see it…"

"You're tired, you're just tired master," Tonbo piped up. "You haven't eaten today and I know you didn't sleep at all last night."

Shorai glanced at his pupil and rubbed the space between his eyes. This was certainly tiring and he could feel the pressure of exhaustion on his limbs but there was no way he could rest now. Not when it was so important that he keep track of the proceedings. He felt a clench in his stomach and tried to resist the overwhelming urge to glare at his brother. He wasn't exactly in pique physical condition following their little scuffle and seeing the future could be quite taxing at times.

"As far as I can tell, nothing's changed," Shorai stated, his voice firm now. "We will just have to wait and see if I'm right."

Sensou scowled at his brother, not appreciating the squirm of uneasiness in his stomach.

'_The boy had better survive this, for your sake brother.'_

* * *

Chi Chi sat stiff as board, staring into the TV screen with wide blank eyes. She had seen Gohan materialise through the haze of light, had heard his voice as he cried out and then the TV had cut to static as electromagnetic waves sent a schism through Z TV's equipment.

The others watched her warily, afraid that at any moment she would snap and try to barrel her way out of the door to find her son.

"It looks like she clocked out," Oolong commented from his hiding place behind Master Roshi's coffee table.

"She's just scared," Bulma explained, patting Chi Chi awkwardly on the shoulder though she received no response. She sighed inwardly. She had known Chi Chi since the Ox princess was a little girl and had often thought herself more mature than her young friend. Since the birth of her son, however, Chi Chi had somewhat surpassed her in this area, developing instincts and fears that Bulma could only guess at.

She tried to picture herself in Chi Chi's place, imagining a son that she had given birth to (with Yamcha as the father though this was something he _never _needed to know) going off to learn how to be a martial artist like the others. She tried to comprehend how she would feel if her son was in Gohan's place…

"Bulma…Bulma you've stopped breathing…"

Snapping herself out of her revelry, she frowned down into the concerned pig features of Oolong and then her eyes whipped up to lock onto Chi Chi's…except Chi Chi wasn't sitting in front of her father, the Ox King anymore.

"Where did Chi Chi go?" Bulma asked, peering around the room and then out through the open door of Kame House.

"I think she went to lie down," The Ox King said absent-mindedly, pre-occupied with his own concern for his grandson's plight.

The others turned back to watch the static on the TV for a while, just in case the crew managed to fix the picture any time soon, when they heard a colossal crash upstairs.

As one, they lifted their eyes ceiling-ward, dreading what they may find should they dare to venture up there.

"Well…I think Master Roshi should go, it's his house," Oolong said, keeping his eyes on the ceiling.

Master Roshi nearly fell over in disbelief.

"Are you NUTS? I'm not going up there! Do you want me to get killed?"

Oolong shot a side long glance at the old turtle hermit.

"Better you than me, you dirty old man."

Master Roshi's disbelief turned into a scowl of rage.

"How dare you talk to me like that you disrespectful swine, I am still a master of martial arts you know and as such, I demand that you show me the appropriate…"

The old hermit trailed off as the sound of footsteps began to travel down the staircase. In a moment the entire congregated party was gaping as Chi Chi appeared clad in as much military gear as she had managed to dig up. Around her shoulders and waist were strings of different ammo, a Gatling gun was strapped to her back. On her hips she wore a pair of pistols in holsters and in her hands she held what looked suspiciously like a rocket launcher.

"Where the hell did she get all that?" Oolong squawked, backing into the furthest corner of Master Roshi's living room.

"Man's gotta defend his island," Master Roshi muttered, pushing his index fingers together.

The Ox King was sweating profusely as he approached his daughter.

"Chi Chi, are you feeling alright?"

Chi Chi ambled down the last few steps, a look of stubborn determination plastered over her features.

"Actually, I've never felt better," she said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and get Gohan."

She made for the door.

"Don't let her get outside!" Master Roshi yelled, diving at the young woman and managing to grab her ankles, spinning her round until she fell with a thud into her father's chest. In an instant, the Ox King's huge arms had come around to restrain his daughter. She kicked and screamed, managing to incapacitate Oolong as he tried to disarm her. He went flying into a chest of drawers, clutching at his throbbing nose.

Bulma did much better, tugging at the grenade launcher until Chi Chi released it and then pulling off the pistols whilst Master Roshi went for the harder targets, the ammo and the Gatling gun.

"No, no my son is out there!" Chi Chi shrieked, bucking erratically though now she wasn't holding on to so much heavy artillery, her intimidation factor had gone down substantially and the others fell back to the floor.

As if on cue, the doorbell rang and Master Roshi edged forward, peering through his open doorway into the face of fortune teller Baba.

The witch wore her characteristic frown, hovering comfortably on her crystal ball as she regarded the others. Although the temperature on turtle island was somewhere in the high thirties, she remained clad in her thick black ensemble.

"I just came to let you know that Goku is back on Earth and heading for the battle," she said, seemingly unconcerned by the present state of affairs.

Master Roshi showed no sign that he had heard her, his sunglasses shimmering in the light as a cloud moved across the glowing sun.

"Hey, hey Chi Chi!"

Chi Chi stopped struggling in her father's intense grip, blinking at the old martial arts master.

"We can watch the fight on Baba's crystal ball!"

The witch bristled.

"Hey, this isn't pay-per-view!" she yelled angrily, her temples starting to throb but the mob waiting inside Master Roshi's home paid her no attention. As one unit, they scrambled out, grabbing Baba's crystal ball and dragging it inside. She barely managed to hold on as they slammed the door behind them.

* * *

"Were you the one that took out the big guy?" Goku asked, staring at the sprawled out form of the Saiyan soldier in the dirt.

Gohan nodded.

"He killed Mr Piccolo," the child said simply, not able to meet his father's eyes.

Goku simply stared. This was his son, his little boy. The same little boy that had cried for Goku after getting stuck in a tree for hours, the same little boy that had been taken by Raditz…the same little boy that had ploughed right through Raditz like he was made of paper Mache rather than flesh and bone when he'd heard Goku screaming.

"When this is over, you're going to have to tell me that long story," Goku said, resting a gentle hand on his son's back to move him a little to the left and behind him. "For now, leave this one to me okay?"

Gohan gaped up at his dad and nodded, not resisting as Krillin gripped his small hand, pulling him back away out of the danger zone.

Goku faced his opponent, his expression dark.

"Kakarot, I can't believe you _mated _with one of these…Earthlings," Vegeta spat, disgust lacing his tone.

Goku said nothing, simply fixing Vegeta with an unwavering stare.

The Saiyan prince let the numbers on his scouter level out and chuckled mirthfully.

"This should be over quickly."

Goku regarded the Saiyan for a few moments longer before dropping down into a ready crouch, smirking.

Vegeta allowed himself to build up a momentum of Ki before pushing off. He shot across the ground like a speeding predator, aiming an attack at his opponent's chest. Just as he was about to release the attack, a groan caught his attention and he ground to a stop, skidding through the dirt.

Goku blinked at the sudden change in intended action but then he too caught the groan, his eyes flicking to the battered form of the huge Saiyan as he heaved himself up.

"Oh man…what hit me?"

Terror unlike anything he had ever experienced coursed through Krillin's system as he watched the big Saiyan struggle up onto his one good foot. He took in the mangled face, the nose having been broken provoking huge, intimidating black rings to blossom under his eyes. His lip was cut and swollen, his bald head was a mosaic of bruises. As he checked himself over, the expression on that beaten face turned from bewilderment to barely suppressed rage. His eyes darted out over his surroundings, resting first on Goku and Vegeta and then slipping on to Gohan and Krillin.

"You…look what you've done to me you little punk!" the huge Saiyan growled, teeth bared in fury. "You'll pay for this, mark my words, you'll pay!"

Gohan simply stared at the beast, unable to move for the fear that gripped him. Even after he'd fired of that huge blast, bigger than anything else he had previously accomplished, that big bully was still alive and mad as hell.

They felt the charge of energy and Goku pivoted on the spot, aiming to vault forward to protect his young son from whatever this monster was about to try.

"Nappa!"

The Saiyan appetite was hard to control, a haze had fallen over the soldier's eyes and the adrenaline thumping through him had blocked off almost all sound. All he could comprehend was that his target, the instigator of his injuries, was standing helpless before him, begging to be obliterated but his superior's voice cut through all of that.

He breathed through his teeth, trying to hold himself in check.

The others watched as the brute's Ki started to drop once more, keeping cautious eyes on him as he limped back to stand on the prince's right side.

"Nappa, what are you doing?" Vegeta asked darkly as the larger Saiyan took up his preferred position.

"I'm…awaiting your command…Vegeta…" The soldier huffed, clutching at his useless leg as a tremor of pain shot through his system.

Vegeta smiled cruelly.

"And what if my command was for you to die?"

There was a moment of cold realisation and then Vegeta's hand was on his exposed stomach, a Ki blast ready. Before Nappa could really react, Vegeta had released the energy and the sickening sound of crunching flesh and bone filled the air. Blood gushed forth from the gaping hole in Nappa's stomach along with the gory remains of sinew and shredded muscle tissue.

Immediately, Krillin slapped a hand over Gohan's eyes whilst trying to hold the contents of his stomach in. The world swirled unpleasantly around him.

"K-Krillin was that…"

Gohan trailed off, shoving Krillin's hand aside as he crouched low over one of the jutting rocks, retching violently. The monk could have kicked himself for his slow reflexes in censoring the gruesome spectacle, there was no telling what sort of mental scarring Gohan would take away from this with a visual like that to haunt his dreams.

Gingerly, Krillin crept forward, rubbing the kid's back.

Goku couldn't believe what he was seeing. The huge Saiyan soldier fell back through the air, completely mutilated, his Ki dropping to rock bottom and then extinguishing completely. Goku's eyes lingered on the body before turning back to the flame haired prince who looked _bored _if anything.

"That was uncalled for," Goku said simply, his expression full of gravity.

Vegeta's smile was unwavering.

"Say what you want but I don't need someone that can be beaten by a Saiyan _half-breed mutt _standing on my right side."

Vegeta moved, sliding back into the same position he had been in before his former comrade had distracted them. Goku matched him, planting his feet a little wider and bringing his arms inward, feeling the gathering of energy buzzing through his finger tips.

"Hey, Gohan, are you okay? I think they're going to start fighting properly real soon, we should move back a ways," Krillin suggested softly, holding the thick black locks out of the kid's face as he continued to spew the contents of his stomach for everything he was worth.

"Okay…okay…" Gohan agreed, standing up on tottering legs.

"Alright now buddy," Krillin muttered, half hoisting Gohan over his arm and dumping him back onto the flying Nimbus. "We're just gonna shift back to that rock formation there and watch things play out okay?"

Gohan nodded absently, trying to tear his mind away from the body of Nappa and the smell of freshly spilt blood and severed organs lingering on the air. The two of them started to fly and as they slowly travelled further afield, the smell lessened and Gohan was able to breathe in clean air to clear his thoughts.

Steeling himself, he turned back on the cloud to watch his father and the prince clash.

The dual was titanic. In an instant, Vegeta was barrelling towards Goku, aiming a well placed punch to the face designed to dislocate Goku's jaw but at the last possible moment, Goku ducked so Vegeta's fist hit black hair. Using Vegeta's momentum against him, he fired a weak Kamehameha blast into the prince's stomach, propelling him upwards.

He took a deep breath.

"Kaioken!"

The power erupted around him like a flame and his aura took on an aggressive red tint. He could feel the strain on his muscles as they fought to hold together against the flow of new Ki channels in his system and he hissed at the unpleasant sensation. His senses seemed to be working on overdrive. Though Vegeta was still flying up through the air at the same rate, to Goku it looked like he was ascending in slow motion.

Knowing he only had a limited amount of time before the technique wore off, he pelted forward, springing off of the ground to follow Vegeta through the air.

It took a moment for Vegeta to right himself and dispel the disorientation that came with a rapid change in the conventions of gravity. To his surprise, Goku was already in the air beside him, aiming a two handed club to the back of the head which connected, sending him rocketing back to Earth.

There was a moment where Vegeta was in free-fall but he was unperturbed, controlling his Ki to halt himself in mid-air and stare daggers at his opponent.

"Wow Goku," Krillin breathed on the ground beside Gohan.

The boy looked up at his dad in awe and wonder, following the two fighter's precise moves, appreciating the fine tuned sparring that only really came when two seasoned fighters were evenly matched. In his time training, he had only ever experienced a fight from a severe disadvantage and it was compelling to see two warriors well met.

In the air, Vegeta smirked, rubbing the back of his head where Goku's club had connected.

"I must admit you surprised me but don't be so foolish to think that you've got the upper hand in this battle. That technique that you're using to amplify your power? I've seen something like that before."

Goku's expression morphed from one of fierce concentration to one of serious disbelief.

'_What? That's impossible! I've never met anyone within my quadrant that has managed to master a technique like this before!' _King Kai blustered in the back of Goku's mind.

'_What about in another quadrant?' _Goku asked innocently, making sure to keep his focus on his opponent through this telepathic conversation.

'_That too is impossible. For a living being to travel across space quadrants, they would need well over 100 years of life and that's with faster than light travel. As far as I can tell, Vegeta isn't exactly an ancient Saiyan so for him to have encountered anything like that, he would have HAD to meet someone in my quadrant. I say he's bluffing.'_

"Hello? Earth to Kakarot," Vegeta taunted, mistaking Goku's silent conversation with King Kai as fear induced immobility.

Goku grunted, cutting King Kai off for the moment and powered up for an offensive. Vegeta met him with equal intensity, showering sparks of Ki littering the air in their wake as they collided, meeting each other blow for blow. It was only as the knuckle of Vegeta's fist shattered one of the smaller bones in Goku's finger that he decided to take it up a notch, ignoring the white pain hissing through his hand as he fell back and prepared himself.

"Kaioken…x 2!"

This time he could feel his muscles almost stretching to braking point. It took all of his will power to keep himself together, to keep himself from being blown apart by the intensity of the Ki pouring into him. This time, he didn't just see the whole world in slow motion, he saw everything in high definition. If he focussed he could see the patterns in Vegeta's skin, could hear the distant sound of his son's heart beat as it sped up in anticipation. He could sense the fluctuation in Vegeta's Ki as the prince looked on this new development with disdain.

Goku knew he didn't have long to try this and bounded forward, delivering a drilling punch to Vegeta's stomach to send him back. Quick as lightening, he was pursuing the disadvantaged Saiyan through the air, a Ki blast at the ready by his side. This time, he didn't give Vegeta time to right himself and the Ki blast detonated in Vegeta's face, sending him careening into the hard ground.

The technique dissolved around him as he waited for Vegeta to stand up and a feeling of fatigue gripped him. He knew from the feel of the prince's Ki that he was more or less unharmed. In the back of his mind, Goku had to admit that he appreciated his opponent's stamina, he'd never encountered anything to equal it. Even Piccolo, when the two were evenly matched, would take hits and feel them.

On the ground, Vegeta stood, rubbing at the throbbing in his cheek. Inside him, a storm was brewing unlike anything he had ever experienced before, a blind and bitter fury, totally out of his control. It made him feel irrational and reckless, petulant and savage. He couldn't remember the last time someone had actually landed such a low brow hit on him, and this was amongst the ranks of the elite. Here, he was looking at a common third class Saiyan mongrel that had just bested him in a clash, _him, the prince of all Saiyans._

"You…" The prince ground out. "You will pay for this."

* * *

_Will Goku have to pay for his attack? Will Gohan retain mental scarring from seeing the horrific attack on Nappa? Does Goku's arrival 3 hours before schedule herald a major change in universal events?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…THE BIG BANG THEORY!_

_(sings) Our whole universe was in a hot, dense sleep…_

_Reviews make me appreciate life, the universe and everything!_


	7. The Root of the Problem

_I think I can safely say that this chapter draws heavily on the warped view of reality left behind after Sensou's interference. This is where things start to deviate more obviously from the original storyline so it should be interesting. As always, things to note:_

_1) This chapter took some heavy editing hits, spelling and grammar has been checked but as you are probably painfully aware by now, I am unobservant and chronically attention deficient so if you find anything, apologies._

_2) I am not a physics student, nor am I Harry Potter. The references to future sight, shifting the course of destiny, inter-planar travel etc therefore have no relevant foundations in science or magic. It's all just a product of my own fractioned mind._

_3) I actually forget the rest but I blame spring time. My current thoughts are fleeting at best. This last note may have been to thank all you wonderful people that have reviewed so far?_

_Let's go with that. _

* * *

**6: The Root of the Problem**

Goku took a moment to breathe, trying to ignore the exhaustion fighting to overwhelm him following his recent abuse of the Kaioken technique. On the ground, he watched as Vegeta's expression warped in to one of insidious fury and took comfort in the fact that the Saiyan prince was losing control of the battle.

If only he could keep up this pace…

He noted that Vegeta was starting to power up, feeling the soaring Ki signature and weighed up his options for his next plan of attack. He still had a few things he could try, his trump card, the Spirit Bomb automatically came to mind but he dismissed it for the moment. The Spirit Bomb required the user to be able to take his time gathering energy and Vegeta was able to match Goku's speed easily even whilst he was using the Kaioken. He could ask Krillin and Gohan to get involved, distract Vegeta until the bomb was ready…

He glanced down briefly, catching a glimpse of his son's innocent face.

No, he couldn't ask them to fight anymore.

That left him with the Kamehameha and the Kaioken…or a combination of the two…

'_King Kai, you're going to have to forgive me for breaking my promise…but I don't think I can win this one otherwise…_'

'_Goku…whatever you are about to do and I can guess, I forbid you from going through with it, you hear?'_

Goku inhaled.

'_Goku!'_

"Kaioken…x…3!"

There was a pop and a click and his system was bombarded with an agonising assault of Ki. His blood was burning in his veins, his already over-taxed muscles screamed in protest and his eyes grew hot as the distinct red of the Kaioken aura erupted outwards. The pain was almost unbearable but the results were unquestionable. This time when he looked at Vegeta he could easily predict the moves the prince was going to make because he was executing them so slowly. Goku reacted before Vegeta had even finished forming a coherent battle plan.

Vegeta's eyes widened in dark surprise as that same red aura burst out of the lower class Saiyan and in an instant he was beside Vegeta, ramming an elbow into his gut. It was all Vegeta could do to try and dodge but even this failed and the attack connected, sending his system into a tumult of nausea. He drew back, clutching his stomach but in the time it took him to do that, Kakarot was behind him, aiming a roundhouse kick to the back of the head which slammed him straight into the ground.

His ears rung and as his face impacted hard rock, one of his canines cracked.

The prideful rage he had felt before seemed to intensify a hundred fold until the whole world was red. How could this lower class Saiyan keep pushing it like that? How could this…_plebeian monkey _produce so much power through an amplifying technique without being reduced to a useless heap as was the norm? It was infuriating that he should be able to do this…maddening even and as Vegeta felt the first spill of blood run over his lips, he lost it completely.

Levering his hands beneath him, he pushed up into the sky.

"You think you've won Kakarot? Huh? You think you've beaten the mighty Vegeta? Well, see how you feel after I blow up this _pathetic spit of land that you call home!_" Vegeta screamed, gathering his last resort into his hands.

Gohan's eyes widened as he felt Vegeta's Ki leaping into astronomical territory and something familiar tugged at his insides.

He had to help his father.

"DADDY!"

"No, Gohan!" Krillin grunted, grabbing onto the kid's ankle as he aimed to catapult himself into the fray. He grunted as he held on, using everything he had to try and restrain the boy. Kami but this little guy was strong…

"Gohan, there's nothing you can do now. You'll only get hurt like this and that's not something that Goku would want okay?"

Gohan heard the words but it was almost impossible to let them filter in. The panic that was settling over him narrowed his line of sight until all he could comprehend was his father helpless in the path of that catastrophic attack. As he stared on, utterly helpless, images of the fallen came unbidden to his mind. First Yamcha blown to bits by that nightmarish little Saibaman, then Chaotsu valiantly trying to take that brutish soldier Saiyan into the next world with him, Tien giving everything he had, Piccolo…

And then there was the gruesome end to that great big bully. If he superimposed his father over that heartless monster in that same position with the prince's hand on his exposed stomach…

No, it _would not _happen.

"DADDY!" Gohan shrieked, kicking Krillin off and putting on a spurt of speed like the bald monk had never seen before. For a second he was left gaping after the shooting form of the boy, knowing that he would never be able to catch up to him before he sunk to the ground in despair.

Goku would never forgive him…

And he would never forgive himself…

Gohan could feel himself accessing a plethora of power that he was unaware existed inside himself. Just like the first time he had been introduced to the volcanic fury of Sensou's training dimension, he tried to grasp onto it, tried to understand it but it slipped out of his consciousness and overtook him like a parasite.

Goku suppressed his fear as the prince powered up in mid-air, not allowing the dissipation of his Kaioken to faze him. His body was spent, a useless mass of shooting pains and aches and he could feel the need to just pass out and sleep for a week battering the back of his mind.

"I'm not ready…" he muttered, staring down the energy that his adversary was gathering.

"I'm not ready," he repeated, preparing himself to withstand another Kaioken, knowing full well that this would probably end him.

Then he heard it.

"DADDY!"

His heart simply stopped beating as he turned to watch his small son hurtling towards them at breakneck speed. An ebullient panic became him, there was nothing else but the overwrought fear that his son was about to be completely incinerated.

"No, GOHAN!"

Gohan heard his father's desperate call but he only had eyes for the man that was threatening to hurt his daddy. Convulsive energy surged inside him as he brought his hands up over his head.

* * *

"What?" Shorai whispered, falling towards the dimension window with blood shot eyes to peer at the spectacle of Gohan Son as he was about to try and attack Vegeta.

"What? What's the matter?" Sensou snapped angrily, agitated that he had to be kept in the dark about the proceedings.

"The boy is about to…but he never learned…"

Shorai was blind and deaf to his companions as the world closed off into the sway of a vision. The seer watched as two different scenarios play out before him simultaneously, comprehending a split in the thread of destiny like the split end of a hair.

Tonbo observed with mounting concern as his mentor's eyes rolled back into his head and as he started muttering incoherently, groaning every now and then. He had seen Shorai lapse into a vision many times before but never before had the seer been so restless, twitching and groaning spasmodically.

Sensou watched the proceedings with stressed acceptance. A feral growl escaped his throat and he fought the urge to grab his brother and shake him into the present for the little good it would do. For now he would simply have to observe things as they happened and pray to the Four Winds for a favourable outcome.

* * *

_Gohan plopped down on the grassy plain and huffed, letting his lungs deflate fully before mustering the energy to inhale again. Above him, Piccolo hovered with an expression of condescension on his face, his eyes boring into the boy as he sat regaining himself. Normally, Piccolo's look of disdain was enough for Gohan to strive to push himself beyond his limits. The boy hated to disappoint, but today was different._

"_Get up kid," Piccolo snarled, firing a fairly high powered Ki blast at the prone form to inspire some movement._

_Gohan snarled uncharacteristically and brushed the Ki blast aside like it was an irritating mosquito rather than a sophisticated attack. Piccolo raised an eyebrow. Perhaps they were on the verge of something here. _

"_I said get up!" Piccolo barked, punctuating this with another lethal attack._

_This time, Gohan twisted, anger apparent in his face as he formed a block in front of his face and blew Piccolo's attack back with his own Ki._

"_I need a break sir, I've had enough," Gohan said, eyes blazing as he looked up at Piccolo._

_Piccolo smirked mercilessly._

"_Do you think the Saiyans will let you take a break when you've had enough?" he asked, diving down to deliver a drilling punch to the boy's skull which he only just dodged._

"_No, I know they won't let me, but I'm not fighting them now!" Gohan protested, throwing out a half hearted counter punch._

"_I don't care if you're not fighting them now, if you don't _act _like you're fighting them now, you'll never really improve enough to be of use," Piccolo retaliated, blocking Gohan's punch and countering with his own much harder punch._

_Gohan went flying into a nearby rock formation letting out an undignified 'oof' as he hit solid matter. After a few minutes, the boy stood up and eyed his mentor defiantly, brushing down his ruined gi._

"_Maybe if you taught me how to make some of those explosions you can make then I'd be able to do more damage!" he threw out, not really expecting his mentor to think about it. To his complete surprise, Piccolo paused, staring at the kid with soul searching eyes._

"_Alright," Piccolo relented eventually with a sigh. "I suppose it is about time I started to try and pound some more complex skills into that thick head of yours. You better pay _close _attention."_

_Piccolo observed with barely concealed amusement as the metaphorical thunder cloud over the boy's head lifted. He mulled over the change in attitude, appreciating the boy's appetite for learning; he couldn't deny that the little demi-Saiyan was absorbing his training like a sponge. This both irked and awed him in equal measure. That Goku's son wasn't a wash out and a wimp was irritating to say the least, how could Piccolo use the kid as leverage against his rival if the kid had actually managed to learn to fight back? That this tiny boy was mastering techniques at the rate he was with the constant thirst for more awed the demon. The boy had the makings of a truly formidable warrior._

"_Before we go any further, I want you to get it straight that I'm not teaching you to 'make explosions', I'm teaching you to control Ki so you can produce it as a physical and destructive output."_

_Gohan nodded studiously, a frown of concentration knotting his brows._

"_Now…the technique I am about to teach you is called the 'Masenko'. It's a standard, straightforward manifestation of Ki that's quick and easy to use and powerful to boot. To perform it, all you have to do is…"_

* * *

Convulsive energy surged inside him as he brought his hands up over his head like he remembered being taught. Simultaneously, he remembered being taught the 'Jinsumi' Ki blast by Sensou at the same time, in a different place, like he was in two places at once or nowhere at all.

"Masenko!" he called out, forming the bright yellow ball of Ki above his head, pouring everything he had into and more from that space inside himself that he still couldn't quite grasp.

From his position on the ground, Krillin bit back a string of curse words as he ogled the nacreous light forming from Gohan's fingertips. Just where was this kid pulling this power from? Had he not admitted, when Vegeta was about to blow them to bits, that he was out of power? What was going on?

Vegeta saw the blast forming in the kid's hands and one of his eyes started to twitch. Still there was no going back now, he would just have to release his energy and get the hell out of there.

"Galick Gun!" he yelled.

"HA!" Gohan screamed.

A torrent of slicing winds started to bombard the Earth as boy and prince released their attacks at the same time. The purple aura of Vegeta's attack and the electric yellow aura of Gohan's attack clashed in the air, turning the sky a deep muddy brown. Through the flashing display, Goku watched his son tumble out of the air, completely spent and despite the insane display of power before him, he raced forward to catch his little boy before he could impact the dirt.

The two power balls hit, colliding in mid-air and the resulting explosion was devastating. The mountains and hills that had been part of Piccolo's home were levelled, trees were upturned and flung then disintegrated in the heat. A huge, resounding boom followed a few seconds later, shaking the foundations of the plains. There were people in the nearest city some 20 miles away that saw the light from the collision and grabbed their ears as the bang followed like thunder.

Goku threw himself onto the ground, using his body to shield his son from any resulting damage. He cried out as the heat tore at his back, burning his skin but still he held on, determined to keep his boy safe.

On the other side of the battle field, Krillin threw himself down as flat as he could, trying not to get blown away by the repercussions of those two goliath powers.

* * *

"What the hell?" Sensou snarled at the dimension window, his hands shaking on the grass as he lent forward. A vein in his temple was beginning to throb.

'_That's Piccolo's technique…but that's impossible. The boy was never taught the demon style of fighting. Something's wrong.'_

He turned from the window, staring at his brother who was still caught in the vestiges of the vision, muttering incoherently. He frowned as he watched his brother's pupil wiping the sweat from the seer's brow, noting how the little spasms flittering over Shorai's body were becoming more violent. This was something of an abnormality. Though Sensou didn't make a habit of watching Shorai when he was caught up in one of his visions, he knew from experience that for the most part it normally looked like he was in deep meditation. Now it seemed that he was having some sort of mild fit.

"Ma," Sensou barked, making Tonbo jump and drop the cloth he was using. "Do you have any idea what's going on? The technique that the boy just used is something he was never taught."

Slowly, Ma shook his head, perplexed as to why the warrior god would be asking him such things. True, he was able to travel across more of the universe than Sensou was ever likely to see but that didn't mean he understood any of it.

"I'm sorry, I don't know about the subtler vibrations and reverberations of the universe. All I know is that I possess the ability of inter-planar travel. I'm not even sure if I fully comprehend how that works," Ma admitted.

Sensou took in a deep hissing breath through his teeth and spit on the grass in frustration.

"Useless," he muttered, pivoting back to face the dimension window.

There was a silence as Sensou tried to prepare himself to watch the rest of this battle in the dark, settling himself down on the grass, but Ma's quiet voice demanded his attention.

"I'd hazard a guess to say it was something to do with Goku's arrival 3 hours before schedule. Perhaps this has twisted the fabric of the universe somewhat…"

Sensou stiffened where he sat but said nothing else, considering. To be honest, Ma's suggestion seemed logical enough but if that was the case and Goku's anomaly was the cause of all this, why hadn't Shorai been able to see that this would happen? Why hadn't Shorai been able to see that Gohan would be able to tap into knowledge he had never been taught? If an aberration like _that _had appeared, who knew what else could change?

* * *

The ash and smog, the dust and debris; eventually it all settled to reveal the new shape of the land, a bowl of a crater filled with desert-like sand. For minutes afterwards, there was nothing but silence, not even a wind dared whip out over this scarred landscape. And then there was a scrabbling, almost non-existent at first and then louder as something dug its way to the surface.

A hand shot out of the dust, flailing for a moment in mid-air before finding leverage and pushing up, revealing Krillin's small frame. He took in a deep breath of air and collapsed, unable to do anything but exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide for a few seconds before digging his fingers into the cracks of his eyes to try and clear the dust. When he managed to open stinging eyes he was awestruck at what he found – the barren wasteland devoid of life where Piccolo's home had once been.

'_I can't believe that kid,_' he thought to himself as he started scanning the surrounding area for any signs of the Saiyan prince. '_Training for what? A year? And kidnapped during that time…again…only to produce something that me and the rest of the other warriors can still only ever dream of? Definitely Goku's son alright…_'

Both the sky and the ground was surprisingly free of the Saiyan shadow so, standing on tired legs, he started scouting for his best friend and the boy that had saved the Earth. When he was unable to spot anything at all, he swallowed his panic and started loping out into the desert, trying to keep his eyes peeled for anything that might give Goku or Gohan away.

Eventually, just as he was about to give up hope and accept that they had probably passed on, he spotted a tuft of black hair sticking out of the dust like an unnatural weed.

"GOKU!"

He stumbled over and started to frantically scoop the dust away, slowly but surely managing to excavate his best friend. He winced as he uncovered Goku's bare, burnt back, gagging as he realised that some of the gi fabric he had been wearing had sort of fused to the skin there. Sand granules clung to sticky skin and he knew that once Goku was taken to the hospital, it would be a hellish experience to clean all that out.

As he dug, he realised that Goku's strong arms were clamped tight around something and with the utmost care, he loosened the grip, peering into the unconscious face of the little demi-Saiyan who seemed exhausted but remarkably un-hurt.

"Thank Kami…" Krillin whispered, sitting back on the sand.

"H-hey K-Krillin."

The bald monk jerked involuntarily and peered at his best friend's pain contorted face. He hadn't realised that Goku had been conscious.

"Goku! Are you okay? Do you think that crazy Saiyan is gone?" Krillin asked, his eyes darting out once more for a sentry sweep.

Goku only heard every other word. Waves of pain were rolling along his devastated back causing a white hot ringing in his ears. His thoughts were jumbled, scattered by the pain. All he could really coherently think about was his son and the bag of Senzu beans he had been given before dropping off of the tower on the way to the battle.

"Gohan?" he asked, blanching through the pain.

"He's fine Goku, just dead tired is all," Krillin assured him. Goku breathed out slightly in relief and then sucked in a new sharp breath of air as the pain over his back seemed to magnify.

"Senzu…in…pocket," he managed, trying to lift his hand so that he could grab one.

Luckily, Krillin was quick to pick up on what Goku was aiming to try and do, reaching up to pull the bean from Goku's pocket himself to save his friend unnecessary movement. Just as the tip of his finger was about to sweep across the lip of Goku's gi pocket, something erupted out of the ground, causing Krillin to jerk up in an automatic reaction.

It was a power ball barely bigger than Krillin's fist, bright white in colour and heading up into the sky. Krillin watched as it catapulted into the upper atmosphere, exploding in a brilliant stream of light that looked somehow familiar…

Something followed it, bursting out of the ground and throwing Krillin away from his companions, a huge creature growing steadily in size until it was bigger than the mountains that had once adorned the land. Thick brown fur covered it from head to toe, its exposed skin was tan. It had a distinctly monkey-like face with bared, chisel sharp teeth and murderous red eyes. The wicked smile on its face, the Saiyan armour and the way that fur on top of its head stuck up in a flame were all reminiscent of the Saiyan prince Vegeta.

The great ape stared down at the miniscule forms of Kakarot and his atrocity of a half breed son.

"That…kid…hurt…me," the huge creature hissed, snarling, grasping at some obvious burns and cuts that had opened up and were oozing sticky blood. The worst of the damage seemed to be confined to a centre point in the Saiyan armour which had cracked and imploded, embedding shards of protective material into Vegeta's vulnerable flesh. He winced every time he moved, knowing that this was a wound that would earn him a good while in the rejuvenation tank once he got back to the station. That this damage was caused by a tiny half Saiyan _toddler _was simply unbearable…inconceivable. The brat had to pay.

Goku subconsciously clutched the limp form of his son a little closer and, finding strength somewhere within himself, attempted to stand. Spots broke in a tidal wave over his vision but he realised the importance of keeping himself straight faced in front of this ape if he wanted to turn the heat away from his little man. He made sure his legs were anchored as he glared defiantly at the Saiyan prince.

"You will _both pay!_" the ape promised, bringing his fist down in a wide arc, aiming to flatten his enemy. The fist was not only big but fast, Goku only just had enough time to muscle up enough momentum to spring away, landing on a sedimentary pile of rubble a little way away where he was able to put Gohan down, hiding him from the line of fire behind a tiny barricade of rocks.

As soon as he was sure that his son would remain safe, at least until Krillin managed to find him, he widened his stance, pulling his hands in beside him to try for a Kaioken enhanced Kamehameha.

"Ka…me…ha…"

'_Goku wait!'_

Goku paused at the sound of King Kai's voice, the energy tingling through his fingers itching to be released.

'_Seriously King Kai, I'm kind of in the middle of something!' _Goku complained, noting that the huge ape Vegeta had turned around to face him and was getting ready to charge forward.

'_I know Goku, don't use the Kamehameha, use the Spirit Bomb!'_

Goku frowned, letting the gathered energy disperse.

'_But that'll take too long. Vegeta may look a lot slower than he was before but he's really just the same.'_

'_I know, look, I have a plan but you're going to have to trust in me and in your friends.'_

'_No King Kai, I don't want to put them in any more d-_

'_You don't have a choice Goku, use the Spirit Bomb!_' King Kai ordered, severing their link.

Goku took a deep breath, ignoring the angry Saiyan ape stampeding towards him and held his hands up to the sky, asking the Earth with his spirit if he could borrow some of its energy.

Vegeta saw the change in stance and paused in his tirade to throw the third class Saiyan a suspicious look. Experience had taught him that when a fighter got a little desperate, he might try to perform a technique that he had previously deemed unusable due to its risk factor. The prince waited, analysing the situation.

He stayed like that for a while, gauging his opponent but whatever Kakarot was trying to do, it didn't seem to be working.

He smirked.

"Trying a last resort, eh Kakarot? It doesn't seem to be doing anything, you should just give up. If you still had your tail, this would have been an interesting duel, a battle between behemoths but as you've opted to have your true power cut off, I fear that you are grossly outclassed."

'_That's it, just keep talking…_' Goku thought to himself as he felt the tug of miniscule granules of energy rolling across the globe.

"I must congratulate you, you and your half-breed son have been the first in many years to really cause me harm and for that I feel that I should give you a warrior's death."

He ambled forward, his huge feet crushing tracks into the dust. Raising his fist above his head, he took aim at the tiny stretched out figure of his opponent.

"Goodbye Kakar-

"DESTRUCTO DISK!"

Vegeta heard the words and turned, taking in the spectacle of the spinning, razor sharp disk of Ki in Krillin's outstretched hand just as the bald monk threw it. The disk sliced through the air, sending whirlwinds of dust over the wasteland and instinctively, Vegeta knew to avoid rather than tackle this particular attack. Although the energy used to make it wasn't particularly spectacular, the way the Ki had been compressed made it deadly. The prince really did have to applaud Earthling innovation, much as it annoyed him.

Tucking his tail back around his waist, he jumped, narrowly avoiding having his foot cut clean off . The disk sped on, slicing through the mound of debris that Goku was standing on, literally missing Gohan's unconscious form behind him by inches.

"Watch it Krillin!" Goku yelled, struggling not to let his concentration slip.

From his position on the sand, Krillin grimaced, putting his hand behind his head.

"Oops, sorry Goku!" he called back as the monster prince landed, creating an earthquake on impact so particles of dust shot up into the air.

The prince approached the smaller fighter with a smile. He would deal with this one first. Kakarot was still standing in the same position, futilely attempting to call on a failed last resort. What did it matter if his demise was delayed by a few minutes?

"That was a very interesting little trick cue ball," Vegeta said, his tail unwinding to swish agitatedly behind him. "It's a shame I can't allow you to live to teach it to me."

"Oh yeah, like I would," Krillin called back bravely, avoiding the tail as it came down to crack like a whip in the dust.

Vegeta chuckled, back on solid ground now he was the one with the clear advantage again.

"Oh believe me, when I'm finished with you, you'll be begging to impart your wisdom."

Krillin didn't doubt it and chose not to comment further, focussing instead on mustering the emptiness inside him to produce another disk. If he could only manage to cut off that tail…bring the prince back down to their level by getting rid of the root of the problem…but how could he when he had to keep Vegeta's attention so Goku could finish gathering energy for his attack. King Kai had been adamant that Krillin was to provide enough of a distraction for Goku to finish.

"De…structo…"

"That's it, try again," Vegeta guffawed. "If at first you don't succeed right?"

Krillin raised his hand above his head and the prince waited lazily for things to heat up. Then something caught his eye, the shadow beneath the bald monk was…odd. Though the power ball Vegeta had thrown up into the air was creating a shadow, the shadow seemed to have been split in two…almost like two light sources were producing different, contradicting shadows.

Realisation dawned on Vegeta like a sledge hammer. He pivoted on huge feet, staring at the still spread out form of his rival Kakarot and his eyes snaked up into the sky where _a second power ball was forming. _

"What the-

It was like nothing Vegeta had ever seen, a vast blue orb gathering miniscule particles of light, feeding on the energy of the very atmosphere itself to increase its size. He stared at it dumbstruck, petrified and those few moments of awe were all Krillin needed for his newly formed disk of Ki to slice through Vegeta's tail, reducing it to a ruined stump.

"What?" Vegeta howled. "No, you little bastard, do you have any idea what you've just done?"

'_Nothing, just cut you down to size is all,' _Krillin thought to himself, jumping out of his skin when he heard King Kai's hysterical laughter in the back of his mind.

* * *

Shorai's head lolled onto his shoulder and his eyes rolled forward. He blinked a couple of times to clear the remaining haze, not appreciating the feeling of light headedness that accompanied his return to reality. Eventually, he was able to focus on the pale green face of his pupil beaming openly at him.

"Tonbo…how long was I out?"

"A while," his little pupil admitted, helping him to lean forward. "Gohan's blast was incredible but he's unconscious now. Goku and his friend have taken over."

'_Ah, so that's what allowed me to return to sanity,_' Shorai thought to himself, breathing steadily. His clothes clung to him and he realised that he had been sweating heavily. It had been a long time since something like this had happened and he'd been a much younger man then.

As soon as Sensou saw that his brother was back with them, his temper flared. He grabbed the seer by his robe, pushing his small apprentice out of the way.

"What happened?" he barked, his expression dangerous. "The boy performed one of Piccolo's techniques, something he was never taught. What's the big idea?"

Shorai sighed and pulled back, feeling too bone tired to care about Sensou's temper, even if he knew he should fear his brother.

"It's a hairline fracture in the weave of destiny," Shorai explained. "It's one of the few things in the universe I can't predict. It doesn't happen very often and is likely the result of Goku's arrival before schedule…"

Sensou's eyes shot to Ma who shrugged nonchalantly. He'd been guessing but it seemed fairly straightforward to him really.

"Does it change anything?" Sensou asked quickly.

Shorai shook his head.

"Probably not, but it's hard to tell. It's like any crack in anything, harmless until whatever the crack is in shatters and then everything's reduced to shards."

"I wouldn't _exactly _call that technique harmless," Sensou spat, his eyes blazing. "Will the boy remember it when he returns?"

Shorai shook his head again, indicating that he didn't know.

"Well, check," Sensou threw out, pushing Shorai's robes into his chest.

The seer glowered, still fighting to breathe evenly.

"I can't just delve straight back in to another vision after something like this has occurred. Hairline fractures are dangerous, I could get caught between two realities and cause myself mental damage. To pull myself out of the last illusion was hard enough. No, I need to rest for now."

Sensou couldn't restrain himself, howling like an animal and jumping on his brother's chest, his hand reaching round to grab at a ceremonial knife he kept tucked under his hard armour. Shorai was beaten into the ground with his brother's arm over his throat. He gasped uselessly and struggled.

"I swear to you brother I am this close, _this close _to ignoring the Four Winds and killing you. I delight in the thought of slitting your throat and letting your blood flow freely over my hands but it just so happens I need you to tell me how this will play out so that I can make my move. After the little stunt you pulled earlier with that Namekian, Piccolo, its more imperative than ever that I get Gohan back."

Shorai's eyes remained level with Sensou's, a cold expression on his features, like he'd removed himself entirely from the situation.

"No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it," Shorai muttered. "Do what you want to me brother, it won't change the fact that I can do nothing more right now."

Sensou kept his angry eyes on his brother's for a while longer before hoisting him up and slamming his head into the dirt. After that, the warrior god stood and walked out over the plains, ignoring the dimension window, Ma and the seer's pupil who was looking at the warrior god's back, horror struck.

* * *

The prince was shrinking, falling out of the air. His colossal Ki was dropping to something manageable and Goku knew it was now or never. With a great grunting effort, he jumped off of the dust mound, throwing the Spirit Bomb as hard as he could towards Vegeta. The ball sped through the air, seemingly becoming elongated as it began to move though it was just a trick of the light.

Vegeta watched its progress through his half-transformation, knowing he was defenceless so long as he was caught between great ape and man. He shrieked, calling out in disbelief, rage and shattered pride.

'_No…it can't end like this, it can't!_'

Twisting himself round in mid-air, he held his half-transformed hand out and cried out, releasing a sloppy blast of Ki to propel himself upwards.

_And the Spirit Bomb missed._

It shot beneath him, hot energy licking at the toes of his boots as it flew onwards towards the bald monk.

"Ah!" Krillin cried, throwing himself down onto the sand.

'_Goku, try a boomerang manoeuvre in the shape of those rocks!' _King Kai instructed, projecting an image of the rock formation into Goku's mind so he knew what King Kai was talking about. It was a natural half pipe created by the brilliant blast his son had used to deflect Vegeta's planet killer that could be used to sling shot the ball up and round towards the semi-vulnerable form of the prince. All Goku had to do was use a little Ki control to nudge the ball onto the right course. He reached out, putting everything he had into the invisible force that he would use to coax the ball towards the rocks.

For a few crucial, heart wrenching moments, nothing happened and it looked like the energy would go flying off into the wasteland to explode, a useless waste of gathered energy. Goku's forehead was beaded with sweat, his Ki was oscillating madly. With a cry he pushed out and the ball swerved, ricocheting up from the half pipe into the sky, a wild card flying back towards the prince.

The prince had almost finished his transformation when he saw the ball heading towards him again, bigger than he was and terrifying beyond compare. The transformation and the arduous battle had taken it out of him and though his mind worked to plan a method of escape, his thoughts kept jumbling until all he could do was fire another sloppy blast towards the Earth, putting almost every last scrap of Ki into it with the desperate hope that he could avoid it.

The sizzling ball flew towards him and he was ascending too slowly. With a final grunt, he dredged up the last of the reserves within himself and doubled the output of the Ki blast, barely conscious as he realised that the ball had missed again.

"No!" Goku yelled. "How is that possible?"

He heard a low groan behind him and whipped round to look at the tired form of his son silhouetted against the dust mound. Gohan rubbed his eyes, confused and a little worried when he found it a gargantuan effort to keep himself awake. He wanted nothing more than to curl up where he was and forget everything but he knew he couldn't do that just yet.

"Gohan!"

Was that his daddy's voice? What had happened anyway? The last thing he remembered was…

"DADDY!"

Though his father was nothing but an indistinct figure on the backdrop of the desert below him, Gohan squinted, trying to make out if his father was hurt. Having lost consciousness so quickly, he had no idea whether or not his blast had been enough to deflect the prince's.

"Gohan!" Goku called up to his son, praying that Gohan wasn't too disorientated for his next plan of action to work.

'_King Kai, please?_' Goku asked, praying it wasn't too presumptuous to ask for his mentor's help in connecting him to the mind of his son at this crucial moment.

'_Okay, but I want a present next time I see you. I'm not really supposed to intervene like this you know._'

'_I know, I'm sorry King Kai…Gohan?_'

On top of the mound of debris, Gohan's little face whipped round comically, searching for his father though he knew that Goku was down on the ground, waving. As his eyes darted round, he caught sight of the massive energy hurtling towards him and froze.

So his blast hadn't worked, Vegeta's planet destroyer was coming towards him, about to destroy him. He braced himself for the worst, hoping that Piccolo would be there waiting for him on the other side…

'_It's daddy Gohan, I'm talking to you through King Kai,_' Goku explained hastily.

'_Listen to me Gohan, that ball isn't Vegeta's attack, it's my Spirit Bomb and it won't hurt you if you're pure of heart. All you have to do is use your Ki to re-bound it up at Vegeta, okay little man?_'

Gohan blinked, struggling to take it all in. He stood, staring the blast down, trying to remember what Sensou had taught him about not crying. It didn't help anyone, it meant you were weak, helpless. Crying meant that you were no longer able to help the people that you loved and that was more than Gohan could take.

Though his lower lip wobbled with the threat of hysterical sobbing, he fortified himself, anchoring his legs as Sensou had taught him.

'_What if I'm not pure enough daddy?_'

There was a millisecond of silence that seemed to stretch on for a lifetime and then Goku replied, his voice light with an obvious smile.

'_Oh Gohan, you'll be absolutely fine, I promise.'_

The boy formed a bubble of Ki and the Spirit Bomb rebounded like a ping pong ball, shooting up once again towards the Saiyan prince. This time, he had nothing left to save himself with and the ball collided in a bull's eye to the wound on his stomach, exploding into an awe inspiring display of electric Ki. The prince let out in ear-splitting scream as his entire body became a hot house of agony. A branch of lightning forked out from the main explosion, carrying Vegeta with it and scrambling his insides. The energy carried him up into the stratosphere or down towards the hard ground. He had no idea whether he was going up or down, whether he was still on Earth or in the farthest reaches of space. There was no more rational thought, only pain and the knowledge that he had been beaten by a third class Saiyan and his half-breed rat.

* * *

_So between them, Gohan and Goku have managed to rid the world of the Saiyan threat. What will happen to Gohan now? Will he get a chance to tell his dad that long story? Or will he be spirited away, back to Sensou's training of doom? Has Vegeta survived this time or has he actually been blown into the next world?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…INVADER ZIM!_

_Solutions, give me solutions!_

_Or reviews…reviews are good too…_


	8. Who Will Wish Him Back?

_Let's play a game shall we? Anyone that can guess my gender gets an imaginary pizza complete with imaginary garlic and herb dip…mmm…dip…Personally, I think its glaringly obvious but then, I know, so I guess to me, it is XD As always, things to note._

_1) I've started to use conjunctions to begin sentences quite frequently. I know this is an area for debate grammatically speaking and I'm one of those that believes in the free-flowing form of writing. If it looks good and sounds good and that's how you wrote it, then stick with it you know?_

_2) I've read and re-read and then re-read this chapter again to make sure everyone is IC and their reactions to new developments are believable. As far as I am concerned, everything more or less makes sense but I am here to answer questions should the need to ask any arise._

_3) A warning for lots of plot in this chapter, plenty of foreshadowing and general brain children so get your thinking caps on and enjoy the intrigue._

_4) Spelling, grammar, maths, spatial discrepancies and continuity (as far as it applies) have all been checked and as usual, apologies for anything I have more than likely missed. _

* * *

**7: Who Will Wish Him Back?**

Gohan was shoved back into the dust by the force of the Spirit Bomb and his eyes fell on his father. He knew without the need to look up and see that the prince was finished. If the Saiyan did somehow manage to escape from something like that unscathed then he must be some sort of god.

He struggled to keep his eyes open, desperate to stay awake until he could talk to his father again. He was so pre-occupied with keeping himself conscious that he failed to notice the presence of something swaying agilely behind him, something brown and distinctly monkey-like.

* * *

Shorai clutched the throbbing spot at the back of his head and stared at the dimension window, observing as Gohan successfully rebounded the Spirit Bomb at Vegeta. As soon as it made contact, he flopped back onto the soft grass in relief, allowing himself to truly feel the weight of his fatigue. Though he knew Vegeta would survive the blast, he also knew that the prince would no longer pose a threat, beaten to within an inch of his life. When he finally fell to Earth, he would fall broken and Goku would save him only for the prince to start a vendetta against his savior… But that complicated mess hardly mattered now.

"Is it over?" Tonbo asked gingerly, coming forward to sit cross legged beside him.

The seer beamed at his pupil, blanching as a shooting pain reverberated through his head.

"It's over."

Sensou's heart was beating like a drum as he stood, his sharp eyes on Ma.

"We must retrieve the boy," the warrior god commanded, stepping forward with his hand raised to grasp the teleporter's shoulder.

"Oh honestly Sensou, have a heart," Shorai mumbled, made bold by his own exhaustion. "Let the boy have some time with his father."

Sensou didn't allow himself to get angry though his temper was wearing thin after the gruelling course of the day's events. He spun, firing a reflexive Ki blast at the seer, delighted when his brother didn't see it coming and his robe caught light.

"Ah, aaah!" Shorai shrieked, rolling across the grass to try and douse the flames. Tonbo launched himself after his mentor, slapping the fire into the dirt.

Sensou snickered, a rare occurrence, and his eyes brushed over the dimension window where the boy was just now managing to stand on tottering legs.

Something caught his eye, a dark, angular shape hanging by the boy's knees like the loose end of a sash or a…_tail…_

Years of combat had taught Sensou to be prepared for anything and so, although the battle appeared to be over and by all accounts he should be letting his guard down, he reacted with lightning perception to this new development. The boy had yet to look at the power ball in the sky that mimicked perfect moonlight but he knew he only had a few minutes at most. He vaulted towards Ma.

"Take me to the boy."

To Sensou's fury, Ma hesitated, glancing out at his ridiculous brother and the brat.

"Forget Shorai," Sensou ordered, looking Ma squarely in the eye. "If you do not take me now, I will eviscerate you without a second thought."

It was not an unusual occurrence to be threatened by the warrior god. Ma had received several threats of dismemberment and disembowelment throughout his acquaintance with the man but there was something about this particular threat that carried certain gravity. If Sensou's usual threats were half hearted, this one was the pinnacle of certainty. He meant what he said this time, if Ma didn't do as ordered, he was likely not to see the next hour.

In the blink of an eye, he and the warrior god disappeared.

* * *

Goku fell face forward in the dust, tracking Vegeta's Ki as it started to diminish. The adrenaline that had fuelled him through the last half of the battle evaporated and he felt empty, drained, like his own muscles weighed 1,000 tons. Vegeta's Ki eventually dropped into a barely flickering flame and Goku smiled. It really was over.

Automatically, his mind wandered to thoughts of home, Chi Chi's cooking and his little boy's laughter, things he'd missed since he'd been dead and living at King Kai's. With a great effort, he looked up at the dust mound where his son sat and a furious pride swept through him.

Though Chi Chi hadn't allowed Goku to start any formal training, the boy was obviously a natural. The sheer magnitude of the blast he had thrown at Vegeta's planet killer was simply astounding for a 5 year old that had only been training for a year, almost unthinkable. He squinted at the boy's dark gi, wondering who his master had been. Gohan really would have to sit down and tell them that long story.

Noticing a flicker of Ki beside him, he glanced round and grinned his patented grin at his best friend who was battered and bruised but alive. Krillin smiled back, shaking his head.

"I don't know what the hell Chi Chi feeds you Son boys but I'm thinking of coming over every once in a while for a dose of the magic potion," Krillin joked, sitting cross legged in the sand beside his friend.

Goku chuckled openly, wincing as the burnt skin on his back complained. The pain had dulled considerably since the burst of adrenaline had taken hold but he knew it would be back soon enough if he left unchecked. He let out a sharp breath.

"Hey, mind finishing the job you started with that Senzu bean?" Goku asked light-heartedly, shifting so his bulging pocket was in view.

"Oh, sure," Krillin said, leaning forward.

Goku's eyes swivelled back to watch Gohan as the boy stood on shuddering legs, anticipating the moment when he would be able to hold his son without some threat looming over them. He didn't think he'd let the boy go for about a week after this.

But then something caught his eye, flicking out from behind Gohan like a whip. For one wild, heart stopping moment, he thought that it was a snake that had somehow survived the decimation of the surrounding area by burrowing under the debris and opened his mouth to warn the boy but as he watched it with paternal eyes, he realised that Gohan's tail had grown back.

At first he was relieved that his son wasn't in any trouble but then it dawned on him that the power ball Vegeta had used to transform was still lighting the sky. All Gohan had to do was look up and they would all be flung into a new world of intense peril.

He felt as Krillin slipped the Senzu bean into his mouth and bit down, appreciating the rush of strength and the release of pressure on his system as he chewed and swallowed. He sprung up, startling the monk who had just been preparing to reach into Goku's pocket to grab a bean for himself, and took off in a flash of speed, determined to stop his son from transforming.

"Gohan, DON'T LOOK UP!" he yelled out as he shot towards the boy.

"Huh?" Gohan asked tiredly, hearing his father's muffled voice over the wasteland. He didn't quite catch what Goku had shouted but he caught the urgency in his tone and panicked, his head twitching over his surroundings as he searched for any sign of the Saiyan prince.

When he found nothing on his immediate level, his eyes started snaking upwards…

Someone appeared before him, blocking his line of sight, the dark armour silhouetted against the light show still raging on behind him. Gohan made a noise of astonishment and fell back onto his butt, taking in the visage of the warrior god and the teleporter. His thoughts were sludge-like through his weariness but he was still able to discern in a moment what their appearance might mean.

"No, no, daddy!"

Goku stared on horrified as two strange figures just _appeared _next to his son, Ki signatures flaring into place in his mind, one miniscule, one greater than anything he had ever comprehended before. His son's panicked cry followed a moment later and Goku lost all rational thought – charging forward at speeds he had never achieved before.

It wasn't enough.

He was only a couple of meters from them and Gohan leapt through the narrow gap between the two figures, small hands reaching out for his daddy. Goku's eyes locked with his son's and the sheer well of desperation he saw in those black pools broke his heart. He thrust his own hand into the air, willing his arms to stretch so he could grasp onto his son and pull him into his protective embrace but he knew somehow that this wasn't going to work.

One of the figures spun at an alarming speed, far too quickly for Goku to follow and grabbed his son's tail. Gohan's eyes went wide and he screamed out in agony but before Goku could react, they had disappeared.

Goku was left to crash ungracefully into the side of the dust mound, scattering sand granules and debris.

* * *

"Let me go, let me go!" Gohan shrieked, squirming in Sensou's grip as they appeared in Shorai's meadow though the tremors of pain that ran along the length of his tail to the base of spine were excruciating. Sensou simply glared disdainfully at the suspended demi-Saiyan letting him shout out his frustration until he was empty, left hanging limply from Sensou's hand and breathing heavily.

When he was sure that Gohan wouldn't try to fight him, he lowered the boy onto the grass where he sat glaring daggers at his mentor.

Sensou met this angry look with a wall of silence, something that just made Gohan all the more furious though he had nothing left inside himself to act on. He was well and truly spent for today.

"Are you through?" Sensou asked quietly, his voice razor sharp and threatening.

Gohan's eyes blazed and he snarled. He wanted to assure the warrior god that he hadn't even started yet but he knew lying would do him absolutely no good. Instead he tried to re-direct his remaining energy into controlling the anger and panic that was dominating his system though it was hard, _very _hard.

"Take me back! You have to take me back!" Gohan ordered, ignoring the fact that he was likely to get hurt for using such a tone with his intimidating teacher.

"Take me back," he repeated. "The Saiyans are gone and you said that if I did as I was told then I would get to go home! I have to see my dad, my mum and I have to find a way to bring Piccolo back!"

Sensou recoiled from the child's mounting hysteria, somewhat revolted at this display of overwhelming emotion. Had the boy forgotten everything Sensou had taught him about control? He took a hissing breath in through his teeth, knowing that this situation was complicated and that one wrong move could end any notion of Gohan's continued compliance. He cracked his neck from side to side, earning a suspicious look from the boy, and tried to recall everything he'd prepared to say.

"You can't go home, not right now," Sensou said, his eyes cold as he regarded the boy. "There is another threat, much worse than the Saiyans and you must be ready."

Gohan blinked, staggered by this news. A new threat? Did his father know? Automatically, his eyes shot out to the dimension window but to his surprise, he found that the window was gone, replaced with an ordinary patch of grass.

"Huh? What kind of threat?" Gohan asked, unable to quite believe what he was hearing. Was there really something worse out there than those two monstrous Saiyans? What other reason would Sensou have for snatching him back like that? Gohan's anger and panic slowly ebbed away to make room for a profound confusion. If it was true that there was another threat to his friends and family, then he was angry at Sensou for nothing but…why had they come to take him back before he'd had a chance to speak with his dad, show his mum that he was okay?

"His name is Frieza, he is the strongest tyrant in the universe," Sensou explained, remembering Shorai's cryptic advice to stick to the truth if he wanted to insure Gohan's co-operation with his plans.

"Your father, that little monk and your father's friend, Bulma, are going to have a run in with him on the planet Namek, Piccolo's home world, whilst looking for the Dragonballs. If you aren't there to make a difference, they will all perish," Sensou explained, laying the guilt on thick.

Gohan's confusion was melting away into a dreadful disappointment. It didn't sound like something the warrior god would make up and who was he to argue? He could think of no other reason why Sensou would continue to be interested in him.

He'd been so close to going home, _so close_ and he'd been away for a whole year already. He'd been looking forward to this day for months, thinking of his mother's home cooking, hoping his dad would share a bath with him in the evening like they used to before all of this started.

"Can't I…just go home for today?" Gohan asked quietly. "I could keep training tomorrow, I'd work really hard, just let me go home for today."

Sensou's eyes flashed. The kid was whimpering, close to begging and it disgusted him more than he cared to admit. Irritation, he knew, would make his responses seem snappish, impatient and he just couldn't afford to show his true colours right now. If Gohan became unwilling to follow his orders, if he didn't believe Sensou was acting in the best interest of himself and his loved ones, he could lose control of his super weapon. No, the best course of action was to exercise self control so he could retain his hold over the demi-Saiyan.

He took a deep breath.

"I'm afraid that's not possible Gohan, you see your tail?"

Gohan threw a glance over his shoulder at his newly re-grown tail, watching as it moved jauntily from side to side.

"I believe your tail holds the key to a Saiyan legacy that may be very useful to your developing power but, as Vegeta used a technique that mimics moonlight to transform, I can't let you risk going home without destroying everything you love."

He had conveniently forgotten to mention how long the technique would remain in the sky for and he hoped that the boy wouldn't have the presence of mind to ask.

"Can't we just cut it off like Mr Piccolo did?"

"I won't do that, without your tail, you have no access to the power of that Saiyan legacy and you may need to rely on it when you finally face Frieza."

Gohan's shoulders slumped and he crumpled onto the grass, all out of ideas. It seemed that once again, he was stuck under Sensou's care, doomed to learn the finer arts of fighting so that he could assist his friends when they found themselves in trouble. He tried to ignore the selfish feeling of defeat that lay heavily on him and he tried to bite back the pang of longing that surfaced every time he thought about how close he had come to going home.

"Come on boy," Sensou commanded gruffly, lifting the boy to his feet. "You will recuperate for the remainder of today and then tomorrow we will continue your training."

Gohan made to follow the warrior god without complaint, nodding his head respectfully to Ma, to Tonbo and then to Shorai…

He paused.

The memories flooded him.

"_Now, go now!"_

_Gohan gripped Ma's hand on a reflex and felt a disorientating shift as he was catapulted into battle. He had no idea where he was, what was happening and then he saw it barraging towards him like the end of the world. He knew instinctively that it meant death. He had no time to react, no time to pull himself out of trouble._

_So Piccolo had stepped in…_

A new surge of fury welled up inside him and he bared his teeth. His tail moved like a snake as he stalked across the grass to stand before the seer who was still patting out the residual smoke from Sensou's attack.

"Why did you make them drop me into the fight right then?" he asked, his voice low with obvious threat. "Why did you make it so Mr Piccolo had to die?"

Shorai stopped patting at his charred robes and regarded the child, moved by the harsh judgement in the eyes of the demi-Saiyan. What could he say? That it was for the best? Even if that was the case, the excuse was hardly good enough to present to a 5 year old boy who had been more or less tricked into getting his friend killed.

He opened his mouth, knowing that what he was going to say next was of the utmost importance to Gohan's forming philosophy. He couldn't screw it up.

"Gohan…you believe me when I say that I can see the future don't you?"

The boy's look was icy but the seer could tell that Gohan was thinking about it. To be honest, Gohan had never really thought about it before. Being as young as he was, he was ready to accept the existence of supernatural phenomenon without cynicism and he was trusting. Why shouldn't he believe in Shorai's abilities?

"I didn't want to have to put either you or Piccolo through something like this but you have to understand that it was for the good of the future."

Shorai stood, his lanky frame towering over the small boy as he stepped forward, crouching down so he could look at the kid with sincere eyes.

"I know that you are a good boy, the Spirit Bomb proved that didn't it?"

He ignored Sensou's snort of derision and if Gohan heard it, he ignored it too. Shorai smiled kindly at the child, relieved when the severe expression on that face softened.

"I know you would understand if I said that it had to be this way, for the safety of so many others."

Gohan's eyes were glistening now, tears that refused to spill swimming in them.

"I d-don't understand," he said thickly. "Why did Mr Piccolo have to get hurt? Why would he do something like that f-for me?"

"Well, I believe that Piccolo is, really deep down, quite fond of you kiddo and actually a really nice guy."

His smile was reassuring and Gohan felt himself mimicking the seer. The all encompassing anger he had felt at being tricked into killing his friend seemed to disperse. Shorai may not have explained exactly what Piccolo had died for but Gohan was a smart kid, he knew when he was and wasn't being lied to. Whatever would have happened in the future if Piccolo had lived was obviously far worse than this scenario, however much it pained Gohan. He would just have to find a way to bring Piccolo back…except…

"If I have to stay here…who will wish Piccolo back?" Gohan asked suddenly, his expression darkening. He turned to face Sensou with a look of raw fear on his face.

"Daddy's friends don't like Mr Piccolo, and he asked me to wish him back! Who will wish him back if I'm not there?"

Sensou raised an incredulous eyebrow. Was he honestly supposed to answer that?

"Can I just…you said daddy was going to N…Namek to find Dragonballs…can I be there when they make the wish so they remember to bring back Mr Piccolo?"

Sensou grit his teeth and tried not to grind them together. The kid's selfless attitude was really starting to grate on his patience.

"We'll have to see kid, it depends on how you're doing in your training," Sensou replied evenly, using the diplomatic approach to both spur his pupil to strive harder and to make him shut up. If he was truly honest, he wasn't completely disinterested in the Namekian fighter's well being. The knowledge that there were Dragonballs on Earth, should Kami and Piccolo be brought back, was something that he was sure he could use to his advantage. A plan for them was already forming in his mind as he thought about it, with Gohan as the key.

He smirked as he looked at the child. The boy was quickly becoming one of the best tools he had ever invested his time in.

"Come on now Gohan, it's time to go. Shorai, Ma, it's been…instructive. Hopefully our paths won't cross again until the next great battle."

Shorai rolled his eyes at his brother's tactlessness but held up his hand in a sign of farewell for Gohan's sake, noting with some displeasure that Gohan didn't seem to be comfortable with Sensou's answer concerning Piccolo's fate at all.

* * *

Vegeta was unconscious by the time he started to plummet, losing the momentum he had gained from the Spirit Bomb and dropping like a stone towards the ground. When he finally hit the dust, it was his comatose state that saved him from further serious injury, his lax limbs absorbing the impact.

Krillin watched the descent with wide, frightened eyes, aware that Goku was in no condition to continue fighting considering what had just happened. He glanced over at his friend's prone form, afraid that he hadn't moved for a good five minutes since Gohan's disappearance, and gulped, realising he would have to take responsibility for the current situation. He stood on aching legs and lurched forward.

Goku was lying in a crumpled heap, hysteria gripping his heart and flipping his stomach as he reached out with his senses, trying to pick up on his son's familiar Ki but the further he stretched out his sensual scope, the more he panicked.

Gohan was nowhere to be found, nowhere at all, not for miles and miles.

Rage was starting to intermingle with the panic cascading through him, causing him to grit his teeth in aguish. In all his life he didn't think he had ever felt so angry. Not when Piccolo had nearly murdered the love of his life at the last Tenkachi Budokai tournament, not when Garlic Jr had kidnapped his son for the last Dragonball on his hat, not even when Raditz had taken Gohan in the hopes that Goku would join him on his sadistic quest to destroy all life on Earth.

This time it was different because Goku was unable to pinpoint where his son was, was unable to get up and immediately give chase.

What did those strangers want with him? If they touched a single hair on his son's head, should he find them, Goku wasn't actually sure if he'd be able to show mercy. He was a good man but he wasn't a saint and throwing his son into a potentially life threatening situation was more than enough to get Goku's back up…_way _up.

'_King Kai?' _he asked, his voice serious. '_Where is my son?_'

King Kai paused with a dumpling half way to his mouth, surprised to hear Goku's voice. Since the end of the battle, he had stopped focussing on the tiny blue planet to tend to his other duties as a Kai (that and he hadn't eaten all day through sheer nerves) and to give Goku some privacy as he re-united with his wife and son.

'_What am I, the boy's keeper?_' King Kai asked jokingly but his light-hearted attitude faltered when he felt Goku's undulating Ki.

'_Let me see…_' he muttered throwing himself into the search. In a few seconds, he had swept most of the Ki's in the solar system and still there was no trace of the boy. A deep dread was starting to form in his stomach as he recalled a similar incident occurring several months before, something he had neglected to tell Goku because he wanted the Saiyan warrior to focus on his training.

'_Goku, I believe your son may have been taken by the Four Winds – a group of beings that-_

'_I don't care who they are King Kai, where are they? I want my son back._'

King Kai sighed, rubbing his temples.

'_I'm afraid it's not that easy Goku, your son has been moved off dimension. Where he is right now is totally unreachable even for the Kai's._'

He could feel the despair in Goku's heart and the agonising feeling of being rendered useless. He felt a tug of pity for the man and reached out with his spirit.

'_The Four Winds never interfere in the lives of mortals unless it's really important. This wasn't a malicious action Goku, it was necessary._'

Goku didn't reply and to be honest, King Kai hadn't expected him to. He tried to disconnect himself from Goku's thoughts to give the man some time to himself but at the last moment, he caught a wayward thought that left him reeling.

'_Will I ever see him again? ….My son…'_

* * *

In the time that it took Krillin to shuffle painfully towards the inert prince, Vegeta had begun to stir. Flashes of lights and nightmares were swirling behind his eyelids as he fought to find something coherent to grasp onto. Images of Kakarot and his insane attack were merging with memories of maltreatment he had suffered under Frieza's watchful gaze. Why was it that he had to be plagued with these horrible remnants at the end? As a warrior, he had hoped to re-live glorious victories of battles past…

He let out a low, long groan that made Krillin stop in his tracks, his eyes bugging out. How was it possible for this guy to have survived Goku's Spirit Bomb? What exactly was this bastard made of? Still, even if he had survived, he was too weak to protect himself. Dredging up some of his remaining Ki, the bald monk formed it into a tiny replica of the Destructo Disk, aiming to send it through Vegeta's heart. It would be a quick death, Krillin wasn't exactly a monster.

He raised his hand high and the prince's eyes fell open, locking on to him instantly.

When Vegeta was finally able to latch onto something that made sense, he wasn't too perturbed to find a threat hovering over him. In the ranks of Frieza's squadrons, it wasn't exactly an extraordinary occurrence to be threatened with a life or death situation. And it was never about the fact that you were, most likely, going to die in these instances, it was all about _how _you died. Vegeta had long since hardened himself to the idea of death, idolising the prestige that came with dying a proud death, a stoic death on the backdrop of some fantastic siege gone awry.

He just wished that the man holding the proverbial sword to his throat wasn't this insignificant monk. Even Kakarot would be a better choice than this…

Krillin could feel the prince's cold eyes on him and tried not to freak out. Steadying himself for what he was about to do, he started to release the disk.

"Krillin, stop!"

Krillin halted his attack and blinked in bewilderment, his eyes automatically swinging over to the last place he had seen his best friend. Goku was standing now and his eyes were dark, storming violently. He was frowning, his lips pressed together in a thin, hard line. It was an expression Krillin had never seen on his best friend before, dark and brooding and totally out of character. It was, he knew, entirely because of Gohan's predicament and he shuddered as he thought about how much a kid could change someone.

"Don't hurt him anymore," Goku told his friend, moving forward to stand above the fallen prince.

"Wanted…to finish me off…yourself, eh Kakarot?" the prince asked, slurring his words as he fought to remain conscious.

The glare that Goku aimed at the prince sent icy shivers down Krillin's spine. Where was his carefree friend, the bumbling, clueless monkey that he had grown so close to over the years?

"No, it's more complicated than that," Goku said, breaking the silence that had fallen over the trio. "I think it would be better to show you the mercy that you failed to show both my friends and your companion and I admire your Saiyan strength."

Goku ignored Krillin's jaw drop behind him, scratching the back of his head as he tended to do when he was thinking hard.

"Plus, I really don't want my best friend to sully his hands by killing another living creature."

Krillin closed his mouth again, a little humbled. That was Goku for you, in the midst of a tragedy bigger than Krillin could begin to fathom, he was still looking out for his best friend. Inwardly, Krillin made a promise to himself that whatever course of action Goku chose to follow in response to the disappearance of his little boy, Krillin would be there to back him up, no matter the squalls.

"Return to your ship," Goku said, turning his back on the Saiyan prince, showing that he no longer considered Vegeta a viable threat with that exposure.

The prince smirked.

"You will regret this act of '_mercy_' Kakarot," he stated, pressing a button on a remote control nestled in the remains of his armour and hoisting himself up as the ship crashed down into the dust. "When I return to exact my revenge on this planet, you'll have no-one to thank but yourself."

Goku said nothing as the door of the ship sealed itself and lifted, hovering in mid-air for a few seconds before taking off like a canon-ball into space.

Instantly, Krillin dropped down onto the sand, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Man Goku, are you sure it was a good idea to just let him go like that?"

Goku's posture was still far too stiff and Krillin eyed him uneasily. He wondered just how much his friend knew about Gohan's changing situation over the past year. Was he aware that Gohan had been taken before and that even Kami couldn't intervene to bring him back? He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders, wincing as they protested and then cracked into place. Why did he always end up being the bearer of bad news? There were a lot of people that were much better suited to this job…much better suited.

Still, he owed it to Goku.

"Uh…Goku…I just, I mean I don't know what you know being in Otherworld and all that but when you were there…in Otherworld I mean…"

He winced at his own circumlocution, knowing that he was making a mess of things. It was a blatant repeat of when he'd had to tell Chi Chi that Goku was dead and her son had been taken by Piccolo…only this time he wasn't telling someone that he was afraid of and Gohan's situation was a lot more ambiguous.

"Well when we were called up to Kami's lookout, Piccolo dropped by at one point and…oh, I guess you didn't know that Piccolo had…okay, after you died…"

Kami but this was hard. He would have rather done battle with an army of Vegetas than go through this but it was important that Goku knew everything he did. It was his little man after all. Krillin fortified himself, made a point of un-jumbling his thoughts before he began again and sucked in some air.

"Okay, listen Goku because this is important. When you died, Piccolo decided to take Gohan to train because he saw some hidden potential in the boy. We weren't strong enough to stop him so he left," he paused, waiting for a reaction but when Goku didn't respond, he opted to continue.

"During the months that followed, we were called up to Kami's lookout for special training and a while later, Piccolo showed up out of the blue to tell us that Gohan had been kidnapped again. Kami seemed to know all about it and said that we couldn't go and get Gohan…I think the same thing has happened here…and…I don't think we can get your son back, at least not using conventional methods…"

He scratched his head absently, a trait picked up from Goku.

"I think we might have to wait for them to bring Gohan back…like they did this time."

Finishing his little re-count of events up to date, he fell into silence, waiting for Goku to say something back to him. The quietness stretched on and Krillin's concern for his friend mounted. A couple of times he opened his mouth to make further suggestions but nothing he came up with seemed rational, it was all too far-fetched.

Just as he was thinking about storming up to Kami's lookout and demanding answers from the black jinn, Mr Popo, Goku spoke.

"Hey Krillin, the Saiyans said that Piccolo and Kami were from a place called Namek…right?"

Krillin raised an astonished eyebrow.

"Goku, how do you know that? You weren't here for any of that exchange…"

Goku shifted to face Krillin, an expression on his face that eased something in Krillin's soul. The out of place phlegmatic mask he had been wearing had been replaced with his usual easy going smile.

"Kami told me when he picked me up at Earth's check in station," Goku admitted. "He told me that he knew instinctively that they spoke the truth and that the Dragonballs he had created were actually based off of a pre-planted blue print he'd already had in his head when he'd landed on this planet years ago."

"Pre-planted?" Krillin repeated, remembering how the power of the Dragonballs had seemed almost _familiar _to the Saiyans as they'd spoken of Piccolo's supposed heritage.

"Yeah, like Kami thinks there are more Dragonballs on planet Namek…"

"And you want to collect them to wish Gohan back?" Krillin asked, catching on. His breath hitched and his stomach jolted unpleasantly. "I don't think that's going to work Goku, whoever took Gohan, they were more powerful than Kami and the eternal dragon can't grant wishes that exceed Kami's power."

"Mm-hm…but that's _Kami's _power. If the blueprints were already planted in Kami's mind then the original idea for them must have come from somewhere, right? Maybe the Dragonballs on Namek are more powerful than the Earth Dragonballs, maybe they play by an entirely different set of rules, we won't know unless we go and find out."

The bald monk thought about it, weighing up the pros and cons of these musings. He couldn't deny that Goku's idea was the most legitimate solution to the problem of his missing son short of sitting and doing nothing, something he just knew the Saiyan warrior wouldn't be able to stand, and they owed it to the other warriors to try and find another way to bring them back. Even Piccolo deserved a second chance after making such a noble sacrifice.

He sighed indecisively. What if they got there and found nothing at all…if the Saiyans had already mentioned Namek and by extension the Dragonballs, who was to say they hadn't already decimated that planet searching for immortality?

He stared up into Goku's dark, optimistic eyes.

"We won't know unless we go and find out, right?" he relented, shaking his head as Goku's eyes lit up.

"We can ask Bulma for a ship but dude, you owe me big. Being an astronaut isn't exactly something I've ever aspired to."

* * *

_Will Goku's merciful attitude come back to haunt him with regards to letting Vegeta escape? Will he be able to wish his son back to him if he manages to secure all seven Dragonballs on Namek? How long can Sensou keep Gohan compliant before things start to take a turn?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…Wreck it Ralph! _

_Seriously, how cool is that movie?_

_SO COOL that you feel enamoured enough to leave a review (nods) _


	9. New Tactics

_(lookies left and right) Shh, I'm not here! Okay, maybe I am, you caught me XD I really shouldn't be uploading this chapter until next week but I've done the editing for this one and it was surprisingly devoid of mistakes so I thought I'd post early. Things to note as usual:_

_1) Thank you for your reviews, favs and alerts. You guys have honestly been making my day all week!_

_2) A warning for this chapter being a little graphically violent but I assure you it was somewhat necessary. Hopefully it's tasteful gore…if you know what I mean…_

_3) Spelling, grammar, sentence structure and whatnot has been checked and revised. As always, apologies for any missed mistakes. Also, a warning for the word 'clodding' which is not actually a word at all but I'm using it as an onomatopoeic expression, I liked the way it sounded. If anybody wants an explanation for this, feel free to message me and I will try to explain myself and my shameful abuse of the English language._

* * *

**8: New Tactics**

It was tricky, very tricky.

Gohan's compliance with his wishes was still tenuous at best. He still had to root all of his decisions in the child's desire to protect his loved ones if he wanted Gohan to co-operate; he was still unable to issue an order just for issuing an order's sake and expect the child to carry it out without complaint. He felt as though he was walking on a tightrope and that one wrong move would send him plummeting over the edge. The ascension following this potential fall would only be harder…

The delicacy of the situation was starting to get on his nerves.

Of course, he had a plan for this and had since the beginning. The entirety of Gohan's training over the 9 years before his supposed destruction of the universe had been meticulously planned before he and Ma had gone forth to capture the boy.

Originally, this plan of his was to be put into effect following the Z Fighter's encounter with Frieza, after Goku had become a super Saiyan for the first time but he had underestimated how much this impalpable coalition between himself and the boy would frustrate him.

He had to solidify Gohan's loyalty to him and to do that, he would have to make sure that Gohan's desire to see his friends and family was stripped.

"Huh? Where are we sir?" Gohan asked as they stepped through the portal not to the familiar fiery dimension that Gohan had become used to over the past months but to somewhere entirely new. It was a dark and desolate place with a heavily overcast sky and withered tufts of plants growing sparsely here and there. In the distance, Gohan could just make out the tell tale formation of houses if he squinted hard enough.

He shivered as he walked behind Sensou. Though the dimension he had previously been trained in was harsh and unpleasant, often erupting in streams of liquid fire to test Gohan's durability, stamina and reflexes, he had never been made to feel particularly uneasy.

This place was unhinging. The air was brisk and cold and the sky was just dark enough to create shadows from nothing. Once or twice, Gohan jumped when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye only to find that it was the static shadow of an object he could just about perceive…or…so he hoped.

Sensou led Gohan deep into this dark dimension not uttering a word. Gohan tried to hide his fear behind an unemotional mask but it was difficult. He was too tired after facing the Saiyans to combat a lot of fear. And all this contrasted brutally with what he had expected of the aftermath of battle, being able to go home and greet his mother, explain things to his father…

"You will stay here," Sensou said eventually, pausing outside a dense black wood. Gohan automatically scanned the trees, noting that he could only really see a few feet into its eerie depths. While his eyes re-focussed and struggled to adjust, his ears picked up noises in the foliage, grunts and shuffles, things making the smallest noises possible before they pounced on unsuspecting prey.

"Nu uh, there's no way I'm going in there."

Sensou's glare was hard, heated and completely inarguable. Very slowly, carefully, he reigned in his temper, crossing his arms over his chest so he could squeeze the anger back into himself.

This was one of those delicate situations, a turn of events that would not occur again after Gohan spent some real time in this place. He chose his next words carefully.

"What would your father think?" he asked rhetorically, putting as much disappointed emphasis into the question as he dared.

Gohan's eyes automatically widened and then they fell to the floor. The warrior god waited for a response for a few seconds but when the child didn't move further, he decided he'd try again.

"This is a dimension that will fortify your psychological stamina," Sensou explained, ignoring the fact that Gohan was still only 5 years old and most likely had no idea what the word 'psychology' actually meant. "You must be tough, you must conquer your fears and most importantly _you must be willing to understand your own power, your own limitations and your own levels of threat._"

There was a flash of a moment where it looked like the boy was going to start crying. His lower lip wobbled for an instant but then it was gone and Sensou smirked. The boy was young but he was no longer a cry baby.

"I will be back to start training you first thing tomorrow. For now, find somewhere to rest."

Gohan nodded, his voice betraying him and watched as Sensou began the long walk back to the dimension door. His heart cried out to his unforgiving mentor as he left, abandoning Gohan in this place but once the shadows had swallowed him up, Gohan knew he was well and truly alone.

"Don't…panic," he whispered, squeaking as a crow cawed mercilessly at him from somewhere on his right and took off into the shadowed sky, a silhouette of black on black. He took a deep breath in and took the first step towards the trees.

* * *

Acquiring a ship to get to Namek had, so far, been much more of an ordeal than Goku had originally signed on for. At first, Bulma had been ecstatic about the idea of going to Piccolo's home world and finding new Dragonballs. Though Yamcha wasn't officially her boyfriend anymore, she had decided that he damn well would be when he was brought back whether he liked it or not.

Then King Kai had interjected with the co-ordinates and everything had gone down hill from there. It turned out that Namek was much further away than anyone had anticipated and even with the combined efforts of both Bulma and Dr Briefs, it was unlikely that they would ever reach it.

It had looked like all hope was lost until Goku had a stroke of genius quite unlike himself, remembering that there must have been a second space pod for the brutish soldier that had accompanied Vegeta to their planet.

"Goku, I could kiss you!" Bulma exclaimed. "But I won't because that would be too weird, not to mention the fact that Chi Chi would kill me if she found out."

"She might kill _me _when she finds out what happened to Gohan," Goku said dejectedly, silently cursing himself, his lack of strength and his almost preternatural parental instinct which normally warned him far in advance of any trouble Gohan could get into.

'_I hope you're doing okay little man, just hang in there. Daddy's coming._' Goku thought to himself, twitching with the need to be up and actively searching for his kid.

"Hey…uh…where is Chi Chi anyway?" Krillin asked nervously, peering around the little ship Bulma was driving to get them back to Master Roshi's island. As far as he was concerned, when poor Goku told his wife about their son, he would be far FAR away, preferably on another planet.

"We had to restrain her at Kame House," Bulma said nonchalantly as they started flying over the ocean. "She was a danger to herself and everyone else with those rifles she found in Master Roshi's attic."

Goku's face warped into a mask of fear so pronounced that it would have been comic if no-one else realised what the Ox Princess was capable of.

"Chi Chi's ARMED?" He inquired, backing dramatically out of his seat. "Are you INSANE?"

"Hey, we didn't exactly arm her ourselves Goku," Bulma snapped, shifting into landing gears so they could touch down.

As soon as the hangar door opened, Goku could hear the familiar footsteps of his wife. With her martial arts back ground, she could tread light as a feather if she wanted to but at the moment, she was walking with great clodding stomps. Something that signified that Goku was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, in deep trouble.

He gulped and moved out to meet his destiny.

Chi Chi watched as the first fighter descended onto the beach and her eyes grew big as orbs.

It was Goku, her Goku. The man that had left on a nice family outing a year ago only to be killed by an estranged brother he had never known existed. He looked almost exactly the same, in better shape if that was possible, but none the less the same. His eyes softened as he saw his wife again.

"Hey Chi Chi, sorry I've been gone so long," he said, grinning his famous grin and opening his arms.

She had a right mind to slap him, to kiss him, to chain him to herself so he could never again put her through something like that and as she darted towards him, tears in her eyes, she automatically searched for the form of her young son. Finding nothing, she slowed, her expression of elation being replaced with one of confused worry.

"Where's Gohan?" she asked in a small voice.

Goku couldn't stop the sadness that filtered into his own expression and Chi Chi, being the mother that she was, assumed the worst before Goku could even get the words out.

"He's DEAD ISN'T HEEEEEEEE?" she cried, falling to her knees and letting the tears flow freely.

"Hey, hey no Chi Chi, no," Goku said gently, kneeling beside her and pulling her into his arms but she was lost in the grip of hysterical sorrow. Her heart seemed to have engorged and was pulsing painfully against her rib cage, her mind seemed to be reforming and shattering over and over. Her son, her little boy…gone…

"Chi Chi, it's not as bad as all that, he…well he got taken, by some guys is all," Goku tried to explain, stroking his wife's soft her and breathing in the familiar scent of home on her skin.

Chi Chi's sobs ceased immediately. The sorrow in her heart morphed into barely restrained rage and she turned on her husband, spitting mad.

"Taken by some guys? WHAT guys? Why didn't you stop them?"

Goku winced at that one, reminded in the most brutal fashion that he had been useless protecting his child when it really mattered. Even if the guy that had grabbed his little boy was a million times stronger than Goku could ever hope to be, he still blamed himself. He had to be strong enough for Gohan in the future, he had to be strong enough to get his boy back.

Chi Chi watched the complex array of emotions as they passed across Goku's face and her anger lessened immeasurably. Whatever had happened out there, he had done his absolute best to stop them from taking Gohan, it was obvious, and she couldn't blame him for his failure knowing that.

"Do you know where they've taken him?" she asked hopefully. Catching the tone in his wife's voice, Goku smiled gratefully at her, broken smile though it was.

"No, and neither does King Kai, my master in Otherworld. He said Gohan has been taken off dimension…that's why we have to go to Namek, Piccolo's home world."

Chi Chi looked pained for a moment and Goku hurried to explain.

"They have Dragonballs there Chi, I might be able to wish him back to us."

Chi Chi opened and closed her mouth a few times, doing a marvellous impression of a guppy as different thoughts went to war inside her. She had just gotten Goku back, she didn't want him to go gallivanting off into space right now, not after everything she'd been through in the last year but…it was for Gohan, she could hardly keep Goku from searching for their son…her precious boy.

"You bring him back to me Goku, you hear," she said sternly, looking at him with the same determined expression she had worn the day of the tournament all those years ago, with the same light in her eyes that had made Goku realise how he truly felt about the Ox King's daughter.

"Uh…we aren't leaving right this second Chi Chi," Goku confessed, apologetic though he wasn't quite sure why. "Bulma has to figure out how to work the Saiyan ship first and maybe expand it a bit seeing as how its only really big enough for one person…"

"My, aren't I going to be the busy beaver," Bulma said, pouting. "You two knuckleheads better not leave all the work to me this time. Yes Goku, Krillin, I am talking to you. You want to go into space? You can do the grunt work alright?"

"But uh…we don't know the first thing about space ships," Krillin said quietly, trying to be rational.

Bulma's eyes blazed.

"Who said anything about working on the _space ship_ you arrogant little pig! Of course I won't be letting you near any of the important stuff, you'll be doing _grunt _work. Making me coffee, lifting heavy things and generally following _my _orders."

Krillin flinched away from the tirade, sensibly looking down at the ground in the pose of submission.

"Sorry I said anything," he muttered sarcastically as Bulma sauntered into the house, pleased as punch with her new press ganged work force.

* * *

"I think it's important that you stop fighting just me, you'll learn my patterns and you'll fall into rhythmic systems of countering my attacks. This will dull your edge as a warrior and so, for now, you will fight new opponents. I also want you to try your hand against multiple opponents to help hone your self control."

Gohan nodded absently, trying to pay full attention to what Sensou was saying but he hadn't slept well that night and he was finding it difficult to stay focussed. The night in this nightmarish dimension had been long and hard, filled with strange noises that had jerked him into brutal consciousness. More often than not, he had dozed off just to hear an alarming noise that sounded so close he'd swatted at his ear in panic, almost falling out of the black tree branch he had managed to strap himself onto. And when he'd opened his eyes, he was met with unsettling shadows cast in half light, moving in unnatural ways across the landscape. Being as young as he was, it took a long time before he trusted the shadows enough to let himself relax back into fitful slumber.

Sensou's mouth curled unpleasantly as he watched Gohan's eyes glaze over. Everything was going according to plan. Though he'd told the boy to rest and recuperate the night before, he had known that it was near impossible to let your guard down in this place. It was designed to keep the occupant on edge, to harden a warrior to things that may unhinge civilians and it was important to Sensou's plan that Gohan be subject to exhaustion, especially today. Today, things were going to change.

They stretched with Sensou leading the warm up routine until, towards the end, the boy was looking brighter, more alert. When the warrior god was satisfied, he told Gohan to take off into the trees and use his agility to stay above ground.

"Remember, this exercise with multiple enemies is about _self control _so you must try and restrain yourself as much as you try to push the boundaries of your power," Sensou instructed as the boy took off.

Gohan catapulted himself through the trees, feeling the cold air whip his hair into a frenzy. His fatigue left him in the flow of free flight and he kept his senses peeled for any movement. It was easy, when he stopped relying on just his eyes, to find the Ki signatures in the forest and to detect which angle these creatures would attack from.

His first assailant appeared at the base of a thick tree trunk, launching a bright grey Ki blast up into the air. The light given off from the attack bathed the forest in a harsh glow, throwing the shadows into hard definition and Gohan was able to see in a much wider circumference. When he had looked into the true face of the forest, as he batted the blast away, he honestly wasn't sure if he really wanted to see it again.

Just as the boy was about to charge downwards, another opponent appeared, perching on one of the thinner tree branches above him, a wiry individual, blade thin and obviously skilled with more dextrous moves than his companion by the base of the trunk. Gohan tried to adjust his fighting stance accordingly but he was beginning to see what Sensou had said about needing experience with multiple enemies. It was hard to adjust a style to match an opponent when multiple opponents were so different.

Without a word, the figure on the tree branch attacked, flying forward to deliver a solid kick to the stomach. Gohan took it and was instantly winded, leaving the way open for the figure on the ground to deliver a punch to the boy's jaw. Gohan tumbled out of the air, struggling to breathe, his mind jumbling, and was caught.

For one wild moment, he thought it was Sensou coming to his aid but as he tossed a laboured glance over his shoulder, he realised that there was a third opponent, a shadowy figure that could easily blend in with this unnerving scenery.

"Oh no…" he managed before taking a knee to the back. The crack of connecting bones rang out through the forest and Gohan cried out as white hot pain flashed across his eyes like lightning. Before he could gather himself and fathom a way to help the pain fade, he was tossed up into the air to be caught by the wiry figure who instantly gripped his tail.

Agony.

Pure burning agony running up through the flexible tail, through the base of his spine and into the core of his being. It was red hot, ice cold and incapacitating.

He hung limply from the wiry figure's grip, dangling and totally helpless, trying to lift his limbs but finding that they felt like lead. Somewhere through the fog of anguish clouding his mind, he hoped that his opponent would let him go but as the seconds turned into minutes, he realised that he would have to get himself out of this situation.

And somehow, for some reason…this made him mad.

The events of the last couple of days came back to overwhelm him, he saw again the dance of the dead parading before him, his father's friends falling to the wrath of the Saiyans. He felt the crippling disappointment that he had felt when he was told he wouldn't be able to go home because a new threat was due to present itself. Mostly though, he was just fed up. Fed up with being tired and hungry and being set upon by three opponents determined to make his life more miserable.

Sensou felt the brat's fluctuating Ki and looked up in anticipation. There was something seriously compelling about watching the little demi-Saiyan reach his limit and access that endless well of potential buried inside himself. Beside him, Gohan's last opponent waited for the signal to charge forward…

Hard though it was, Gohan managed to lift his lead like arms and fire a weak Ki blast at point blank range into the face of his lanky opponent, forcing the figure to let go of his tail. He started to fall out of the air but caught himself on a reflex and surged forward, almost blinded by the energy coursing through his system, aiming a punch to the stockier opponent that had decided to join the aerial assault and a kick out behind him to catch the stealth expert off guard at the same time.

Both moves connected, giving Gohan enough room to adjust himself before all three opponents bared down on the young boy. The ensuing battle was fierce and now, not so one sided. As Gohan fought, he felt completely bemused by what was happening, reacting to attacks and countering rather than creating opportunities for his own attacks simply due to the fact that he had no time to collect his thoughts.

As Sensou had intended, eventually, Gohan's control started slipping. He was far too tired to apply the proper focus and he fell into fighting on auto-pilot, avoiding attacks and striking back without any real judgement.

Outside the battle, Sensou gave just a brief nod of the head and Gohan's last opponent took off towards the tussle, aiming an underhanded punch to the boy's solar plexus.

Gohan saw the fist coming out of nowhere and reacted, pushing off the two enemies he had been holding back and blocking the punch. He could feel a flicker of that profound something inside himself and grabbed onto it, his aura igniting as he countered the owner of this new fist with blinding force.

His own small fist drilled through his opponent's chest and he felt, in a moment of dark clarity, the figure's rib cage shatter, the flesh parting beneath the force of his onslaught. Nothing had ever felt so fragile before and, he realised, nothing had ever felt so _alive._ He felt as his closed off hand slid past sinews and organs, as it brushed off of one of the chambers of the heart and exploded out of the back of the figure so his arm started to slip through the body.

His opponent made a startled grunt and then a gurgling sound seemed to dredge up from the very centre of his body. Hot, red blood slid down Gohan's arm and still he was unable to move, unable to pull his arm out of this opponent's…no, this _person's _body…

The incarnadine taint of this person's blood was the only colour in the dark void and the boy shivered as the liquid started to pool in the arms of his gi, teasing the fabric towards the floor. It started to drip, falling down to splash like a cymbal against the ground. Gohan heard every rhythmic beat, magnified a hundred fold like his guilt.

His eyes sought out his opponent's face.

And his whole world shattered.

"D-daddy?"

His father's normally easy-going face was plastered with a dramatic expression of shock and pain. His skin, normally tinted with a healthy tan complexion was grey white and large purple rings were starting to form under his eyes as he lost copious amounts of blood.

"N-no…daddy…" Gohan whispered, no longer aware of himself beyond the substantial guilt and self loathing surging up from somewhere inside.

His arm lowered naturally with the weight his father was putting on it and, unnervingly, the man slipped down until Gohan's arm slid clean out of his chest, still covered in gore.

His eyes filled and leaked streams of salty tears as he watched his father descend, face slowly growing blank until he hit the floor and lay there in a crumpled, lifeless heap.

Silence followed and the forest seemed to grow darker, like the light of Goku's life had been keeping the shadows at bay. Gohan simply sat frozen in mid-air, slowly falling apart.

He had killed his daddy.

Somehow…he had killed his daddy.

_How _could he have done that? What sort of monster was he?

_He had killed his daddy!_

"This is what happens when you lose control," Sensou's voice barely filtered through Gohan's all consuming sorrow. He felt as the man put a hand on his shoulder but he was too numb, too grief stricken to really appreciate the gesture.

"This is one of the many reasons that I must train you so diligently; keep you from your loved ones. _You are a danger to them. _And if you are going to help your friends against this new threat, you will need to remain in control at all times, do you understand?"

Gohan didn't say a word and Sensou wasn't even sure that the boy had heard him.

He had heard. He had _definitely _heard.

'_You are a danger to them._'

The words swirled around in Gohan's head, the only phrase to have soaked through his own saturated heart beat as he stared at the unmoving form of his father below them.

His ears were beginning to ring with those words, like all the sounds in the world were coming together to form them over and over again in Sensou's voice.

'_You are a danger…_'

Sensou's eyebrows raised in disbelief as he felt the child's climbing Ki and he fell back as the other three fighters in the area closed in.

This…was something else entirely. Gohan had shown the warrior god glimpses of the core of his power throughout the course of the last few months and more so during the battle with the Saiyans only yesterday but this was more than a glimpse. This was a solid demonstration of something catastrophic and Sensou found himself somewhat moved by the spectacle.

First, the boy shrank into himself so he was almost curled up in mid-air, his tail dangling limply, his eyes still fixed on the ground where his father lay. A white aura started to pulsate around him, generating light like a beacon. His hair flew up around his face and his power grew.

As his remaining opponents drew closer, there was a thrum of power, the boy groaned and for an instant, just an instant, his long hair spiked up, changing colour from black to gold and the warrior god started.

'_No…this can't be…'_ he thought as he watched the child's hair fall back to black.

The first of the kid's assailants drew close enough to attack and Sensou watched with baited breath as the boy whirled round, his aura throbbing erratically, changing from white to gold and then back again. His closed fist, still filthy with the gore from his previous kill, connected with the stocky figure's jaw and crumpled his face instantly so he dropped down onto the dirt, gasping for air as his Ki fell.

The expression on the boy's face was haunting as he charged towards the wiry figure and the stealth expert, blank. His aura pulsated as he drew level with his opponents and his hands outstretched.

"HAA!" he cried and two massive Ki blasts fired outwards, bathing the black forest in marvellous yellow light. Both balls of energy were equal to, if not bigger than, the Masenko the boy had produced only the day before to win an edge against the prince of all Saiyans and the repercussive winds from the blasts forced the trees to bend out of the way like contortionists.

Sensou watched with cold countenance as the first blast connected with the stealth expert and he gave off a blood curdling shriek, incinerated within seconds and dropping down to the forest floor to lie in a useless heap of charred flesh. He took note as the wiry fighter managed to dodge the second blast and as Gohan gave chase, effortlessly following his opponent as he hopped from tree to tree.

The boy shifted without sparing any unnecessary movements, his eyes were locked on to his enemy. When he realised that his opponent was easily able to match his speed, he gave off a yell, his aura burning golden for a moment and sped up, aiming a razor sharp chop to the back of the wiry figure's neck, rendering him limp.

That was all it took for the last of Gohan's opponents to fall to the ground.

Sensou uncrossed his arms, barely able to suppress his reaction to the boy's display. For a few more minutes, the child stood in mid-air staring down at his fallen adversary, his aura oscillating erratically between gold and white. Then he turned, fixing Sensou with such a glower that the warrior god almost felt his blood turn to ice.

No-one, not even the great enemies of old had _ever _been able to do that to Sensou.

The boy really was _something._

Gohan could feel himself coming back to him…or something like that. He felt as though he had been dreaming, his body taken over by something that was him…but wasn't him at the same time. He shook his head, it didn't matter.

His eyes fell from the image of his harsh mentor down to the shadowed ground where they travelled forward to fixate on his lifeless father.

The boy's lower lip wobbled.

Half falling, half flying, he touched down on the ground and stumbled forwards, his eyes never leaving his father's dauntingly immobile form. His heart was racing at a hundred miles an hour, the only thing keeping him upright after he'd drained so much of his Ki. His breath hitched and wavered until he was hyperventilating, dropping down so his head rested on his father's cold stomach.

"I'm so sorry daddy…" Gohan whispered, letting hot tears slide down his cheeks to flood Goku's gi.

'_You are a danger to them._'

He ran a small hand over the rough fabric of his father's clothes and let his fist ball up. Maybe if he wished hard enough, his father wouldn't be dead and this would never have happened. If he wished hard enough, maybe none of this would have happened and he'd wake up as he always had in his bed at home, the nightmare fading in his mother and father's warm embrace.

'_Please please please…_' he begged, squeezing his eyes tight shut.

But when he opened them again, it wasn't the bright yellow walls of his bedroom he saw but still the backdrop of eerie foliage and his father's cold body lying where it had fallen.

Sensou landed before the boy, his face pointedly impassive. Gohan sobbed on regardless of Sensou's presence, his thoughts swirling into an incomprehensible monologue of guilt and sadness.

The warrior god simply observed for a while, letting the boy regain some rationality before taking a breath to speak.

"Boy, stop that," he said, using a softer tone than usual, knowing the kid would respond better this way to what he was about to reveal. "That is _not _your father. Goku is still on Earth getting ready for his trip to planet Namek, that thing you are currently clutching is called a _'war mannequin'_."

Gohan sniffed, his hand tightening in the folds of the figure's clothes. He took a few seconds to muster the willpower to turn his head and peek up at the warrior god, taking in Sensou's raised eyebrows, the thin set of his lips…

With his heart in his throat he sat up, letting his eyes fall on Goku's face only to find that there was no face, only a blank canvas where Goku's facial features should have been frozen in agony. Severe confusion intermingling with the sorrow still sitting heavily on his chest, his eyes snapped down to the horrifying wound on Goku's chest only to find stuffing and stitching where he should have found blood and gore.

Frowning, he lifted the hand that had struck his father up to his face, half surprised to find it still covered in dried blood.

"I don't understand," Gohan said evenly, turning dangerous eyes on his master, the orchestrator of his torment.

"This is a '_war mannequin_'," Sensou repeated, gesturing to the empty creature laying at Gohan's feet. "They are essentially formless dolls, unfinished life forms that wander these lands in abundance. Their greatest asset is their ability to shape shift, taking on the appearance and, astoundingly enough, the Ki signature of whoever takes their fancy. I used them to mimic your father so you would learn _just _how important it is to master self control."

Gohan's eyes were hard as he stood and Sensou could feel the child's Ki lifting. He grunted, shifting his stance so it appeared less defensive as the boy faced him. The child shifted smoothly into an offensive beginning pose and the warrior god chuckled. As if anything the boy could do at this level would even register on Sensou's perpetual radar.

"Does that make you angry little monkey? Really? And aren't you glad that _wasn't _your real father? Aren't you glad that something like that hasn't happened in a real battle with your real friends?"

Gohan released his Ki and stared down at the floor, thinking, occasionally glancing at the now featureless mannequin lying in the dust, its limbs splayed at sickening angles.

"I never said that training to face these threats would be easy," Sensou said gruffly, impatience apparent in his tone. "You _need _to learn how important it is to control yourself and the fastest, most effective way to insure you do this is to use mannequins like these to enforce the idea that, if you lose control, _you will be harming your loved ones. _Do you understand?"

The boy took a deep breath in, experiencing an unpleasant sensation as the whole episode turned into a traumatic scar on his mind. No matter what Sensou told him, no matter how many times he was able to look and see that the mannequin no longer even slightly resembled his father, he would always remember the moment when his fist had parted flesh, blood seeping down the sleeve of his gi to pool and drip onto the floor below like red rain.

He would always remember the expression of betrayal and aguish on his precious father's face.

"I don't like this sir," Gohan said, unable to censor his comments, knowing Sensou wouldn't approve of his judgement.

'_Isn't there another way?_'

"I know boy," Sensou answered, coming to stand behind him. "This may be brutal but it's necessary. I wouldn't put you through this otherwise."

Gohan eventually nodded, still unable to trust that his daddy was alive just because Sensou said he was. Goku's death by his hand had been too real, _too _real. He had _felt _as his father's life drained out of him and, being his son, surely he'd be able to tell if it was truly the end of his father's life. Surely he would…

He winced as a desperate desire ignited within him to make sure his father was still okay, on Earth getting ready for his trip to Piccolo's home world as Sensou suggested. The desire was so strong, so consuming that he almost asked Sensou if they could go and check, even if it was just for his own peace of mind. Of course, he managed to hold himself in check though it was hard and he fell into vibrating on the spot, his system thrown into tumult by recent trauma and frustration.

And what if, through some miracle, Sensou did allow him to make a quick visit to Earth to make sure that Goku was safe, would he still depart with Sensou or would he be too tempted to try and stay at home? Would he really be comfortable ignoring Sensou's warning, putting his family in danger because he hadn't mastered self control? Because he hadn't mastered his own monstrous nature?

A repeat image of Goku's pain-stricken face flashed into place behind his eyelids. His chest constricted as he remembered the feel of his father's blood creeping along the fabric of his gi to splash rhythmically on the ground below. He recalled the sick moment of clarity as he realised that he had _killed his daddy_.

And the words played on a loop in his mind.

'_You are a danger to them._'

* * *

'_You know it won't work right?_ _Trying to wish your son back with the Dragonballs on Namek…_'

Goku remained silent through the darkness, staring into the steam wafting up from his molten bath water. Above him, the stars twinkled amiably and he could hear his wife bustling around inside the house, familiar sounds…but it was still too quiet without the shrieks and howls of his son as he dunked him beneath the bath water or washed a particularly sensitive area eliciting giggles from the child.

'…_I have to do something King Kai, I can't just sit here and do nothing while Gohan could be suffering wherever he is. He's my son._'

'_I know that Goku…but you have to understand that even the Kai's cannot interfere with what the Four Winds decide. They are the keepers of destiny itself! Though the Namekian Dragonballs are indeed more powerful than Earth's, they are still bound by the power of their maker, a mortal._'

Goku stared at his hands through the water, remembering how he wasn't strong enough, fast enough to keep his boy safe in the first place. If he had only managed to move a little quicker, if he had only been as strong as the man that had grabbed the boy's tail…

'_That doesn't mean anything to me King Kai, I don't know how to give up. Not when it comes to saving the Earth and definitely not when it comes to rescuing my son. If I can't wish my son back to me, I'll find a way to wish myself to where he is…or I'll wish for a way to know more about the 'Four Winds' so that I can find a loophole in their defences._'

Goku heard King Kai's sigh of exasperation and squirmed unpleasantly. A tiny frown of irritation passed over his brow and he ducked below the water, hoping to muffle his mentor's comments.

'_Goku, don't try and cut me off, I'm trying to help you!'_ King Kai snapped angrily.

There was a pause as Goku considered the blurry outline of the heated bath barrel and his lung capacity.

'_Look…it's not just about the fact that this plan of yours is doomed to fail, its about the disrespect you are showing to powers way beyond your understanding. These people control fate, FATE Goku! You don't exactly want to try and get on their bad side…'_

Goku decided that he'd held his breath for long enough, pushing up to break the surface of the water and suck in a refreshing breath of air.

"Phew."

'_Listen King Kai, I promise that whatever I brake on the journey to get my son back, I'll fix. If you didn't want me to try this then why did you give Bulma the co-ordinates to Namek in the first place?_'

There was a pause and Goku leant back against the bath tub, waiting for King Kai's response, making shapes out of the stars.

'…_They'll need you when they try and wish the others back._' King Kai said sombrely, causing Goku to hold his breath.

A tense silence fell between master and pupil, the sound of the night life around Goku's home the only thing keeping him anchored to sanity.

'_I can't give up on him King Kai, it's just not in me. Maybe if you had children of your own, you'd understand…_'

With that Goku pushed up and swung himself out over the edge of the bath barrel, ignoring King Kai's further protestations as he wrapped himself in the towel that Chi Chi had provided and stalked back along the dark side of the house towards the front door.

Despite King Kai's warning that his hope was futile and his pleas to respect the people that had taken Gohan, Goku wouldn't be deterred.

Not where his son was concerned.

* * *

_Will Goku be able to defy expectation and wish his son back? Will Gohan remain pure-hearted after suffering so much trauma? Will Sensou be able to inspire true loyalty in our favourite demi-Saiyan?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…Mushi-shi!_

_(sings) I walk 10,000 miles, 10,000 miles to read reviews! XD_


	10. Compendium

_This story is a monster. After posting this, I have another chapter written and am half way through the chapter after that. (shakes head) It's unreal. Anyway, a few things to consider:_

_1) Goku is sited as 'the first Saiyan to truly achieve the legend' somewhere in the middle of the chapter. Don't panic. I'm not crazy. I have acknowledged that Broly embodies the legend but due to the unnatural nature of his powers, it seems to me that it was inevitable that he would reach this threshold without having to work too hard if you know what I mean. At the same time, his powers mean that he's a bit unstable, nuts. Goku retained the general essence of himself when he transformed and he was the first 'regular Saiyan' to manage it so this is what I mean when I say he's the first Saiyan to achieve the legend. I think 'achieve' is the key word here._

_2) Warnings for plottings and other confusions? I hope this is all straight-forwardish to most of you. I realise that a lot of Sensou and Shorai's intentions are hidden, interwoven into badly constructed narrative, whatever you want to call it but for the most part, I hope this is at least comprehensible…unlike this author's note (sweat drop)_

_3) Spelling, grammar, sentence structure and other garb has been checkerinoed…but I'm pretty sure I've missed some basic things this time due to the constant need to tweak bits of this chapter. Apologies._

_And now, the actual story._

* * *

**9: Compendium**

It wasn't just his father.

At first, Sensou favoured using a mannequin of Goku, knowing that it would promote the most effective response from the kid, but in time, the boy started to look for the telltale signs that his father had joined the fray, a flash of an orange gi, wild black hair, the battle cry in his father's familiar voice…

This completely detracted from the aim of Sensou's training, so he started switching out the forms, using more and more mannequins to make Gohan learn control…and to solidify the fear that he could hurt his family unintentionally…

The boy had seen all of his friends die in truly horrific ways, each gruesome end more elaborate than the last. He had accidentally decapitated his new friend Krillin, had incinerated his almost mentor Piccolo in a haze of rage fuelled Ki until there was nothing left but a charred husk. He'd almost driven one of his kicks straight through Yamcha's stomach but had seen him at the last minute and tried to change angle, accidentally slicing clean through his upper body.

They continued to fall one by one, again and again and again by his hands…always by his hands and when the battle was over, Sensou would vanish, leaving the boy to clean away the evidence of his repeated sins, blood tainting the black forest crimson.

* * *

Goku and Krillin stood outside the finished space ship, staring at it with judgemental eyes. It had been a good few months since Bulma had started working on the Namekian space craft (a replacement for the Saiyan space pod that the genius technician had accidentally blown up on the first day) and by now it looked almost completely different to the porcupine-like wreck that Capsule Corp had toted to Bulma's lab on the first day. Though it still retained its porcupine spikes, the ship was much larger than it had been before and had been noticeably enhanced. Weak areas in the metal body of the ship had been fortified. The Perspex material that made up the windows had been completely removed and replaced with a thicker substance. Everything had been air locked and tested, the wiring for the entire ship had been re-routed, the electrical programming examined and re-written.

As if on cue, the doorway opened and a spitting mad Bulma, complete in comedy astronaut getup, stormed down the ramp onto the grass, stalking away from her father who was looking most concerned, rubbing his head.

"Oh come on darling," Dr Briefs pleaded, following after Bulma.

"No dad, I really don't see why we would need an ice machine or a Cappuccino maker, this isn't some sort of pleasure cruise."

Goku looked from Dr Briefs to Bulma and then down to Krillin who shook his head. Best not to get involved.

"Just say…okay? Just say that when Goku's done training, he needs an ice cold lemonade to refresh him…okay? Imagine how _un-_refreshing that drink would be without ice."

Goku watched as Bulma's face tinted red and decided to interject, despite his best friend's warning.

"Uh…sorry to interrupt but…did you install the gravity machine I asked for?"

Bulma turned a scathing glare on him, her teeth clenched together in rage. Used to Chi Chi's spitfire attitude, Goku immediately held his hands up in a sign of surrender.

"Yes we installed your gravity machine you impatient _cretin! _And you better be grateful because I had to re-write a whole CHUNK of the ship's computer coding to accept the damn thing. If it wasn't for your stupid training equipment, we could have been in space a _month _ago!"

"Yeah Bulma I know," Goku said, purposefully keeping his expression sheepish. "But I need to keep training, what happens if we run into Vegeta on Namek? He didn't manage to get his hands on the Earth Dragonballs after all."

Bulma's eyes narrowed as she regarded one of her oldest friends but she couldn't really argue with such rational reasoning.

"Hmph," she huffed, by the way of the last word.

"So is this thing ready to take off?" Krillin asked, ambling over to the entrance and peering up into the dark interior of the craft.

"Y-

"Almost," Dr Briefs cut in, ignoring his daughter's fuming at being interrupted. "I just have to install the ice machine and the Cappuccino maker…shouldn't take long once I figure out where to put the darn things…"

Goku simply stared at the technician, his eyes huge.

"You…were…actually being serious about those?"

Dr Briefs bristled, the little cat on his shoulder losing her balance as he squared his shoulders.

"Yes I was being serious! Do you know how taxing space travel can be? What if you wake up one morning and need a steaming Cappuccino to start your day off right, huh?"

"Uh…"

Goku was honestly at a loss. Living in the wilderness as he had for most of his life, he had never given luxury appliances and the like much consideration, though he was better at identifying things than he used to be since Chi Chi had assaulted her way into his life. He glanced up at the glossy Namekian craft and a sense of urgency flared in his gut.

"Dr Briefs, Bulma's right, this isn't a pleasure cruise. We have to get into space as soon as possible so I can try and rescue my son!"

Dr Briefs raised an eyebrow but his eyes darted over to Bulma, his child, who had more or less given up on the whole conversation and was stomping into Capsule Corp to gather her remaining luggage together. He couldn't really delay a rescue mission of such importance for a few luxuries after all.

"Alright then," he said, shuffling forward. "Follow me."

He led Goku over to the entrance, Krillin in tow, and clambered onto the hovering doorway.

"Piccolo," he said, making sure to enunciate the syllables in the correct places.

The doorway lifted up, levitating in the air and taking them into the newly re-furbished space craft. Goku beamed as he felt the sensation of escalation in his stomach. As soon as they were inside, iridescent lights flashed on. Both Goku and Krillin gawped in awe.

Where before the interior had been a moss-filled ruin, now it was shiny, new and comfortable. The main control room had a set of brand new monitors and the controls were labelled in both English and Namekian. There were three launch seats with harnesses and straps and leading off from the back of this control room was a corridor.

"This is the control room, through there's the sleeping quarters and the kitchen at the rear of the craft," Dr Briefs explained, pointing off down the corridor. "Goku, your gravity machine is in the first room on the left. The bathroom is the first door on the right."

"Oh cool," Goku stated enthusiastically, rocking on the balls of his feet. "Will you show me how it works?"

"Sure," Dr Briefs nodded, motioning for Goku to follow him.

"So uh…enhanced gravity training huh…" Krillin muttered as they walked. "Do you think…I should try it too?"

Goku glanced down at his friend.

"I don't see why not, the stronger we both are, the better right?"

Krillin smiled.

"Right."

Dr Briefs led them into a spacious room and Goku could see immediately that it had everything he might need. There were weights anchored in to the walls, dumb bells and various weighted clothing he could swap out when necessary, all colour coded. There was a set of rings in the ceiling he could use to swing from and even a few robots built into their own pods in the sides of the rooms that they could use to practice Ki blasts. The gravity machine took up the centre of the room, a cylindrical, complicated piece of machinery which looked like it had been melted at high temperature so the metal had bubbled and then, as it cooled, the weird shapes had solidified into definition.

"The controls are here," Dr Briefs confirmed, motioning to the control panel. "This machine goes anywhere from 1 to 100 x Earth's gravity but you need to be careful that you don't end up flat like a pancake."

"Gotcha," Goku affirmed while Krillin just nodded.

"You ALSO have to make sure that the doorway is completely sealed before you begin training or it will mess with the gravity for the entire ship and the rest of this beauty hasn't been fortified to withstand it like this room has."

Goku nodded seriously, making a mental note to double check the door before he began training at all times. He'd hate to be responsible for the death of his companions in the depths of space through his own carelessness.

"I think that's just about it," Dr Briefs mumbled, staring at the ceiling of the gravity room. "If you're honestly sure about the ice machine and the Cappuccino maker then you're good to go."

"What right now?" Krillin asked, suddenly very uneasy with prospect of space travel so close.

"Yep, the co-ordinates have already been entered into the control panel. Just have to push the button."

"Oh great, that's perfect!" Goku exclaimed, grinning wide.

"We've already got your essentials in storage. You guys just have to gather anything else you want to take, good luck charms…stuffed toys to help you sleep at night, you know."

"Oh, no we're fine with the essentials," Krillin told Dr Briefs, glancing out of the window idly and double taking when he saw Bulma struggling with a pack that was twice the size of her.

Bulma stopped at the base of the ship and sunk down against the pack. She'd worked up a good sweat hauling that across Capsule Corp's substantial lawn, not exactly a good thing to do when you were stuck in a thick astronaut suit.

"Piccolo," she wheezed, glowering at Goku and Krillin as they hopped off of the descending doorway to help her.

"Yeesh Bulma, what have you got in here? Bricks?" Krillin asked, picking up the pack.

"_None _of your business," she snapped, taking Goku's offered hand and dusting herself off. "I assume you talked my dad into letting us leave now? Have you guys got everything? Remember, it's not like we can turn around and come backb."

Both Goku and Krillin nodded, feeling a lot like little kids told to watch out for their exit buddies on a school trip.

It took a while to get everything settled, Bulma pulling up graphs and charts and anchoring down her colossal pack while Goku and Krillin made sure they were strapped in and ready. The rumble of the space ship's engines started up beneath them and Goku felt calmer than he had in weeks.

They were finally getting to go into space; he would finally be able to get pro-active in the mission to rescue his son.

Beside him, Krillin was doing everything he could to keep in his lunch.

"Ready?" Bulma asked, not waiting for a response. "Dorigalop craptca."

The monitors on screen blinked and there was a momentary pause where the chaos of the launch was silenced. Krillin could hear his heart beat throbbing in his ears.

'_I'm gonna be sick._'

The ship took off in a burst of speed, parting the atmosphere as it shot up into the stratosphere and beyond. Goku could feel the application of G Force to his system but was completely unbothered, used to the harsh pressure of increased gravity he had felt living on King Kai's planet. His eyes sparkled with furious exhilaration as the blue sky slowly disappeared through the window to make room for an endless black, pin-pricked now and then by a blazing star.

"Woohoo!" he cried, launching himself out of his seat as soon as the monitor told him it was safe to press his face against one of the windows.

Krillin hadn't coped with the take off nearly as well as his best friend. He slipped out of his seat into a boneless puddle on the floor where he curled up, clutching at his stomach and sporting a green pallor reminiscent of Piccolo.

"Don't get comfortable down there," Bulma told him, her voice still abrupt as their ascent stabilised and they started to cover some real travelling distance. Unbuckling her harness, she ran a quick scan of the system to make sure there were no anomalies to be seen to.

"Now if you don't mind, I'm going to sleep. I pulled quite a few all nighters working on this little project and I'm exhausted. If you know what's good for you, you won't wake me up until dinner."

Goku turned to watch Bulma go, silently grateful for all the effort she and her father had put in to make this trip possible. He already felt closer to his son than he had in a while and he knew, he just knew that when he slept the night, for the first time since he had been wished back to life, he wouldn't be riddled with nightmares of that recurring memory, the moment when that strange warrior had grabbed his son's tail, causing his son's face to twist in agony.

Bulma's slamming door reverberated through the whole ship making Krillin wince and then breathe out, relaxing muscles that he hadn't even realised had been tense. He rolled his eyes as he stood up and walked over to Goku, contemplating how even Piccolo had never managed to elicit such an intimidated reaction from him.

"I hope she wakes up in a better mood," he said off-handily, blinking as Goku chuckled.

As if on cue, something dropped out of Bulma's enormous moored pack and caught the little monk in the centre of his bald head. Yelping painfully, he rubbed at the throbbing bump and stared at the offending hair brush, noting that a few of Bulma's stray hairs still clung to it.

"Guess I deserved that," he muttered causing Goku to crumple into a laughing heap.

* * *

Sensou keyed in his destination on the number panel by the side of the dimension door and waited as the Ki connecting dimensions shifted, lost in thought. As soon as the new dimension had settled into place, he stepped through, entering into what appeared to be a stuffy, high ceilinged library.

It was an interesting dimension as far as these things went, with a distinct lack of definition that made the place feel unfinished. Though he appeared to be inside a very large building, Sensou knew that if he was to find the door to this building, it would open up onto an empty white void, similar to the void that he and Shorai had stepped into when the council had first been called to discuss the fate of Gohan Son not so long ago.

The windows were a mis-matching array of stain glass elaborate pieces of art work and plain transparent frames. Light poured in from an unknown source to pool on the chaotic stacks of written work that littered the floor and shelves of the building. Sensou took a moment to appreciate the general disarray. Though there were shelves with engraved letters in gold leaf, none of the tomes or scrolls had been sorted in this place in over a century, not since the old librarian had gone mad, disappearing into the furthest reaches of the building never to return.

Sensou sighed and closed his eyes, seeking the faint Ki signature of the author of the work he was looking for. No matter who they were, they always left a trace of themselves behind on their own work and Sensou was highly skilled at finding even the barest signature.

Eventually, he found it, tucked away in a corner by one of the stain glass windows, a thin leather bound book hidden beneath two other works of no interest to the warrior god. He picked his way through the disorderly piles, skirting around particularly perilous mountains of badly tessellated books.

As he advanced, he thought hard, remembering the unnerving display of power Gohan had showcased in that first day of training, that weird half ascension to Super Saiyan long before he was strong enough.

Just what had that been about?

He had known that using a mannequin to impersonate the boy's father in the first pivotal battle would evoke a strong response but he had never imagined that the boy's power would jump so dramatically. It was both impressive and worrying in equal measure. Though he knew it was important to push Gohan to reach that level, now was definitely _not _the time. If the boy ascended too quickly, he could become dangerously ill or lose his mind and there were some things in the lay-lines of fate and destiny that couldn't be changed, events that acted like support beams for existence itself.

The fact that Goku was to become the first Saiyan to truly achieve the legend was one of those things that had to remain untouched. Shorai had made sure that Sensou understood that before he and Ma had even left to collect the boy.

With this in mind, Sensou decided, following Gohan's drastic leap in power, to consult the compendium of Saiyan knowledge found in the forgotten library so he could better understand the signs to watch out for, how to stop the transformation before it changed destiny or killed his super weapon.

He stepped into the light, ignoring the dust particles shimmering on the air, and glanced down at the pile of works he had been heading towards. He frowned, the expression marring his features.

Carefully, he crouched down, staring with analytical eyes at the topmost book, noting that there was a noticeable absence of dust on the surface.

_This stack had been recently disturbed._

Sensou let a smug smirk run over his lips as he shifted the books and picked up the tome he was after and sure enough, he could see that the spine had been recently bent, the pages didn't hold the smell of neglect as they did in the other tomes.

'_So Shorai's been doing a bit of research as well. This is very interesting,_' Sensou thought to himself as he thumbed through the compendium, searching for the necessary passages on Super Saiyan transformations. He paused when he found what he was looking for.

"Lets see…hair changed for a moment…aura shifting between white and gold…no change to eye colour…"

Sensou skim-read the passage, pausing only to concentrate on the story regarding the first ever Super Saiyan, the legend against which all legends were pitted. He smiled to himself, thinking of the astronomical power Gohan had shown in Shorai's vision, ending everything. When he was finished, there would be a new legend overtaking that of even the very first Super Saiyan.

Eventually, he found what he wanted, a detailed breakdown of the transformation to Super Saiyan including all pathways. The compendium denoted a particular faze of transformation called the '_False Super Saiyan_' and it matched the description of Gohan's momentary power surge exactly.

Sensou breathed a mental sigh of relief. Though the mechanisms to kick start the transformation had been set in motion, it would be a while before the boy managed to break that particular barrier. He read on, noting with both pleasure and caution that the tail he had decided to let the boy keep would make the transformation smoother, easier to achieve and would enhance the boy's final output substantially.

He paused, sinking back onto one of the stacks, using it as make shift seat.

'_Did Gohan have his tail in Shorai's original vision of the end of everything? I don't think he did…does that mean, when we get to that stage, he has the potential to become…even _MORE _powerful? It's not possible…_'

He stayed frozen on the stacks, contemplating the pros and cons of letting the boy keep his tail indefinitely. If he let the child keep it, he could have access to a power beyond imagination…but if he let the boy keep it and Gohan decided to turn on him at any point, he could have a serious nuisance on his hands…

In the end, it was a risk, a gamble and the warrior god decided he would play it by ear. For now, it couldn't do any harm. The boy was still aeons away from matching Sensou's strength so he had plenty of time to right the situation if it turned out letting the boy keep the tail was a mistake. He grunted, satisfied with his decision and snapped the compendium shut.

The boy had reached the false Super Saiyan stage, that was fine. Sensou would just have to be vigilant in preventing the boy from going further, breaking that barrier before his father had managed it. To be honest, he felt like he had worried for nothing. The boy's power had been pushed to the surface because of his exposure to Sensou's new training regime and he had showed nothing of the like since. As the compendium stated, the transformation was usually triggered by a 'need' and as Gohan became familiar with the training pattern, that 'need' lessened.

Running a hand through his hair, he stood and stretched, appreciating the light streaming in through the stain glass window, warming his skin. Replacing the tome where he had found it, he started weaving his way back the way he had come feeling a new sense of invigoration when he thought about Gohan's training and the day ahead.

* * *

Krillin was upside down, one hand on the floor, the rest of his body taut as he fought to retain his balance. He could feel his muscles tightening and decided to push his limits, struggling to lift himself up onto his fingers.

His arm ached like hell but he kept pushing it until his whole weight was resting on one index finger. He smiled inwardly.

"Krillin, you moron!"

The door to his room flew open and Krillin lost his balance, tumbling bald head first into the side of his bed where he cracked his ankle against the hard metal frame. Automatically, tears sprung into the corner of his eyes.

"How many times do I have to ask you not to leave your stuff in the control room?"

Bulma stood in the doorway waving a magazine with a questionable picture on the front back and forth. Krillin's face burned crimson.

"Hey, I've been looking for that!" he exclaimed, jumping up and grabbing at the corner, aiming to yank the magazine out of Bulma's grasp before she could start flicking through the contents (of which the images were much less tasteful than the cover art).

"Where did you find it?"

"On top of the atmospheric scanner of all places. Seriously Krillin, if I have to tell you again, I'll make sure that every girlfriend you ever get knows you read filth like this."

Krillin felt the burn in his cheeks drop down into his stomach, forming into a hard ball of dread.

"Oh no Bulma, do you know how hard it is for a guy like me to get a girlfriend in the first place? That's just too harsh, you can't condemn a man like that!"

"Make sure I don't find any more of your junk around, and I won't," Bulma said, satisfied.

Krillin opened his mouth to say something snarky back but a loud boom interrupted them. Turning to glance back along the corridor, Bulma let her eyes lock onto the door to the gravity room.

"Hey Krillin, I thought you and Goku were gonna train together."

Krillin shrugged, pulling on his baseball cap and ambling towards the door, peering out at the gravity room along with Bulma.

"Yeah we might do eventually but Goku's kind of got a bit of an advantage at the moment."

"Oh? How come?" Bulma asked, frowning.

"Well you see, when Goku was dead and training on King Kai's planet, he was actually already training at 10 x Earth's gravity so he's starting now at 20 x Earth's gravity whereas I have to start off in 10 because I've never gravity trained before."

Bulma formed an 'o' with her mouth but said nothing, nodding slightly. The two of them remained staring at the door for a good 5 minutes but neither of them heard any other sound.

"Do you think he's alright in there?" Bulma asked, a sudden horrible image of Goku hurt and unable to call for aid springing to mind.

"Yeah, sure…he's fine…" Krillin said uncertainly, thinking along the same lines as Bulma.

"Are you sure we shouldn't…you know…check?" Bulma asked, shoving Krillin out into the hall.

"Hey, you don't have to push me out like that! It's not like we're fighting any bad guys here," Krillin complained, taking the initiative anyway.

"As a beefed up muscle head, I expect you to be able to handle the gory details if Goku is in trouble," Bulma offered, falling in behind Krillin as they advanced along the corridor.

"Feeling squeamish are we?" Krillin ribbed as they drew level with the door and the bald monk peered through the little window into the gravity room.

What he saw nearly made his jaw drop. The gravity machine was flashing out the number '50' and Goku was in the middle of the room, a look of utmost concentration on his face. He was upside down as Krillin had been but both hands were on the floor. Above him, a heavy weight rested on the dents in his boots. Sweat trickled down his face making him blink as it neared his eyes, every muscle in his body was tense.

"I bet that loud bang we heard was Goku dropping that weight," Krillin guessed, blinking through the little window.

Bulma bristled beside him.

"Hey, he can't just go around dropping weights all willy-nilly. This ship isn't exactly indestructible, even if my dad and I were the ones working on it."

Krillin nodded absent-mindedly, watching as Goku slowly lowered himself down and then pushed up again, all the time keeping the impossibly heavy weight in perfect balance. His eyes moved from the weight on his friend's feet to the expression on his face and the bald monk shook his head.

Goku had seemed to be coping exceptionally well with his son's disappearance, laughing and joking like nothing was different, but that really wasn't the case at all. Krillin recognised the mission in his friend's eyes and estimated that he was in training with the goal of challenging Gohan's kidnappers, should the dragon be able to grant his wish.

Typical Goku really. Instead of falling into a pit of self depreciating depression, he'd picked himself up and decided to do something about the situation, training himself with such ferocity so he would never again be rendered useless when his son's life was on the line. Krillin hadn't seen Goku this into self improvement since Piccolo had last challenged him at the Tenkachi Boudokai, though he obviously couldn't speak for the year spent in Otherworld.

"He looks so intense," Bulma commented quietly beside Krillin, peering through the window. "I forget that Goku has to work hard to be as strong as he is, that it isn't just natural for him."

"He took Gohan's kidnapping hard," Krillin confirmed, turning away from the window.

Bulma let her gaze linger for a moment longer, thinking about the little boy she had met in the mountains so many years ago. Goku had come such a long way since then, changing from that naïve little kid into a pure-hearted adult, still carefree but with an awareness of the world he had lacked before. Having a child of his own had helped to mature him immeasurably and it was obvious to everyone that he loved his son more than anything. In a way, she envied Gohan. Though she loved her own parents with all her heart, Goku really did make the ultimate dad, serious and loving, fun and protective in equal measure.

'_You've got a great daddy kiddo and he's coming for you,_' Bulma thought to herself as she too turned away from the window, leaving Goku to train undisturbed.

* * *

Shorai blanched, feeling a pain like a drilling spike stabbing the back of his skull. He grasped at it, his hands balling into fists in his black hair. Beside him, Tonbo glanced up in concern.

"What's the matter master?" he asked nervously.

Shorai clung to the sound of his pupil's voice and his eyes fell open. Tonbo squeaked when he saw the dull colour, recognising the lightening of the irises for the sign it was. Shorai was trying to keep himself from falling into a vision.

Tonbo had learnt about this in his studies. For the most part, seers were able to slip easily between their visions and reality. Every once in a while, there would be a jar in the process and when that happened, things could get very complicated very quickly. In that instance, there was a fail safe that could be implemented though it drained the seer immensely to try and pull it off.

Shorai's breathing was becoming shallow and rasping. He fell face forward on the dirt gripping violently at his head and the grass around him, tearing up handfuls of greenery. Tonbo knew that the best thing to do was to keep talking, to give his mentor something to fixate on, something to anchor him. If he became confused, caught as he was between lucid dreaming and true awareness, he could get stuck like this.

"Hang in there Master Shorai," the boy encouraged, rubbing the seer's back. "Just focus on my voice, follow it."

Shorai could only comprehend the stabbing pain in the back of his head and the warping vision failing to resolve itself into true definition. Every time he almost got a clear picture, it would jolt and become unfocussed, sometimes scattering into thousands of tiny coloured dots before his eyes. Nausea gripped his stomach making him want to heave but he had no idea where he was in relation to anything and was afraid to vomit without really understanding where he was.

When he heard Tonbo's voice, he attached to it gratefully, following it back into reality until he was left gasping in the grass, his hand slackening on the back of his head as the pain finally relinquished its hold.

"Are…are you alright?" Tonbo asked as Shorai sat up, sweating and shaking.

The seer took a moment to breathe before answering his anxious pupil. He smiled weakly.

"Yeah, I'm alright, just need a moment."

He frowned as he tried to regulate his breathing, ignoring the burning in his gut as his breakfast churned unpleasantly. None of it had really made sense but he'd caught a glimpse of a golden aura, a blonde boy offset against a sky of green.

'_There's no way Sensou's managed to push him to that already,_' Shorai thought to himself, shuddering at the thought. '_I warned him that Goku's ascension to Super Saiyan was an existential staple. What is he playing at?_'

"You know what might be fun?" Shorai asked semi-rhetorically, standing on shaking legs.

Tonbo knew that the seer didn't require an answer but shook his head anyway out of habit.

"A trip to visit Gohan and Sensou," Shorai declared, somewhat pleased when Tonbo's eyes lit up.

The two of them set off immediately, Shorai picking at auspicious strings in the weave of fate to find out where his brother was currently keeping the demi-Saiyan. Tonbo trotted out ahead of Shorai, elated that he would get to see his friend again. Though they had only really gotten to hang out once, Tonbo rarely got to meet anybody his age and Gohan was so likeable, so disarming and friendly.

They stopped outside the dimension gate as Shorai re-set their destination and waited. There was an almost imperceptible movement in the doorway as it shifted locations and the two of them stepped through.

Tonbo's excitement ebbed away. The dimension they had entered was dark with sharp shadows and sinister intent. Moving swiftly behind Shorai as they walked forward, Tonbo swore that he could hear strange sounds on the air, things creeping alongside them hidden expertly in the darkness. He whimpered.

"What a place to bring a child," Shorai muttered solemnly to himself, shaking his head and putting a re-assuring hand on Tonbo's shoulder, squeezing gently.

They started heading over the shallow land towards a thick black forest out on Shorai's right hand side and Tonbo's heart filled with fear and pity. Gohan had been asked to survive this place? The thought of his friend alone in this desolate place made Tonbo's skin break out in goosebumps.

They didn't have to walk too far. Sensou and Gohan were waiting for them, standing on the edge of the forest next to a clump of particularly dark foliage. Shorai noticed immediately that Gohan's natural expression had changed. Though he still smiled and waved at Tonbo when the two approached, he was much more reserved than before and when his eyes lifted up to meet the seer's, there was an emptiness there that hadn't been there before. A lump of regret settled on Shorai's system.

"To _what _do we owe the pleasure brother? I thought I wouldn't have to see you again until I brought the boy to face Frieza," Sensou hissed, irate that Shorai had dared interrupt his training.

Shorai gave his brother a heated look.

"Training him to surpass the legend are we?" Shorai asked off-handedly, his face betraying the true agitation he felt.

Sensou's eyes widened and he grunted. He hadn't really expected to keep anything from his all-knowing brother, especially not after discovering that Shorai had been doing his own research on the legacy of the Saiyans but he hadn't really expected a confrontation on the matter either.

"Gohan," he snapped, causing the young boy to look at him expectantly. "Go for a walk with my brother's brat. We shall resume training once this discussion is finished so watch for my signal."

Gohan kept his face remarkably dispassionate as he absorbed the command though he was unable to completely mask the delight in his eyes. He motioned for Tonbo to follow him, leading the young seer apprentice out into the lighter areas where he knew his friend would be more comfortable. Shorai smiled in momentary relief, pleased that Gohan was still putting the needs of his companion before his own, showing that he may have been tainted but not yet corrupted.

When he was sure the boys were out of earshot, he turned on his brother.

"I warned you about pushing the boy to Super Saiyan before his time, I specifically told you of the risks, _serious _risks. What's going on?"

Sensou didn't appreciate his brother's tone but worked to keep his temper in check. Losing his head was only going to make matters more complicated though he was itching to loose his fist on Shorai's stomach as he had during the Saiyan battle. That had been satisfying beyond words.

Sensou shrugged his shoulders, making sure to adjust his body language so he appeared bored, knowing it would annoy Shorai.

"The boy got a bit too emotionally involved with one of the opponents I prepared for him a while ago and accessed a stage in the transformation called '_False Super Saiyan_'. He hasn't done it since. Frankly, I'm beginning to suspect that it was a fluke."

The corners of Sensou's lips curled, his eyes flashed dangerously.

"I'm surprised you didn't pick up on this sooner with your abilities brother; that happened at least a couple of months ago now, I'm disappointed."

Shorai's eyebrow twitched in vexation but he didn't rise to the bait. Years of handling Sensou had given him some immunity to his brother's provocation, even if it did still make him feel the same squirming aggravation inside.

"Don't push him Sensou," Shorai warned. "There is no way to rectify things if he breaks the barrier too soon and overrides Goku's ascension."

Sensou murmured his acknowledgement and acceptance of the warning, folding his arms over his chest and glowering hostilely.

"Anything else?"

Shorai took a deep breath. This probably wasn't going to go down well and he was playing on Sensou's home turf, always a bad idea when he was making demands but he pushed on, spurred by the deadness he'd seen lingering in Gohan's eyes.

"Yes, actually, while we're here," Shorai said, trying to appear comfortable in this unholy place.

Sensou's eyebrow quirked and for one wild moment, he was convinced Sensou was going to hit hm again. If he was truly honest, he hadn't properly recovered from the last hit, his stomach still churning unpleasantly at meal times every now and then. He braced himself but pressed on, determined now he'd set things in motion.

"Goku's appearance before schedule in the last fight has messed things up more than I originally thought it would. The hairline fracture in the weave of destiny is spreading out, leaving cracks in its wake and I'm finding it difficult to keep up with them."

Sensou's eyes were piercing, incomprehensible. Shorai licked his lips.

"I think it might be easier for me to keep an eye on the progressing situation if you let me have a couple of sessions with Gohan. Direct contact with a subject always makes things-

He was cut off as the broad side of Sensou's arm slammed into his throat, cutting off his vocal chords. Breath whooshed out of his mouth as he was pushed up against one of the tree trunks choking and spluttering for air.

"Don't think I don't know what you're up to my dear delusional _brother_." Sensou snapped, his eyes mad with rage, his canines bared ferrally. "You want to spare some of the boy's inherent goodness, make sure my training regime doesn't completely pollute his soul. A follow up for your idiotic mistake during the battle against the Saiyans well I've got news for you…"

He pushed his arm a little deeper into Shorai's throat, keeping his eyes on the seer's purpling face.

"Unless you can assure that preserving his purity would benefit me directly, I have no interest in letting you undo all of my hard work."

He let the seer go, aware that Gohan was watching him with hawk eyes from his position out on the shallow, open lands. As much as he'd like to hurt his brother further, he wouldn't be able to do so whilst keeping the boy's solidifying loyalty in tact. Since his first battle with the war mannequin impersonating his father, the boy had come to terms with the idea that he would have stay longer than he had originally intended with Sensou, at least until the warrior god said he was ready to go home and that was a very big step in the right direction. Instead of setting himself goals, he was _wating for Sensou's word _and that change in philosophy was a monumental progression_. _

But there was still that irksome need to protect anyone weaker than him, to work for the greater good that Sensou had so far been unable to eradicate and as much as it pained him to admit, Gohan would still turn against him in a heartbeat if he was to bare down on someone without good enough reason.

It was infuriating being limited the way he was currently by the whims of a child with an over-developed sense of justice. Damn his over zealous father.

"You're…a fool…" Shorai gasped, pushing himself back up and pulling the warrior god's attention back to him. "Here."

The seer held out his hand and Sensou simply stared. He knew what the invitation meant but he had never actually imagined that Shorai would ever be willing to share what he saw with his violent brother. The warrior god gripped the seer's hand greedily, eager to get a glimpse of the fruits of his labour.

There was an instant of unpleasantness and then an image resolved itself, filtering over Sensou's eyes and blocking out reality. It took a moment to adjust to the displacement and he glanced around, trying to discern where he was. He caught the image of the boy out of his peripheral vision and turned to stare at the pint-sized golden warrior staring down the intimidating form of Frieza in his final, transformed state.

The air fizzled and for a moment, Sensou dismissed it as gathering Ki. Then the vision started to waver, making him feel, for lack of a better word, travel sick. He staggered, falling to the ground and shut his eyes tight.

The vision didn't disperse however and he was forced to watch with his eyes closed as Gohan leapt towards the universe's tyrant, golden aura pulsating madly.

The vision exploded, there was no other way to describe it. Sensou made a noise of displeasure as coloured dots started to pop in front of his eyelids, as Ki signatures scrambled before him, as matter exploded around him and was sucked into an unknown vacuum at the same time. It was a horrendous feeling, totally uncontrollable and through it all, there was a stabbing pain at the back of skull, like someone was pushing a spear into his brain.

"That's enough!" he barked, letting go of Shorai's hand and pulling back, relieved when reality re-instated itself in front of his eyes. He blinked, appreciating the darkness behind his eyelids.

"Now do you see what I mean?" Shorai asked, still rubbing at his throat. "The future is starting to fragment Sensou, I must be able to keep an eye on it. This is bigger than the need to preserve the boy's innocence…though I'm loathe to admit it."

Sensou regarded his brother, unnerved by the spectacle he had just been shown. Rubbing at the back of his still aching head, he thought about it, knowing he didn't really have a choice.

"How often will you need to see the boy?"

"Once a month should suffice," Shorai confirmed, exhausted but contented with his small victory.

Sensou grumbled something Shorai didn't quite catch but he paid it no heed. Now that his business with the warrior god was done for now, he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. He pivoted on one foot to glance out at the two boys who had resumed their games once they'd confirmed that Shorai was okay. Stray chuckles escaped every now and then as Gohan tried to teach Tonbo to fly.

"Tonbo, it's time we started for home," Shorai called, waving his pupil over.

He watched as Tonbo waved to show that he'd heard and smiled inwardly. While it was true he needed to see Gohan for the reasons outlined in his arguments to Sensou, he was still pleased that the boy would get to spend some time out of this nightmarish dimension. The boy was headed down a dark road with a guide that cared only for his own twisted gains and Shorai was determined to provide some light in the darkness.

Even if it was at his own risk.

* * *

_Oh God…I've read this so many times I'm actually starting to get plot-ache (message me if you want to know what that is)._

_Will Gohan defy expectations and break through to Super Saiyan? Will Goku get strong enough to protect his son when the time comes? Will Krillin listen to Bulma and stop leaving his personal effects all over the space ship?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…Once Upon a Time!_

_I think Rumplestiltskin is gonna pwn them all (nods) He has a hidden agenda with this curse business, I just know it!_

_Reviews are like Victoria Sponges, DELICIOUS…and full of jam…_


	11. Namek's Allure

_(sings) I've got a lovely bunch of Dragonballs deedaleedeedee…Yes, I too have been sucked in by the magic that is TFS' Dragonball Z Abridged. I laughed so hard I choked on my cereal Saturday morning whilst watching it. Anyways, a few things as always and Happy Chocolate Eggs Day everyone!_

_1) You may note that the time frame for events is becoming a little messed up (understatement). For the most part this is because things have been altered; Dr Briefs and Bulma had to work longer to renovate the Namekian space craft to fit in Goku's training equipment etc which is why I mentioned the magnetic storm during their journey. This also accounts for a few key differences that you'll notice later on. On a similar note, nothing is playing out exactly like it did in the series time wise – the ramifications of Sensou and Ma's interference…it's all a bit butterfly effect if you get my drift._

_2) Training Gohan for poor Mr Warrior God is a bit like moving in a psychological circle. I re-read this so many times to make sure his changes and pushes made sense without the subtler elements being laid bare like a naked lady and am finally in the realms of satisfaction with it. If anyone has any questions feel free to message me but I'm sure all will become clear as the story progresses._

_3) Spelling, grammar, tense, my teeth and everything else has been checked but I'm exhausted so I've probably gone and missed a few mistakes dotted here and there in this chapter so as always, apologies if you find anything._

* * *

**10: Namek's Allure**

Bulma sat in one of the launch seats in the control room, flicking through the same magazine she had been flicking through for the last 3 days. The pages were starting to become well worn and the crosswords in the back had been filled in completely, a rarity for Bulma. She sighed, flipping the magazine closed and fingering the date on the front. The next issue had already come out on Earth, she wondered if her dad had remembered to pick a copy up for her.

Kami but she was bored. If they didn't find Namek soon, she was honestly considering thumbing through Krillin's collection, which, despite repeated warnings, had mostly ended up strewn across the control room in various quirky places.

As if on cue, one of the monitors on Bulma's left started flashing. Blinking, she turned, swivelling herself round to regard the screen, skimming through the numbers and instructions to get the gist of the message. As she read, her face lit up.

"Hey Krillin!"

The bald monk stuck his head out of the kitchen down the hall, curry bread in his mouth and his cap turned backwards on his head. He raised a questioning eyebrow, trudging his way into the control room with an armful of various snacks when Bulma didn't speak again.

"Wmurf gofmph omf?" Krillin asked through a mouthful of bread.

The genius technician shot him a withering look, taking in the bread still stuffed between his lips with distaste.

"Try speaking without something obstructing that big mouth of yours," she snapped, tugging the bread away before Krillin could react.

"Ow, Bulma, my teeth were in that," Krillin complained, rubbing at the now sensitive spot on his jaw. "What's going on?"

Bulma's expression instantly morphed from disapproval to elation.

"Namek! We're nearly there. The computer says we'll be landing in a little under 20 minutes!"

"Oh really? That's great," Krillin said earnestly, eager to get out and stretch his legs. Though they'd made a few pit stops on their journey and come across a few obstacles (the trip through the magnetic storm that sent the gravity machine in the training room into a frenzy being the most memorable), they hadn't really ever had a sense of reaching a destination and Krillin at least was beginning to get seriously sick of travelling.

"I'll go tell Goku," he said, pivoting on one foot and making to sprint back into the corridor. At the last moment he paused, a horrible thought coming to mind.

"Uh…landing isn't like taking off is it?" he asked nervously, remembering the violent nausea he had felt as the ship shot straight up into the stratosphere.

"No way, it'll be a lot smoother with me at the controls," Bulma told him confidently.

Krillin swallowed. Bulma at the landing controls? With her road rage, it was hardly a comfort. He wisely chose not to comment, taking off and peering through the window into the gravity room, his fist poised above the door.

He stopped, staring through the transparent window, watching his friend performing pull ups like his life depended on it. Since the magnetic storm, Goku had been working in 100 x Earth's gravity, something that Krillin was quite frankly too sensible to try himself. He'd made it all the way to 50 and that was further than he'd ever meant to go.

Goku was sporting an expression of both exhaustion and insane determination. His muscles were straining as he heaved himself up, completely tensed and firm. His gi was shredded and sweat was running down his body to drip onto the red tiles of the training room.

As he hefted himself up one more time, Krillin could just make out his lips moving, forming his son's name.

"Krillin, hurry up! We'll be entering Namek's atmosphere soon and I need you two to be strapped in!"

Bulma's shrill voice carried down the corridor, making Krillin jump and drop the food he was still carrying. Fruits and breads rolled across the corridor and Krillin stood patting his chest to calm his heart.

"Alright, you don't have to deafen me," Krillin muttered as he knocked on the door to the gravity room.

Every time Goku pulled himself up, the image of his son's anguished face crossed the back of his eyelids. Every time he felt like he wanted to give up and call it a day, he remembered the boy's startled cry as the stranger gripped his tail. When he felt defeated, like he would never be good enough to combat the power he had felt emanating from that strange figure, he remembered the moment when he had held his son after being away from the boy for a year, hugging him close.

There was just no way he was going to lose again and if that meant he had to train with his body weighing 100 x what it normally did, then so be it. He would do it, he would get used to this crippling intensity if it inevitably helped his son.

A knock on the door interrupted him and he glanced over at the little window in the doorway, blinking as he noticed Krillin motioning to him. Standing up slowly, he strolled across to the gravity machine and pressed the button, feeling the pressure on his system release.

It was hard as the machine powered down and the room returned back to normal gravity, not to take flying leaps every time he strode forward. He felt almost weightless, like he would float away if he didn't concentrate on anchoring himself down.

"Uh…Bulma says we're literally about to land," Krillin explained as Goku opened the heavy door.

"Oh really, we're here?" Goku asked, both excited at the prospect of reaching their destination and worried that he hadn't had enough time to prepare himself in the recesses of the gravity room.

"Yes, we're here," Bulma called back down the corridor. "And if you two aren't strapped in securely in the next 5 seconds, you're going to end up flat as a pancake when we start the landing procedure."

Goku pulled a face, vaulting down the corridor with his best friend to grab onto the launch seats as the ship started to judder around them. He barely managed to buckle himself in before the ship started to drop. There was a sickening lift in his stomach but he barely felt the G Force at all as they shot downwards. Shifting his gaze outside, he noticed with ignorant distress that an inferno seemed to be ravaging the ship and for one brief, uncomfortable moment, he wondered if they were landing on Namek or if they were trying to land on the surface of some sun.

Krillin curled into his seat and gripped his torso, putting all his energy into keeping his stomach inside his body. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and started to repeat a mantra to himself, ignoring the turbulence as the ship descended and Bulma's frantic mutterings as she adjusted controls.

'_I am a Z Fighter, something like a ship's landing procedure is no big deal to me. I am a Z Fighter, something like a ship's landing procedure is no big deal to me._'

It seemed to go on forever, the seconds stretching on like hours and Krillin was sure that if he ever did anything awful enough to merit going to hell, this is what they would make him do over and over and over again as punishment for his crimes in life.

"Krillin?"

"I am a Z Fighter! Something like a ship's landing procedure is no big deal to me!" Krillin barked, opening his eyes to stare into the confused black eyes of his friend.

"Uh…okay?" Goku said, raising a bewildered eyebrow. "We've landed you know…"

"…I knew that, I did," Krillin affirmed unconvincingly, pulling his cap round to face the right way and yanking it down over his burning face.

Goku smiled at the bald monk. Krillin was never the type to really take his feet off of the ground and yet he'd come with Goku into the furthest reaches of space to help him find his son. A poignant sense of gratitude enveloped him. He really would have to figure out a way to pay his best friend back someday…

Bulma let out a breath of air, completely satisfied with herself and her perfect landing skills. She took a leisurely look out of the window as her reward, noting the pale green colour of the sky, dotted with a few lazy clouds. She grinned, clouds like this were good, it meant that there was a high possibility that the atmosphere was stable.

"Now, I just need to check for any noxious gases, foreign parasites…well I'm sure there's bound to be a few things running rampant out there, it is a whole new world after a-

Bulma cut herself off, frozen in place over the atmospheric scanner she had started to tinker with as she glanced out of the window again only to find Goku and Krillin standing out on the dark grass, no space suits and no clue.

She shrieked in horror and fell over backwards in sheer disbelief.

Outside, Goku breathed in deep, appreciating the fresh air and the breeze that let them know this place was alive. It was nothing like the recycled, regulated air on the space ship, this was transient, changeable and oh so very refreshing. They had landed on a fairly large island, grassy with a few trees and shrubs dotted here and there. There were no discernable cities in the vicinity but the sea was about 20 paces from the ship, lapping gently at the bank. A few more islands were dotted out on the water, smaller than the one they had landed on.

"It's just like Earth," Krillin commented, looking at a particularly tall tree with light coloured wood and a mop of dark turquoise leaves decorating the upper branches.

"No wonder Piccolo felt so at home," Goku muttered, thinking aloud.

"Hey you two IDIOTS!" Bulma yelled, dropping down onto the grass and dusting herself off. Krillin and Goku turned to give her the same blank look. It made her blood boil.

"Surely its common sense not to come out here without a space suit before you've checked out the atmosphere, the gravity, what diseases are lurking around and whatnot. I can't believe you guys could be so thick-headed."

"Well…you're not wearing a space suit Bulma," Krillin pointed out, glaring pointedly at her dress length body warmer and black polo neck.

"Hmph," Bulma huffed, taking out her Dragon radar. "I checked it out first."

Goku glanced down at his feet, testing the soil. He stretched his arms out and held them for a little while, pondering then jumped up and down twice, feeling the air rush through his gi.

"I think the gravity here is at least similar to Earth's…" he decided.

Bulma shot him a dirty look.

"That's _not _what I meant about checking it out Goku," she said, clicking the button on the top of the radar so it would give a reading on the whereabouts of the Dragonballs.

"Hey, look," Bulma said excitedly, thrusting the radar under Krillin's nose. "A Dragonball, they really are the same!"

Krillin blinked at the screen, watching the flashing white orb appearing with the number 1 next to it. He frowned and pressed the button to widen the scope, confudled when he found 5 all gathered in one place.

"Hey look, I think someone else is trying to collect the Dragonballs," Krillin mentioned, feeling a pit of dread forming at the bottom of his stomach. If whoever was collecting them got to make their wish then Krillin, Goku and Bulma would have to wait on Namek for a year before they could bring the others back, a Namekian year which could easily be much much longer than any Earth year and that was only assuming the Namekian Dragonballs played by the same rules as Earth's. What if they didn't come back at all?

"What?" Bulma squawked, snatching the radar back to see for herself.

Suddenly, Goku's head snapped up and he stared with wide eyes as something fell through the atmosphere, something that looked like a pale canon ball. He felt the Ki signature attached to it, a cold, cruel signature ripe with malevolence and automatically became defensive, his mind working to divulge a plan that would allow them to avoid trouble whilst Bulma was in tow.

Krillin noticed his friend become still and followed his gaze upwards, quivering when he saw the ship shooting through the sky.

"Crud, Vegeta," the little monk said.

Bulma's eyes were huge as she glanced up, gawping first at Goku and Krillin, then at up at the pale sky where the Saiyan space pod was rocketing down, creating a real spectacle. She had to stuff her fist in her mouth to stop from screaming.

"Goku, what do we do?" Krillin asked. Though his first honest instinct was to flee, he knew better than to disregard Goku's imput. The guy had a knack for winning these things after all and Krillin trusted him almost more than he trusted his own judgement.

Goku remained silent, weighing up his options, observing as the ship crashed down on a distant shore somewhere. If that really was Vegeta then it was probably better to confront him before he got a chance to use the Dragonballs. Goku had improved _a lot _since their last fight, he could feel it in his own throbbing Ki but there was no telling how much better Vegeta had gotten and if he were to lose at this crucial point, he wouldn't be much help to his missing son. Then there was Bulma to think about. Obviously not a fighter, he wouldn't put it past Vegeta to use her as a weak point.

He stretched out his senses, feeling around the shape of the Ki that had just landed and out, checking for signs of any more trouble.

That's when he felt it.

A power more diabolical than anything he had ever known, a colossal, hideous force.

Impenetrable…inarguable…indestructible.

"What? What's the matter Goku?"

Krillin had seen his friend's face pale and was automatically put on red alert. Anything that could scare Goku like that was going to be a big deal, especially if it could scare him after the monumental leap of power he'd achieved training under 100 x Earth's gravity.

"Krillin, can you feel that?" he asked, pointing off to the right.

Krillin's brow furrowed and he stretched his senses out, straining to find what Goku had managed to detect. When he found it, his knees went weak.

"What the hell is that? It's…what an awful, awesome power…"

Bulma's eyes travelled the length of Goku's outstretched arm and continued into the distance. She took a deep breath, knowing intuitively that the source of her friend's panic was directly involved with the 5 Dragonballs that were already together. Checking the Dragon radar to be sure, she pulled a face when she realised her hunch had been right on target.

"Guys…that's where those Dragonballs are," Bulma told the others.

Goku's expression didn't change but Krillin was suddenly overcome with a bitter sense of defeat.

'_First Vegeta…and now this…this…whoever…and they already have 5 Dragonballs…double crud._'

"Uh…well…maybe it's best if we just forget about this plan and go on home right? It's not like we could take on a power like _that _and expect to win…right Goku? Right?" Krillin asked, nudging his friend in the ribs.

Goku remained uncharacteristically stoic, shifting slightly so Krillin's next rib missed by an inch. His eyes were dark and focussed, still determined despite the impossible odds.

"You and Bulma can go if you want to but I'm staying," he said crisply. "I have to wish my son back; I'm not leaving until I gather all seven Dragonballs and call the eternal dragon. I won't leave him in that situation…"

Power was starting to undulate off of him in waves making the smallest rocks on their island skitter across the dirt.

Krillin sighed, his indecision waning. He couldn't leave Goku to go through this himself, he just couldn't.

"Alright, it was just a…well you know a thought," he suggested, hoisting his backpack up.

"Wait, what?" Bulma asked, bemused. "Are we going home or are we staying?" she turned to Krillin hopefully, thoughts of home at the forefront of her mind, a decent shower, some good food…

"You're welcome to go Bulma but I told Goku I'd help him get his son back," Krillin said simply, like it explained delving headfirst into what was potentially a suicide mission…

She whimpered. You couldn't really argue with good intentions. At this rate, they were going to be the death of her.

Steeling herself, she marched up to the two men, her eyes gleaming deviously.

"Alright, here's the deal," she said, a plan already forming in her mind about how to tackle this highly delicate, complex situation. If they were going to stay on Namek through all this mayhem, so help them, they were going to need her brains and she'd be damned before she'd be the one to prevent Goku from rescuing the sweet little boy she'd met on Roshi's island not so long ago.

"First, we need to get our hands on just one Dragonball, that'll give us some time to think about our next move…"

* * *

They had 5 days before the showdown with Frieza, just 5 days to make sure Gohan was ready. Sensou watched with a critical eye as the boy began battling his opponents for the day, charging forward with a fierce flurry of punches and kicks, opening the way for a few Ki based attacks which included one of Gohan's own making, a fast flying half formed blast that accompanied a fist to the face, successfully blind siding an opponent and packing a punch to boot.

His form was no longer sloppy though, with the short amount of time they'd had to prepare, Sensou had decided to focus less on teaching Gohan complicated techniques and more on mastering the fundamentals and increasing his power level.

Releasing his mannequins at the point where it looked like Gohan might slip up, Sensou watched as the boy quickly changed tactics, avoiding a clash with the bald monk and Piccolo by pushing one of his other opponents into the path of Piccolo's blast.

The warrior god frowned.

Though it was true that Gohan had begun to pick up the skills needed for better self control, Sensou couldn't help but notice whenever he was forced to fight one of his friends or family that he would avoid confrontation altogether rather than face it head on to defend himself, still unwilling to hurt those he loved, even if they were threatening him and even when he knew the creature he was facing was simply an impersonation.

This wasn't exactly the best direction for Gohan to move in. Sensou had no doubt that in the future, the boy would come face to face with one, if not all of his friends and family and if he wasn't prepared to at least defend himself, he wasn't worth Sensou's time.

The warrior god clapped his hands twice, signalling that the fight was over for the time being.

"Hey, what's going on?" Gohan asked, checking both Krillin and Piccolo for injuries with a quick skim of the eyes.

"This is not helping you anymore," Sensou said evenly, his expression pensive. "I think we need to change tactics for the few days we have left before you are to face Frieza. This may require some…re-shuffling of your opponents."

On a whim, Sensou called another mannequin and Gohan watched in awe as it slipped slowly into Goku's form, an out of place malefic grin on its features. Up until now, the boy had not seen any of the mannequins change and it clarified the fact that these things weren't actually his friends and family, further proof that what Sensou had told him about them being things to practice self control with was true.

He glanced up at the creature, watching as its expression softened, reacting to the Ki signature it was copying from the real Goku. He raised an eyebrow and noted as Sensou called the other nameless fighters off leaving only Krillin, Piccolo and Goku.

Oh…

"S-sir…" Gohan began uncertainly, watching as each of his friends squatted down in a ready stance.

"Sir, I can't fight-

He dodged the first one of Piccolo's attacks just barely, the demon lord's fist shooting through the lingering black tresses of hair as he bent back and rolled out of the way. On a reflex, he leapt up yelping, narrowly avoiding one of Krillin's signature Destructo disks.

"Sir, I don't want to fight-

He had to throw his hands in front of him to catch Goku's knee, using the momentum to rebound himself into the air. Pulling a face, he clutched at the place the knee would have hit and threw himself sideways as a Special Beam Canon spiralled out a hair's breadth away from destroying his left ear. Gohan heard the faint whistle of Ki as it blasted through the trees and lit up the dark forest in an array of purple and yellow light.

He had a moment to make up his mind about what to do next and launched a half hearted Jinsumi in an attempt to scatter his opponents long enough to make an escape. The light of the gathered Ki ignited, barrelling down towards his friends and he took off in the backlash, knowing they would all be able to dodge the attack no problem. He wove his way through the trees and stopped by a clump of dark berry bushes, squatting low.

His heart was thumping rapidly in his chest and he struggled to control his breathing as adrenaline made him flighty. He struggled to surpress his Ki and hide himself, knowing that the mannequins would be searching for him.

He needed a moment to think.

'_How am I supposed to do this?_' he asked himself. '_There's no way I can avoid hurting all three of them…what does Sensou want me to do?_'

Gohan was a smart boy and as soon as he'd asked himself the question, he knew the answer.

"He wants me to hurt them," he whispered, throwing a glare in the last direction he had seen his mentor.

He felt the appearance of someone beside him but was too slow to react. Green hands gripped his shoulders, spinning him round so he was facing the cold face of his almost mentor. Icy fear grew up in his stomach as he tried to figure out what to do, indecisive about defending himself, even though he knew this wasn't really Piccolo.

Piccolo took the advantage, ramming his knee into Gohan's gut so the boy was winded, falling to his knees and spitting up bile.

"Ow," he groaned, struggling to stand back up.

As he tried to force himself up, Goku and Krillin landed beside Piccolo. All three of them stared down at Gohan with disapproving eyes. The boy felt a twinge of shame as he spread his feet and raised his small fists, preparing to defend himself.

'_I won't hurt them…I won't,_' he thought to himself valiantly, bracing himself for the coming pain.

And come it did. Goku charged first, kicking at the boy's exposed side. Gohan managed to block it but the force of the kick caused the kid's body to bend sideways, creating an opportunity for Krillin to perform the same kick on his opposite side. When it connected, Gohan went blind for a moment, feeling the jar to one of his organs deep inside. Piccolo didn't wait for Gohan to recover, aiming a well placed club to the kid's head which knocked him into the dirt.

When he stood up again, his face was bloody, one of his cheeks was swollen as a tooth had pierced the sensitive skin inside his mouth. A trickle of dark blood ran down his forehead, diverging at his eyebrow to spare his eyes.

The ruthless battering continued with Gohan trying desperately to block, slowly getting faster but it was obvious the kid would soon be rendered unconscious if this kept up. Sensou watched this display both impressed and disappointed. No matter how many hits the kid took, no matter how much he was hurting, he still struggled to pull himself up, determined to remain standing – that was an amiable state of mind indeed, to face a battle that he was convinced he couldn't win and keep getting up.

On the other hand, no matter how many hits he took, no matter how brutal, he still wouldn't lash out and fight back. The warrior god took a deep breath in and called off his mannequins, moving down until he was standing in front of the barely conscious boy.

It took a while for Gohan to see Sensou. He felt sick and waves of coloured dots kept breaking over his eyes like the waves of the sea on the shore. Even though he could feel his feet firmly planted on the ground, the ground itself seemed to be moving beneath him, discombobulating him. When he realised his mentor was standing right in front of him, he let out a feral growl and put the last of his energy into a drunken punch that glanced off of the warrior god's shoulder plate.

Sensou raised an aporetic eyebrow.

"You are in no condition to try anything like that," Sensou told him, amusement in his tone that just made Gohan angrier.

He stood as strong as he could, ignoring the quiver in his legs, his face steadily going from pale grey to light purple as he endeavoured to keep breathing. He knew he would have to give in to sweet oblivion soon and he wanted answers.

"Why'd you make me fight my friends?" he demanded, standing as straight as he could, muscles tensed.

Sensou's amused expression died off to make room for something more sombre.

"Because you need to be ready to face _anything_," Sensou told the boy, crossing his arms over his chest, watching the way Gohan's tail swished agitatedly from side to side.

"You are slowly mastering the art of self control, but you can't let this impede your judgement, do you understand?"

Gohan frowned and shook his head, confused. The whole thing seemed hugely contradictory to him. Why learn not to hit only to learn that he was supposed to hit? It didn't follow a logical train of thought at all.

Sensou's face remained completely placid, a sure sign that he was thinking about how to proceed. Eventually, he spoke.

"Life has many twists and turns boy, as does battle. You need to be prepared to face absolutely anything, to face situations that you never thought would apply to you in your wildest dreams. There may come a time when, for whatever reason, your allies turn on you and you are forced to fight them. If you hesitate, if you aren't willing to do what's necessary…"

The warrior god trailed off, letting the child fill in the blanks for himself.

Gohan stayed stock still, his mind working at 100mph. He couldn't begin to fathom a situation in which he would have to face his allies but he knew there was an awful lot of evil in the universe and that evil had ways of trying to manipulate everything around it. He glanced up at the mannequins of Piccolo, Krillin and his father and then at Sensou.

"You need to be able to make the conscious decision to attack if necessary – to save yourself when the time comes and only inflict marginal damage in the process. It's about learning to incapacitate rather than kill…because if you end up in this situation," he gestured to the mannequins around him, each sporting the face of someone Gohan loved. "You don't want to lose control."

Gohan's frown deepened as he thought about it, understanding for the most part. This lesson was about judgement, making the right calls, not just excercising restraint at all times as Gohan found natural unless he was angry.

"If…if I learn to hurt them…_will _I hurt them?" the boy asked timidly, wiping at the blood trickling down his face and smearing it over his pale cheek.

Sensou chose not to brush the question aside as childish foolishness, giving it due regard. He couldn't help the sense of elation that flushed through him as he realised his previous training had worked perfectly. The idea that Gohan was a real threat to his own family had been firmly planted, a seed putting down roots but yet to blossom into a flower. This new training, in a very roundabout way, would help this seed to fully germinate, so that Gohan would eventually come to realise that he was better off with Sensou, that his beloved friends and family were safer without him.

But how to answer the present question…

"That is entirely up to you," Sensou said, pleased when he saw the look of resigned hurt cross the kid's young face.

Now that Gohan had gotten his answers, however thought provoking they may be, his resolve left him and he crumpled, falling into the foetal position on the hard ground. To his own surprise, he remained conscious, watching as Sensou's feet moved towards him, his huge boots kicking up flecks of mud. When he reached the boy, he crouched down, saying something that Gohan couldn't quite catch.

He ached everywhere and the side that had taken that brutal kick from Krillin wept every time he tried to move. His stomach was churning rebelliously and he fought not to up-chuck more bile, knowing that at this angle it would spray Sensou's boot, something the warrior god would not tolerate.

He took a moment to reflect on the positives of just giving up and falling to the allure of darkness waiting behind his eyelids but in the back of his mind, his father's voice was yelling at him to stay awake. It was a memory of another time, another place…Gohan couldn't recall much detail but he remembered that voice…

'_Don't close your eyes Gohan, you have a concussion. Promise me you won't close your eyes, you just keep looking at daddy, alright?_'

Gohan kept his eyes trained on Sensou's boot though they were becoming impossibly heavy. He felt strong hands beneath him, lifting him up and his jumbled mind automatically fixated on the idea that it was his father coming to take care of him.

"I'm tired daddy…" he mumbled, forcing his eyes open as they sank.

There was a muffled voice and he felt something slide down his throat. At first he spluttered, coughing it up on a reflex but then he took it gratefully, noting in the back of his mind that there was a sweet tang to this strange water.

Immediately, his aches and pains lessened considerably. He sighed, relaxing as he felt the pain leak out of his organs and his eyes closed against his will. Though he continued to fight against the darkness, he could no longer win.

Sensou held the sleeping boy and listened to the regular tick of his heart beat, checking his vital signs following the administration of his medicine. Once he had checked the kid's airways and made sure his heart was beating out a steady rhythm, he took off, taking the child back to the make-shift shelter he had been living in for the last few months.

He'd let the boy rest for now. In a few hours, Gohan would be back to normal and they would resume training.

The boy still had his friends to defeat after all.

* * *

Vegeta's head whipped round as he felt the spike in power somewhere to his left, his scouter beeped to confirm what he was sensing. The numbers were really quite alarming when they finally levelled out, much higher than Frieza's wing men Dodoria and Zarbon and that presented a veritable level of threat to his mission. He frowned as he probed the signature with his senses, noting that the Ki was somehow familiar. Was it a member of Frieza's Ginyu Force? Surely not…

Another pulse of Ki drew his attention and he watched as the Saiyan space pod crashed through the upper atmosphere. This time he knew who it was and he smirked cruelly. Pushing his power level down as he had learnt to do on Earth, he simply sat and waited for this new arrival to find him.

It didn't take long. The recognisable figure landed in front of him with a bursting aura and an invigortated smile on his purple face. Vegeta simply stayed sitting where he was on the rock he had chosen as a make-shift seat, exhuding confidence.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" Cui asked, folding his arms and fixing the prince with a knowing smile. "A little lost monkey finally trying to make his way home?"

Vegeta said nothing, a few stray jubilant chuckles escaping as his opponent advanced. A tiny frown marred Cui's alien features for a moment as he judged the prince's composure but he brushed it aside, seeing it as arrogant and totally misplaced pride, nothing else.

"Where have you been Vegeta?" he asked darkly. "Lord Frieza isn't very happy that you took off on your own mission. What were you after? Dragonballs perchance? Went in completely the wrong direction if you were looking for those, didn't you…"

Vegeta's smile widened and Cui's expression faltered. Met with such brash and overbearing confidence, he was starting to become unnerved though he knew he had nothing to fear from Vegeta. The prince's power level was still lower than his own…

"Feeling chatty today, aren't we Cui?" Vegeta taunted, standing up slowly.

Cui's eyes widened as Vegeta slipped into a battle ready stance, his expression inviting, daring Cui to do the same so they could spar. Dubiously, Cui flicked the scouter, reading the prince's power level. He sighed in relief when the numbers stopped ticking over.

It really was just misplaced arrogance making the prince so cocky.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you," Cui commented, gesturing to Vegeta's stance. "You know I'm much more powerful than you are."

This time, Vegeta couldn't keep it in. He erupted in a full, hard laughter fit, his harsh guffaws echoing off of the surrounding Cliffside.

Cui simply stared at the prince, wondering if he'd gone insane in his last battle on Earth. He'd heard that the prince had returned to the main station beaten to within an inch of his life. Perhaps the people he had fought out in the cold universe had tortured him before he was able to escape…perhaps it had pushed the prince over the edge…

"Oh Cui, I feel sorry for you," Vegeta said when he finally calmed down, wiping a stray jovial tear from his face. He smiled at his adversary.

"I think you should know that I learnt a few tricks while I was on Earth," Vegeta boasted, shifting his weight on the soil.

"Oh yeah? What tricks?" Cui asked, going along with Vegeta's ploy. "Did it involve learning how to turn tail and run from a battle?"

Vegeta's grin turned feral. His eyes were alight.

"I learned to hide my power."

Cui was in the middle of a pitying expression when the scouter over his eye started throwing out wild numbers, numbers previously inconceivable for the Saiyan prince. The purple soldier watched, first in awe and then in horror as the numbers climbed well over anything that he himself had ever achieved, as a bluish, Ki fuelled aura erupted around the Saiyan and as the stones littering the island started to tremble, rising into the air and disintegrating into swirling matter around his adversary.

"Ah…what the-

The numbers on the scouter were passing into the realms of Frieza's wingmen and still the prince's power was increasing.

With a yell, Vegeta capped his power and faced Cui, loving how his previous superior cowered before him.

"Now then Cui," Vegeta said, purposefully taking two controlled steps forward. "What are we going to do with you I wonder?"

Cui had been rendered speechless. Terror flashed across his eyes, his whole body shook. It was one thing to deal with Frieza and his men, they at least considered him useful, a seasoned veteran of war that could be used to control unruly troops. With Vegeta it was different, the prince despised him, despised how Cui had treated him and he had no use for the purple soldier.

With only one real option, Cui took off, his aura flaring as he flew at top speed, aiming to get as far away from Vegeta as his powers would allow.

For a few minutes he flew without looking back, putting all his concentration into his speed. Once he was sure he'd put a good 10 mile distance between himself and the prince, he let himself relax a bit, wondering what he was going to do now.

"Behind you," Vegeta stage whispered, appearing behind the purple soldier, causing the alien to jump out of his skin.

The prince didn't give Cui time to recover, knocking him out of the sky with one well placed punch.

"Vegeta, wait, we can talk about this!" Cui pleaded as he flew towards the ground, dark blood spewing from his lips as he fell.

"Sorry Cui, I never really liked you and you know you're of no use to me at all," Vegeta said, gathering energy in his outstretched hands.

* * *

_Will Goku manage to get his wish from the eternal dragon? Will Gohan ever be able to fully master the art of self control? What will happen when the time comes to face Frieza?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…Adventure Time!_

_(hides from the fear demon in my belly button)_

_A review on this story is worth TWO BELGIAN COOKIES! Imaginary ones…that is (sweat drop)_


	12. A Conscious Response

_Ah, I've finally mustered up enough funds to start buying the DBZ manga. Three sweet volumes are on the way to me to aid in the cognitive process when writing this monstrosity (beams) A few things as always:_

_1) A warning for warped events – believe it or not, Gohan's absence this saga has seriously shifted things. Even I hadn't anticipated just how much until I came to write this part and was like: 'oh but this would happen' and 'oh that can't happen'. I've read through it multiple times to make sure it makes sense etc._

_2) Thanks to all reviewers, favers and readers so far – I really REALLY appreciate you guys and feel it appropriate to spread the love (kisses screen)_

_3) Spelling, grammar, rebellious plot bunnies and other important flotsam has been checked but I'm pretty sure I've missed things with my unobservant eyes of doom so apologies. I will overhaul this once its completed. _

* * *

**11: A Conscious Response**

Frieza was losing his patience and the more Frieza lost his patience the more the death toll of the crew aboard his ship rose. Already today, three people had been blasted to the next dimension, the last one for spilling a drop of Frieza's drink in the main room after tripping over one of the Dragonballs strewn haphazardly about.

At the moment, he was seated on his throne in the main room, his tail beating a crater into the walls, blood red liquid sloshing around the glass he held in a clawed hand. His expression was anything but satisfied. His subordinate, Zarbon, stood quietly by his side, sweat beginning to bead on his forehead as he considered the possibility that Dodoria might not succeed in his mission. Namek was a large planet and without the scouters, it would be like trying to find a flame haired needle in a hay stack. If he didn't succeed, Frieza was likely to take out his frustrations on more men or worse, on _him_.

"Zarbon!" Frieza barked suddenly, causing the warrior to start uncomfortably.

"Yes…Lord Frieza?" he asked uncertainly, trying not to show fear, knowing how it would wet his overlord's appetite for devastation.

"I'm giving Dodoria one hour. If he fails to retrieve our wayward prince and present him to me in that time, you are to go out after them. Do you understand?"

Zarbon swallowed the lump in his throat and bowed his head.

"Yes lord Frieza," Zarbon affirmed, breathing a mental sigh of relief. If Dodoria wasn't able to find Vegeta, which was probably likely considering Vegeta's adaptability and strategic intelligence, then at least Zarbon was permitted to try for it himself before Frieza really lost his temper. That just couldn't happen, not to him.

"When I get my hands on that impudent monkey, he will wish he had never been born," Frieza spat, more to himself than to Zarbon. "How dare he take one of the last Dragonballs…how dare he defy my desires…"

The warrior stared at his malignant overlord, overwrought with sudden fear and thanked his lucky stars that he wasn't the prince of all Saiyans right now.

* * *

Goku and Krillin twigged as Vegeta's power level rose substantially and turned together to look back the way they had come. Bulma stumbled over the ridge they'd been walking towards and plopped down on the grass.

"Oh good, we're taking a break," she said, flopping back until she was lying spread eagled, glancing up at the clouds.

"Krillin…" Goku muttered, feeling his own Ki rise slightly in response to battle exposure. The Saiyan blood within him was starting to pump, making him itch to join the fight though he knew this wasn't his battle to fight.

Krillin glanced over at his friend, a little perturbed. He could feel Goku's excitement warring with his rational thought process, his Ki oscillating feverishly. This was something the bald monk would never be able to understand, he'd never had trouble thinking clearly about the situation at hand, had never been plagued by the animalistic desire to abandon all and enter the fray. He supposed it was Goku's self control that made him a true Earthling…rather than a true Saiyan…

Vegeta's power was gargantuan compared to that of his opponent's and in a moment, both Goku and Krillin felt as a life was snuffed out.

"Hey, how come we can't fly again?" Bulma complained, slowly pulling herself up into a cross legged position on the grass. She was completely exhausted. No matter what her personal trainer on Earth said about her being in great shape, she was seriously struggling with this rough terrain.

"We told you, flying puts out way too much energy and if we're going to try and get our hands on one Dragonball, we're going to have to think stealthy," Krillin explained exasperatedly.

Bulma was by all means a genius. There wasn't a problem she couldn't solve if she put her mind to it but when it came to Ki and martial arts, she was totally clueless. He wondered briefly how she'd managed to remain so ignorant, having known martial artists for most of her life, but then he vaguely recalled an argument she and Yamcha had gotten into over the whole thing. He didn't remember the finer details but he did know that Bulma had stubbornly refused to listen to anything related to the subject afterwards; out of spite or pride, he never did figure it out.

"Do you think we should go back for the ship?" Krillin asked, concerned about his ticket off of Piccolo's home world should the situation get out of hand.

Goku shook his head, his face serious.

"It's like Bulma said, if we move it around too much, we'll attract too much suspicious attention. Best to leave it where it is and have them all think it's a regular Namekian space ship."

"Hey guys, what's going on?" Bulma asked, gauging the urgent tone in her companion's voices, the speculative frown marring Goku's features.

Krillin was about to answer but at that moment, they felt as Vegeta's Ki took off, heading straight for them.

They'd been targeted.

"So much for stealth," the bald monk said, darting forward to grab Bulma around the waist, launching himself into the air at the same time as Goku.

"HEY! A little warning please!" Bulma yelled, yanking the bottom of her dress-like body warmer down as the air whooshed beneath it.

"What do you think gave us away?" Krillin shouted over the wind, ignoring Bulma as he and Goku sped through the air, the green clouds parting before them in a swirling mess.

Goku frowned, knowing the answer. He glanced at Bulma's bewildered face and cursed himself silently.

"It must have been my raising power level," Goku admitted, promising himself that if Vegeta caught up with them, he would do everything it took to prevent the Saiyan prince from laying a finger on either of his friends. "Vegeta must have another one of those scouters."

Bulma stiffened in Krillin's arms, her eyes widening in sudden terror.

"WHAT? Vegeta? He's following us?"

She glanced back over Krillin's shoulder, her heart racing wildly.

'_Oh please don't let him catch up…_'

"Krillin," Goku said, earning the monk's attention as they flew. "Take Bulma down to the ground and head for the nearby rock formations, I'll try and lead him away by increasing my power output."

Krillin frowned indignantly, staring at his friend with obstinate eyes.

"No way I'm gonna let you face him on your own, I've got your back bro."

Goku smiled into the wind gratefully, unruly hair whipping out over his face.

"Thanks Krillin but this is my fault. I promised King Kai I'd fix whatever I broke on this trip, I guess the same promise applies to you as well. Besides, I need you to look out for Bulma."

"Huh?" Krillin started, completely baffled by Goku's thought process, staring wide-eyed as his friend started to veer off, charting his own course.

"But Goku!" The bald monk called after his friend, hoping to make him pause and reconsider this strategy.

"Take Bulma down to the ground," Goku repeated as he pelted through the pale green sky, nothing but a white dot on the horizon in a matter of seconds.

Increasing his output slightly, knowing it would make the numbers on Vegeta's scouter jump, Goku sped up. He skirted around the land masses, flying through narrow gaps and holes – purposefully taking a route that would make him move around more, hoping to create a sequacious pattern that would intrigue the prince enough to spur a chase.

Sure enough, he felt as Vegeta's Ki signature veered away from the dwindling sparks of Krillin and Bulma and breathed a mental sigh of relief. Slowly, he let his erratic flight route level out and started searching the surrounding areas for a good place to have a confrontation. Eventually, he settled on a flat stretch of plain, devoid of plant life but with a semi-circle of rocks on the far side providing a natural barrier against the water. Halting in the air, he started to descend, letting out a breath as he touched down. He turned to face his oncoming opponent.

Vegeta's Ki signature swelled and Goku flexed his fingers, willing himself to stay calm, collected. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't excited about the prospect of fighting Vegeta again. The whole experience of going head to head with the Saiyan prince on Earth, while essentially extremely dangerous, had been invigorating. He'd been _moved _by the ordeal.

Now that Krillin and Bulma weren't in any immediate danger, it was easier to let himself feel that same excitement. The adrenaline was starting to pulse through his system and he decided to get in a few warm up stretches before the prince touched down, bending down to touch his toes and cracking his stiff, travel-worn neck from side to side.

That's when he heard the whimper somewhere behind the semi-circle of rocks, the distinct, high pitched sound of a child scared witless.

* * *

Gohan was not doing well.

"Remember what I told you about a conscious response!" Sensou barked as Gohan lost his composure and blasted the mannequin of Krillin, digging deep into the subconscious well of power in his panic.

The now familiar look of guilt and hurt burnt across the boy's features as he watched the descension of his father's friend. He looked up at his mentor with troubled eyes and opened his mouth to say something but was forced into an awkward block as both Piccolo and Goku came at him from both sides, forcing him to concentrate.

Sensou fell back, rubbing the bridge of his nose and sighing audibly. He had met Gohan's difficulty with this particular exercise disdainfully, recognising it as a mental block that would need to be overcome. This mental block, in this particularly crucial time, was a great set back to the boy's scheduled development. It was all about willpower. If the boy could only reinforce his resolve, if he would only _choose_ to let go of his restraints…

But of course, he was being stubborn, still unwilling to hurt those he cared about even if it was for the greater good.

Despite Gohan's difficulty progressing in this particular area of training, it wasn't a total waste of time. The boy would often sustain serious injuries trying to maintain the block and flee strategy he had adopted and every time he was brought back from the brink of death by Sensou's potions, his base power seemed to shoot through the roof. The warrior god smirked as he thought about it. This was the main reason that he had let Gohan keep his tail. The tail provided a booster so that every time Gohan's power grew, it was buffered up by the potential in the Saiyan legacy.

Surprisingly, Sensou had no interest in the transformation from humanoid to great ape, at least not at the moment. The fact of the matter was that Namek had three suns and even if he was to teach the boy the technique that replicated perfect full moonlight, the combined light of those suns would drown it out.

In this battle, that particular skill was useless.

Sensou grunted, roused from his musings as the boy was punched back into one of the broader tree trunks by the mannequin of Goku. Piccolo followed this up with a rhythmic set of punches to the ribs. A cracking sound seemed to cut the air in two and Gohan cried out, his complexion instantly paling. Satisfied for the moment, Piccolo fell back, allowing the boy to crumple into a pain induced heap on the floor.

The warrior god breathed out slowly and flew down, his feet touching softly on the ground as he walked towards the boy. He made a noise of resignation as he realised the child had all but disappeared under that unruly hair of his. Grabbing the black locks, he hoisted the boy up and shoved a potion down his throat before he could protest.

Gohan was grateful for the instant relief, his eyes falling open and darting to the inert form of Krillin lying unmoving a few feet away. He took a deep breath and tried to lock down the familiar feelings of grief and loss.

'_He's not really Krillin, he's not really Krillin,_' he thought to himself quietly, trying to soothe the guilt sitting uncomfortably on his chest.

'_You are a danger to them._'

"I think we'll take a break for now," Sensou said evenly, calling off the mannequins and allowing Gohan to stand unaided. He twisted, testing his mobility and felt at the cracked rib that had repaired itself following Sensou's potion. It was stiff and a little swollen but otherwise perfect. In a few more minutes, there would be no indication of injury at all.

"You need a hair cut," the warrior god stated simply, gesturing to one of the tree stumps left behind after a Ki blast gone awry several months before. Gohan blinked.

"Really?" he asked, moving forward to perch on the edge of the stump, his feet dangling above ground.

"If you keep it as long as it is now, it could be used against you. When you fly out, the movement must travel the length of your hair, adding a couple of extra seconds to any attack," Sensou said, reaching down for his knife and hacking into the child's hair freely.

Gohan pulled a face, thinking about it.

"How come you have long hair?" he asked evenly.

Sensou smiled smugly, his eyes blazing as the hair fell like black rain before him.

"Because no one can move as fast as me, I don't need to worry about my hair," he replied.

"Does that mean if I get as fast as you, I can keep my long hair?" Gohan asked, tugging at one of the shorter tresses and shivering as he felt the exposure on his back.

Sensou chuckled.

"Good luck with that one kid."

Silence fell between them, interrupted only by the soft sound of Sensou's blade slicing through Gohan's hair. At first, Gohan was suitably distracted thinking about the loss of his long hair but then his thoughts wandered back to his present concerns. He eyed the mannequins waiting idly on the sidelines, ready to obey Sensou's orders and attack. He sighed inwardly.

It just wasn't fair, he was never going to get this. He was never going to be able to hurt the ones he loved, no matter how brutally they attacked him. Even if Sensou assured him that it was better to hurt rather than kill…even hurting them…wouldn't that make him even more of a monster?

'_Will I hurt them?_'

'_That is entirely up to you._'

He fidgeted agitatedly in his seat, causing Sensou to pause.

"Sit still," the warrior god snapped. "What's the matter with you?"

Gohan stopped moving but Sensou could feel the shift in his Ki. It was much more positive, stronger. His tail moved out beside him, bobbing up and down.

"If it's alright with you sir, I'd like to get back to training," Gohan said, hopping off of the edge of the stump he had been sitting on.

Sensou's eyes narrowed but he nodded to the mannequins scattered around, watching as the boy took off, his new short hair flying out behind him. Smoothly stepping over the stump, he took Gohan's position sitting on it, his feet flat against the floor as he watched the unfolding battle.

Immediately, he could see the difference.

Gohan fell into a battle ready stance and eyed the three mannequins surrounding him, a new mannequin replacing the old one of Krillin. A cold, cruel smirk was etched into Goku's face but the eyes radiated kindness, almost like he was putting on the façade of sadism to help Gohan with the resolve to attack him.

The boy closed his eyes and pictured Vegeta's planet destroyer the moment it had been launched at his father, the malevolent light bathing the arena in a deadly glow. In his mind's eye, he saw himself, tiny, weak…unable to call up the energy required to fight off Vegeta's attack and save his precious father.

What would he have done?

He could have done what Piccolo had done. If he had been brave enough to shoot down and knock his father out with a clean sweep, he could have taken the blast for his daddy and Goku would have woken up later without injury.

His eyes snapped open and he blocked the first scissor kick to his head with crossed arms, countering with a swift kick of his own by using Goku's leg as leverage to propel himself into his father's gut.

Goku fell back winded and Sensou's eyes lit up on the ground.

_Yes._

Piccolo was the next to try an attack, aiming a tackle to the boy's torso. Gohan took a deep breath and concentrated on the memory he had picked out for this.

He remembered the moment when he had been dropped into battle, the disconcerting heat and light, realising that the attack meant for Tien was now bombarding towards him. He had no time to think, no time to form some sort of evasive reaction…but if he had…if he had known what was going to happen, that his former mentor, Piccolo, would throw himself into harm's way like that to protect him, would he have been able to stop it?

All it would have taken was one little Ki blast aimed at the right place, a tiny, unexpected attack that could have slowed Piccolo down and saved his life.

Thrusting his hands out before him, the boy let out a cry and released a Jinsumi wave just big enough to blow Piccolo out of the sky. The demon lord fell for a few seconds before catching himself and staring daggers at the small boy.

Gohan allowed himself a small smile.

This he could live with.

On the ground, Sensou had launched up out of his seat and was observing this battle transfixed. Inwardly, he was amazed that Gohan had been able to break his mental barrier so suddenly, so completely. What had changed his mind?

The warrior god let out a tiny chuckle.

'_If I'd have known it was his hair holding him back, I would have cut it off ages ago,_' he thought to himself jovially.

In the air, the boy battled to keep his power stable, forcing it not to spike up with his elation at finally managing to achieve the purpose of the 'conscious response' training. He fell into the same blocking pattern he had used as all three moved in, checking for an opening where he was sure he could maintain perfect control as he attacked.

A few hits connected, blood splattered the front of Gohan's Ki, absorbed in the black but Gohan didn't really seem to notice. As one, the three fighters fell back, each gathering Ki for signature moves and Gohan seized his chance. He launched forward on an adrenaline rush using all his concentration to aim well placed chops to pressure points, rendering Piccolo and Krillin unconscious in seconds. The boy grabbed at their clothes before they could plummet and shot down, placing them gently on the ground, pleased beyond words when he saw that there was hardly a mark on them both, even where Gohan had hit them.

Goku was the only one left and Gohan was ready for him.

He turned adamant eyes on the form of his father, feeling the catch in his system, the prick in his eyes as he thought about what he was going to do.

'_You are a danger to them._'

'_Will I hurt them?_'

'_That is entirely up to you._'

He squared his shoulders and widened his stance, illuminated by the bright blue Ki that accompanied the familiar Kamehameha wave. The mannequin in the sky looked exactly the same as his father had the day that he had shown him that particular move and it was hard to try and keep himself in check, to master himself enough to react correctly to this situation.

And today was the day.

The boy placed his hands by his side and held them one over the other in the air.

Sensou's jaw dropped.

"Ka…" both father and son said together.

"No, BOY DON'T YOU DARE!" Sensou yelled, watching angrily as the blue light started to ball in Gohan's palms.

"Me…ha…me…"

The whole world was blue, the whole universe was blue. Gohan was both euphoric and afraid that he had managed to replicate his father's technique without the proper training so effortlessly. Perhaps Sensou's instruction was paying off after all.

He heard the warrior god's enraged warning but by then, he didn't care. He was proud to be his father's son, was proud that he had been able to figure this out by himself and strengthen the bond between himself and Goku.

"HA!" Both father and son cried out.

The waves crashed forward and collided, sending out a shock wave of heat and light that caused the warrior god to shut his eyes tight and raise his Ki, creating an energy barrier between himself and the repercussions of this insanity. The power of the waves levelled the trees in the surrounding area and blew the unconscious forms of Piccolo and Krillin away.

The two balls fused together in the sky for a moment before Gohan's attack started to beat a path through his father's. Sensou simply shook his head as the wave ate through Goku's energy and absorbed him.

There was a blood curdling scream as the mannequin was cremated within the core of Gohan's attack and a bang as the energy exploded, bursting over the land in a shower of bright phosphorescent sparks.

When Sensou's eyes finally re-adjusted to the naturally dim light of this dark world, he found the boy kneeling in the mud, staring blindly at the place where Goku had been in the sky.

Gohan couldn't believe what he had done.

'_You are a danger to them._'

How could he have done that?

'_It is entirely up to you._'

How could he have let himself lose control like that?

'_You are a danger to them._'

How could he have created something so terrifying, so monstrous?

He dared not move, afraid somehow that if he did, he would have to acknowledge the monster that was himself. If he stayed perfectly still, perhaps he could pretend that this turn of events wasn't real. Perhaps he could just stay frozen in this moment forever and not have to face up to the fact that he was some kind of…_nightmare._

Sensou's boot appeared in his peripheral vision but he didn't react. He didn't want to breathe.

Sensou glared down at the boy.

"You lost control, didn't you," he said quietly and the clipped tone made his words more sinister. Gohan said nothing.

"Why in the nine HELLS would you try something like that? Without the proper training…_specifically when I warned you not to._"

Sensou's raised voice seemed to jerk the boy into responding. Shakily, he turned and regarded his mentor, tears filling his eyes.

The warrior god folded his arms across his chest and stared at the boy angrily.

"What have you learned from this?"

Tears spilled down the boy's cheeks, intermingling with the blood that had been spilt during his battle with his friends. He shook his head violently from side to side and stood up, backing away.

"I…I don't want to do this anymore," he sobbed, glancing over at the bodies of Krillin and Piccolo, taking a stab to the heart when he realised they had been thrown into harm's path by his outrageous attack.

"Wrong," Sensou barked, taking a step towards the boy. "You have learnt to heed the warnings of your master, you have learnt to maintain your self control at _all times._ You have learnt not to get cocky, do I make myself clear?"

Gohan's face was pained but he halted his retreat, nodding as the tears slipped down his face.

"You _will _continue to train in the art of conscious response. You will master the ability to inflict incapacitorial damage on _anyone _you face so that you can be ready to face _anything. _DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?"

Gohan nodded again, his face flushing with the force of this new trauma, with the weight of the sodden emotions battering his heart.

"Good," Sensou conceded, letting up. "Mistakes are to be learned from boy, remember this so that we don't have a repeat incident and remember that this is why you are here, to learn to harness your abilities in a safe, consequence free environment."

Gohan nodded again, the barrage of tears slowing.

"We're done for now," Sensou said gruffly, turning on the shattered demi-Saiyan and striding briskly through the trees towards the dimension door.

Gohan stayed where he was for a while longer, his eyes passing guiltily from the devastated plant life to the place where his father had been completely obliterated. Despite Sensou's words that mistakes were to be learned from, the boy felt fresh tears rolling down his cheeks as he thought about the ruin he had caused.

'_I will never use my father's attack again._'

* * *

Vegeta spiralled through the air, made bold by his recent victory against Cui, a long time tormenter. A feeling of freedom ran through his system, buoying him up, causing him to want to trace the power he had sensed flaring up in his mind's eye as he'd finally done away with his purple friend. For a moment, that strange power signature had felt a little overwhelming but he didn't care. If it was stronger than him, he would simply keep fighting until his power level matched his opponents. There was nothing he couldn't do after all, he was the prince of all Saiyans, a Super Saiyan!

He felt the big signature split off from two tiny ones and decided to ignore the civilians, snaking round in the air to follow this mysterious power until he could confront it. He smiled as he felt the power bobbing tauntingly around in front of him, deliberately flaunting itself so he would give chase.

"You're either very stupid or very strong my friend," the prince muttered, following the evasive trail onwards.

Suddenly, he felt something speeding towards him and halted in mid-air, looking back over his shoulder. It was a big power reading, no doubt about that but it still wasn't a match for Vegeta and his newfound powers. He grinned as he felt around the shape of it and realised it was one of Frieza's wing men, Zarbon or Dodoria.

"So…Frieza's out looking for me. It must be because of the ball I've hidden, I doubt he'd be too concerned about Cui's death," Vegeta said to himself, descending onto a nearby island to wait for the encounter.

'_He must be furious,_' Vegeta thought delightedly, picturing the flustered frustration on Frieza's normally calm features.

Sure enough, within a few minutes, Dodoria's large form appeared in the air and Vegeta smirked, waiting for him to touch down. He frowned slightly as he watched the wingman approach, flying forward in a zig zag pattern that made him look drunk. It was only when he got a little closer that the prince realised he wasn't wearing a scouter. He had no idea where Vegeta was.

"Hey fatty," the prince called up, waving. "I'm down here, having trouble finding me without your scouter?"

Dodoria's small eyes narrowed, fixing on the tiny form of the Saiyan prince. He growled under his breath.

"Fatty huh? That the best you can come up with, filthy simian?" Dodoria asked as he floated leisurely down to meet his opponent.

Vegeta's smile widened. He was good at trash talk.

"I just want to make sure you have a truthful body image Dodoria. It's important in the realms of martial arts to know yourself after all."

"Oh, well then I guess you must already be aware of how chronically _short _you are," Dodoria retaliated, enjoying how Vegeta's lip flicked up in disgust.

"What do you want with me Dodoria?" Vegeta asked, playing with the rim of his scouter as he eyed his pink opponent.

Dodoria's piggy eyes shot up to Vegeta's scouter and then back down to the prince's pensive face. He sniffed evenly and tried to gauge the Saiyan prince.

"Frieza is not happy with you Vegeta," Dodoria began. "You've destroyed one of the villages and hidden one of the Dragonballs, delaying Frieza's quest for immortality."

He held out a hand, Vegeta remained impassive as he regarded it.

"Hand over your scouter and come back with me and you may yet be forgiven," Dodoria offered, hoping his smile appeared genuine.

The Saiyan prince simply raised a disdainful eyebrow and laughed confidently.

"How do you know it was me that destroyed the village? Are you sure it wasn't that _other _power that's been flying around?"

Vegeta appreciated the look of confusion that flittered across Dodoria's tubby features, there for a moment, then gone. Without the scouter, Dodoria had no idea whether or not the prince was telling the truth. Was there another power out there? And if it was them that had destroyed the village, would they really be stupid enough to go up against Frieza?

"Oh I'm sorry, have you been unable to find it seeing as your scouters appear to have gone missing?" the prince asked innocently, examining his nails. "I am assuming you are so eager to have mine because there are none left on Frieza's invasion vessel."

Dodoria closed his eyes, focussing on breathing in deeply to dispel his frustration. It had always been difficult to keep things from Vegeta, the prince was far too observant. By asking for the scouter the way he had, he'd given away its value. Though he was honestly convinced he could take this monkey should it come to blows, the prince was as cunning with information as he was with his martial arts moves and was currently in the power spot. With a misplaced flick of the wrist, Vegeta could destroy the scouter should Dodoria threaten him, which the henchman was just itching to do.

"Well," Vegeta said, his lips curling nastily. "You can have it, I have no need of it now."

Dodoria watched greedily as the prince removed the device and held it out at arm's length, letting it slip through his fingers so it dropped to the ground.

The henchman eyed it warily, his eyes flicking up to Vegeta's emotionless face, registering its emptiness.

"Finally come to your senses huh?" Dodoria asked, stalking forward. He was literally about to bend over to retrieve the prized possession when Vegeta's boot appeared in his peripheral vision. He blinked stupidly as that boot was placed atop the scouter.

Horror gripped his stomach.

"Wait Vegeta, what are you doing?" Dodoria shrieked, scrabbling to get down fast enough to retrieve the device before Vegeta managed to crush it but a simple application of pressure and all that was left was shards and smoke.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Dodoria yelled, pulling himself back and and snarling fiercely, his pink face tinged a darker mauve as he flushed with fury.

Vegeta simply started laughing, holding his sides as the smug chuckles rang out over the empty land. Dodoria even thought he could see tears in the corner of the prince's eyes, collecting there as the prince's violent cackling continued.

"I just wanted to see a fat man bend down," Vegeta said eventually, wiping at his eyes.

Dodoria could feel his eyes bugging out as the rage inside him swelled. Such insolence! Such completely misplaced Saiyan pride! How Vegeta could keep up this shocking display when he knew how powerful Dodoria was…

"You'll pay for that," Dodoria ground out, letting his Ki rise freely until he was at max output.

Vegeta's smirk remained in place as he regarded his opponent, his eyes flashing with zeal. He took a deep breath in and prepared himself for a little fun. Dodoria flinched when he realised that the prince wasn't intimidated by his rise in power but he shook it off, readying a rapid fire attack that had been known to level mountains. Once the arrogant monkey saw what he was really up against, he would know fear.

Dodoria bent down and pulled his arms in, feeling them tingle with pressure as though each arm had been loaded into an over-sized sling shot.

He grinned.

"Eat laser!" he yelled and fired his attack.

Vegeta merely crossed his arms and stood with his feet slightly apart, the smirk frozen in place.

The space that Vegeta was standing in exploded in a blinker of rainbow coloured Ki. Dodoria's arms were moving like pistons as he produced blast after blast and a torrent of ash and fire was spiralling into the atmosphere, turning the sky dark for a moment. A wall of blinding light formed in front of him as the blasts started to stack, the glowing energy lasting in the air for a few moments before dispelling. Through the barraging attack, Dodoria listened for the tell tale scream of his opponent, prepared to savour the prince's despair as he was cut down to size but he could barely hear anything over the resounding booms that followed the light a few seconds later.

Eventually, Dodoria decided he'd excercised himself enough and withdrew, letting his arms hang limply by his sides. He waited with baited breath for the smog to clear and the dirt to settle before searching for any sign of Vegeta. There was, of course, nothing left, just the broken shards of the scouter reflecting light lamely.

The henchman breathed out, pinching the bridge of his nose and cursing himself for his temper.

'_Lord Frieza wanted him alive for questioning…but he pushed my buttons…no, I _let _him push my buttons and now I have no way of locating that damn Dragonball…_'

He took a deep, cleansing breath, massaging the frown out of his features and tried to form a new plan of action. There had to be a way to find the Dragonball without Vegeta, there just had to be. If Frieza found out that he had lost not only the scouter but Vegeta as well, there was no telling what was in store for the henchman…but if he turned up with the Dragonball, effectively cutting out the middle man, he was sure his temper tantrum and subsequently his _disobeying direct orders _might be forgiven.

Either way, he couldn't go back without that Dragonball.

Caught up as he was in his own failings, he didn't notice the unscathed prince slinking out from behind him, skirting round until he was directly in Dodoria's blind spot. There was a pause in the air and Vegeta sprung off of one perfectly placed foot to pelt forward and grab Dodoria's arms. For the henchman, there was only a moment of horrible realisation before both of his huge arms had been yanked backwards, almost clean out of their sockets by a colossal strength.

Dodoria cried out in crippling agony, his shoulder blades protesting this severe maltreatement. He could feel his arms straining in their sockets, creaking as Vegeta slowly tipped them upwards.

"Please, no more, NO MORE!" The henchman begged, blind panic scrawling its way over his piggy features. Vegeta simply raised an eyebrow.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just kill you now Dodoria," Vegeta whispered, pushing his opponent's arms up just a little more so his voice was knocked up an octave.

"I…I know a secret about your home planet!" Dodoria blabbered, hardly coherent with the pain and the fear.

Vegeta paused, considering.

"_My_ planet?" he hissed, applying just the tiniest amount of extra pressure to make Dodoria whimper.

"Yes, yes," Dodoria moaned, involuntary tears starting to stream down his chubby face. "I'll tell you if you let me go, all you have to do is let me go!"

Vegeta sneered at Dodoria's blubbering. If killing Cui had been a pleasurable experience, then this was sure to put him in a good mood. How many times had he pictured this moment? How many times had he been forced to remain silent whilst Dodoria had mocked his race, his heritage, his power?

The moment had finally come and Dodoria was as putty in Vegeta's ruthless hands. He was going to enjoy this.

"Okay, spill it," Vegeta said, shoving Dodoria forward, forcing his arms down so they cracked unpleasantly.

Dodoria felt the sweet release and swung his arms forward, rubbing his wrist as he flexed his muscles to make sure everything was in working order. He inhaled sharply, taking air into lungs that had been compressed by the angle of Vegeta's hold.

"Now remember, you said that I could go," Dodoria reminded the prince warily, floating up into the air so he felt he was a safer distance away, still within firing range so as not to provoke hostility.

"_Only _if you tell me what you know," Vegeta clarified, crossing his arms with that same sadistic smirk on his face. Dodoria shuddered.

"Okay, well, you know how Frieza always said that your planet was unfortunately taken out by a meteor shower?"

Vegeta said nothing and his eyes were devoid of emotion, like bottomless black pits.

"Uh…well that wasn't true. It was Frieza that destroyed your planet because he was afraid that someone of your race, someone possibly like yourself Vegeta, would become too powerful and would challenge him in the future. It followed on from Bardock's rebellion."

Dodoria had expected the prince to be stricken by the news but to his chagrin, Vegeta's over-confident smirk just seemed to widen.

"And he kept the most powerful one alive, what an idiot."

Dodoria stayed hovering in mid-air, confused by Vegeta's countenance and shaken by his self-assururance. Something had happened to the Saiyan warrior on his detour across the galaxy, a change had come over him.

'_No…there's no way he could have actually achieved…he can't be a Super Saiyan…can he?_'

"That's all I know," Dodoria swore, backing up a few inches in mid-air. "And now, if you don't mind, I'll be going now."

He didn't miss the flicker in Vegeta's expression or the cold light in the prince's eyes. Dread washed over him.

"Actually I _do _mind fatty," Vegeta said, Ki filled aura flaring up around him. "You see, I lied when I said you could go. I _should _thank you for the valuable information so I promise, your death will be much swifter than I originally intended."

Despite how many times Frieza had tried to pound it into his men that he did not tolerate cowardice, Dodoria's first impulse was to flee and he obeyed it without much consideration.

Vegeta simply shook his head, chortling perfidiously as he took aim.

Like shooting a fat fish in a tiny barrel.

* * *

_So what will Goku do about his abrupt change in situation? Will Gohan crack under the pressure of Sensou's training? Has anything changed now that Vegeta knows the truth about his home planet?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…Avatar, the Last Airbender!_

_(pwns it with fire)_

_Reviews provide Gohan with moral support (nods sagely)_


	13. Just Like Gohan

_An earlier update this week due to a holiday coming up in the next few days which means I won't have access to a computer system for a while. This shouldn't generally affect my update schedule if anyone's worried. A few things to note as always:_

_1) I actually DON'T think there's anything heinous I need to point out in this chapter (le gasp). _

_2) Spelling, grammar, sentence structure and all other valuable English factors checked but my Microsoft Word has decided to randomly destroy spell checker so if there are more mistakes than usual, I'm really sorry. I'm terrible for that thing…automatic replacement? You know where you read the word you want to read and not the jumble of letters that's actually there heh._

_3) No really…what am I forgetting to tell you guys? (tears hair out) Oh well, just PM me if you find something that drives you nuts etc._

_4) LOVE FOR REVIEWERS, READERS, FAVERS AND ALERTERS! (candy hearts for all)_

* * *

**12: Just Like Gohan**

Oh Kami…

He froze where he stood, his heart beating out an irregular rhythm making him feel breathless and light headed. Goku wasn't a panicker by nature but this situation was bad, _really _bad.

Vegeta was mere minutes away, maybe less. If Goku launched forward and grabbed the child sniffling behind the rock formation, he could probably take off and try and out-run the prince but it was a risk, a huge risk. In the state the kid was in, he would probably freak out if Goku suddenly grabbed him, even if he was only trying to help and that would slow things down. Then, if Vegeta caught them, the poor kid would have been exposed to real danger and it would have been Goku's fault.

He wondered about moving but he was sure Vegeta had seen his descension and would find it odd if he'd suddenly moved. The prince was a veteran of battle; he would automatically assume that there was more to the movement.

Goku had no real choice, he'd have to grab the kid and make a run for it. Settling his boot into the dirt and gaining leverage, he shifted his body into a vault forward but stopped himself at the last moment when he felt a smaller Ki catching up to Vegeta. To his bafflement, the prince gave up the chase, turning to face this new, weaker opponent instead.

'_Now's my chance,_' Goku thought, launching himself forward, rounding the edge of the rock formation to find the tiny form of the Namekian child huddled against the darkest part of rocks, water licking at his soft shoes.

He started when he saw Goku round the corner and huddled into himself. Tears ran freely down his face and his lower lip was wobbling uncontrollably. He didn't cry out but then Goku suspected his vocal chords were struggling through the lump of panic clearly squatting on his system. His eyes were huge, unseeing and dark like…

_Like Gohan…_

Automatically shifting into parent mode, Goku dropped down onto his hunches, his expression slipping into something more disarming. He kept a weather eye on Vegeta's palpitating Ki and was somewhat pleased to find that the Saiyan prince was otherwise engaged in a stand-off for the moment. Goku could take his time a little with this poor kid.

"Hey," he said gently, watching the poor kid flinch. He had no idea if the child spoke any English but he knew how to project a comforting vibe, knew how to adjust the tone of his voice to soothe and re-assure, something he had picked up when he became a daddy.

"It's okay little guy, I won't hurt you," Goku said, purposefully staying where he was. He knew that if he moved now, the child would spook and might do something drastic.

"I know you probably don't understand me but I think it might be better if I keep talking anyway, alright?" Goku said, watching with delight as the child seem to come out of himself a little, his eyes slowly calming as he regarded Goku.

"We have to get out of here. This place isn't safe right now. If you let me, I can take you back with me to meet up with my friends and, once I'm back with them, we can try and look for your family together."

He stood very slowly and was about to take an experimental step forward when a soft voice cut him off.

"My family's dead."

Goku blinked feeling a well of sympathy erupt in his heart. The tiny Namekian rubbed vigorously at his face, trying to hide the fresh, hot tears pooling in his eyes and Goku knew instinctively not to intervene.

"I'm so sorry little guy," Goku said eventually, when the poor kid appeared to be calming down. The Namekian boy shot Goku a judgemental look which he didn't take to heart.

"You, you're different than those other aliens," the boy said gruffly, standing up on shaking legs. Goku had to admire his resolve. He was a brave, resilient little fellow just like Gohan. The resemblance between his son and this kid was actually a bit uncanny. He shook his head, wondering uncomfortably if any child he met on this trip would remind him of his lost son.

"Were they the ones that took your family?" Goku probed carefully.

The boy nodded, finding it difficult to speak again.

"Ah, I see, well I'm sorry that your first encounter with visitors was a bad one but we're not all bad. Come with me, we'll get you somewhere safe."

Goku held out his hand, an invitation, not a demand and the child picked up on the subtle nuance. He hesitated, wondering if he should trust one of these aliens when the others had all been so cruel, cold and ruthless in ways he had never seen before. His family had been murdered, the people of his village slaughtered, dropping like stones around him and he'd seen it all, the brutal disregard for life, the traumatic indignity of the way they were killed…It was like a _game _to these freakish visitors.

"It's like a nightmare," the child muttered, his face screwing up with pain.

Seeing that look, Goku simply lost his self restraint. He moved smoothly forward and before the kid could react, he'd pulled him into a hug. He hadn't really taken the time to consider that social semantics on this planet might be completely different to those on Earth, hadn't really considered that something as simple as a hug might be taken as a threat. All he knew was that this little boy was hurting and the only tried and tested method he had to make things better was to embrace.

The Namekian kid stiffened in his hold, a million thoughts running together in his head as he tried to process this simple gesture but eventually he fell prey to his natural child-like instincts, his hands locking together around Goku's neck, his face buried in Goku's gi. This was a situation far beyond the scope of a child, he needed an adult's help…

"Th…thank you," the kid said and though it was muffled in Goku's shirt, he heard it.

"Listen, I came to get the Dragonballs to wish my son back but we could always wish your family back first."

His heart stung with the thought of leaving Gohan in whatever predicament he was in for a little longer but he couldn't ignore the needs of this kid in immediate danger, in his care.

"You lost your son?" the Namekian boy asked bluntly as they took to the sky.

Goku nodded once, focussing on pushing his Ki down so that he could avoid attracting any more pursuers.

"He was kidnapped," Goku told the boy simply.

The child frowned, staring out at the land whipping passed him. He could see the remanants of destroyed villages as they soared past and trees that had been knocked from their resting places. He blanched and turned away.

"You know, Porunga grants 3 wishes. It's only one life per wish so I couldn't bring my family back all in one go anyway…you could still use the wishes this time and I could just wait until the next time to gather the Dragonballs."

Goku's face creased as he considered this kindness; the need to save his son warring with the need to help this poor boy be re-united with his family as soon as possible. What right did he have to make this child wait to see his brother, his uncle, whoever got left behind? But…then…how could he let Gohan down?

"I…uh…I mean I don't mind," the boy said, reading the pained expression on Goku's face.

"I don't really know too much about death but I know it's not particularly unpleasant once you've passed. There's a check in station on the other side which I'm told is where you get processed into a new life…so, it's not like my family is suffering now…"

Goku eyed the child and smiled. Selfless like Gohan too.

"We'll worry about it when we get there okay?" he said, pushing the matter aside for more important concerns at the moment.

They flew in silence for a little while, Goku moving slowly to keep his energy signature off of the radar, checking for possible assailants every now and then by sweeping the Ki in the surrounding area while the Namekian child tried to come to terms with everything that had happened. Now that he had this new adult to hold onto for the moment, he could try and order his thoughts, sort himself out and get over the temporary death of his family, the blood thirsty slaughter that they had all been subjected to.

"My name is Dende," he said, breaking the silence.

Goku blinked at him.

"Oh right, I totally forgot to introduce myself, sorry. I'm Goku. We, my two friends and I came from Earth to look for the Dragonballs."

Dende smiled at him. It was a strained expression, ripe with new trauma and exhaustion but Goku returned the gesture, throwing out his patented Son grin.

"Nice to meet you Dende," he said.

* * *

Zarbon counted the hour down to the minute and took off the moment he was sure that Dodoria had failed. Frieza watched him with stark, unimpressed eyes and called in a minion the moment his wing man was out of sight. Linking clawed fingers behind his back, he beckoned the minion forward with an incline of the head. Gulping, the poor fool shuffled forward.

"Y-yes, lord Frieza?" he asked, mentally throwing profanities at himself for his nervous stutter. Frieza had mutilated for less before, it all depended on what mood the lord of the universe was in and, due to all this trouble with the scouters and the Dragonballs, rumour was circulating the ship's lower levels that Frieza was in a particularly awful mood at the moment. To be called to his chamber was practically a death sentence.

"I need you to call the Ginyu Force. This charade has gone on long enough, don't you think?"

The minion guppied, trying to suck in enough air to answer, even though he knew it was a rhetorical question.

"And for heaven's sake, tell them to bring scouters!" Frieza snapped, turning to fix the minion with a tortuous stare.

The minion stiffened, falling into the patterns of automatic behaviour in his panic which was to, thankfully, salute his acknowledgement of the order and flee. Frieza watched him go and fought to restrain the impulse to obliterate. If he killed this one, he would have to call in a new minion and the process would begin a new. They were wasting precious enough time as it was.

He shifted his gaze back to the window, growling under his breath.

'_You had better not fail me Zarbon or so help me you will meet the same fate as that wretched Saiyan prince._'

* * *

When Gohan slept, he was subjected to a relentless incursion of nightmares that filled him with overwhelming guilt, a feeling which followed him to his waking hours, intensifying with every training session he engaged in. Gradually, he was mastering himself and his ability to hone his conscious responses and refine his self control in battle. He could hit out his friends so that they weren't unnecessarily hurt in a clash which was great but he still had trouble discerning between enemies and friends when he was backed into a corner and it still almost always resulted in true macarbre.

Sensou had switched back to his first method of training as a response, using unknown fighters and throwing mannequins of his friends into the fray when it looked like Gohan was falling into automatic response mode and slowly but surely, the boy was minimising his casualties.

To the warrior god's gratification, the boy was also starting to sport a more haunted look in his day to day activities, obviously harbouring guilt at the terrible things he had done in moments he had lost control. Sensou was confident that it would be much easier to remove Gohan from battle against Frieza when his influence was no longer needed this time. The boy was too scared of hurting his real friends, had gone through too much to just return home now.

Sensou let out a self satisfied sigh, watching as the demi-Saiyan twitched and whimpered in his sleep, his face screwing up as the new nightmare took firm hold.

It was a bad day, technically. Sensou still applied his original rule that if Gohan didn't wake up when he sensed Sensou's approaching Ki, he would get a boot to the side as punishment but today he decided he would let the child sleep for a little longer. Today, he was going to switch out the puppets for the puppet-master and fight Gohan himself and he wanted the boy to be in top form so he could truly get a measure of how much stronger Gohan had grown.

'_Sleep well little monkey and take solace in your dreams. Even if they're unpleasant they can't compare to the truth of the waking world,_' Sensou thought to himself, pulling himself up into a meditative position to wait until Gohan awoke.

* * *

_Gohan knew he was dreaming which was weird._

_He felt somehow hyper-aware, like he could pull himself out of sleep if he didn't like where this was going. He rarely did anymore after all…_

_He glanced around, recognising the dark dimension, the setting for whatever sin he was going to relive during this time asleep and decided that he would try and change it, forcing himself to concentrate as hard as he could on his home in the mountains. _

_The dream shifted and Gohan felt an enhanced sense of elation at his success, waiting excitedly for the familiar house to form in front of him. If he couldn't go home in real life, he was definitely going to enjoy being home in his dreams._

_A new image fell into place, blue sky and rocks. Gohan blinked when he realised this wasn't his home at all but the training grounds he had appeared in when he had fought the Saiyans…_

_Oh Kami…_

_He turned, watching the incandescent death ball hurtling towards him and realised what he had done. Squeezing his eyes tight shut, he tried to drag himself up and out of the dream, feeling a wrenching tug deep inside himself._

_He heard the impact of the attack, heard Piccolo's ear-splitting scream and his eyes flew open on a reflex, growing huge in horror._

_Instead of finding Piccolo's battered body standing in front of him after taking the brunt of that Saiyan soldier's attack, he found Piccolo dangling limply from his own outstretched hand, his eyes slowly deadening as Gohan released his crushed jugular._

_He dropped like a stone._

"_N…no…"_

"NO!"

Gohan sat bolt upright, clutching at his heart through his gi as it beat like a jackhammer. Sweat trickled down his back and plastered his hair to the side of his face. For a few moments as he was caught in the sway of full blown panic, he didn't register Sensou sitting in front of him, smirking.

"Morning little Saiyan," The warrior god said tauntingly, uncoiling from the tree stump he had been sitting on to advance on the demi-Saiyan. Gohan blinked unevenly and stared up at his mentor, a lump settling in his throat.

"Are you ready to begin your new training for today?"

Gohan inhaled deeply through his nose, held it and then exhaled through his mouth, feeling the release of constricting fear on his system. Since the nightmares had started to plague him constantly, he'd learnt the quickest, most efficient method for dispersing the lingering hysteria upon waking. Breathing deeply helped him to get a grip on reality and order his thoughts as though mental organisation was powered by oxygen alone.

"New training?" he asked, frowning as he took in another breath of air.

"Well, I suppose new would be the wrong word, seeing as how you've fought me before," Sensou said thoughtfully.

Gohan took another breath in and hiccoughed when he absorbed what the warrior god had just said. Fight…Sensou? So he could stop fighting his family for today?

"You are becoming quite adept at handling multiple enemies," the warrior god was saying. "But I don't want you to forget how to fight one on one. The unspoken rules are different, your actions will change, do you understand?"

The boy nodded groggily and stood up, rubbing his hands over sleep encrusted eyes and dropping into a ready stance. Though it looked to Sensou like the boy was still swathed in the remnant of sleep, he knew that in reality, Gohan was alert, ready.

He dropped into his own ready crouch and lunged without warning, sweeping his hand through the air in a merciless chop to the boy's exposed back. His hand connected with hard bone and Gohan was sent careening into one of the dark tree trunks, impacting the base of the wood with a loud crunch.

Sensou scowled.

Maybe the boy wasn't as alert or ready as the warrior god had thought after all.

* * *

Goku felt around the familiar shape of Krillin and Bulma's Ki, setting down on flat ground before the mouth of a dank cave. He did a brief sensual sweep of the area, confirming that Vegeta was still otherwise engaged in battle and made a mental note to keep a weather eye on the progression of the fight so he would know when the prince would resume the chase, as he undoubtedly would. Carefully, he shifted Dende's weight in his arms and placed him gently on the grass. Immediately, the Namekian child slipped around Goku's legs so he was hiding behind him, peeking out at the cave entrance warily.

Goku had to smile as he remembered the better parts of the day he had taken Gohan to meet Master Roshi and the others. His little boy had been wary too, hardly surprising considering they lived so far out in the mountains. Gohan rarely met with other people and while he was perfectly confident and friendly with the animals of the forest near their home, he wasn't as comfortable around people.

"It's alright," Goku said. "My two friends are inside and their Ki levels are stable so there's nothing bad in there."

Dende said nothing, his eyes fixed firmly on the cave entrance. He swallowed uneasily as Goku started walking forwards and trotted along behind, keeping as close as he dared.

The cave mouth loomed overhead and Dende was able to see the slime on the rocks, moisture that had settled into the cave walls from the water that surrounded the island. Beside him, Goku set down a sure foot and slipped on smooth stone, catapulting himself into one of the cave walls to stop himself from falling over.

"Careful, it's slippery," Goku commented good-naturedly as they continued into the cave.

Dende tried to quash the mounting sense of claustrophobia as the darkness started to close in on them and as the natural daylight faded, the Namekian child found he was able to see a faint yellow/orange flicker a little further down the cave. Distinct voices were bouncing off of the rocks, surrounding Dende's head with a fog of white noise. He plugged his ears tight and held on to the back of Goku's gi so as not to get lost as they advanced.

Eventually, a tiny little house came into view, a bubble-like domed building which was exhuding the flickering light Dende had seen. Goku smiled when he laid eyes on Bulma's familiar Capsule house.

Moving into the light given off by the house, he rapped once on the door and waited. A moment later, his nose was almost smashed in as Bulma opened the door, throwing it out so that she could grip a baseball bat with two well practiced hands.

"Huh? Goku?" she asked as he barely managed to dodge the incoming door to the face.

"GOKU! Oh we thought you were DEAD! DON'T EVER DO THAT TO ME AGAIN!" the genius shrieked, punching her old friend half heartedly before pulling him into a bone crushing hug. Goku felt a rippling shiver pass through Bulma as she latched on to him and was struck by the very real concern she had felt for his wellbeing. Smiling apologetically, he hugged her back.

"Sorry Bulma, I had to do _something_," Goku said, scratching the back of his head sheepishly.

"Yeah well next time-who's the mini Piccolo?" she asked suddenly, locking eyes with a terrified Dende.

Dende instantly froze, not even daring to breathe. He had never felt so out of place in his life looking at this new, _very _loud adult. He knew that it would be good manners to bow and perhaps introduce himself but his legs seemed to have turned to jelly. Bulma tilted her head to one side, blinking curiously at him. Then she had a bit of an inappropriate thought and pulled a face; looking from Goku who was still scratching the back of his head to this poor terrified Namekian, she was reminded of a kid that had brought home an animal from the woods with the intention of asking if they could keep it.

"Oh right, this is Dende. I found him out on the battle field. He's lost his family and he needs some help."

Bulma made to ask if he meant they'd been separated but then she caught the look in Goku's eye and comprehended. Squatting down, she put on her best nice face, wishing she had more experience with children.

"Would you like to come in and get warm for a moment Dende?" she asked, gesturing to the little house.

"Uh…that's a really nice offer and everything," Goku said, blanching when Bulma shot him a venomous look. "But I really need to get him somewhere safe."

Bulma opened her mouth to say something that was potentially quite rude but at that moment, Krillin barrelled out of the doorway to bump fists with his best friend.

"You _had _to wait for the _one _moment I was in the bathroom to come back? You really do have a knack for timing," Krillin said sarcastically, beaming as he realised that Goku wasn't gravely hurt or even bleeding.

"Wow, you beat Vegeta without even getting dirty?" he asked, turning a critical eye on his friend's freshly pressed gi. Just how strong had Goku gotten training in the gravity room for so long?

"Huh? Oh no, I didn't fight Vegeta in the end," Goku said. "I think he got sidetracked fighting someone else which was great for us or we never would have escaped the way we did."

'_We?_' Krillin thought, glancing around the cave and spotting Dende through the half light. He pointed gormlessly.

"Who's the mini Piccolo?" he asked, causing Bulma to rap him over the head.

"We've already done this," she complained. "His name is Dende, Goku found him. He needs help getting somewhere safe."

Krillin nodded his acknowledgement of the explanation, blinking as he gave the boy the once over.

'_This really is Piccolo's home planet…he looks just like a young demon! Well…I guess we can't really call Piccolo a demon anymore…_'

Dende stepped forward, uncomfortable under Krillin's scrutiny but grateful that someone was actually going to help him. He bowed low.

"Pleased to meet you and…sorry for the inconvenience."

Krillin's eyebrows shot up at the polite behaviour. He wasn't exactly used to pleasantries with the Z Fighters at home so when he bowed back, it felt more than a little rusty.

"No problem little buddy," Krillin said, beaming in what he hoped wasn't a scary way.

"You know…" Dende said thoughtfully, glancing up at the ceiling. "If you take me to Guru's…we could probably accomplish two goals at the same time!"

"Like…kill two birds with one stone?" Bulma asked innocently.

Dende froze, his breath hitching in his throat, his eyes widening. Krillin was afraid that the little Namekian had gotten sick but Goku recognised the look immediately.

"Uh…we wouldn't actually kill a bird. It's just a phrase…a saying…" he said, trying to explain.

Bulma cottoned on quickly.

"Oh yeah, it's basically saying the same thing as 'accomplishing two goals'. We wouldn't literally go around killing birds with stones, that's just crude. So, you know, don't take it literally."

Dende breathed out, comprehension dawning.

"Oh I see, an Earth saying," Dende said, frowning as he thought about it. "We say 'fusing two beings with one soul' which is similar…but it means something a bit different."

There was a momentary pause as the party considered the semantics of cross cultural barriers and Goku checked on Vegeta's Ki before Dende seemed to remember the original thread of the conversation and back-tracked.

"Uh…anyway, Guru is in possession of one of the Dragonballs, the 1 star Dragonball which he kept in his care after he finished creating them. If you take me to him, Nail can look after me, he's the strongest warrior on our planet, and you can make a start on collecting the Dragonballs to make your wishes."

"Hey yeah, that's perfect!" Krillin whooped, rocking on the balls of his feet but Goku gave him a stern look.

"Don't you need to collect them to wish your family back?"

Dende shook his head, making up his mind on the spot.

"It's like I said before, my family isn't exactly suffering where they are. I can wait to see them…you've travelled all this way, have helped me when I was in danger and are still willing to help me even though the journey ahead is potentially perilous. It's the least I could do…"

Goku took an indecisive breath inwards, holding the air in his lungs for a moment, letting himself feel guilty for delaying this child the chance to be with his family for the sake of his son.

What could he do?

"You really do remind me of Gohan," Goku mumbled, putting his hand tenderly on Dende's head.

Dende smiled the first genuine smile Goku had seen since he had met the young Namekian. It was strange to see someone that looked so much like Piccolo smiling so easily.

"So what are we waiting for? Lets go," Krillin said eagerly, making to dart out into the open air.

"Hang on just a minute," Bulma said, gripping the back of Krillin's gi in talon-like fingers so he was jerked onto his butt. "I've got to pack up the Capsule house, there's no way I'm leaving it behind. This thing was an expensive project."

Krillin scowled and rubbed his butt where he'd landed, throwing Dende a conspirational grin as Bulma sauntered back inside to make sure everything was in the right place before she pressed the button telling the whole thing to compact.

* * *

Zarbon made a point of searching methodically for the lost prince, starting at the Namekian village they had found decimated and working from there. He tried to think along the same lines as Vegeta, making the most logical deductions about the next course of action that would be to the most benefit but it was difficult. The prince was a tricky character at the best of times and he'd always excelled at stratagem. Zarbon was, unfortunately, not so gifted.

Every so often, he would be at a loss for where to look next and the green planet seemed to stretch out endlessly before him. Never before had he been afraid of a backwater planet in an unmarked quadrant, never before had he felt so agoraphobic. During these moments, he had to force himself to remain calm, steering his mind away from the possibilities of failure. He had to keep reminding himself that Frieza had not given him the same time constraints as he had Dodoria…even if it was pretty much a given that the same rules applied to Zarbon's search.

He shuddered involuntarily, pulling at his sleeves so they covered his hands against a non-existant chill. If he failed, as Dodoria had, to complete his mission, there really was no point in returning to Frieza's ship. He'd be better off stealing one of the Saiyan pods dotted round and making for some unknown planet in one of the lesser raided quadrants…

Just as the plan was solidifying in his mind, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye, a blue fire shooting across the water. As it rocketed past him, he was able to narrow his focus for a moment and make out the shape of Vegeta's flame-like hair.

Zarbon shook his head, he honestly had the luck of the devil.

"Hey, Vegeta!" The wingman called out, belting forward to cut the prince up mid-flight.

Vegeta grimaced, mildly surprised to see the stronger of Frieza's two flunkeys as he purposefully cut across the prince's path. He'd sensed that there was an energy signature nearby but he had been far too intent on resuming his pursuit of the stronger signature. It had disappeared for a little while after his destruction of Dodoria and had just this second re-appeared, blazing to life in his mind's eye like a light bulb, along with a few smaller powers.

"Zarbon, I'm surprised you're still alive," Vegeta said curtly, folding his arms and sneering as his adversary's eyebrow twitched. "I would have thought that Frieza would have lost his patience with your constant failings by now."

Zarbon's lips pursed as he tried to control the wave of rage tsunami-ing through his system. The prince had no idea how much trouble he was in.

"Lord Frieza is not happy with you. You've-

"Waylaid his quest for immortality yada yada. You know I've heard all this from Dodoria already, you could at least come up with something original."

Zarbon felt his eyes become round as dinner plates. He blinked, the cogs in his mind working as he fought to figure this out.

Dodoria had found the prince but had not returned. The prince had emerged from their encounter unmarked…had Vegeta managed to somehow…?

No…not with a power level of 18,000, surely…

"You know, he said something very interesting before he died," Vegeta said casually, feeling a wicked sense of pride as he watched Zarbon struggle to comprehend the prince's hidden depths. "He said that Frieza blew up my home planet, that the meteor shower was just a story made up to insure I would comply with his every wish as a 'fortunare survivor subject to the lord's mercy'."

Zarbon felt his jaw drop.

Dodoria would only reveal something like that to the prince if he was put under extreme stress. On a reflex, his hand stretched up to tap at the scouter on his ear so he could get an up to date reading on Vegeta's current power level but his hand hit air where the scouter was still noticeably absent.

"Aw, useless without the scouter? It's a frightful shame that mine somehow got smashed beneath my boot…"

Zarbon growled ferally.

"Why would you brake your scouter? You're as powerless as the rest of us without it!"

Vegeta simply laughed.

"Oh contrare my dear clueless Zarbon, I've learnt to enhance my senses so I can feel out the power level of my opponents and track them down."

Zarbon raised an eyebrow, smiling a pitying smile at the spurious prince.

"Come on Vegeta, you really expect me to believe that? If a technique like that existed, we would have all learnt it by now." Zarbon scoffed, astounded that the prince's notorious pride could make him so delusional. He obviously thought he was some sort of god…well, he obviously thought he was something special if he was willing to take on Frieza.

Vegeta's expression was condescending as he regarded Frieza's favoured henchman.

"I see you're as closed minded as ever. I think this is why I'll inevitably be remembered as one of the greats while your name will fall into obscurity…have you ever considered that there may just be more outside your tiny circle of protection? Or are you just too stupid to consider the possibilities?"

Zarbon bristled angrily, shifting so his stance became aggressive. Vegeta recognised it for the threat it was but remained remarkably unflustered.

"Enough of this nonsense. Tell me where you hid the Dragonball or I'll take you back to Lord Frieza and he can interrogate it out of you."

The prince blinked slowly, his eyes incredulous.

"Yeah okay, give it a try freak show but I've got better things to do so I don't plan on dragging this out."

"Your choice," Zarbon replied simply, closing the gap between them in under second, aiming a knee ram to the groin which Vegeta easily dodged, somersaulting on the air and twisting to aim a rapid fire of Ki blasts at his assailant.

Zarbon had to admit he was impressed. The first one that hit felt like a heated frying pan to the skull and the henchman felt a trickle of blood spilling over the corner of his lip. He smiled and smeared it with his thumb as the two fighters returned to stalemate for the moment.

"Dramatic improvement I see, but you're still no match for me," Zarbon boasted, his eyes flashing as one of the planet's suns started to set.

He stayed stock still in the air facing Vegeta. If the prince hadn't managed to hone his new senses, he wouldn't have been aware that something was going on at all but then he felt the fluctuation in Zarbon's Ki and watched intently, trying to figure out what was going on.

Could Zarbon hide his power level like Vegeta? Impossible…no one had been able to do that before the Earthlings he had encountered on his last trip and yet here…

Something was happening to Zarbon. At first his handsome face seemed to be blurring out of focus and Vegeta rubbed at his eyes, hoping that he wasn't fatigued after his previous battles against Cui and Dodoria. Then his skin started to bubble, slowly at first and then faster, like his blood was coming to boil under the surface.

The prince stared, dumbstruck.

"It's time I introduced you to the other side of myself," Zarbon said through a voice a few octaves lower than his usual base tone.

In another instant, the brute's muscles had bulked out considerably, his face had broadened, the chiselled features disappearing to make room for something grotesque, a monster from a nightmare. The fingernails on his hands had lengthened and his eyes seemed to have taken on a new malicious gleam.

Aside from the physical changes, Vegeta balked when he felt the substantial leap in Ki, shifting so it was above even his own enhanced power. Just where were these bastards getting all their energy?

"Ah, I haven't had to use this form in a long time, you should feel honoured Vegeta," the new hideous Zarbon commented as he faced off against the prince.

"W…what the hell are you?" the prince asked, his eyes small, unseeing. In this form, Zarbon's power was second only to Frieza. So this was why the lord of the universe had someone like Zarbon by his side at all times, this was why their coalition had lasted for so long. Dodoria was a lackey filling a gap that normally popped up every few years where Zarbon had been by Frieza's side for decades.

"Surprised? This is nothing compared to lord Frieza," Zarbon muttered, examining his fingernails and adjusting his newly expanded armour.

"Frieza can transform too?" Vegeta asked, dreading what he knew would be an affirmative answer.

"Yes, you dimwitted simian, I thought that was obvious. You honestly didn't think that Frieza could rule the universe effectively with a power level of only 530,000 did you? And you say I'm closed minded…"

Vegeta had nothing to say to that, rendered speechless by this horrible unveiling of information. Just what was he up against? He was so sure that he had prepared himself for this, had spent hours mentally visualising Frieza at his most potent so he was able to take the tyrant without real incident when the time came and he was finally immortal.

Immortal…

If he was immortal, it wouldn't matter if Frieza's power was so gargantuan, his would be limitless. Even if he had to spend years engaged in battle with the tyrant, he would eventually surpass that hellish lord.

He _had _to have the dragon grant his wish, he just had to.

"Daydreaming Vegeta?" Zarbon asked, sounding positively bored as he fazed in front of the prince and swung a colossal fist up to connect with the prince's jaw.

* * *

_Will Gohan find it easier to battle his mentor? Will Goku go through with trying to wish his son back if he manages to get his hands on all 7 Dragonballs? How will his visit to Guru change things?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…My Little Monster?_

_Betcha thought I was gonna write My Little Pony then didn't ya?_

_BWAHAHAHAHA (cough)_

_Every time you review, a muse gets their wings!_


	14. Know Thyself

_I remember this chapter giving me serious plot-ache but reading it back over during editing; I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of it was coherent heh. A few things to note as always:_

_1) Guru mentions that the eternal dragon can only bring back someone who has died 'before their time' aka of unnatural causes. I'm not sure if this is strictly canon but I remember getting the impression that this was more or less the case in the series. I honestly can't remember if I have abused this particular rule further down the line or not so a warning for this._

_2) A warning for references to a dark power within Goku. It was my general understanding that Saiyans were, at the core, ruthless warriors with an insatiably violent appetite for battle so I exploited this. Goku's circumstances and unique personality make him a bit of an oddball but that doesn't mean his base power well is any different to any other Saiyan._

_3) Spelling and grammar checked but I warn you that my spell checker has upped and kicked the bucket (I am a computer retard so I don't know how to fix this) so apologies if there are a few more mistakes than usual. I have been extra vigilant whilst editing but I get distracted so easily…_

* * *

**13: Know Thyself**

Absolute defeat.

It was the only thing Vegeta could comprehensively think before agonising pain cut through everything else. Zarbon's assault was barbaric, brutal and completely indefensible. As soon as Vegeta was able to form his hands into a crude block, Zarbon was ready with a diabolical attack that crippled the prince's appendages and made his organs scream in protest. Vegeta heard his bones crack and felt the scream as it was ripped from him. He watched as blood was scraped from his arm by those excessively sharp talons and he realised in a moment of crippling clarity that was done for. He'd taken on an opponent with his newfound power and had been grossly outclassed.

Through the entirety of Zarbon's vindictive attack, he kept blabbering on but Vegeta no longer had the presence of mind to absorb what his opponent was saying. Eventually, Zarbon must have deemed the prince beaten enough and his insatiable assault ended. Vegeta was left hanging limply from Zarbon's hand, barely conscious, his chest heaving as he fought to stay alive.

"I'm not sure but…I think I'm actually a little disappointed," Zarbon said to his broken charge, exhaling slowly and returning to base form. Clasping Vegeta's arm with his other hand, he pulled the battered prince onto his back where Vegeta hung like a bloody coat, drips of crimson liquid slipping down the end of his fingers and splashing onto Zarbon's boot. He cringed outwardly at the sight.

"You're lucky that lord Frieza wants you alive Vegeta," he told his unconscious ward as he started to make his way back to the ship, following the land masses he had spent so long scrutinising on his search. As he flew, he let it finally dawn on him that despite the odds, he had succeeded in tracking the elusive king of the apes and was, most likely, not going to die today. Mollification swept through him and eased the anxiety in his heart like a balm.

Never again would he ever be put in this situation. Never again would he be forced to search for something like some _common grunt. _He made a mental note that when all the messy business on this butthole of a planet was over and done, he would be issuing a new protocol whereby all ships were to have a backup storage of scouters and all soldiers were to carry at least two with them at all times. Overkill? Yes but precaution was one of the things that had gotten Zarbon so far in his particular occupancy.

The ship came into view and Zarbon descended onto the landing platform, allowing a couple of lower class soldiers to relieve him of his filthy burden. He brushed himself off for the all the good it would do and turned to face Frieza who was looking at him with a blank expression.

"Vegeta, my lord, as requested," Zarbon said simply, bowing low.

Frieza's dangerous eyes flicked over to the prone form of the prince and then back to his right hand man. To Zarbon's surprise, Frieza looked less than thrilled. When he spoke, his voice was unnervingly calm, a sure sign of irritation.

"Zarbon, do tell me because I really am quite intrigued to know the answer to this question, how am I supposed to ask him where he's hidden the blasted Dragonball if he lacks the ability to ANSWER ME?"

The lord of the universe slid forward and Zarbon drew back, suddenly afraid. In the back of his mind, he wondered why the hell it hadn't occurred to him that Vegeta would be useless in this state but inevitably, he couldn't really blame himself for actions performed under such staggering duress.

He tried to brace himself for what was undoubtedly the end. Frieza raised a pale hand.

_Smack._

He felt the sting in his cheek and the immediate swelling that followed but couldn't quite believe it. He stood frozen, glancing down at Frieza with wide, baffled eyes while the tyrant merely fixed him with a cold gaze. Shakily, he lifted his hand to touch the spot where Frieza's hand had connected.

Frieza merely sighed a long suffering sigh and turned to the two soldiers still propping the prince up with identical flabbergasted looks on their faces.

"Well what are you waiting for you buffoons; get him to the rejuvenation chamber immediately. If he dies before he can be healed, I won't hesitate to send you both to the next dimension. Understood?"

Both soldiers saluted on a reflex and bolted, carrying the prince between them so his boots dragged along the floor, leaving a bloody trail behind.

"For your sake, Zarbon, I hope that he survives to impart the knowledge I so desperately need," Frieza muttered darkly and Zarbon shivered. For a minute he had thought that the young overlord had dared to show mercy for his failure, the first display of such a virtue ever to be shown amongst all members of the Cold family, but this wasn't mercy, not really. The threat of his mistake still hung over his head for as long as Vegeta remained in a critical condition. Should the prince take a turn for the worse then Frieza would release the full fury of his wrath…

No, prolonging Zarbon's torture this way was no mercy at all.

He watched as the nefarious overlord pivoted on one foot and exited the landing platform, his hands clasped securely behind his back. The moment Zarbon was sure that Frieza was truly gone; he sunk down into himself, holding his hand over his smarting cheek.

* * *

"Doesn't flying put out way too much energy?" Bulma shouted over the wind as they took off, Goku with Dende on his shoulders and Krillin with Bulma under one arm. She squirmed uncomfortably and glared at Krillin as his grip on her tightened.

"Vegeta already knows I'm here and I don't think he's the sort to give up the hunt so quickly," Goku confessed. "There's really no point to the stealth operation anymore."

"You mean Vegeta's still following you? Following _us_?" Bulma squeaked, shooting furtive glances over Krillin's shoulder, expecting to see a silhouette of the prince in one of the suns at any moment.

Goku nodded once.

"I would have gone on with Dende alone but I think it's better if we stick together for now. He was probably able to tell by my drop in Ki that I'd stopped off somewhere and will, most likely, go poking around that cave you two had set base camp up in. Even if I hadn't stopped, I wouldn't put it past him to scope out the area. It wasn't safe to leave you behind."

Bulma shivered involuntarily, feeling the icy chill of fear and nausea in the core of her being. Goku turned to face her, his stoic expression changing to his usual easy-going smile.

"Don't worry, if he gets too close, I'll stay and fight him while you guys escape or lead him away like I did before, that seemed to work fine," he said reassuringly.

Krillin grit his teeth, riddled with self loathing as they flew onwards. Bulma didn't miss the angry tension in his muscles, something she had noticed Yamcha suffered with when he was caught up in a bout of irritation.

"What's up Krillin?" she asked.

Krillin took a deep breath in, trying to calm himself. He must have been giving off a really strong vibe if Bulma of all people was able to pick up on his anger.

"It's just…Goku shouldn't have to fight Vegeta alone, I should be able to help," his eyes flicked to Goku, an apology shining through them like a beacon. "I should have gone with you before when you said you'd break away from us and-

"And leave me by myself to face thugs and murderers and who knows what else?" Bulma shrieked, irked beyond belief.

"It's not like you couldn't take them with your attitude," Krillin mumbled under his breath, causing Bulma to stare daggers at him. The bald monk gulped, wondering if Piccolo had ever been intimidated by one of Bulma's death glares. It was a highly plausible consideration; Bulma was a maniac when she was miffed (which was most of the time).

"When we get to wherever we're going, remind me to beat the crap out of you," the technician hissed angrily, causing Krillin to sport an expression of genuine fear.

On his left, Goku chuckled light heartedly.

"Just be thankful she doesn't have a frying pan," he said, remembering with vague fondness the times that Chi Chi had chased him around their garden, wrathful anger playing over her face as she threatened him with a kitchen utensil. Most of the time, Goku had simply run around until his wife had worn herself out, expelling the aggravation onto the air. Occasionally though, she would get in a hit and Goku would be left sprawled out on the ground with a better respect for Chi Chi's law and a pounding headache.

Since the birth of Gohan, Chi Chi had put away her frying pan. She had never really wanted their son to grow up around violence, ironically enough.

Krillin shot Goku a look over the air.

"DON'T give her ideas Goku," he said as they flew, "I don't have time to check the Capsule house for frying pans to toss away."

Luckily Bulma hadn't been listening, checking the ends of her hair as it whipped out before her, trying to see if she could make out any split ends.

"Attitude, what attitude?" she muttered to herself. "And dad always said I had such an even temper."

Krillin wisely said nothing as they continued on their way.

After another few minutes flying, Dende leant forward excitedly on Goku's shoulders pointing at a tall pillar shaped island that had come into view.

"That's it! That's Guru's house!" he proclaimed, bouncing a little.

"Whoa there little guy," Goku said, laughing when he was thrown off course slightly. Straightening out, he checked on Vegeta's Ki to see how much time they might have to stop before they needed to move again and became alarmed when he was unable to find a trace of the prince.

He paused in mid-air and glanced back, scoping out his surroundings.

"What's wrong?" Krillin asked instantly, stopping by Goku's side.

"Krillin, can you feel Vegeta?" Goku asked, wondering if there was something wrong with him. He remembered what Bulma had said about foreign parasites and wondered if he'd perhaps caught a Namekian illness.

"No…no…I can't feel anything," Krillin confirmed with wide eyes. "What's going on?"

Goku thought about it, remembering the gargantuan power he had felt when they'd first arrived, a power tainted with corruption and depravity. His pulse quickened and he fought to maintain control of his own swelling Ki.

"I think Vegeta's in trouble."

"Or dead," Krillin added helpfully.

Goku continued to stare back the way they had come, his eyes reflecting the green light from the sky. Krillin read the intensity of Goku's gaze and realised that his friend was struggling with himself though he had no idea why he would be feeling particularly conflicted over something disastrous befalling Vegeta. Any normal person might feel a sense of justified vengeance but if anything, Goku just looked sorry.

He opened his mouth to say something consolidatory but Goku turned in that instant, cutting him off.

"We should keep going," he said, pushing on towards Dende's safe house. Krillin shot a bewildered look after him but followed without further comment.

The two of them dropped down on the grass outside of a domed building with the same porcupine-like spikes that decorated their ship. The single window they could see was large and tinted a dull purple, looking out over the waters high above all the other islands. As it was in a primly exposed location like this, Goku wondered briefly why this place hadn't been raided already.

He took the squirming Dende off of his shoulders and set him on the grass, watching fondly as the kid sprinted inside. There was some garbled speech in frantic Namekian and a taller green man stepped out to greet them.

This one sported the same phlegmatic demeanour as Piccolo, his eyes cold and hard, his mouth set in a thin, harsh line. He had well toned muscles on the arms and upper body which made Goku wonder if this was the warrior that Dende had been talking about. If he was as much like Piccolo as his appearance indicated then Goku was sure that Dende would be well protected. It eased the anxiety he had felt over the matter a little.

"Greetings," the new Namekian said, bowing low. Krillin and Goku followed his example while Bulma simply stared; overcome by the resemblance between this new native and the demon she was accustomed to. The bow, a mark of respect, had totally thrown her. Piccolo cared for nobody but himself…well, himself and Goku's little boy it turned out. It was hard to remember that this wasn't Piccolo she was looking at when she'd only ever seen one other person sport this particular look.

"My name is Nail, are you the ones that rescued Dende?" the Namekian asked.

Goku nodded compliantly while Krillin focussed on appearing disarming. Should this guy decide that he didn't trust them, the bald monk didn't much feel like fighting someone that looked so much like Piccolo.

Surprisingly, Nail's expression changed, his lips quirking up into a small smile.

"For that, you have our honest gratitude," he said, bowing again to Goku then gesturing with his hand to the dark doorway. "Please, do come in. I expect you'll be wanting to speak with elder Guru about the Dragonball."

Krillin couldn't help the beam that broke over his face. He turned to look at Bulma who was wearing a similar expression, light dancing in her eyes as she considered that the first stage of her master plan was potentially going to be completed in the next few minutes. Acquire one Dragonball, discuss next move.

They followed Nail into the darkness, noticing a large hole in the ceiling as their eyes adjusted to the dimness. Levitating, Nail started to ascend through the hole, indicating that they should follow him. Without hesitation, Goku gripped Bulma around the waist and proceeded to lift up.

The upstairs storey was flooded with serene light, contrasting to the darkness apparent on the lower level. The light seeped in through the huge window they had observed outside and illuminated a large Namekian dressed in white robes. Ancient lines pitted his face creating patterns in his skin. His antennae hung low on his head and his eyes were closed. Dark spots marred his skin and his breathing was heavy, his chest visibly expanding in the light given off by the window. He smiled when they entered the room but didn't open his eyes, alerting Bulma at least to the fact that he was probably blind.

"Greetings," the ancient Namekian said in a low, dusty voice. From behind his chair, Dende's head peeked out and Goku's smile widened.

"It's nice to finally meet with some visitors that _aren't _endearing to destroy my people," the old Namekian whispered regretfully, placing a large hand on Dende's exposed head.

"Thank you for bringing this little one back to me. He and Nail are all that remain of my extensive family."

It took a moment for that to sink in before Krillin gasped.

"You mean you three are the only Namekians left?" he blurted out, both disgusted and horrified with the extent of the massacre that had taken place. A whole planet of people destroyed…it was just inconceivable. The bald monk was suddenly struck with how important he and his friends had been to the wellbeing of Earth and ached to get back there.

Guru nodded, the movement shifting the folds of fabric draped over his body and Goku clenched his teeth, trying to hold his temper in check. Though it was really none of his business, he had never been one to sit idly by while innocent people suffered and he'd never really cultivated the stomach for learning to mind his own business.

"Sir…I apologise if this may seem a little out of place…but if we were able to use the Dragonballs to wish back my friend Piccolo then the Dragonballs would return to Earth and we could use them to bring back the people of Namek."

Guru frowned as he absorbed this information, his heart jumping.

"Who is this Piccolo? How do you have such things on your planet?"

"Oh…uh…I don't really know the finer details sir but as far as we know, Kami, our guardian, was born here on Namek and came to Earth with a blue print for the Dragonballs already in his head…"

Guru nodded in understanding, leaning back in his chair and coughing.

"Ah…a member of the Dragon Clan, I remember there being an old story about that. This Namekian has passed unnaturally? You know the eternal dragon can only bring back someone who has passed before their time…"

"Yes, there was some trouble on our planet…similar to the trouble you are experiencing," Goku explained.

"And you would be willing to use one of your wishes to help my people? Truly you have a kind soul."

Goku scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

"Well if Nimbus is anything to go by then sure," he said jovially provoking Bulma to face palm in the background.

"Goku!" she hissed, causing him to glance back. "They won't know what Nimbus is!"

"Oh right," Goku muttered, frowning.

Guru leant forward, his face turned towards Goku and for a moment, Bulma was sure that he could see the Saiyan standing there, even though his eyes were still firmly closed.

"Yes, you are definitely pure of heart, I can see it," Guru decided, moving back again. "Please, take the Dragonball and wish your friend back by all means."

He reached up over his head, grunting slightly with the effort and his hand closed over the Dragonball resting atop his seat. Bulma's eyes widened.

"That thing's huge," she mumbled to Krillin. "I thought it was just a decoration!"

Goku held out his hands, surprised when the Dragonball dropped into them like a cannonball. He stared at his warped reflection in the orange surface and grinned elatedly.

"Thank you very much," he said, bowing low. He spun on his heel, feeling his face break out into a truly gigantic smile. With this he was one step closer to his son…

'_Gohan…_'

"Okay guys, lets get out of here," Goku told the others, holding the Dragonball up in triumph.

"One more thing before you go," Guru stuttered, his voice cracking. Nail was immediately by his side, holding on to his arms as the great Namekian was overwrought with a coughing fit that left him gasping. He inhaled deeply, smiled at Nail and turned his attention back to Goku who was looking at him in concern.

"If you would kindly step over here for a moment, I can try and reach deep inside to pull out your hidden potential. I sense that the road you are choosing to take may be arduous and you may need to rely on this power to insure the safety of you and your friends."

Goku blinked uncertainly but stepped forward, ever trusting.

"Don't overdo it elder Guru," Nail said warily.

Goku felt the old Namekian's hand on his head and glanced up in interest.

"Let me take a look here…hmm…I can indeed feel something deep within…"

Guru frowned as he felt around the shape of Goku's hidden potential and reeled as he latched on to it. In all his years he had never felt anything quite like it before.

It was…

…staggering in its intensity, absolutely absurd, like a never-ending well and, if Guru wasn't mistaken, it was shaped like a dark power with jagged edges accessed through rage or evoked by violence. He frowned as he felt around it, completely confused by it. Though it was indeed similarly shaped to the limited evil that Guru had felt in his time as the eldest Namekian, it had none of the usual malevolence attached. If anything, it was…one of the purest forms of energy he had ever experienced. How could something shaped like evil be so incorruptibly good? He took a deep breath and regarded the young Saiyan blinking up at him in bewilderment.

Perhaps this man himself was something special?

Yes…yes, Guru was certain of it now. No other being in the universe would be able to contain the essence of darkness so completely and harness it as something pure. His power…it may have been born of evil but it _certainly _wasn't ruled by evil and that was a rarity…perhaps even an anomaly.

He smiled.

"Hold still," he instructed and released Goku's restraints.

Goku's eyes widened, his Ki jumped dramatically and Krillin almost fell over with the force of it, staggering back into one of the walls to help him stay upright. A shining white aura erupted around his best friend and created a storm in the upper storey of Guru's house, bathing everything in iridescent light.

Goku could feel it flooding through him, gateways opening like water ways so the flow of Ki could travel through him in voluminous waves. He felt invigorated, ecstatic and almost giddy with the power.

"There, it's done," Guru confirmed, removing his hand.

Goku took a deep breath and concentrated on reigning in his new power, pleased when he was able to lower his output considerably. Clearly his ruthless training regime aboard their space ship at 100 x Earth's gravity had given him a bit of an advantage when it came to controlling such a monumental amount of new Ki.

As the high from the release wore off however, he was able to think more clearly and realised with a jolt that he had probably just alerted half the planet to his presence with that rapid Ki ascension. Vegeta's possible assailant came to mind instantly

"Thank you very much," he repeated, bowing low, his tone suddenly urgent. "I'm afraid with a power increase like that we may have just attracted quite a bit of trouble."

"How is that so?" Guru asked, alarmed.

"The…uh…other aliens have mechanical devices that alert them to fluctuations in Ki. Sir, if you wouldn't mind performing the same technique on my companion, we can at least try to lead them away from here so you, Dende and Nail are safe."

Krillin was still gawping gormlessly at Goku's power increase as Goku inclined his head, beckoning Krillin forward. It was…insane…power increases like that didn't just _happen _and after a Ki increase of that magnitude, with all that power, he honestly couldn't see how Goku could be the same person. But as he looked up into Goku's dark eyes, he could see that his best friend hadn't changed.

He was beginning to think that nothing could change the true essence of Goku.

"It would be my pleasure," Guru said, placing a hand on Krillin's head as he shuffled nervously forward. While the ancient Namekian was delving deep into the recesses of Krillin's soul, Goku tried to take an accurate measure of his powers, wondering if it would be enough to take on the stranger that had kidnapped his son. He stretched out his senses, searching for any enemies that might be hurtling towards them, surprised when he was able to map the Ki signatures on the entire planet…even a little further…

He started.

"Goku, what's wrong?" Bulma asked, turning away from Krillin who was giving off his own resonating aura as Guru finished releasing his hidden strengths.

"5 of them, all of them with pitch black souls," Goku muttered, more to himself than Bulma. "Heading here…"

"What? Who's heading here?" Bulma squawked, automatically panicking. "_Why _are they heading here?"

But of course she already knew the answer; it was sitting in Goku's arms throwing out flashes of orange as the light from Krillin's aura bounced off of the refractive surface.

"Man…" she muttered, folding her arms and frowning, "these Dragonballs are popular."

* * *

Vegeta could feel the sluggish movement of liquid around him and cracked open an eyelid. The light that filtered through his eyelashes stung and made the back of his head pound. He tried to hold on to a groan that wanted to escape, knowing that the best course of action after waking from brutalised unconsciousness was to remain as silent as possible but he had no real control over his body at the moment and the vocalisation fell out of him. Interestingly, despite the fact that he could feel the release of his diaphragm, no sound came out. This could only mean that he was completely submerged in whatever liquid he could feel around him. How was he breathing?

For a few seconds, he let his vision adjust and realised with some confusion that the liquid he was surrounded by was a very specific dark blue, a colour normally only found in the healing tanks that littered the space stations and Frieza's invasion vessels. Sure enough, when he thought about it, he could feel the nozzle of the oxygen pipe attached to his mouth and nose keeping him alive.

Letting that knowledge swirl through his mind, he started to take inventory of his injuries, gauging aches and pains, judging cuts and bruises. He was sure that at some point during the humiliating battle, one of his ribs had popped out but as he moved slightly, he realised there was no stiffness, no shooting pain.

Just how long had he been healing? And more importantly, how much had happened since he'd been out? If he was in a healing tank then he was sure that Frieza still wanted him to spill the beans on the whereabouts of the missing Dragonball at least.

"I'm afraid his vitals are still weak…it's bizarre…almost like he's resistant to the treatment inside the tank."

Vegeta heard the voice and instinctively pushed his Ki down as low as it would go, knowing it would give him a strategic advantage if they thought that he was still weak. Through the slit in his eyelids, he could just make out the form of one of Frieza's subordinates and the taller figure of Zarbon. Anger surged through him making it difficult to control his Ki.

"Oh this isn't good," Zarbon was saying, running a hand through his long hair. "If he doesn't get better, Frieza will have my head."

"I've tried adjusting the levels of chemical formula but-

"But nothing, if he's not healed in the next hour, you can rest assured that I will come and find you before Frieza finds me, are we clear?" Zarbon hissed, clutching at the subordinate's armour.

The alien blanched and held his hands up in a sign of surrender.

"Y-yes sir!" he affirmed shakily.

Vegeta laughed inwardly and relaxed, letting his Ki sink a little further, amused when both Zarbon and the unfortunate subordinate glanced at his vitals with grim expressions.

"Better get to work," Zarbon said tauntingly, throwing the subordinate at the monitor and turning to leave. The subordinate nodded frantically and pulled at the collar of his uniform, breathing out a sign of relief as Zarbon left. Vegeta listened to him grumble, choosing his moment, waiting until he was looking intently at the monitors and dials attached to the rejuvenation chamber before preparing his next course of action.

"This really doesn't make sense…but its nice to see you cut down to size for once," the soldier mumbled, glancing over at Vegeta's prone form.

"And here I thought the Saiyans were a proud race, an unbeatable race. Well just look at you now…"

He smiled uneasily but that smile turned into a grimace as the prince opened his eyes, fixing the subordinate with a murderous expression.

"Oh…wh-what?" he stuttered, drawing back.

Vegeta simply smirked behind the glass and lifted his arm up, letting his Ki jump up as the attack formed in the palm of his hand.

* * *

The explosion rocked the ship and in the throne room, Frieza's eyes widened. He glanced over his shoulder as Zarbon appeared, panting in the doorway.

"What was that?" Frieza asked calmly, expecting a concise explanation.

Zarbon sucked in a breath of air before replying.

"I'm not sure sir, I think it came from the rejuvenation room."

Frieza's eyes narrowed into slits and Zarbon could feel his soul quivering inside him.

"Then what, may I ask, are you doing here?"

Zarbon felt fear catapult through his system as he regarded Frieza's disapproval but he reined it in, gritting his teeth to stop himself from falling apart.

"I came to make sure that you and the Dragonballs were-

Another explosion cut him off and this time, both Frieza and Zarbon were able to see a flash of green light igniting somewhere to the right of them. Zarbon didn't wait to finish his explanation, pivoting round and launching himself along the corridor, his thoughts on the joy he would get out of mercilessly beating Vegeta to a pulp when Frieza was finished with him.

'_That's right…go and check out the source of that disaster,_' Vegeta thought to himself as he watched Zarbon hurtle past him without a clue. For the moment, the prince was wedged into one of the armoury closets, peering out of a crack in the doorway to see if this improvised plan of his would work. The hard armour was cutting into him from all sides but if his plan was successful, it would be worth the degradation of being forced to hide here.

To his surprise and elation, Frieza followed Zarbon's retreating figure a moment later, fury bubbling like a black hurricane beneath the surface. Vegeta chuckled to himself, waiting until he could sense their energy further down the corridor before tearing himself out of the armoury closet and sprinting towards Frieza's throne room.

Pressing the button on the side of the doorway, he watched as it swung open and beheld his treasure, his lips curling up.

They really were fools. How they could leave the Dragonballs unguarded through all this chaos was completely beyond him.

It was…if he thought about it, a rookie mistake. One that Frieza certainly wouldn't be making if he wasn't already flustered. The thought made Vegeta smirk.

He moved into the room and crouched down before one of the Dragonballs, his mind working like lightning. On the one hand, he could try and escape with them but that would not only slow him down, it would make him an obvious visual target. On the other hand, what else was he to do?

He frowned for a moment then grinned as he decided on the most beneficial course of action. Out of Frieza's window he could see as Zarbon rose up out of the hole he had created, his head whipping frantically about as he searched for any sign of the prince. If he was going to seriously try for an escape attempt, he would have to get Zarbon to move back into the ship. Steeling himself, he skidded towards the door, feeling out the surrounding Ki and then yelling:

"Hey idiots, I'm in here!"

He afforded himself a momentary gathering of Ki before shooting off a twin blast down the corridor. He beamed as the light cascaded from his finger tips, noting that his overall power had increased dramatically following his near death experience. He had to love his Saiyan blood line.

Glancing back at the window, he watched as Zarbon plunged back into the depths of the ship and launched into action, throwing out a Ki blast to melt the transparent window so he could lob the Dragonballs through. One by one they disappeared from Frieza's throne room until only Vegeta himself was left and he didn't stick around to wait for trouble to find him. Hopping out of the open window, he lunged towards the nearest rock formation and waited for them to find the devastation, pushing his Ki down as hard as he could.

It was Frieza that appeared at the window first, his Ki palpitating madly. It was clear from his expression that he was absolutely livid, a vein was throbbing in the corner of his temple and his eyes were manic, glowing faintly red as his Ki sparked behind them. Vegeta felt a twinge of fear as he observed that expression but that was overshadowed by the bombardment of pride flowing through him. As soon as he was immortal, he would have nothing to fear from that _creature_.

"Zarbon, if you do not find Vegeta within the next half an hour, I will eviscerate you without remorse," Frieza said simply, shifting slightly so Vegeta could catch a glimpse of Zarbon who was, for all intent and purposes, looking spectacularly unwell.

'_Vengeance comes in all shapes and sizes,_' Vegeta thought merrily, appreciating Zarbon's discomfort.

Zarbon said nothing to acknowledge the order but launched himself up into the sky, trying to catch a glimpse of Vegeta's retreating figure. When he found nothing, a sea of dread washed through him and he took off in a random direction, hoping that he looked like he knew what he was doing.

Vegeta guffawed lightly and stepped into the water, disappearing beneath the murky surface in a matter of seconds, following in the direction he has launched the Dragonballs until he'd reached a distant shore line. To his delight, all 5 of Frieza's Dragonballs had landed within a couple of metres of each other.

"Oh yes," the prince whispered, gathering them together and pushing them into a small embanked cave off of the side of the tiny island. Once he was sure they were secure, he allowed himself a small moment to appreciate his victory.

6 Dragonballs. He was now in possession of 6 Dragonballs and it wouldn't take him long to find the last one. He had a hunch that the huge power he had been tracking before Zarbon had rudely interrupted him would be associated in some way with the last Dragonball and when it came to matters of importance like this, he wasn't normally wrong.

'_Soon I will be immortal and then I will challenge Frieza,_' he thought to himself, smirking grimly as he took to the sky, seeking out the power by expanding his senses outwards and emptying his mind.

At first, he couldn't locate the power and frowned as he searched, letting his senses stretch further than they had ever been stretched before. Then, just as he was about to start getting agitated, he felt a colossal spike in Ki and recoiled, staring blindly into the distance for a moment.

"What the-

'_That power…it's phenomenal but…who could possess a power like this short of Frieza himself? Surely it's not his blasted brother Cooler. I doubt Frieza would be stupid enough to let him know about the Dragonballs…no…it has to be…_'

The prince's eyes narrowed. Whoever it was, he was determined to find out and if they happened to know anything about the last Dragonball, as he was sure they did, he would extricate that information through any means necessary.

* * *

Gohan was already up and waiting when Sensou arrived, balancing on a thin branch high in one of the dark trees trying to snatch a long, thin chilli like fruit that was dangling tauntingly before him. It pleased the warrior god to see that Gohan had taken some initiative in his training, trying not to rely on the impulse to simply fly and grab it easily, instead trying to improve his balance and strength. He watched as the small boy stretched forward, his fingertips brushing the tip of the fruit.

"Boy, get down here!" he barked, causing Gohan to jump out of his skin and tumble off of the topmost branch. Catching himself in mid-air, he scowled down at his mentor before flying up and gripping the fruit in tight fingers, devouring it in two colossal bites.

The warrior god sneered as the kid flew down to meet him, his arms crossed over his chest. Gohan's face had morphed into a hard mask of concentration and obedience but his tail swished out jauntily behind him, alerting Sensou to the true irritation the demi-Saiyan had felt at the interruption.

"It's good that you are trying to improve your manual dexterity but you have to remember to be alert to your surroundings," he instructed, turning and beckoning for Gohan to follow. The demi-Saiyan fell into a complaisant lope behind his mentor, eyeing him suspiciously as they walked. It wasn't the first time that the warrior god had led him into some sort of disaster, exploiting the boy's trustful nature to teach him about true awareness but as they continued into the endless shadows, Gohan realised that they were heading towards the dimension door.

"Sir, where are we going?" he asked, dodging Sensou's automatic back-hand with ease.

"What have I told you about stupid questions?" Sensou offered in response, his tone ominous.

Gohan's eyes narrowed as he gauged his mentor's tone and he fell into studying the warrior god's behaviour; looking for any clue as to where they might be going. As he stared, he noticed the thinner set of the lips and the slight frown. Sensou's eyes were sharper than normal; colder and every so often he would let out a slight huff as they ambled forward. The warrior god's posture was off, there was an obvious slump in the shoulders now that Gohan looked and he was walking at trudging speed where as normally he would be forcing Gohan to march. The boy raised an incredulous eyebrow.

Sensou was in a bad mood.

That could only mean they were going to visit Shorai and Tonbo.

He skipped up slightly in delight but made sure to hide his elation behind the emotionless mask he was trying to cultivate. He didn't particularly feel like being assaulted for being happy today and he certainly didn't want to commit an evasive slip up, letting one of Sensou's hits connect. The warrior god was being a lot tougher on the boy than he had been before the Saiyans.

The dimension door loomed before them emitting a bright, unnatural light that cut through the shadows like a beacon. Setting their destination, Sensou waited with the boy in silence as the doorway changed location and they stepped through to the meadow.

Immediately, Gohan felt the warmth of true sunlight on his skin and could do nothing but bask, a smile tugging at his face despite the lingering presence of Sensou. The warrior god frowned and moved in to hit the top of the boy's head with a closed fist.

"Ouch!" the boy complained, rubbing at the lump forming at the top of his skull.

Sensou simply gave him a disapproving look and pivoted, slinking out across the grass towards his brother's usual spot.

Gohan followed, making sure to keep Sensou's back in view so he could steal pleasurable moments in the sun without being scolded, feeling the light dance across his face as they walked beneath the weaving trees. The shady foliage, the smell of healthy wildlife and the sounds of small animals skirting through the grass made him ache for his home in the mountains. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep his lower lip from wobbling.

In a few moments, the two of them had cleared the trees and were standing on the edge of the familiar field. Gohan's eyes automatically flicked to the stream and he licked his lips, trying not to give in to the thirst. Back in Sensou's training dimension, the only available water was from a dark waterfall in the middle of the forest. Gohan tried to limit his trips there because he didn't trust the colour of the water and it always seemed like the shadows were converging on the banks, waiting for a good moment to attack him.

He waved when he saw the seer and the seer's apprentice seated at the peak of the hill and beamed when Tonbo waved back. Shorai was sitting in a hunched position with a few papers scattered around him muttering to himself and didn't notice as his brother and the little boy advanced.

"You could at least say hello," Sensou said tartly, standing a few feet away with Gohan at his side.

The demi-Saiyan noticed immediately how haggard Shorai looked. His dark hair was more unruly than usual, tangling down his back in black folds. His eyes were small, squinting and lined with heavy bruises. His face was grey. When he glanced up at the warrior god, his glare was sharper than it normally was and he kept tucking a particularly wild piece of hair behind his ear like it was a nervous tick.

"Ah, Sensou, Gohan, I'm sorry. Please sit down Gohan, I'll be with you in a moment."

Gohan moved forward and seated himself before the seer, throwing Tonbo a smile when he was sure Sensou wasn't watching. Tonbo returned the grin easily and, also shooting a sly glance at Gohan's scary mentor, he pushed his Ki beneath himself and hovered a few inches off of the floor to show Gohan how well he was doing.

Gohan's eyes lit up in pride and he fidgeted slightly, itching to go and play some flying games with his friend.

"No…no that can't be right…but if it is then there would have to be preventative measures put in place…" Shorai was muttering, his face taking on a red hue as he fought to lock down hot frustration.

Gohan turned his attention back to Shorai and tilted his head to one side.

"Um…sir?" he asked softly.

Shorai glanced up briefly and then back down at his papers, indicating that he was listening.

"Are you okay?"

Shorai's eyes flicked up again and locked with the demi-Saiyan's. He saw the concern and the confusion on the surface and beneath that he could see the results of Sensou's training. Already the haunted look he had seen in Gohan's eyes only a few days ago was deepening. There was hurt there and, worryingly, acceptance. Shorai blanched as he regarded those eyes, knowing he should have been paying more attention to Gohan's well-being over the last few crucial days but everything had just fallen apart at once.

He took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry Gohan, I'm being incredibly rude. Please, if you wouldn't mind, can I borrow your hand?"

Gohan complied willingly, placing his hand in Shorai's own. The seer noted with a start how rough they had become over the last few months. So different to the soft hands of the child he had faced only a few months prior.

He took a deep breath and carefully delved into the threads of Gohan's future.

* * *

_So Vegeta has managed to gain 6 Dragonballs. Will he be able to get his hands on the last 1 to wish for immortality? Now that Guru has awoken Goku and Krillin's hidden potential, just how strong are they? What will Shorai find in Gohan's future?_

_FIND OUT ALL THIS AND MORE ON…Tomb Raider_

_(accidentally gets impaled on a spike…again…seriously with the spikes…grrrr)_

_Reviews are made of cookie dough and love. You know you want to spread some cheer (nods)._


	15. Lucid Dreaming

_I have just had the worst 2 weeks in the work place so the reviews I got for the last chapter really cheered me up. Thank you so much. A few things to note as always:_

_1) I noticed whilst reading through this chapter that I like to alternate between typing actual numbers and spelling out numbers with letters. At school, I was always taught to spell out numbers but with the power levels sometimes noted in this fic, I ended up typing the actual numbers instead for convenience. This was fine until I got half way through a sentence and realised it wouldn't make sense if I wrote the actual number so the result is a horrible mish-mash of letters and numbers. Apologies, I intend to try and fix this once this fic is completed._

_2) I never actually saw the original Dragonball so am unsure of how much real gory violence Bulma has been subjected to. I always got the impression that the Planet Trade Organisation offered a new level of maliciousness so I've run with that in case Bulma's reaction to ensuing events seems a little extreme. _

_3) I was really excited about posting this chapter. This is a note of importance indeed._

_4) Spelling, grammar, sentence structure and other items of grammatical interest checked but as always, I am prone to the ever horrendous human error (more so than other humans even) and offer apologies for any mistakes found._

* * *

**14: Lucid Dreaming**

Vegeta shot across the sky, not bothering to push his power level down. Having experienced the full force of Zarbon in his transformed state, he wasn't particularly worried about crossing Frieza's favoured wingman this time.

He smirked openly.

His power had grown so much…

He felt around the signature he had been following and his heart thumped when he realised he was closing in. Then he felt it, a force hurtling through the sky at breakneck speed. On a reflex, he glanced up, feeling his stomach sink as he watched at least 5 space pods drop through the sky in perfect formation. Only one particular squadron flew in tight formation like that…

"The Ginyu Force…" Vegeta muttered, his quivering voice laced with disgust. His hands balled into fists beside him and he clenched his teeth together tight. Whatever notions he had of attaining immortality were seriously tested when he factored in the impact of the Ginyu Force. Ridiculous as they were, no one could ignore those power levels. They spoke for themselves.

His nose flared when he realised that they had probably brought scouters with them. They were, inevitably, in a far better position to track down the Dragonballs and Vegeta just knew they would go straight for his stash on that island. Mentally, he cursed himself several times over for being arrogant enough to destroy his own scouter. No matter how hard he tried he still couldn't sense the minute trace of energy the Dragonballs gave off and that's what he got for trusting in an ability that he had literally _just _picked up.

Muttering profanities, he flew forward like a missile, knowing that he was almost out of time.

* * *

In the end, Krillin, Bulma and Goku had decided to go after the Dragonball still flagging up by itself on Bulma's radar. As they took off from Guru's, Goku had suggested several times that it might be wise for Bulma to get off of Namek entirely, taking the porcupine-like space ship and just heading for home but she vehemently shook her head, saying that they clearly needed her intelligence to navigate these tricky strategic waters if they wanted to successfully end up with all 7 Dragonballs.

Goku was both grateful and a little exasperated. It was true that they were going to need someone to come up a legitimate game plan but at the same time, Goku was uneasy about putting one of his oldest friends in such danger. Of course, when Bulma decided on something, there was no force in the universe that could stop her so his opinion on the matter was pretty much null and void.

A few minutes after that argument had been resolved, however, Vegeta's Ki signature popped up in the back of his mind again, furious, pulsating and almost twice as powerful as it had been only hours ago. Goku vaguely wondered if he had gone to see a Namekian with powers like Guru.

"Not good," he said, throwing a glance back over his shoulder. "Krillin, you and Bulma should go on ahead, I'll-

He paused, cutting himself off as he felt the large Ki signature coming towards him. It had an oppressed feel to it and, concentrating as he had been on Vegeta's advance, he hadn't picked it up until it was too late. Zarbon came to a halting stop in front of them, his eyes growing round as he spotted the Dragonball in Goku's hands.

"Give me that," he snarled, snatching at the ball.

Goku dodged, leaning back so Zarbon's swipe flew uselessly through the air. In Krillin's arms, Bulma blinked as she looked at their new adversary.

"Wow," she said, eyeing him through dark lashes. "He might be a little grabby but I guess he's got to have a fault somewhere."

Krillin raised a disbelieving eyebrow as he took in the flirty glances she kept throwing in this new stranger's direction.

"SERIOUSLY BULMA?" he squawked, flailing slightly.

"Who are you?" Goku asked calmly, his hands tight on the Dragonball.

Zarbon smirked but he had none of his usual confidence to back it up. Frieza was waiting, time was pressing on, why did he have to waste time with this?

"I am one of Frieza's elite wingmen," Zarbon told them, by the way of an introduction. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll hand over the Dragonball without fuss. Lord Frieza is already pretty pissed off and I promise, you don't want him to get any angrier."

Goku's expression didn't change. He could feel the oscillating Ki from this new opponent and judged it, allowing himself recognise the taint of darkness in this being's soul. Whatever this 'Frieza' was, his purpose for the Dragonballs was probably going to be something quite malevolent.

He shook his head slowly.

"Sorry friend, I need this to wish my son back," he said simply and made to fly past. Zarbon's arm shot out like a barrier, blocking Goku's path. His smirk widened slightly.

"Can't let you do that mate," he said.

Goku fixed him with a cold stare, not moving back. Somehow, Zarbon felt a little intimidated by this and that in itself was a feat of note. He couldn't remember the last time someone had actually managed to rock him.

Goku turned and threw the ball back to Krillin who caught it awkwardly in his outstretched hand, keeping hold of Bulma's waist with the other.

"Do you think he'd noticed me?" Bulma asked Krillin absent-mindedly, wishing that they had all met on solid ground we she could take up a more dignified pose to capture his attention.

"No really, are you actually serious?" Krillin asked grimly. "You know he's opposing Goku right? He's an enemy?"

Both Zarbon and Goku fell into ready stances in the air at the same time, reading the aggressive signals and reacting accordingly. Goku fixed Zarbon with a primal stare and Zarbon frowned as a spark of recognition flared in the back of his mind.

"Have we met before?" he asked in an offhand tone, trying to place where he'd seen this face before, that look.

Goku's eyes remained level as he answered.

"No."

He shot forward on the air, his hair whipping back and Zarbon met it all with a veteran's smile, waiting for the punch he knew was coming. Sure enough, Goku's fist angled upwards and in a moment it was speeding down to impact the right side of Zarbon's face. He set up an easy block but when the punch came, it slipped right through him without impacting, transparent like a ghost.

By the time Zarbon realised it was an after image, Goku was already behind him aiming an exposed elbow to the back of his neck. The wingman recognised it as an incapacitorial move and barely managed to dodge, releasing his Ki and dropping through the air a couple of metres so the elbow couldn't connect.

He hovered below them, staring up at this dark haired stranger with distaste and agitation. Just how had he moved so fast? And honestly, where had he seen this guy before? Was he one of Frieza's Special Forces? With moves like that it was definitely a plausible theory…

Suddenly, both his opponent and little bald man behind him looked out over their left shoulders at exactly the same time. For some reason, the action creeped Zarbon out and he shivered, following their gaze to the horizon where a tiny blue light was flaring.

'_Wait, what?_'

Zarbon simply stared as the light grew and then Vegeta came into visual range, rocketing through the atmosphere. The wingman felt an irritating mix of relief, anger and awe that these strangers had been able to…to what? Sense the prince's arrival?

Surely Vegeta couldn't have been telling the truth when he spouted all that nonsense about being able to detect power levels…

He groaned inwardly. This really hadn't been the best of days so far.

Vegeta ground to a stop in mid-air and took a moment to survey the situation. His eyes widened as he realised that he had come face to face with Kakarot and his annoying sidekick of all people, the latter holding on to a gorgeous girl and the very thing he was looking for. Somehow, Zarbon had found his way into the mix but that didn't really worry the prince too much.

Kakarot was the real problem.

His power was enormous.

Absolutely incredible.

How had he managed to increase his power so substantially and in such a short amount of time? Vegeta had been in battle constantly since his recuperation and still he hadn't managed to increase his strength that much…did Kakarot not sleep?

As he was gauging Goku's power, he felt the huge spike of Ki behind them and turned to stare back over his shoulder. The Ginyu Force had landed and time was running out.

"I'll make this quick," Vegeta said in an urgent voice. He held out his hand.

"Give me the Dragonball."

Krillin glared at him and clutched it tighter, reflexively tightening his grip on Bulma's waist at the same time. She squeaked and slapped at his hand, relieved when the pressure round her midriff lessened.

"Ouch, what are trying to do Krillin? Crush me to death?"

"Sorry Bulma," the bald monk mumbled absently. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Bulma mouth 'I'm not with him' in the direction of the stranger that had appeared and mentally face palmed.

Goku had his eye on the horizon where he could feel the full force of the power he had traced through the upper atmosphere. Each individual Ki level by itself wasn't too high but he could gather by the way they'd landed in tight formation that they were used to working as a team. Together, they were sure to be quite formidable and there was no telling how much of an issue they would become if they decided to put someone intellectually gifted like Vegeta at the helm.

This was turning into a nightmare.

"Seriously, give me the Dragonball. I don't have time to waste waiting for you to be co-operative," Vegeta repeated.

Until now, Zarbon had remained silent, hoping to learn all he could about this bizzar ability they all seemed to possess but he too had no time to waste, turning to face Vegeta.

"You shouldn't be worrying about that my friend. You stole the Dragonballs from Frieza and I need them back."

To Zarbon's ultimate irritation, the prince didn't even turn to face him as he replied.

"Zarbon, you're not worth the dirt on my shoes, just shut up and stay out of this."

The wingman felt a stab of anger in his gut and growled, dropping back into a battle ready position. His eyebrow twitched when he realised that the prince was still refusing to look at him and he let his Ki build freely until he was verging on transformation.

"How dare you speak to me like that you insolent monkey! Have you forgotten what happened last time we met on the battle field? This time I won't let you live."

"Tch, you're no threat to me now," the prince said bluntly, keeping his eyes on Goku and his attention on the Dragonball in case the bald monk and the woman tried to escape with it. Goku took note of Vegeta's lingering attention and motioned for the others to stay still though he knew Krillin would have trouble fighting the desire to flee.

"You have too much self confidence," Zarbon stated, letting his Ki expand and his muscles engorge until he was standing in all his transformed, monstrous glory before them. Tucked under Krillin's arm, Bulma recoiled, her face contorted in sudden disgust.

"Looks really are deceiving," Krillin muttered, earning a heated glare from Bulma for his troubles.

Zarbon flexed his new enlarged muscles and launched himself at the wayward prince, noting the mocking smile still in place as he sailed forward. In an instant, Vegeta's arm had flashed out to the side and a Ki blast was barrelling its way towards the wingman. He had only a second to realise that this phenomenal, split second attack was more powerful than anything he could hope to face head on but by then it was too late. He let out an ear splitting shriek as he was incinerated, his burnt body dropping into the water beneath them.

Bulma screamed, her eyes widening in panic and horror. Vegeta winced at the noise but did nothing to attack. The smell of cremated flesh lingered on the air and eventually, Bulma's screaming subsided into empty gags.

"Krillin, KRILLIN I'M GOING TO BE SICK! You have to put me down NOW!" Bulma yelled, bucking violently in his arm.

"But…" Krillin started, glancing at Vegeta.

"Oh by all means, put her down, I have no interest in seeing the contents of her stomach," the prince said, glancing over his shoulder again as he felt the Ginyu Force start to move, their Ki streaking like comets across the planet's surface. Just as he'd predicted, they were bee lining for his stash of Dragonballs and he groaned inwardly, feeling the flare of frustration and panic worming through his system. He let his eyes flick over to Goku's and tried to resign himself to the only course of action open to him.

"We don't have time for this," Vegeta repeated, relaxing his stance. Goku followed the movement, recognising it as a call for a truce, a chance to talk. Vegeta's eyes levelled with his and they were reserved, reluctant.

"Look Kakarot, can you feel that? Those power levels belong to something called the Ginyu Force, an elite squadron of freelance fighters that Frieza likes to call on every now and then when the situation tends not to be progressing in his favour. At the moment, they're heading towards 5 of the Dragonballs that I've managed to steal and hide. Once they have those, they'll go for the other Dragonball I've hidden or they'll come here looking for this one. I suggest we put aside our differences for now and work together to stop them before Frieza gets involved."

Goku took a moment to let this bombardment of information sink in. He had no idea who this 'Frieza' character was but he could tell by the change in Vegeta's tone of voice that he was probably the owner of the monumental Ki signature they had felt when they'd first landed. If a power like that got involved at this stage, it could be disastrous. Even with his restraints released by Guru, he had no idea if he could tackle something so mind-boggling.

Then there was the fact that Vegeta was actually willing to team up. He was reminded strongly of the fateful day that Raditz had appeared on Earth, kidnapping his son and starting all this madness. Piccolo had deemed the situation dire enough that he had offered to help in the effort to destroy Goku's brother despite their long standing rivalry. If Vegeta was trying to call a truce for now, then the situation must be graver than Goku realised. The prince was privy to a lot more information than them, or so it seemed.

He sighed heavily.

"Alright, we'll work together for now," he relented.

On the ground, Krillin's jaw dropped open as Bulma heaved behind a particularly thick turquoise bush. What the hell was Goku thinking? Teaming up with Vegeta of all people? The guy was less trustworthy than Piccolo had been…and Goku was way too gullible.

"Bulma, stay here," he threw out before taking to the sky and hovering beside his best friend, staring at him meaningfully.

"Goku, are you sure about this?"

"We don't have a choice," Goku explained, running a hand through his hair. "It seems that Vegeta has the advantage of knowing the enemy and this time, I think that's gonna be important."

The bald monk shot a glance in Vegeta's direction, noting as he turned to face the speeding Ki signatures, fully exposing his back. Since when had Vegeta been able to sense Ki?

"This is insane," Krillin commented, sighing in serious irritation. "Alright Vegeta, what's the plan?"

The prince was intent on tracking Ginyu's Ki, the cogs of his mind turning at breakneck speed as he churned through information and tried to divulge a plan of action. With Kakarot at his side, at least for this battle, it was plausible that they could very well take out the Ginyu Force and the thought filled him with satisfaction. It all depended on how they approached this situation and how quickly they could react.

"We're going to have to go to them," Vegeta decided thoughtfully, crossing his arms across his chest. "The Ginyu have scouters so they'll know we're coming. Surprise attacks are out but if we push our power down we can still catch them off guard. It'll probably be a good idea to bring the Dragonball with us so we don't have to split our forces. They're quite clever at assessing tactical advantages and manipulating their opponents so they can pick them off individually."

Goku nodded once and glanced down at Bulma was now sitting cross legged in front of a mound of dirt, hiccoughing slightly. Pity surged through him. For all intents and purposes, Bulma was still a civilian. She shouldn't have to witness a battle like the one that was more than likely going to take place.

"Just give me a minute Vegeta," he said, falling out of the sky before the prince could respond to land a few feet away from Bulma. She was hunched over herself muttering something about needing serious therapy when they got home and Goku grimaced. She should have gone home when she had the chance.

"Bulma?" he asked gently, stepping forward and crouching down beside her. To his surprise, she wasn't crying.

"Goku…that was horrible…it was much worse than watching it happen via Crystal ball or TV. I'm sorry I threw up."

Goku pulled a face and examined her expression, realising that her eyes were glassy and her breaths were short and sharp. She was in shock.

"It's alright Bulma but we have to go after the rest of the Dragonballs and there are a lot more enemies than we originally thought there were."

"Oh Kami…" the technician whispered, rocking slightly back and forth.

"I think it would be better for you to stay here, maybe hide yourself until it's over," Goku told her. "I really do appreciate your intention to help and we'll come and get you when we have the Dragonballs, alright?"

Bulma nodded automatically, then her brain kicked into gear and she shook her head violently.

"No way! I'm not waiting here by myself, what if someone shows up! What am I supposed to do?" she asked, some of the spark returning to her voice.

Goku shook his head and stood again.

"I don't think there's anyone left for you to be afraid of. Anyone dangerous will be with us. Just hang tight for a few hours, okay?"

Bulma huffed, the fear reflecting in her eyes but she nodded once in agreement and Goku took off without another word, riddled with guilt over leaving one of his oldest friends to get over her shock and navigate the treacheries of an empty planet alone. If they hadn't been in such a desperately tight spot, he would have suggested that Krillin take her back to Guru's but as it was; they needed every second they could get.

He met the prince and the bald monk in mid-air glaring daggers at each other and glanced at the prince who took the lead without comment.

Bulma watched them rocket off into the distance from her seated position on the ground, following them until they were nothing but tiny white specks on the horizon.

* * *

Captain Ginyu beamed as he and his team-mates uncovered the mother load of Dragonballs hidden carefully in an embanked cave off of the edge of a tiny island. They glinted in the sun as Recoome dug them out and handed them to the captain who held them for a moment, then let them slip into orbit around him so he could free his hands.

"I think I should check in with Lord Frieza," the captain muttered to himself, tapping at the spare scouter in his pocket and glancing lazily out to the left as the scouter over his own eye beeped to let him know that Guldo was approaching.

"Ah, excellent," the captain said, his smile widening as the smallest member of the team landed and presented him with the 6th Dragonball.

"Heh, these things have been a piece of cake to pick up," Jeice commented, flicking a piece of white hair out of his face as a breeze blew past. "I can't figure out for the life of me why Frieza called us out to do grunt work like this."

Captain Ginyu shot him a disapproving look, noting the large power levels that had cropped up on the scouter, moving towards them with what appeared to be a Dragonball in tow.

He smiled mirthlessly.

"It appears that the last Dragonball is coming to us gentlemen," he said triumphantly, appreciating an easy job and the chance to impress Lord Frieza who was sure to reward them fantastically for their competitive success.

On his left, the tallest member of the team, Burter, frowned slightly as he read the numbers on his own scouter.

"Who would be bringing the Dragonball to us?" he asked suspiciously.

"Probably a group of Namekians that want to barter for their planet," Jeice decided offhandedly, waving his hand. "I wouldn't give it any thought Burter."

The blue soldier glanced down at his friend and shrugged. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that the natives had tried to bribe their way out of death for all the good it would do them.

They waited for a few minutes in silence until they could see the tell tale flicker of Ki based auras pelting towards them. Eventually, Vegeta came in to view, followed by two others that they didn't recognise.

Captain Ginyu smirked and waved up at them as they descended, each of them sporting a determined look and a fighter's stance. His eyes lingered on the one to Vegeta's right. The numbers the scouter spewed out were actually pretty impressive. Ginyu was somewhat surprised he wasn't already acquainted with someone that had such obvious talent. Still, it was nothing his squadron couldn't handle.

"I see you've come to deliver the Dragonball, how thoughtful," he commented pleasantly, waiting for Vegeta to take the bait.

The prince's face remained stoic as he regarded the full imposing visual of the Ginyu Force. If not for their tendency to pull ridiculous poses and chant their own names, they would have been one of the more intimidating phenomenons in the universe.

"On the contrary, we've come to take back the 6 Dragonballs you appear to be stealing from me."

Captain Ginyu pouted, walking casually forward to lay a hand on Vegeta's armoured shoulder.

"Aw come now Vegeta, lets not get into semantics here. I do believe it was you that stole them from Frieza, was it not? We're just doing the right thing and returning them to their rightful owner."

The prince growled ferrally and shook the captain's hand away, taking a step back so he was out of physical touch range.

Captain Ginyu sneered.

"Still a bit haphephobic are we? I would have thought that would have provided a problem learning martial arts as you have."

Vegeta grinned darkly, feeling a familiar squirm of unpleasantness in the core of his being as he regarded that cocky face.

"I'm not haphephobic Ginyu, I just don't want _you _to touch me."

Captain Ginyu threw his hands up, putting on an over-dramatised pout which made the other squad members chuckle openly.

"I'm deeply offended by your rejection Vegeta. I think you owe me a present for being so rude."

He pointed to the Dragonball still clasped in Krillin's hand, amused when the tiny man tried to hide it behind his back.

"You want to fight for it?" Ginyu asked, his eyes twinkling. "That's fine with me. This forsaken rock has provided us with no other form of entertainment."

He clicked his fingers and three of the squadron stepped forward.

"One on one. We'll see if any of you survive," Captain Ginyu said, his expression twisting.

Vegeta let his eyes rove over the three fighters currently opposing them, watching as Guldo flexed his fingers and as Burter cracked his neck. He did a mental sweep of what he knew of the Earthling's talents and tried to divide the opponents by strengths and weaknesses. It was a difficult and daunting mental task. Though he had seen the Ginyu Force in action, it had only been once or twice during his career in the Planet Trade and he had no real idea of the full extent of their abilities.

"Okay, baldy, you take Guldo, the little one. He has good speed but I doubt he'd be able to fight off that disk of Ki you can make…Kakarot, you take Recoome, the big one. He's all about power. I'll take Burter…"

Goku's eyes shifted from the large purple figure to the giant of a man standing before him, his tuft of red hair bouncing as he stretched. Narrowing his focus, he took a new reading of his opponent's Ki, noting with some relief that despite Vegeta's earlier urgency, this man's Ki still seemed unspectacular. He wondered briefly if this elite force could suppress their Ki and kept his guard up, gradually allowing his own Ki to raise as he prepared himself for the clash.

Vegeta and Burter moved first, catapulting themselves into the sky at the same time and throwing themselves forward to collide, meeting each other fist for fist. Burter was the first to draw back, his hand shaking from meeting the prince's knuckles, his arm tingling from the impact. Throwing out an arm to block the Saiyan's rear offensive, he spun, fixing the Saiyan with a judgemental stare as the numbers on the scouter started to bounce erratically.

Goku and Recoome began next with Recoome charging towards Goku over the ground like a freight train. It was fast but Goku weathered it with ease, ducking low at the last moment and drilling his fist straight up into Recoome's exposed stomach.

* * *

"Ah!"

Gohan cried out suddenly and fell straight back on the grass, clutching at his neck with a look of blind panic on his face before falling limp. Sensou flinched when he felt Gohan's Ki drop drastically and launched towards the seer who had fallen back himself and was rubbing at his own neck with tears in his eyes.

Tonbo stared at the prone form of his friend on the ground, watching with mounting horror as one of his feet started to twitch.

"Master Shorai? What happened? What's wrong with Gohan?" he asked hysterically, his voice cracking as he fought to get the questions out.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?" Sensou roared, lifting his brother off of the ground and holding him up by his robes.

It took a few seconds for Shorai's eyes to focus in on his brother's irate face. A vein was throbbing in his temple; his eyes were small and unseeing. His teeth were bared in an animalistic threat but Shorai was undisturbed by this display of raw anger. His eyes flicked to Gohan…

…and he was overcome with fright.

"Let me go," he hissed urgently. "I need to see to Gohan."

"What did you do?" Sensou repeated, shaking his brother so Shorai could feel his brain hitting his skull. He groaned.

"IF YOU DON'T LET ME GO RIGHT NOW THERE IS A VERY REAL POSSIBILITY THAT GOHAN WILL DIE!" Shorai shrieked, glaring at his brother with eyes of fire.

Sensou met his brother's eyes and was unable to argue. Releasing his grip, he let Shorai fall, vengefully satisfied when Shorai landed awkwardly on his ankle and it twisted out at a stupid angle.

The seer whimpered, going blind for a moment with pain but moved over towards the child as fast as he could, laying his slim hands on Gohan's head. He saw the dead look in the boy's eyes and tried not to panic.

There was a tense pause as Shorai closed his eyes, sweat beading on his brow as he fought the pain in his foot and gently tugged on the threads of fate that had tangled over the boy.

"_I…was trained…by the great…Piccolo…I…am son…of Goku."_

_Gohan shuffled forward painfully, his blurring eyes fixed on the beast of a warrior before him. One of his legs was limp and he was sure one of his arms was broken but he pressed on anyway, ignoring the parts of his body crying out, the blood oozing out from a wound in his matted hair._

_He was going to finish this if it killed him. This time, there was no Piccolo to take the hit for him, no one left to come to his aid. Both Vegeta and Krillin were out of commission and he was the last hope for his friends trapped in Otherworld. He was going to finish what he started._

_He took in a shaky breath, waited for his vision to clear and charged, gathering Ki in the palm of his hand for a Masenko. The brute continued to watch him with that stupid grin on his Neanderthal face. _

_Gohan didn't catch as the brute's leg flicked out._

_He only realised as the hard knee connected with his neck and something cracked…_

Shorai reeled when he felt the impact in his own neck jarring his nervous system but made sure he controlled his reaction, falling into the process of un-weaving the threads of fate that had become caught. Of all the abilities the great seers possessed, this was perhaps the most dynamic, altering things ever so slightly by tugging on the threads until they fell the way the seer's wanted. This ability could only be used if the conditions were right, if fate had already been subjected to questionability at a particular juncture…if the threads were already tangled…

Goku's anomaly had opened up a can of worms as far as Shorai was concerned. The cracks that had started to spread out from that one crucial fracture had created webs of instability across the great tapestry of fate. Shorai had been working almost non-stop to fix them before something catastrophic occurred but he had never imagined it would impact his own future sight.

Though he was loathe to admit it, it was his fault that Gohan was like this at the moment. The kid had accidentally been pulled into one of these cracks when Shorai had tried to read a linear pathway for the battle against Frieza, had experienced the reality that _should _have occurred whilst sitting safe in front of the seer. The result was a trick of the mind telling him his neck had been broken when he was perfectly healthy and his Ki had plummeted accordingly.

The minutes ticked by as Shorai worked to complete his delicate task, trying to coax Gohan up and out of the crack he had fallen victim to.

Sensou tracked the fluctuations in the boy's dwindling Ki and glared at the tiny body still splayed in the grass, observing his brother's pained expression. If Gohan didn't survive this, he was going to kill Shorai without hesitation and damn the consequences.

* * *

Krillin dodged the cannonade of tiny Ki blasts his opponent was firing at him as best he could, taking a hit here or there that left gashes leaking dark crimson. His small opponent chuckled manically, throwing out the tiny Ki blasts faster and faster until the bald monk was forced to take cover behind a rock formation – allowing him time to gather his thoughts and stash the Dragonball he was still carrying.

Much to Krillin's chagrin, this particular attack strategy was working well for his opponent. Though individually the miniature Ki blasts didn't carry enough power to cause substantial damage, when thrown in clusters, they became quite inescapable and, over the longer term, quite deadly.

He frowned as he considered the next course of action open to him, remembering what Vegeta had said about the effectiveness of his Destructo disk. Carefully, he peered around the edge of the rock formation and realised that his opponent was, unnervingly enough, waiting for him, his fingers poised. He shuddered involuntarily and formed his patented disk of Ki, wondering if now would be a good time to be experimental and try to split the Ki so he could form two smaller disks rather than the usual large one.

The eyes of his opponent shifted, rolling back in his head for a moment. With the manic grin still in place, it made him look quite deranged and Krillin decided to throw caution to the wind, focussing on splitting his Ki between the two planes of his hands.

The energy flickered.

Above them, Goku and the huge soldier were locked in a heated grapple though it was painfully obvious that the big guy was fighting a losing battle. Already he'd lost a few of his teeth from a connecting smash to the mouth and most of his clothes had been blasted to smithereens by Goku's 'Kamehameha'. Goku himself was completely unscathed and not even out of breath.

Below them, Captain Ginyu watched with a critical eye, ignoring the numbers on his scouter which refused to give him a stable reading on the unknown fighter playing with Recoome like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn. As a seasoned fighter, he could recognise a natural genius when he saw one and this guy was practically a professional. He reacted to everything at the opportune moments, listened to the sound of the movements rather than following them with his eyes and struck back with strength and precision.

_Where _had this guy come from? _How _was he associated with Vegeta? _Why_ hadn't Ginyu heard of him before if he was able to perform like this in battle?

His eyes narrowed as the numbers on the scouter crept above his own power level.

Goku allowed the big guy to push him back, grinned and sprung forward to ram his elbow into the big soldier's gut. Recoome gave out an undignified 'oof' and crumpled in on himself. Captain Ginyu watched with distasteful eyes as his team-mate fell out of the sky to land in a dishevelled heap at his feet, unconscious but still alive.

He glanced up at the unknown fighter who waved down heartily.

Vegeta felt the sudden plunge of Recoome's Ki and glared at Kakarot who was now engaged in his own staring match with Captain Ginyu. He didn't appear to have been bothered at all by Recoome's efforts. One of the strongest known fighters in the universe and Kakarot had just dispatched him like he was made of jelly. It didn't make sense, had Vegeta only seen a fraction of his power?

Had he _actually_ become a _Super Saiyan_?

No, it just couldn't have happened. Kakarot was a third class warrior, a mutt. Vegeta was pure bred from a long line of prestigious fighters. It was his _birthright _to achieve the legend…

Burter followed the Saiyan's eyes and began to turn just as his scouter started throwing out numbers to indicate that Recoome was inches away from death. He gawked disbelievingly at this nobody standing confidently before his captain with not a scratch on him and his eyes travelled down to the sack of flesh that had been his team-mate not ten minutes before.

"What the-

Vegeta's eyes flicked over to Burter, taking in his distraction and the blind side angle he had inadvertently presented to the prince. Sneering, he gathered a couple of tiny Ki blasts in his hands and with a flick of the wrist, he launched them both at the back of his opponent's head, triumphant when they connected and Burter let out a low groan.

"Didn't anybody teach you not to turn your back on an enemy?" Vegeta drawled.

Burter was left with a couple of weeping scorch marks on the back of his head. Spinning round, he growled furiously and launched himself forward, using his greater height to his advantage.

Krillin wouldn't let himself be distracted by any of the other battles, using all of his focus to tug at the energy in his hands, squashing it and controlling it like it was made of putty rather than Ki. Sweat was starting to sheen his forehead, glinting in the sunlight and he was sure he had strained something in his jaw by the way his teeth were clamped together.

There was a sudden, significant shift in the waves of energy and two disks formed in his outstretched hands, spinning lazily.

'_Yes! YES!' _Krillin thought proudly. '_I did it!_'

He glanced out at his opponent only mildly surprised when he found Guldo staring gormlessly off to the right, no longer paying attention to him at all. He had felt the dramatic drop in one of the enemy life forces and knew that it was providing an attention stealer.

The bald monk was itching to throw the disks out under the cover of this distraction but years of battle experience was going against that. Instead, a wild notion came to mind and he decided to put it into play, tip-toeing sideways until he was out of any visual scope. Grinning at his own cunning, he launched one of the disks straight out in completely the wrong direction.

"Hey, looking for me?" Krillin called tauntingly, launching up on top of the rock formation he'd been hiding behind, holding on to the remaining disk.

Guldo tore his eyes away from the sad spectacle of Recoome and blinked at the energy, surprised that the bald fighter had been able to produce something so ingenious. The compact Ki was unspectacular but formed in a way that made it more or less unstoppably deadly. He'd have to learn that one if he managed to keep the monk alive long enough to interrogate the technique out of him.

"Now that is interesting," Guldo said, his expression a little strange as he appraised the spinning Ki.

"Glad you like it," Krillin said, "because it's for you."

He swung his arm back in the air, feeling his muscles bunch and threw it as hard as he could. The disk arched through the air, forging a path towards the little alien opponent. Krillin waited with baited breath feeling a horrible sense of foreboding when Guldo refused to dodge, smiling grimly.

At the last possible moment, Guldo brought his hands up to his eyes and muttered something. An illuminating yellow light started to radiate out from his eyes and to Krillin's terror, the disk stopped dead in the air.

He stared.

The disk wasn't even spinning anymore.

The Ki itself wasn't even _pulsating _anymore.

Had he developed some sort of technique that killed the essence of Ki and turned it in to something useless? He felt the pull of the other disk in the back of his mind and, using a technique that Yamcha and taught him, called it back to him so it boomeranged through the air.

Guldo smirked and stepped forward, examining the disk like he might examine a work of art. Krillin flinched outwardly, feeling somehow exposed though he couldn't really place why. As Guldo moved around the disk, the bald monk could see that he was keeping his hand held in a claw-like position facing the disks at all times. Did that mean that once he'd used the other hand, he wouldn't be able to use this technique a third time?

"Damnit!" he exclaimed, vaulting forward on the air. He swung his arms up and cupped them beside him, aiming to use a weak Kamehameha to waylay his opponent for just a few more seconds.

Guldo saw the small monk and grinned perfidiously, lifting his remaining hand up to his eyes and muttering. Just as before, an incandescent yellow erupted from his eyes and Krillin felt as though he'd been suddenly encased in invisible concrete. His limbs felt like they weighed a ton, the energy that had been pooling in his hands felt like it had turned to stone.

"Heh, I like 'em feisty," Guldo said, keeping his remaining hands stretched out before Krillin's body and now, he could feel the restraints pouring from Guldo's fingers. Whatever this technique was, it was quite catastrophic.

"What the hell is this?" Krillin asked, struggling fruitlessly.

Guldo stepped forward to give the bald monk a somewhat piteous look.

"This is my famous time manipulation technique," The soldier boasted. "I'm the only one in the galaxy that can perform a technique like this and I've got it down to a fine art."

'_Just keep talking,_' Krillin thought to himself as his remaining disk of Ki shot across the land, heading straight for the cocky soldier.

"No-one's ever been able to match it, it's a trump card, an absolute winning certainty so it's a shame for you that you drew me as your sp-

Guldo cut himself off as he finally spotted the disk of Ki spiralling towards him at an alarming rate across the ground, throwing out dust and small pebbles in a whirlwind as it flew. In a moment of dark clarity, he understood that there was no way he would have time to release his current restraints to catch the disk. He didn't have time to do anything but brace himself.

Krillin closed his eyes as the disk cut flesh, feeling nausea grip his stomach as he heard the sharp Ki sever sinews and saw through bone. He felt the restraints on himself release and found himself flying violently through the air as time was restored in the middle of a Kamehameha aimed at an opponent that was no longer there.

He let the energy die in his hands and caught himself, forcing himself to glance down at the decapitated body of Guldo, his opponent.

He winced.

And prayed to Kami for forgiveness.

* * *

_Will Gohan survive falling into a crack in fate? Will Vegeta ever figure out how strong Goku is? Has Krillin been tainted by managing to kill Guldo?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…The Rescuers_

_(sings) R.E.S.C.U.E rescue aid sociETYYYYY_

_Reviews received for the previous chapter really did brighten up my life. Review this chapter to add more sunshine to my world of doom. _


	16. Body Language

_I actually met someone at work that has as much enthusiasm for DBZ as I do. This is important, it means I can wear my DBZ badges to work on Friday and someone out there will appreciate them. As always, things to note:_

_1) Spell checker still on the fritz along with everything else so apologies for weird typo mistakes and bits that I may miss. Due to increased work at…uh…work XD, I'm not running on a lot of sleep so I may have missed a few things I normally pick up on._

_2) Again, I should make it clear that I haven't actually read or seen Dragonball so I'm not sure how many people Krillin may have killed as a younger man but I like to think that even if he had killed before, Goku's reasoning for sparing Vegeta on Earth may have made him feel more…I dunno, guilt receptive? Not only that, but I imagine if you're not a psychopathic murderer, killing people never really gets easier…_

_3) Love for everyone that reads, favourites, alerts or reviews. You guys make my life a brighter place indeed. _

_4) I'm sure there's more but I forget to remember._

* * *

**15: Body Language**

_Tick…tick…tick…tick…_

Gohan's heart was still beating.

He wasn't breathing.

Shorai knew he had a matter of minutes at most to figure this out and bring Gohan back from the brink of death, before his Ki fell away completely or his heart caught up with the illusion and simply stopped beating.

_Tick…tick…tick…tick…_

The boy's rhythmic heart marked the seconds, adding extra pressure as he felt around the web of fate and pulled at the individual strands, following them to their tangling points and then sorting through them so they no longer connected.

_Tick…tick…tick…tick…_

He saw hundreds of different scenarios, witnessed that particular battle always ending with a critical hit to a boy that was only trying to be brave for his loved ones.

_Tick tick…tick tick…_

Sensou waited with baited breath, his hands clasped rigidly in front of him as he sat cross-legged on the grass, oozing anger like an infected pore. What the hell had Shorai done to his super weapon? If Gohan did die, that was _a lot _of time he'd wasted on a project that had come to no fruition and who knew what sort of backlash his death would have on future events. What if they created a true paradox?

He ground his teeth, completely ignoring the green haired boy beside him who was holding his breath as he watched his master work.

_Tick… …tick… …tick…_

The seer cringed as he felt Gohan's heart slowing. He had to hurry, he had to find the last two strands that the boy was caught between so he could bind them together and create some sort of stabilisation. Where were they?

_Where were they?_

* * *

Goku felt the sudden depletion of Ki and cocked his head to one side, staring openly at the devastation caused by Krillin's last Destructo disk. A wave of sadness engulfed him. Whatever had happened during that battle, Krillin was going to have that life on his hands for the rest of his existence.

He had to talk to his best friend.

He started to descend and Captain Ginyu watched him with wary interest, his arms folded across his chest. Jeice's eyes skimmed from the captain to Goku and then back again as he waited for orders.

"Should I…jump in?" he asked uncertainly, a little unnerved that the scouters had been unable to provide accurate readings on these enemies.

Captain Ginyu remained silent for a few moments considering different courses of action, what needed to be done.

"No," he said eventually, his eyes roaming to Vegeta and Burter still engaged in battle in the sky.

"I need you to stay here and keep an eye on Burter for me. If it looks like he needs help then you'll have to jump in. I don't need any more of my squadron out of commission. In the meantime, keep an eye on the Dragonballs."

Jeice nodded, a little flustered, watching as Captain Ginyu removed the balls from orbit around him and placed them on the cool grass.

He couldn't remember the last time that Captain Ginyu had felt the need to enter a battle himself and he had never come across such adept nameless fighters before. The two unknowns were something of an aberration and it unnerved Jeice to think that 'unknowns' could still be traversing the galaxy with power levels unrecorded. As a proud member of the Ginyu Force, he thought he at least had a working knowledge of the existing power levels worth taking note of.

Goku landed a few feet away from Krillin who was still staring transfixed at the shell of the broken soldier before him. His expression was grave as he shuffled forward and placed a hand on Krillin's shoulder.

Krillin jerked suddenly and glanced back at Goku with a haunted expression marring his features.

"I…didn't think it would actually kill him," Krillin confessed, turning back to look into the blank eyes of his dead opponent.

"It was an accident," he whispered, more to himself than to Goku.

"I know," Goku said firmly, his grip on the monk's shoulder tightening. Krillin threw another look over his shoulder, locking eyes with his best friend, his pure best friend whose heart was so clean he was able to ride the Flying Nimbus. If Goku could forgive him…

"It wasn't your fault," Goku confirmed, his eyes dark and steady as he regarded his best friend. "Don't worry; we can use one of the wishes to bring him back when we finally call the eternal dragon."

'_That should offer some redemption._'

"Don't you need to wish for your s-wait, one of the wishes?" Krillin asked, frowning.

Goku was about to elaborate but froze when his eyes locked with the rapidly approaching figure of Captain Ginyu. The captain saw them and paused to pose in mid-air, mistaking their flinches and grimaces as reactions to feelings of intimidation. He descended smugly onto the grass before them, his eyes lingering on the particular way that Goku's hair fell.

"You," he said, "you are a third class Saiyan? I thought there was only one left, Vegeta's subordinate. I don't remember him looking like you."

Goku's eyes narrowed as he recalled an image of Raditz and he moved to face Ginyu properly, allowing his Ki to climb up a few notches.

The smile on Ginyu's face faltered for a moment as his scouter started overturning and he glanced at the broken body of Recoome, thinking of the possibilities. He took a breath in through his nose.

"Humour me. Just how powerful are you?"

To the captain's surprise there was no arrogance in Goku's expression as he opened his mouth to reply, no unnecessary pride. In all his time dealing with Saiyans before and after the decimation of their planet, he'd found that misplaced pride to be something of a common feature. This was the first time he'd met someone so unflappable.

"I'm stronger than you," Goku said evenly. "This is assuming that you can't suppress Ki though."

Captain Ginyu felt his eye flinch and started to call this unknown fighter's bluff but at the last moment he stopped himself as the numbers on his scouter dropped back down again. With an analytical gaze, he watched as his opponent visibly relaxed and realised that they really were in control of their energy output.

"Ah, you know what? I think I'll actually go ahead and believe you," the Captain said, nodding.

Goku blinked in open surprise. Opponents didn't usually admit if they were outclassed after all. He wondered if this guy had something up his sleeve and kept his guard up.

"Krillin," he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. "Keep an eye on the last Dragonball, make sure one of them doesn't decide to take all 7 and disappear."

The bald monk didn't need telling twice, streaking back to his original hiding spot where the Dragonball was still, thankfully, waiting for him.

Ginyu and Goku faced off, Ginyu with his arms still crossed.

"Now, show me your true power," Ginyu said, a challenge in his voice.

Goku felt his eyebrow flinch, realising that the Captain was up to something but unable to figure out what. Why was he so interested in seeing Goku's power? Was he going to perform some sort of mimicking technique to raise his own Ki?

He weighed up the pros and cons of capping his power before his pique but decided in the end to just go for it – relying on his ability to react accordingly to whatever the captain was planning.

He started to let his power build, the Ki churning out of him like fire from a furnace. The loose matter around him in the form of small rocks and strands of grass flew into the air and disintegrated, crushed by the pressure of the charge. His hair started to waver through the build up of energy and his muscles tightened.

Captain Ginyu watched in awe and delight as this unknown's fighting power moved smoothly past his own pique and kept right on rising. As he observed, he tried to figure out just how old this Saiyan was, how long he had been in battle. Judging by the aging of regular Saiyans, he couldn't have been very old at all. How had this Saiyan become so strong? Where in the nine hells had he trained?

His lips curled unpleasantly as his scouter started smoking. As one of the higher calibre scouters, this was one of the ones specifically designed to take Freiza's power ups (in his initial form of course) so to see it placed under such duress when reading for someone un-classed was both astounding and worrying.

Ginyu had to have that power. It was beyond anything he could ever hope to achieve.

As Goku's Ki levelled off, Ginyu threw one of his hands into the air and braced himself, plunging a closed fist down into the middle of his chest.

Goku's eyes widened in horror and Ginyu experienced a stab of crippling pain as his fist crunched against his rib cage and shattered it, sending shards into his lungs, narrowly missing his heart. A tsunami of agony rolled over him and he fought to remain conscious as he struggled to lift his arms up, smirking and coughing up thick sludgy blood.

"CHANGE NOW!"

Yellow light enveloped him. His opponent was sporting a look of confusion and alarm and, as always happened when he swapped bodies, there was a moment where he could feel that expression warping his own features and see it at the same time still on the face of his enemy. On the other hand, he could see the smug look on his own usually purple face and see it staring back at him mockingly.

Then there was darkness followed by an unpleasant sensation, like putting on a pair of clothes that had been washed with too much starch. Ginyu blinked as his focus re-adjusted and he let out a sigh of relief as the pain numbed.

Goku cried out, clutching at the indescribable agony in his chest. He glanced down on a reflex and was startled to find himself wearing Saiyan armour splattered with a dark amaranthine liquid. He took a deep rattling breath and removed his hand from his chest, petrified when he found himself staring at huge purple hands.

On the other side of the battle field, Ginyu smiled triumphantly, testing out his new body and feeling at the toned muscles around his torso. The clothes he was wearing were quite heavy, interestingly enough, but comfortable, allowing for free-flowing movement. He lifted his hands up to run them through Goku's dark locks. It had been many years since he'd had a body with hair.

"W-what is this?" his old self spluttered, staggering forward and dropping to his knee as he hacked up more blood. Ginyu's smile widened until his teeth were bared.

"This…is called a body swap," he explained. "I've stolen your body because it's more powerful than the one I was using. You could call it an upgrade to the next model."

In the air, Vegeta was getting pissed off. Every time he tried to fire off an attack designed to annihilate his opponent, the blue bastard managed to dodge, swinging back and forth over the battle field with relative ease. The prince huffed under his breath, remembering Burter's talent for speed.

Despite this little set back, the prince had been pleased to realise that he possessed a far greater strength than his opponent, a testament to how far he had come in such a short time considering that only a few short months ago he wouldn't have dreamed of taking on Cui, let alone Burter of the Ginyu Forces.

He held back in the air and waited for Burter to go on the offensive, knowing that this soldier was far better suited to defensive strategies but Burter just held back as well.

A stalemate.

Vegeta kept his eyes on his enemy, unblinking. These stare downs were just as much a matter of martial practice as the physical movements executed during battle and Vegeta was a professional at this. His eyes spoke volumes, radiating apathy, pity and the thirst for victory.

Burter wasn't as good as Vegeta. It had been a long time since he'd been in a battle that had come to this and he wasn't very patient. If he got fed up, he would start to fidget and even though the air practically crackled between himself and Vegeta as they maintained their respective glares, Burter could feel himself getting antsy.

"Burter! Finish Vegeta so that we can report to lord Frieza!" Someone's voice called up from the ground. Burter broke eye contact with the prince to glance down at the unknown fighter who was wearing a scowl reminiscent of his leader.

He tilted his head to one side.

So the captain had finally found a new body.

Just as he was about to acknowledge the order, something connected with his back, white hot and completely engulfing. He realised far too late the mistake he'd made and as he felt himself coming apart at the seams in the endless stream of energy that had been directed at him, he noted with a sense of bitter irony that his scouter was only now starting to produce numbers to warn him of Vegeta's attack.

"What did I tell you about not turning your back on your opponent?" Vegeta asked as Burter's incinerated body plummeted to the ground, impacting hard.

He sneered victoriously and turned his attention to Kakarot who was standing below him with a sour look on his face and Captain Ginyu a few feet away who looked like he was about to keel over, a gaping hole in his chest gently spewing out thick, dark blood. He raised an eyebrow and dropped down, landing on top of Burter's prone form, his nose wrinkling as he smelt the odour of the dead. Casually, he took a step off of the corpse, making sure to dig his boots in as he went.

He noticed immediately that Kakarot was holding himself wrong and did the mental math.

"I see you found yourself a new body Ginyu. Whoever thought you'd lower yourself to swap out for a third class Saiyan _plebeian_," Vegeta jeered, slightly annoyed when his jibe provoked almost no reaction from the captain.

"You know, you're the only one that cares about all that pedigree rubbish," Ginyu said lazily, glancing at his new peach-coloured hands.

"Hmph," Vegeta said. "You should pay more attention."

Ginyu shrugged and took a deep breath in, testing the movement of his new body. Preferably, he'd like some time to get used to the rudiments of this guy's body and power before he had to use it in battle but such was life.

He faced Vegeta resignedly, wishing he'd thought to tap his scouter and get a reading on the prince's power before he'd changed bodies. He knew that he was the more powerful of the two but he needed to know by how much. Time was ticking on and lord Frieza was not exactly known for his patience.

"Jeice, give me a power reading on Vegeta!" Ginyu called out, inclining his head slightly to get a visual of his bright red henchman.

Jeice was staring blankly at the broken body of Burter, clutching the 6 Dragonballs like his life depended on it. Ginyu frowned when he realised Jeice was in a semi-state of shock, remembering that this was the first squadron that the red alien had seen obliterated. Ginyu was practically an old hand at this.

"JEICE! A READING!" Ginyu barked, jerking the henchman out of his stupor. He glanced up at the captain's new form, feeling his thoughts muddle.

Acting on a knee-jerk reaction to an issued order, Jeice tapped his scouter and let the figures try and stabilise.

"Uh…it's not putting out anything definite," Jeice told the captain as he focussed on Vegeta, pressing the button on the side to try and regulate the settings.

"But it's hovering somewhere around 230,000."

Ginyu nodded once doing some quick arithmetic to work out how much he thought Vegeta could increase his power. Though he had never seen the prince use this technique before, it was obvious by the way he baffled the scouters that he'd learnt this little trick from his unknown companions. Ginyu smirked.

"That's very impressive Vegeta but that's still nothing compared to what I can do," Ginyu assured, chuckling maliciously as he started to power up.

Once again the loose matter around him began to fly, the power built up inside him until he felt like he was on fire. His veins throbbed, his muscles bunched and a battle ready haze fell over him.

"A reading Jeice!" the captain demanded, a depraved look in his eye.

"Uh…piquing at around 75,000…captain," Jeice informed him, double checking the scouter and breaking out in a sweat as he realised that something was going very wrong.

"What?" Ginyu cried, hissing angrily.

"And…getting weaker…"

* * *

_Just like that, Gohan was the only one left._

_He glared heatedly at the big bully standing before them, clearly enjoying himself, and fortified his resolve, gathering Ki up from inside himself so that he could actually oppose this brute. Krillin felt the rise in Ki and turned to give Gohan a terrified look._

"_No, don't. He downed me with one kick kid, don't fight him."_

"_I have to," Gohan said, his voice low with determination. "If I don't fight him, who will wish our friends back?"_

_Krillin simply stared as Gohan shuffled out to meet his destiny; awed and a little humbled. Gohan was only 5, only 5 years old facing a challenge that most adults would run from. The decision to fight this particular battle was something nobody should have to face, let alone a kid…_

_Did he really understand what he was up against?_

_Yes…yes, he did understand. Krillin could see that by the grim set of his expression, by the way he powered up to absolute max and stood as tall as possible, still straining to look up and meet the eyes of this goliath._

"_G-Gohan…"_

_The boy's eyes locked with the brute's and they studied each other, each drawing their own conclusions. Gohan gathered that this wrecking ball of a fighter didn't often have to think about his moves, charging blindly about relying on brute strength to get the job done. If he could out-think this Neanderthal he might just be able to pull something off…_

_Recoome's grin widened as he realised this kid was serious about fighting him. He hardly ever got to fight children and they always provided the best sport._

"_Alright, I'm ready," Gohan said, dropping into the stance that Piccolo had taught him._

_Recoome raised an interested eyebrow, acknowledging the kid's martial form and fell into his own ready stance. The two stared at each other for a moment longer before Gohan kicked off._

_During his time training with Piccolo, Gohan hadn't often taken the offensive. It was uncomfortable for him and Piccolo was always telling him off for lacking the drive to do the job properly. As he faced this brute, despite his misgivings, he made it his personal mission to perfect the offensive art, somersaulting behind the big soldier to aim a well placed punch to the pressure points in the neck._

_When Recoome caught his exposed fist, Gohan didn't let himself feel the sink in his system that often accompanied failure, instead, he took the initiative and pulled back, adjusting his strategy to account for Recoome's quick reflexes._

"_Hey Jeice, look at this kid go," Burter commented on the edge of the arena, his hand flicking over the scouter so that they could get a gauge of his power level._

"_I know. How old would you say he is?" _

"_Depends what species," Burter commented, glancing over at Krillin's inert form. "If he's the same as that bald guy, he's probably quite old but if he's the same as Vegeta, which I'm pretty sure is more likely seeing as how they look pretty similar, he's probably pretty young."_

"_Huh," Jeice said, frowning as he watched the boy produce a fairly powerful Ki blast. "Either ways, he's very talented. It's a shame he's fighting dopey or we might be able to persuade him to join our forces, you know, train him up to replace Guldo."_

_Gohan dodged awkwardly as the huge soldier blew his own Ki blast back towards him and was unprepared for the elbow to the gut that sent him careening into one of the land masses. As the dust cleared, he rolled over and vomited spectacularly, all the food he'd eaten at Bulma's being purged from his system in an instant. Shakily, he wiped his mouth and got back on his feet._

"_I'm not afraid of you," he said as he trudged forward, punctuating this statement with an impressive blast to the floor as Recoome barrelled forward, cackling manically. Gohan shot straight up into the air and tried to turn to catch the punch he knew would come but his reactions had slowed after that hit to the stomach and he took another to the back of the head that made his eyes bug out._

_He crashed ungracefully to the ground, creating a crater on impact. A blitz of pain erupted in his arm and he cried out as the pain was coupled with the nauseating sensation of pins and needles. He knew without having to look that his arm was broken but he glanced over anyway, horrified when he found it skewed at a sickening angle._

_He didn't have time to collect himself further before Recoome released his rapid fire attack, lighting the sky with an ominous red glow. The balls of Ki flew around Gohan as he steeled himself and started to dodge, avoiding the raging inferno ravaging the once beautiful land until there was nothing left but heat and light torrenting in the air to create diabolical mushroom clouds of devastation._

_And through it all, he could hear that wicked laugh, the laugh that let him know this thug was just toying with him._

_When he landed for the last time, he landed awkwardly and stumbled, whimpering as his ankle twisted. The mistake cost him dearly._

_Recoome appeared behind him and took aim, ploughing both fists into the small of Gohan's back so he shot off like a cannon ball into the last explosion of Ki. The soldier grinned like a Cheshire cat when the smoke cleared and he saw the beaten boy struggling slowly to his feet._

_Krillin had watched it all from where he'd been thrown, begging his body to obey orders and get up so he could help Goku's kid but he was pretty sure the brute had managed to sever some crucial nerve pathways in the base of his spine. His legs just wouldn't respond and if he even flinched he was overcome with pain so profound it actually brought tears to his eyes._

_He could do nothing but look on in horror as Gohan staggered to his feet to face the monster, beaten to near insanity. Krillin only managed to glance at the boy's dire injuries before a festering guilt started to course through his system and he had to turn away._

_What kid deserved this? At 5 years old, Gohan's biggest worry should have been what he was going to eat for lunch, not facing off against a brute that had probably murdered more people than Krillin cared to count._

_Gohan's eyes were blurring in and out of focus and every few seconds he would black out, only to catch himself as he started to fall and stumble sideways – but he wasn't going to give up. Not this time. He wasn't going to be the little baby that needed protecting._

"_I…was trained…by the great…Piccolo…I…am son…of Goku," he spouted as he trudged ever onward._

_Clutching at his flinching arm, he crouched, ignoring the exhaustion battering the back of his mind, ignoring the need to just give in to the dark oblivion calling to him, and launched…_

That's when he saw it. His vision warped worryingly and he found himself staring out at a line of dark green trees. He could feel the grass beneath his head and see the individual blades closest to him, weaving in a breeze rushing over what was obviously an exposed meadow.

_At the same time, he was charging towards the huge soldier, his hands poised above him as he readied a last ditch Masenko. He could feel the energy gathering in his fingertips._

"Master Shorai, he's blinking!"

A boy came into view, breaking the visual of the line of trees, a kid about his own age with a hopeful expression on his pale features.

Tonbo.

_He felt a sense of inevitable dread wash through his tender stomach as he saw the soldier react to his attack before it was even ready, his leg parting the air as it came up to connect with –_

He felt a tug on his shoulder followed by a yanking sensation. There was a weird moment where he felt like he was falling into a million stars, blinking as pinpricks of light rushed past him and he tried not to succumb to the feeling of falling which was threatening to steal his breath.

He sat bolt upright, his forehead almost colliding with Tonbo's cheek. The seer's apprentice fell back on his hunches in the grass, staring disbelievingly as Gohan glanced around the meadow, stiff as a board but alive and well.

Shorai's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he too fell back on the grass fighting to keep himself in the present. He gulped uneasily, blinked so his eyes would return to their regularly scheduled programmes and threw a concerned stare in Gohan's direction as the boy's eyes continued to dart all over the place.

The seer watched as hysteria settled over the kid and as he started to hyperventilate, bringing violently shaking hands up to feel at the spot on his neck where the soldier's knee would have ploughed into it. Tears leaked freely from his eyes and dropped into the material of his black gi, cascading down his face as he realised that somehow, he wasn't dead. He took in a huge shuddering breath and tried to control himself.

Opening his mouth, he tried to say something but nothing would come out. Shorai shook his head as he crawled forward, an indication that Gohan shouldn't speak for the moment and sat across from the boy, taking his hands and examining him from head to toe.

The seer quickly checked on the lines of the boy's fate which were, for the moment, free of complications. Then he checked the boy's eyes to make sure Gohan hadn't left any of himself behind being pulled as he was so roughly out of that illusion. They were glassy and his complexion was a little grey, indicating that he was in shock but he was otherwise wholly unscathed.

The seer breathed a sigh of relief.

Noticing Shorai's relaxing shoulders, Sensou got up and slipped forward to check the boy over himself. His eyes narrowed when he witnessed the boy crying so openly but his expression became less harsh when he realised that Gohan was in severe shock and probably couldn't help himself anyway.

Satisfied that the boy was alright, he turned on his brother, rounding on him.

"_How _could you let something like that happen? I thought you were supposed to be _in control _of your stupendous gifts!" The warrior god snapped, his fists balling threateningly by his side.

"I didn't _let _that happen, there are cracks stemming from Goku's initial anomaly that have spread all over fate and when I tried to read Gohan's future, he was _accidentally_ pulled into one of them." Shorai told his brother evenly, his eyes still on Gohan's face as the poor boy fought to calm down.

"Gohan, son, are you alright?" he asked gently.

Gohan's shining eyes snapped up to meet his own and Shorai was suddenly struck by just how young the poor kid really was. The boy shook his head automatically. No, he wasn't alright, anybody could see that but being Gohan, he frowned as he thought about the trouble he was probably causing, dredged up some inner strength and answered:

"Ye-

"No," Sensou stood in front of the seer, his eyes blazing with anger verging on madness. "You don't talk to him, you don't look at him and you can forget all this business of me bringing the kid here for monthly visits. I can't believe you would put him in this sort of danger if you were aware of the risks."

The warrior god ached to hit his brother for being so monumentally stupid, yearned to exact his revenge for putting him through so much unnecessary stress. He spat at his brother's feet and pivoted to fix Gohan with an icy stare.

"Come on, boy, we're leaving."

"No, Sensou you have to believe me, I had no idea that something like that could happen. You can't just take the kid with the intention of not returning, I need to see his future – the fight against Frieza – and you've seen it yourself what can happen when fate falls out of place. Why do you think we came up with the arrangement for him to come and see me in the first place?"

"I can do whatever I want," the warrior god retaliated challengingly, "so don't you _dare _presume to tell me what I can and can't do. You do not own me and I don't want you anywhere near the boy."

Shorai moved, tucking his legs underneath himself and placing his hands flat on the soft grass, he bowed so low that his nose was practically touching the dirt. Sensou's eyes widened in disbelief. In all the hundreds of years they had been together, Shorai had never once, _not once, _bowed to him.

"Brother, I implore you to see reason," Shorai began. "I've been working pretty much day and night to weather these cracks and fix them where I can. For some reason, Gohan seems to be sensitive to them. It could mean that he has latent seer gifts of his own and that's worth investigation in itself. Aside from that, we _need _to keep looking to his future to make sure that the stability of existence isn't further challenged. You know I'm right. The Four Winds would not have ordered me to keep an eye on his fate if it wasn't of the utmost importance."

Sensou stared down at his brother, his expression slowly falling from furious to grim. As he calmed down, he began to see that as much as he wanted to be free of his insolent brother, as much as he wanted to protect his super weapon until he was ready, he really didn't have a choice in the matter and he had to admit that Shorai's comment about Gohan potentially having latent seer gifts was intriguing. If he could get Shorai to bring them out, he would have the means to cultivate his own seer, someone loyal to him that could allow him to gain a strategic par with his all-knowing brother.

He smirked as he thought about the possibilities.

"Alright brother," Sensou said, crouching down so he was level with the seer. Shorai glanced up hopefully. "We will continue as planned but you are going to have to _guarantee _that something like this won't happen again and you have to promise to inform me of any and all progress related to Gohan's latent seer gifts. Are we clear?"

Shorai allowed himself a moment to stare into his brother's gleeful eyes, dreading the spark of mental activity he saw there, afraid of the double edged sword he was being forced to walk into.

Sensou's eyebrows rose slowly as he waited for Shorai's answer and the seer realised that he was trapped if he wanted to insure that he would still get to spend time with Gohan. He sighed and nodded.

"I promise."

Sensou's lips curled and he straightened, glancing over at the boy who was staring at his hands like he couldn't quite believe that they were real.

"Boy!" he barked. "Get back in front of the seer. He's going to try again."

Gohan's head jerked up and his black eyes were large and fearful. Automatically, his hands clasped at his neck as though he was trying to hold it in place. Seeing this, Shorai felt himself fill to the brim with painful guilt and as he locked eyes with the terrified boy, he tried to let the apology show on his face.

Gohan never wanted to do anything like that again.

Never again.

It was like having a nightmare that he couldn't wake from, a painfully vivid dream that just got worse when he realised it had been some sort of reality. He'd listened to the conversation between the warrior god and the seer and had realised that, in another place, in another reality…someone had broken his neck…

Standing on shaking legs, he tried to back away, bumping into Tonbo who was standing behind him, concern on his face.

"Master Shorai won't let it happen again," the boy said carefully, giving Gohan a look of confidence that he'd never seen on his friend's face before. Normally Tonbo was quiet, uncertain but at the moment, it seemed to Gohan that he was a pillar of strength and faith. The panic in his stomach subsided a little and he shuffled forward against his better judgement, sitting back in the cross legged position in front of Shorai, trying not to let his nerves show.

Shorai leant forward until his was alarmingly close. Gohan held his breath.

"I'm sorry Gohan," the seer whispered. "I never meant for something like that to happen. You shouldn't have had to go through that."

Gohan's eyes grew round as he regarded the genuine look of remorse on the seer's face. Instinctively, the boy knew it had been an accident, something Shorai hadn't forseen but that didn't stop the fear solidifying in his system.

"C-can I just ask…did…did I die?" Gohan asked quietly, his eyes flicking down to the ground.

Shorai felt the bite of the question and winced accordingly. No matter what he did now or how much he had not meant for the boy to be pulled into that mess, the damage was done. He'd just added another mental scar to Gohan's ever-increasing collection. It ate at him. He was trying to help the boy not hurt him further. The only thing he could do now to rectify the situation was to tell the boy the truth, the outcome of that heinous battle.

"No, you didn't die," Shorai told him, a small smile tugging at the corners of his dissatisfied mouth. "Your daddy saved you."

He watched as the child's dark eyes lit up, a strange expression on his young face as feelings of yearning, pride and gratuity warred for dominance in his poor, abused system. Shorai's smile widened as he took Gohan's hand which was sure and firm as he gripped it in his own.

"Are you alright?" Shorai asked carefully, indicating that he was about to start looking in to Gohan's future again.

Gohan's answering smile was clear and natural, allowing Shorai some relief from his guilt. The difference in the boy's attitude following the revelation that his father had saved him from what was sure to be an awful fate was staggering. Though he was still obviously and understandably afraid of Shorai's future sight, he was tackling the problem head on, spurred by inspirational news.

"I am sir," he said assertively.

* * *

_So Gohan's managed to survive the tangle of fate, does he have latent seer gifts as Shorai says he might? What will happen to Goku now that Captain Ginyu has stolen his body? And what happened to BULMA?_

_Find out some of this and not a lot more on the next exciting episode of…WOLF'S RAIN!_

_(sings) STRAAAAAAAAAY, STRAAAAAAAAY (howls at boss)_

_Reviews are like Dr Pepper…WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?_


	17. Of Thieves and Theories

_Don't you just hate those times when you eat, sleep, breathe and piss work? A few things to note as always:_

_1) Bananas are good for you! (points) _

_2) I can barely see my desk for having to work and lack of sleep so I apologise if I've missed some important errors – I'm pretty sure there is a spatial discrepancy somewhere in the chapter but I can't focus enough to apply the correct mathematics to the situation. If you spot this, I do apologise._

_3) I have endeavoured to check spelling, grammar, sentence structure etc but am afraid that this has been somewhat in vein…vain…(sleeps on keyboard). Please accept my humblest apologies for the mistakes you may find in this chapter. I will try and rectify these should anything heinous be mentioned. _

* * *

**16: Of Thieves and Theories**

"What the hell do you mean getting weaker?" Captain Ginyu demanded, swinging his hands up so he could watch the undulating waves of Ki he was emitting. He had to admit that as he powered up, it didn't feel quite right and the Ki he was radiating certainly didn't look that powerful. In his old body, if he hit max output, the land around him would be quaking under the pressure of his terrible power. In this body, he wasn't even giving off enough energy to distress the surrounding shrubbery. Just what was going on? Had these freak shows managed to tamper with the scouters to throw off his readings, making him think that this guy was a lot more powerful than he actually was? Had it all been some sort of trick?

He glanced down at Jeice and growled angrily, a vein throbbing in his temple.

"Quit joking around Jeice and give me a real reading," he yelled down, watching as Jeice pressed the button on the scouter and pulled a face.

"Down to around 50,000 captain," Jeice informed him worriedly.

Captain Ginyu felt an acute sense of dismay, throwing an anxious glance in Vegeta's direction. Numbers like that were sure to tempt the prince to take advantage of the situation and sure enough, Vegeta's eyes were glinting hungrily as he watched the current proceedings. Ginyu gulped, wondered briefly why Vegeta hadn't already made his move and realised that the prince was waiting for the right moment, a true opportunist.

A guttural chuckle interrupted his thoughts and his eyes swung back to lock on his former body. His old self was sporting a waxy complexion as the blood slowly drained out of him and the pool of disconcerting liquid saturating his feet was starting to border on sickening. Ginyu couldn't really comprehend how he was still conscious; there was no accounting for some people's force of will.

Goku took a deep breath in and felt the action rattle his system. His organs, whatever they may be, were starting to suffer and shut down, making it difficult to focus on anything coherent but still, he found it somewhat morbidly funny that Ginyu was unaware of the true nature of the strength inside the body he currently inhabited.

"Don't you get it?" he asked. "Your mind and body have to be harmonized for you to be able to access the kind of power you're trying to dredge up. It's not just about _having_ the power, it's knowing how to call it up and use it."

In spite of the dire situation, Ginyu smirked.

"Don't give me all that 'know thyself' rubbish," he spouted, brushing Goku's comment aside with a physical wave of the hand. "What's the real secret? I haven't had any trouble with the other bodies I've taken over."

Goku struggled not to pass out, still grinning as he replied.

"With an attitude like that, I doubt you'll ever figure it out."

Ginyu's smirk contorted into a scowl. He threw another furtive glance at the scheming prince, noting with some uneasiness that the prince was holding back, standing casually with his arms crossed over his chest like he was surveying a puppet show put on for his amusement. He was entirely comfortable with this situation, completely in control and Ginyu was sure that attitude was going to cause him stomach ulcers if he continued to worry about it.

Instead, he relaxed, letting the power he had gathered up expel around him before ambling over to Jeice and the Dragonballs, making a point of walking slowly so as not to give away how tense he was really feeling.

Goku regarded him through hazy eyes, feeling his heart (or what he assumed was his heart) jump as he realised what Ginyu was doing. If he lost the Dragonballs, he essentially lost his son and the potential to bring back his fallen comrades. He couldn't let that happen.

He dug deep into the recesses of himself and tried to move, taking a step forward and almost crying out with the crippling pain that wracked his system.

"Krillin…go…get out of here…" he whispered before sinking to his knees in the dirt, no longer able to keep himself vertical.

"Jeice, take care of these bastards. I'm going to take the Dragonballs back to lord Frieza and try to work out this body," Captain Ginyu told his last remaining subordinate, picking up the Dragonballs and pushing them up into orbit around him again.

"B-but Captain!" Jeice stuttered, looking with fear at Vegeta who simply smirked.

"Are you questioning my orders subordinate?" Captain Ginyu asked, his eyes steely as he reached into the pocket of Jeice's armour to take a spare scouter for Frieza.

"No…captain," Jeice relented, bowing low. He hadn't been called 'subordinate' since his days in training and it really brought it home how serious the current situation was. He fought hard against the urge to flee from it, disgusted that he should ever be forced to consider running from _Vegeta, _Lord Frieza's _lap dog_ of all people.

"Good," Captain Ginyu said gruffly, making sure the Dragonballs were securely in place around him before taking off, shooting up in an arch to land before the bald monk who was squatting protectively over the last Dragonball, his Ki poised for battle.

He frowned as he regarded the small man, remembering the numbers his scouter had thrown out when he was holding the disk of Ki against Guldo. He did some quick calculations and wrinkled his nose when he realised that even if he tried to max his output again he was still no match for even this guy. It was intensely frustrating to know that he would have been able to dispatch this guy in a heart beat in his own body but there was more than one way to skin a cat. He just had to rely on his experience.

"Give me the Dragonball," he said levelly, holding his hand out.

Ginyu's back was turned as he focussed on the monk. Now was the time. Vegeta took off and then dropped into a swan dive in the air, letting himself loose in the dissension of freefall, aiming a fist to the body snatcher's back that would, without a doubt, drill through his spine to protrude from his chest. He relished the bloody visual as he upped his Ki to control his fall and an atmospheric flame lit up around him.

There was a clash and a resonation as two aggressive Ki's met and Vegeta found himself connected with Jeice's reinforced arm, the red and white alien gritting his teeth as he tried to fend off the prince's momentum enhanced charge.

"Oh no you don't," Jeice muttered, gathering his Ki and pushing Vegeta back as best he could.

The prince looked murderous as he fell back to land on the ground a few metres away, folding his arms back across his chest.

"Those Dragonballs are mine. I'm not letting Ginyu leave with them," he stated flatly.

"Yeah yeah, I don't see your name on them tough guy," Jeice retaliated, shifting himself slightly so he was in a better tactical position. Vegeta snarled. As a defensive fighter, Jeice's reputation preceded him and the prince didn't have the patience to deal with a difficult blockade when the Dragonballs were on the line.

Krillin studied the look on Ginyu's face, trying to ignore the fact that this weirdly depraved expression was etched into the features of his pure-hearted best friend. Though Krillin could feel that his opponent's Ki was low enough, he didn't trust the contrasting confidence he saw in Ginyu's eyes, didn't trust that Ginyu wouldn't figure out how to tap into the deeper levels of Goku's energy reserves should they engage in battle.

Making up his mind, he slipped the ball up under his arm and lifted his remaining hand up to his face, his fingers splayed over his forehead.

"SOLAR FLARE!" He shouted.

Brilliant white light erupted over the battle field and Ginyu fell back, stunned, his eyes snapping shut against the harshness of the light but even then it felt like the iridescence was leaking through his eyelids to further damage his retinas. He howled and clutched at his face, covering his eyes with his hands as though this would afford him a more comfortable level of darkness in which his eyes could recuperate. Given an extra millisecond of warning due to his angle, Jeice was able to snap his eyes shut before the light could penetrate and incapacitate his sight. Having fought the Earthlings before and knowing their tricks for escape, Vegeta was able to guess from the subtler signals what the monk was going to try and had shut his eyes and covered his ears against whatever technique Krillin was about to use.

In the ensuing confusion, Krillin was able to make a bid for escape, shooting out over the water to put as much distance between himself and Captain Ginyu as he could.

It took a few minutes for the light to clear and then for Ginyu's eyes to adjust first to the darkness of his own eyelids and then to the light of the planets three suns as he chanced opening them again. When he was sure there was no lasting damage, a primal rage filled him.

Vegeta felt the rise in Ki and gawped at Ginyu, suddenly ignoring Jeice who had shot forward to re-engage in battle.

From his position on the hard ground, Goku felt it too and reeled, entirely perturbed by the experience of feeling what was essentially his own Ki and the misplaced malevolence attached to it.

Ginyu had lost himself to the crippling rage, the likes of which he had never felt before. All he could see was the haze of red as he locked on to the diminishing white aura of the monk out on the water and all he could comprehend was the heat of fury as it boiled the blood beneath his skin. On a reflex, he took off, shooting through the air like a missile, knowing that he had managed to tap in to his new power with the force of his anger.

Within seconds, he'd caught up to the bald fighter and had jammed an elbow into the underside of Krillin's ribs, sending the bald man ricocheting back towards the previous battle field like a bullet. Dropping the Dragonball, he landed in a broken heap, the lowest rib floating disconcertingly inside his chest. Ginyu flew down to meet him, reaching down to grab the last Dragonball, letting it orbit in the air before him with its brethren.

"I should kill you for that little stunt," Ginyu grunted, his Ki dying off as he calmed down. "But as it seems to have inadvertently helped me call up this dormant power and as I ended up with the last Dragonball anyway, I'll cut you a break."

Krillin drew on everything he had inside himself, willing himself to at least sit up so he could try and fire a blast at the underside of his enemy but whatever had happened to his rib was preventing him from moving upwards, almost as though the rib had twisted in his body and would snap if he tried to force himself to fold.

Ginyu huffed disdainfully at his fallen foe, regarded the fight against Vegeta and Jeice as it resumed and kicked off, heading back towards Frieza's ship, all the while contemplating what he would have to do to make it easier to tap into the power of this new body.

* * *

"Well?" Sensou growled as the seer finally released Gohan's hand and the boy was sent to find some breakfast with Tonbo.

Shorai fixed the warrior god with an agitated stare, running his hands through his dark hair so chunks of the unruly mess stuck out at bizarre angles.

"It's…complicated," the seer muttered, trying to order his thoughts. "I wasn't really able to look into a few things because of the cracks so there are some blind spots…"

Sensou snarled and leant forward on the grass so his long hair fell over his shoulders. His eyes were intense.

"Get to the point brother, will he survive? Is there any major cause for concern?"

Shorai glared heatedly at the warrior god. Sensou had no real appreciation for the finer art of seeing, even when the answers directly affected him. The fact of the matter was that the cracks themselves were _becoming _a cause for concern. Blind spots were bad enough at the best of times, let alone during a major event like that one about to take place on Namek.

"Unless things take a very unlikely turn, he'll survive the fight well enough and thanks to whatever you've been doing to him in that awful dimension, you won't have trouble picking him again afterwards," Shorai snapped indignantly.

He caught the spark of elation in Sensou's eye and mentally shook his head, feeling a tremor of injustice and inevitability as he realised that, no matter the situation in the universe, even if Gohan was to somehow become harmless to the fate of existence, the warrior god would never let the boy go. Gohan was effectively a prisoner that was unaware of his cage, being made aware so slowly that he was forced to accept it as a part of him.

He sighed and continued.

"The problem comes when we introduce the possibilities associated with his dormant ability to turn Super Saiyan. Obviously, he hasn't achieved this or we'd have much more trouble than we already do but…this is where the cracks are rife. I have no idea if he'll get angry enough to tap into that power, go False Super Saiyan, Super Saiyan, whatever…If he does…I have no idea what could happen…completely blind…"

"Can you give me a vague estimate on the odds of this happening?"

Shorai thought about it.

"Honestly, there's only a very slim chance he'll be able to access that power at this stage and even if he does, we'll see the signs. We can always try removing him before he breaks that barrier."

Removing him…that would mean that the outcome of this potentially delicate situation rested almost entirely with Ma and that didn't sit well with Sensou. Of all the people the warrior god could read through their actions and intentions, including for the most part his cryptic brother; Ma was one of the few people that baffled him. He never knew what the teleporter was thinking and none of his manipulation tactics had ever been successful much to his constant disappointment. It was, more or less, entrusting the course of destiny to the absolute unknown.

Gohan led Tonbo into the thick of the trees and sunk down against one of the broader trunks, feeling the comforting rub of rough bark against his in tact nervous system. Tonbo watched as his hands flinched up to touch his neck, rubbing at the spot that had obviously been damaged in that wayward illusion. He did this a couple of times, still acting skittish after his brush with death.

Concern and fear warred inside the seer's apprentice, creating a ball of general unpleasantness in his system. It had been scary to watch his friend just collapse like that, _really _scary and he was sure that at least that night when he slept, he would be plagued with nightmares featuring Gohan's dead eyes. Still, as frightening as that had been, it must have been 10 times worse for Gohan…

"Are…you…actually alright now?" Tonbo asked, sitting down beside him and looking at him with serious concern. Subjected as he was to the constant nonchalance of Sensou's expression, Gohan found the emotions in his friend's face a little too strong and was unable to hold his gaze for long. He rubbed at his neck absently.

"Yeah…I think so," Gohan said, nodding. The two boys sat in silence for a few minutes, staring out at the way the light played off of the leaves on the trees to create weaving shapes and green shadows. Gohan's thoughts circled around what had happened without ever fixating. It was still too raw, too unbelievable to think that he knew what having his neck snapped like a twig felt like…

"Hey Tonbo…you're Shorai's apprentice right? Have you ever seen the future?" Gohan asked suddenly, turning to fix Tonbo with a curious gaze.

Tonbo frowned for a moment and looked out at the trees with faraway eyes.

"I thought I did once. It was weird, like looking at something through one of those windows where you know that the glass is there but if it wasn't, you wouldn't notice until you went to touch it. Do you know what I mean?"

Gohan thought about it, letting himself mull it over before giving his friend a response.

"I think so," he said, nodding again. "What did you see?"

There was a long pause as Tonbo looked out at the trees.

"I don't remember it very well now. There was a battle of some sort I think…and a man with bright blue eyes fighting a dragon…"

The seer's apprentice shrugged and grinned shamefully.

"Master Shorai says that when seer's have the first vision, those visions normally come true in a few hours but I'm strange because mine hasn't come true yet."

The grin fell away as the boy looked down at the dead twigs and leaves on the ground by his feet, leaning forward so he could rest his elbows on his legs.

"I'm beginning to think it wasn't even a real vision…that I'm just wasting Master Shorai's time…trying to learn about future sight…"

Gohan cocked his head to one side watching the change in Tonbo's expression and his own grew sombre in response. He hadn't wanted his friend to relive something that made him feel guilty…he'd only been seeking to turn the focus away from the day's events, his own predicament…

Maybe he was just being selfish…

He opened his mouth to say something soothing to his friend but was afraid he'd make it worse and turned instead to look gloomily out at the trees, starting when something peculiar caught his eye, a leaf that was huge, flat and a little waxy.

"Heeeeeey," Gohan shouted excitedly, jumping up. Tonbo squeaked at the sudden movement and bounced up, patting his heart as it threatened to evacuate through his throat.

"Don't scare me like that Gohan!" he said, taking a deep breath in.

"Look, look down there!" Gohan whispered, pointing ecstatically in the direction he had seen the out of place leaf.

Tonbo hadn't spent much time in the forest learning to forage. Though he and his master lived off of the land, they mostly stuck to eating fish from the stream and the berries from the bushes Shorai knew were safe so he didn't recognise the huge leaf and what it signified.

"Bananas!" Gohan yelled excitedly, racing off into the trees.

"Hey what?" Tonbo asked, streaking out after Gohan and tripping over a few protruding roots so he tumbled down to meet his friend at the foot of the plant.

Gohan was staring intently at the higher leaves when Tonbo finally stood again, rubbing one of his legs where he'd landed awkwardly. The demi-Saiyan pulled a speculative face and circled the base of it, his eyes growing shiny as he discovered a bunch of bananas ripe for picking on the highest branches.

"Wanna fly up and get those?" Gohan asked, folding his arms across his chest and smiling smugly.

Tonbo shot an awed glance at his friend and stood, blinking rapidly. Only a moment ago, both he and Gohan had been caught in a melancholy mood following the traumatic events of the day and the dredging up of unwanted thoughts. Now, it was almost like there'd never been a cloud hanging over them at all.

How could Gohan swing between moods so suddenly? How could he just brush aside everything that had happened to him?

The longer Tonbo looked at his friend, the more contagious the smile became. He felt it tug at the corner of his lips and soothe the slump he'd gotten himself into. He didn't exactly know what his friend was doing but it seemed to be cheering him up considerably. He laughed and hovered a few inches off of the ground. Since Gohan had taught him the basics of flying, he'd done nothing but practice in his free time after seeing lessons and he was ready for this.

"Race ya!" he said, launching himself up into the air, wobbling for a moment before gaining control of his Ki and moving up to grab the bananas.

Gohan let his eyes linger on the slowly ascending figure of his friend and let the smile on his face falter. His hands shook as he brought them up to feel at the spot on his neck where that brute's knee would have connected then he too pushed off into the sky, his eyes set on the perfectly yellowed bananas poking through the waxy leaves.

* * *

Frieza stood with his arms crossed in the control room, his eyes fixed on the monitors before him as they changed, showing flash images from all over Namek. Around him, corpses lay scattered about like flower arrangements and tiny robots were working to mop at the river of blood flowing dangerously close to Frieza's feet. The room had taken on the tangy smell of fear and spilt blood that usually accompanied one of Frieza's rampages but the tyrant was used to it.

By now, the invasion vessel had been completely purged of life and, aside from the cleaning crew of robots, it was crushingly silent. Having been fortunate enough to be born with the ability to survive in space, Frieza was unperturbed by this lack of life. The endless, all-consuming silence that resided in the deeper reaches of that black void was enough to harden anyone to this sort of thing.

By now, he was so far beyond anger that he was re-entering the realm of calm. It was obvious by the time that had elapsed that Zarbon had failed in his redeeming task and Frieza intended to find that hopeless coward and teach him a lesson.

Suddenly, one of the monitors flashed up an image of a moving figure, heading straight towards the ship. Frieza's eyes skimmed up to the monitor and with a flick of the hand, he enlarged the image, aiming to analyse this newcomer.

His mouth dropped open.

The Dragonballs.

They orbited the newcomer like atoms, spinning as he flew forward, a triumphant smirk on his face. Frieza started to count them. 1…2…_yes 4…5…_

All 7 of them.

Somehow this intrepid nobody had ended up with all 7 Dragonballs. Was he part of Frieza's arsenal? No, he wasn't wearing Saiyan armour. As Frieza scanned the newcomer's face, he noticed the familiar expression and the scouter covering one of his eyes.

"That _can't _be Ginyu," Frieza muttered disbelievingly, turning on his heel and splashing carelessly through the puddles of blood on his way to the launch bay. Within a few minutes, the tyrant was hovering easily in the air, waiting to give this stranger an appropriate greeting. As he approached, Frieza noticed that he didn't falter as the scouter over his eye started throwing out numbers and when he was close enough, he waved and pulled a ridiculous pose – something Frieza recognised as the pose of greeting.

Definitely Ginyu.

"Lord Frieza," Captain Ginyu saluted reverently, bowing in the air.

Frieza's eyes darted from Ginyu's unfamiliar face to the 7 Dragonballs surrounding him and he grinned like a crocodile.

"Aw Ginyu, you shouldn't have," Frieza said pleasantly, gesturing to the Dragonballs. Now that the rightful owner had been restored following Vegeta's rebellious kleptomania, he was in quite a good mood. It was a welcome relief from the fury he had been trying to contain since all this nonsense had kicked off. He was, quite frankly, sick and tired of having his will defied at every possible turn this trip and was looking forward to making his wish and getting off of this backwater planet.

"But it's been so long as we hardly get to exchange intergalactic post cards," Ginyu responded idly, landing on the grass along with the overlord and handing over the huge Dragonballs one by one.

At first, Frieza was transfixed, greedy eyes lingering on each Dragonball as it was passed to him but when they were safely in front of him, ready and waiting for his wish, he glanced up to get a closer look at Ginyu's face. His eyes narrowed sceptically.

"So where did you find your new body Ginyu? I think this one is better looking than your old one."

Ginyu tilted his head to one side.

"Ah, we actually ran into Vegeta while we were gathering up the Dragonballs and he had a few friends with him. This was one of his friends and, aside from yourself lord Frieza, his power level was of the strongest I've ever recorded so I thought I'd upgrade."

He shrugged indifferently.

Frieza frowned sharply, turning investigative eyes on Ginyu's new body and sure enough, he recognised the shape of the hair, the deep set colour of the eyes and the angle of the chin. He looked just like the leader of the monkey rebellion that had died foolishly thinking he could take on the Empire. A third class Saiyan it seemed.

Where in the nine hells had he come from? Frieza was sure he'd wiped out all of those snivelling whelps aside from Vegeta and his two subordinates…how had one managed to escape?

Judging by the looks of this one, factoring in what the overlord knew about Saiyan aging, he wasn't very old. Perhaps he'd been a youngster when the planet had been destroyed, one of those sent off planet to wreak havoc on some unsuspecting galaxy…and now he'd turned up with a power level higher than Ginyu? Frieza felt a squirm of unpleasantness inside him and didn't much care for it.

'_I shouldn't be worrying about old folktales, it's childish,_' he chided himself, thinking of the legend Vegeta had constantly felt the need to enlighten him with since he was a boy. '_Besides, once I'm immortal, nothing in the universe will be able to challenge me._'

"Don't worry sir, Jeice is taking care of Vegeta and his friends as we speak so they won't be bothering you again," Captain Ginyu assured the overlord, seeing the pensive expression on his face.

"Hmm? Oh no captain, I was just thinking about how fantastic it's going to be to finally get my wish."

Ginyu's eyes glinted insatiably and Frieza raised an eyebrow.

"This seems like an excellent time to perform the dance of joy," Ginyu suggested excitedly, shifting into the starting pose and humming a few bars.

"Uh…Ginyu, we really don't have time for that sort of thing, after all I have been away from empirical affairs for a while and I'd like to get off of this graveyard soon."

Ginyu's face visibly fell but he complied, pausing mid pirouette and standing straight to watch the unfolding events. Frieza turned his attention to the Dragonballs, his elation mounting.

"Eternal dragon, I summon thee, come forth and grant me my greatest wish. I want to be immortal," Frieza said with emphasis, speaking now to the Dragonballs themselves.

There was a pause as both Ginyu and Frieza waited with baited breath for something to happen and when it didn't, Frieza could feel his anger returning.

"Is…this…supposed to happen?" Ginyu asked uncertainly.

"No," Frieza hissed, spitting like a venomous snake. "There must be something missing…some piece of the puzzle that only the Namekians knew. Blast it all, I've already killed all of those green slugs!"

"Relax lord Frieza, there must be a few left, a village you may have missed. Here, check the scouter," Ginyu said, slipping the scouter he was wearing off of his eye and presenting it to Frieza. The tyrant took the scouter without a word and checked the numbers, immediately noting where Vegeta and Jeice were fighting, their Ki signatures colliding brilliantly. Widening his scope, Frieza pressed the button and was surprised to see a tiny blip on the edge of the radar, a power level unaccounted for.

"Excellent Ginyu," Frieza said, rising in the air. "Now stay here and guard the Dragonballs until I get back. I shouldn't be long. These native buffoons tend to respond well to my more…persuasive methods of extracting information."

"You can count on me," Ginyu said sombrely, saluting once again as Frieza took off, hurtling through the atmosphere with frightening speed.

* * *

The battle between Jeice and Vegeta was fierce but it was obvious that Vegeta had the upper hand. Jeice was astounded as he threw the Saiyan prince back from a grapple, only to have Vegeta barrel straight towards him with a Ki blast ready to detonate in Jeice's exposed stomach. He managed to avoid the blast by inches, contorting his body into a weird shape and pulling a muscle in the process.

Falling back in the air, Jeice let himself pant freely while Vegeta held himself, his chest rising and falling evenly.

"You…certainly have…improved…" Jeice admitted between breaths.

"And you're exactly the same," Vegeta countered tauntingly.

Jeice pouted but was unable to muster up the energy to say more, glancing down at the bodies of his fallen comrades. Vegeta followed Jeice's gaze downwards, watching with only the tiniest inkling of displeasure as the bald monk crawled towards the broken form of Ginyu's discarded body, Kakarot's temporary home.

'_So it's all down to me,_' he thought to himself. '_I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to leave them to their fate but I need Kakarot to face off against Frieza if that dolt of a captain's managed to get the Dragonballs to him._'

His eyes sifted back up towards Jeice and he grinned cruelly. Without warning, he fired off a couple of twin blasts that ignited in the atmosphere, casting perfidious green shadows over the decimated battle field. Jeice barely had time to look up and register just what was surging towards him before he was swallowed up in calescent illumination.

When the light cleared and Vegeta's eyes re-adjusted, he was delighted to find that he'd left no trace of the Ginyu subordinate behind, not even a miscellaneous limb that had somehow escaped the onslaught only to plummet to its final resting place. It was a mark of how powerful he'd gotten that he was able to completely disintegrate his enemy and an enemy with a formidable reputation at that.

"Ha, learning from your mistakes makes you a good warrior. Learning from other people's mistakes makes you a legend," Vegeta said victoriously, remembering in an ironic sense how he'd managed to best Burter in his last scuffle.

Below, both Krillin and Goku felt the sudden extinguishing of Jeice's Ki and glanced up to lock on to Vegeta floating smugly in the air. Krillin tried to brace himself for the nausea he was likely to feel as the body impacted the ground but as the seconds ticked by, he realised he couldn't actually see a body. He hadn't heard the telltale thud of limp meat hitting a solid surface either…

Realisation rose over Krillin like a wave, gradually increasing the suffocating feeling of anxiety in his system as it dawned on him that Vegeta had completely wiped Jeice out of existence. It made him remember that despite their tenuous truce, the prince was still the same. Ruthless, cold-hearted and far, far too careless with life.

'_No Vegeta,_' Goku thought as he struggled to maintain his own floundering life force and remain conscious. Things were starting to become difficult to process as he clung to life like a worm on a hook. Everything seemed to be coming at him through a thick layer of sludge. He knew Vegeta had killed his opponent; that this was regrettable but he was unable to comprehend anything beyond that basic recognition.

Vegeta slowly lowered himself down to the ground and took in the true sorry state of his companions, chuckling mirthfully.

"It gives me great pleasure to think that I could just leave you here like this to waste away, the perfect revenge after what you put me through on that mud ball you call a planet…"

Krillin grit his teeth, flumping down in the dirt despite his mangled rib, his resolve leaving him. He let his eyes roam to Goku who was looking worse by the minute, the blood by his knees starting to congeal and crack over the grass. If they were going to die…at least they'd be able to see their friends again but he didn't think Goku would take any consolation from that knowing that his son would remain trapped in whatever situation he was currently in, that he'd failed as a father to rescue his boy from danger…

"V-Vegeta…"

Krillin's eyes snapped up as Goku spoke out, a knotting ball of rage dropping into his stomach as he assumed that Vegeta was literally about to finish Goku off but what he saw forced the rage to die in his system. The prince had hoisted Goku's arm up over his shoulders and was keeping him upright while Goku's head lolled laxly down by his chest. Fixing Krillin with a detached stare, he took off, flying in a slow arch to land before the bald monk.

"Can you stand?" he asked simply, meriting a confused blink.

"Uh…what's going on?" Krillin asked, letting out an involuntary moan as he tried to move his body in ways that it just wouldn't bend anymore before giving up and throwing Vegeta an apologetic look.

"Hmph," the prince grunted, gripping Krillin's wrist and pulling him up as well, pushing off into the air as slowly as he dared. The strain on Krillin's arm and subsequently, his chest as it was stretched made him want to throw up and pass out all at once but he forced himself to hold it together. Goku wouldn't hang on for much longer so they couldn't afford to be making pit stops for Krillin to be a crybaby.

It was an agonisingly slow progression as they made their way towards Ginyu's idle Ki signature and Krillin found himself praying that Ginyu wouldn't feel inclined to move any time soon unless it happened to be closer to them.

"I want you to get this straight," the prince said, "I'm only keeping you around so Kakarot can help me defeat Frieza. Consider yourselves a life insurance policy until I get my immortality."

Krillin squinted up at the prince through pain filled eyes and wondered if that was really the case.

Although he was having trouble focusing through the heat of the fire in his chest, he could tell that the deadly Ki signature presumably belonging to Frieza was nowhere near Ginyu and the Dragonballs at the moment so if Vegeta managed to take on Ginyu, he'd have the Dragonballs and his immortality regardless.

Not only that, but the prince had only mentioned Goku in his plans to battle Frieza, what was he bringing Krillin along for? To insure Goku's compliance?

Krillin stared at the prince, hoping to read him, wondering if maybe he just didn't want to face that tyrant alone…What kind of history did Vegeta have with that terrible overlord? How scared should they really be?

"There he is…we've got him," Vegeta muttered confidently as Frieza's invasion vessel finally came into view, the smile creeping onto his lips widening as he realised that Ginyu wasn't wearing the scouter he had taken from Jeice.

Briefly, he wondered why Frieza hadn't called the dragon just yet, why he'd left Ginyu with the Dragonballs while he'd disappeared on some strange solo mission, his Ki signature bulging in Vegeta's mind half way across the planet. He shook his head, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that Ginyu was a prime target at the moment, a sitting duck.

The element of surprise offered by the lack of Ginyu's scouter was an advantage indeed, if Vegeta could just be stealthy enough to make use of it. If Ginyu was surprised, he was more likely to try and change bodies for something more readily accessible – the ultimate coward's way out of ever truly losing a fight. When Vegeta thought about it, he wondered why Frieza got on so well with this man. The tyrant was always complaining about how much he hated cowardice.

He took a moment to study the surrounding area, searching out the best place to set up an attack and landed very carefully off to Ginyu's left behind a pile of heaped up bodies. The curve of the ship provided the perfect blind spot for Vegeta's attack and the bodies masked the odour of blood that Ginyu was sure to pick up on with his stolen Saiyan senses. Vegeta's mind was working overtime as he set down Goku's now unconscious form and propped the pale monk up against the edge of the corpse pile.

"We're only going to get one shot at this," the prince whispered, staring at Ginyu who was pacing to and fro in front of the Dragonballs, humming to himself.

"I'll launch an attack from here and take him by surprise. I think if I scare him sufficiently enough, he'll reflexively try and switch bodies with me. You'll have to watch him for the signs and when it looks like he's going to do it, I'm gonna need you to throw this lump," he inclined his head at the unconscious purple figure at his feet, "into the path of the transfusion."

"Me? Throw? Are you kidding me, I can barely see straight!" Krillin hissed, causing Vegeta to slap a hand over his mouth and stare at Ginyu who kept pace, completely oblivious.

"Well you're just gonna have to perform some incredible feat of stamina because if this fails, I'm pretty sure that Kakarot is going to die," Vegeta responded evenly, raising accusatory eyebrows at the monk.

"Won't Goku just get hit with your blast if this works?" Krillin retaliated bitterly, turning his own accusatory eyes on the prince.

"Probably," the prince admitted. "But he has a better chance of surviving that than he does staying in this mangled body."

Krillin regarded him with distaste for a long moment before rolling his eyes and conceding.

"Fine, but just so you know, I don't like this, or him…" Krillin jabbed his thumb at the negligent Ginyu.

"Or you," he added sulkily.

Vegeta opened his mouth to say something snarky but just ended up closing it again. A petulant attitude like that wasn't worth the comment. Turning back to the matter at hand, he watched Ginyu with hawk-like eyes, counting his steps, timing his movements, waiting for the opportunity to present itself. The captain's feet were like a metronome beating out a rhythm that matched the agitated pace of the prince's heart and adrenaline flooded him.

Taking up a ready position, he gathered all the Ki he could, making sure to prepare a big, flashy attack that was sure to make the biggest impact on Ginyu. Krillin took a sharp breath in as he felt the exponential Ki the prince was giving off but kept his own attention on the captain.

Suddenly, Vegeta stepped up with confidence, his feet widening as he shifted into the correct stance.

"GALICK GUN!" He yelled at the top of his lungs, firing off an instant blast of enegy that almost disintegrated part of Frieza's ship.

Ginyu heard the yell and jumped out of his skin, pivoting back on one foot to stare in terror at the monumental surprise attack bombarding towards him, bathing the surrounding area in phosphorescence and choking heat. He had only a few seconds to peer through the brightness and spot Vegeta pouring everything he had into that monstrous assault and to try and reach deep to produce enough energy to create a substantial block.

He tried to access the plethora of power he knew lay dormant somewhere within his current body but it just wasn't working this time; he still hadn't mustered enough control to save himself.

He blinked at Vegeta through the catastrophic output of Ki and grinned through his terror.

"Change…NOW!"

* * *

_Will Vegeta's plan to switch Goku and Ginyu work out? Will Frieza get the password for the Dragonballs and wish for immortality? Will Gohan really survive the fight with Frieza as Shorai predicts?_

_FIND OUT SOME OF THIS ON THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE OF…the Hobbit?_

_We've tried fisheses and goblinses but never hobbitses!_

_Reviews protect me from Gollum – yes he freaks me out in the irrational sense. _


	18. Dragon's Breath

_Stress and horror do not a productive fanfic writer make (grimaces at terrible Yoda-esque grammar). It's a good job I'm completely obsessed with writing this story or I might've had to take a hiatus (le gasp). Anyways a few things to note:_

_1) Despite the aforementioned stress and horror, updates will proceed as normal so no worries. Or hakunamatata as the well known saying goes._

_2) Spelling and grammar checked…LIKE A BOSS! As always though, I'm sure I've missed a few things with my severe obliviousness so apologies in advance if you spot silly mistakes._

_3) A warning for plot bunnies, bad anatomical analysis, spatial discrepancies, baldness and general Vegeta-isms._

…_Onwards! _

* * *

**17: Dragon's Breath**

Guru gasped heavily and fell back in his chair, his chest slowly expanding as he took in gulps of air. Sweat was starting to bead on his forehead, running down the contours of his face to drip from the tip of his chin. His mottled skin was dark with the promising shadow of death.

Nail started jerkily, moving silently to Guru's side and taking the huge, clammy hand of the older Namekian in his own.

"Please Guru…just hold on a little bit longer…" he whispered anxiously, patting his father's heavy hand. On the other side of the room, Dende looked on fearfully, pathologically afraid of death now that he had seen so much of it. He stood with his back to the wall, his tiny frame shaking and his eyes on Guru's wizened face.

For a few moments, Guru simply sat taking in rasping breaths of air, his face turned to the sunlight streaming in through the window. Eventually, and much to Nail's astonishment, Guru smiled.

"What is it lord Guru?" Nail asked quickly, panicking when he couldn't account for the strange smile on the elder Namekian's face. Was this the feeling of peace someone felt before finally passing on?

"The Earthlings…" Guru muttered, "They will have the Dragonballs within the hour."

Nail merely blinked at Guru incredulously, his mind working to process such impossible news.

The Earthlings had actually managed to gather the Dragonballs against all odds? _Really?_ How had they managed it? Was it because of the pure hearted Saiyan that had spoken to Guru when they'd brought Dende? Nail could certainly see how someone like that could be a magnet for miracles. He'd gotten the impression that with Goku on the job, anything was possible.

Much to his chagrin, a spark of hope for his people was starting to ignite in his system. He'd long since fallen into apathetic acceptance about the tragedy that had befallen his once proud race and it was both wonderful and disconcerting to _feel _something again.

"The password Guru," he commented simply, filled with sudden concern.

"I know, calm yourself Nail."

The elder Namekian shuffled round in his chair so he was facing Dende, looking at him through closed eyes. Somehow, Dende found himself calming when he realised that Guru wasn't about to die after all, at least not yet. The shadow on his face was still there but he seemed to be battling against it, a tiny row boat of life against the tsunami of natural cause.

"Dende, I need you to take the password to the Earthlings," he began, ignoring Nail's indignant protestation. "Fly quickly and don't worry about trying to hide from pursuers. There's nothing left on the planet to threaten you aside from the tyrant himself and he won't be bothered with a child at a time like this."

"What do you mean?" Nail asked. He knew all too well that the tyrant in question had little to no regard for life. If Dende was to attract his attention, he would surely be obliterated for no reason at all.

Guru inclined his head sluggishly in Nail's direction and the younger Namekian caught the meaning behind the action before Guru spoke the words.

"He's coming for the password and he won't believe that we'd entrust something so important to a child. He is somewhat ignorant of the potential often found in youth. Dende is our best chance."

Nail's mouth fell open as he grasped the true meaning of Guru's words, suddenly glad that Dende was the one to be sent away.

He was coming for the password.

If the tyrant was coming here, then Nail would have to be the one to fight him and his insides turned to jelly. Among the Namekian warriors, Nail had been notorious for his stoic courage, taking even the most adverse of situations and meeting them with a detached, efficient response. Facing a malevolent power of this magnitude was something else entirely, a situation with more gravity than he had ever dared to comprehend.

It was, essentially, a suicide mission.

Guru was asking him to sacrifice himself to give his people a chance.

"I'll do my best," Nail whispered, bowing his head in resignation.

Dende watched the silent communication passing between Nail and the eldest Namek and was filled with an all-encompassing terror.

"No, lord Guru, DON'T MAKE NAIL FIGHT THAT MONSTER!"

He vaulted forward with a cry and attached himself to Nail's legs, sobs wracking his body as he let the panic wash over him freely. Child as he was, he had no other way of coping with his fear other than to let it control him and Nail felt his heart break in two as he watched the younger Namekian. Somehow, observing this display of affection and fright gave him the strength that he felt he had lacked a moment ago.

Prying the boy away with gentle fingers, he crouched so he was on Dende's level and met the child's tearful eyes with his own serene expression.

"I have to do this so we can give our people a chance Dende. If the Dragonballs on Earth really can bring everyone back…You can't be selfish with this okay?"

Dende gulped, trying to swallow the hysteria but the tears continued to slip down his cheeks in a torrential downpour.

"W-what if we f-fail," he stuttered, letting his eyes rove to Guru who was looking frailer than ever in Dende's terrified eyes. "Th-then you'll just be dead too."

Nail simply pulled the boy into a fierce hug without saying another word, unable to hold back from such close physical contact though he knew it was potentially cruel to allow himself such an attachment now.

Dende clasped his hands around Nail's neck and squeezed, remembering the feel of Goku's protective arms around him when he'd been left to the mercy of an empty planet. This was exactly the same…Nail's arms were firm like a shield and eased the ache in Dende's heart considerably.

"We won't fail," Nail stated simply.

* * *

"Change…NOW!"

Krillin heard the cry and saw the smirk on Ginyu's stolen face. He threw his arms out as if to embrace Vegeta's attack and Krillin knew that was his cue. Reflexively, he gripped the back of Goku's Saiyan armour, ignoring the stab of agony in his rib cage as he flexed his fingers closed. With everything he had left inside him, the bald monk hefted up the dead weight of his best friend and a wave of unfathomable nausea washed through him. He staggered against the pile of bodies, knocking a few free so they rolled forward but he didn't sink to the ground as he wanted to. Goku probably only had a few more minutes of life within him, this was his only chance.

With his muscles rippling, Krillin took hazy aim and launched the body into the line of fire. As he propelled himself forward, through the momentum, he felt the loose rib inside him stab against his innards and he yelled as hard as he could, a vocal expulsion of the pain tormenting his system. The moment he felt the Saiyan armour leave his aching fingers, he fell back onto the dirt and focussed everything he had on containing the explosion of agony threatening to rip him apart.

Vegeta caught a glimpse of Ginyu's patented pose and a sense of helpless dread bloomed inside him for a moment as he realised it was all up to the handicapped monk but then he heard the battle worn cry as Krillin launched Goku's body into the line of fire and the dread was replaced by a refreshing feeling of victorious relief.

Ginyu watched in horror as the familiar body flew into his line of sight…

_There was darkness…_

…but he could still see the unconscious body in the air before him; everything seemed to have slowed down so he could pick out the individual threads of Ki bound together to make up Vegeta's attack and the true bloody mess of the wound he had inflicted upon himself before he'd swapped bodies with this powerful stranger.

_Crippling, undulating darkness pulsing every now and then with a heart beat so painful it left him wanting to break down into sobs like a child._

He could feel the grin on his face slackening, the heat and the light bombarding him as Vegeta's attack crept ever closer. His arms were still stretched up to the sky.

_Consciousness was slipping away, absorbed in that darkness. He was starting to forget himself, desperately clinging to the essence of…the essence of…_

His vision was fading into that darkness, sucked down into that agonising heart beat.

_Into that agonising heart beat._

_Thump…thump… …thump._

Goku woke as if from a deep sleep, his memories of the fight against the Ginyu force merging with the current, sudden situation. He saw the cannonading attack blasting towards him and had enough sense to block as the Ki erupted over him, shredding his gi and causing him to fall back into the dirt, almost burnt to a crisp. He winced as new wounds opened up all over his body, gashes and burns littering his torso and legs until he was nothing but a wreck, the smell of cremated skin tainting the air above him. Instantly, he brought his sore hand up to his chest, surprised and relieved when he realised that he could feel a solid rib cage. The gaping hole was gone.

As the wind blew across the now silent battle field, Goku could feel his hair rustling on the ground, a dark strand or two whipping out over his eyes to obscure the green sky.

He was in his old body again.

How had that happened? And what had become of Captain Ginyu?

On the edge of the battle field, Vegeta straightened, his eyes trained on Goku's inert form. He watched warily as Goku lifted his hand and rested it on his chest, feeling reverently at the intact rib cage.

'_That is definitely Kakarot,_' Vegeta decided, shifting his gaze to the dead weight of Ginyu on the ground, noticing with some disappointment that there was no longer a Ki signature attached to that body.

"Good," he stated simply, walking towards the bald monk who was writhing uncomfortably on the ground, contorting himself into strange positions to try and relieve the pain.

"Goku…hn…made it?" Krillin asked as he caught a glimpse of Vegeta's white boot out of his peripheral vision.

"Yes, my plan worked perfectly," Vegeta said, grabbing Krillin's hand and unceremoniously hoisting him up into the air.

Krillin couldn't help crying out as he was lifted and as the pain intensified, he found he just couldn't take anymore and passed clean out.

* * *

Gohan squatted next to the dimension window that Shorai had drawn up for the coming battle with Frieza, studying the visual of the prince as he picked up Krillin, his father's friend, by a limp wrist. Rage twisted his gut as he watched the agony grow up on the bald monk's grey face, making him break out in a sheen of sweat. Gohan could feel his Ki enflaming around him as he observed, burning hot with his anger and he grit his teeth, trying to hold himself together.

'_Don't lose control, don't lose control._'

It would be a waste of energy to let his control slip before the battle had even begun, he knew that but it took every ounce of the boy's willpower not to lose himself in the rage, to keep his focus as he realised the full extent of the dire situation Krillin and his father were in. Vegeta was currently in the power spot and both Goku and Krillin were completely vulnerable. What would Vegeta do with them? If he tried anything, anything at all…

The boy's eyes flicked up over the grass to where Shorai and Sensou were huddled together, deep in conversation about the upcoming battle. Sitting as they were, Gohan could see more of a family resemblance between the two of them, specifically the similar facial expressions the two of them both sported when they were frustrated. It was a little frightening when he thought about it, that the trustworthy seer was so obviously formed of the same genetic building blocks as his ruthless mentor…

Across the grass, Tonbo stared at his uncharacteristically silent friend, watching the uneasiness swim across his features. If he had been able to read Ki, he would have been overwhelmed by the worry and anger pulsing out through Gohan's increasing power output but as it was, he had only the subtle fluctuations of Gohan's facial expression to tell him what his friend was thinking. He frowned and peered into the dimension window, watching with apprehension as the prince dragged both Goku and Krillin into the space ship parked on the large island.

When his eyes locked onto Gohan again, he noticed that his friend was still glaring intently at Shorai and Sensou. Biting his lower lip, he shuffled round until he was sitting closer to Gohan, their knees brushing.

"Don't worry," Tonbo whispered, causing Gohan to start and blink at him. "Your dad and the little monk are gonna be fine. I overheard Master Shorai and your master talking..."

He glanced down at the ground and pushed his index fingers together, suddenly filled with doubt.

"I'm not really supposed to tell you about the future, not unless Master Shorai says I can so don't tell that I…uh…told, okay?"

Gohan's dark eyes seemed to clear, his expression softening as he turned back to watch Sensou and Shorai. Gradually, his Ki output siphoned off until it was down to normal. He took a deep breath in and exhaled grandly.

"Thanks Tonbo," he said, throwing his friend a grin. "I won't tell anyone."

Tonbo grimaced back, still fretting about revealing secrets of the future without permission.

With his mind cleared of irritating neuroticism, Gohan turned his attention back to the dimension window, watching as Vegeta emerged from the ship and descended, coming to land before a group of over-sized Dragonballs glinting a bright orange in the high sun.

His heart skipped a beat.

"Mr Piccolo…" he whispered, suddenly guilt ridden as he thought about the noble sacrifice the demon lord had made for him in the battle against the Saiyans and of the request he'd made to Gohan to wish him back. How was Gohan supposed to fulfil that request if he was stuck in this dimension? How was he supposed to properly honour his friend's selfless actions?

And now Vegeta was inches away from wasting those precious wishes on immortality…

He had to do something.

'_I can't let him down._'

He straightened with a plan already forming in his mind. His eyes automatically started combing the line of trees until he found who he was looking for, the dark figure watching the unfolding proceedings under the cover of the largest oak like a lone wolf. Tossing a fleeting glance at the two brothers to make sure they were thoroughly engrossed in their discussion, Gohan subtly started moving in Ma's direction, aiming to seek an audience with the teleporter by himself so Shorai and Sensou would be unable to forbid him from pursuing his chosen course of action.

Tonbo made to follow but at the last moment, he stopped himself. Whatever Gohan was trying to do it was obviously some sort of stealth manoeuvre and Tonbo would only make it more likely that the boy would get caught. Instead, he stayed as still as he could in front of the dimension window, trying to be invisible, planning to cover his friend should anything go wrong.

Gohan skirted around the meadow, pretending to be interested in unimportant things until he was close enough to Ma to give a cordial greeting.

"Hello," he said with forced cheer, his heart hammering anxiously away in his chest. Even now, Vegeta could be making his wishes to the eternal dragon, time was of the essence.

For a few seconds, Ma didn't answer or move; scrutinising the boy he hadn't seen in several months out of the corner of an electric yellow eye. If possible, the kid seemed to have gotten scrawnier, all muscle mass and gangling limbs. He had a definition about the face that made him appear more like a survivor than a child and he had a hollow look about the eyes that spoke of recent trauma. His eyes were shiftier than they had been, deeper and every now and then he would flinch, his hands automatically lifting to feel at a certain spot on his neck.

A surge of pity welled up inside Ma as he watched the boy. Just what had Sensou been doing to him?

"Sorry to sneak up on you," Gohan said, remembering his manners and bowing. Ma inclined his head to return the gesture, pleased that Gohan hadn't forgotten his civility through whatever brutality Sensou had inflicted upon him.

"That's fine," Ma said, not used to small talk. "How have you been?"

He asked the loaded question and Gohan responded with a loaded, monosyllabic answer.

"Fine, uh…I'm really sorry but…I was wondering if I could ask you a favour?"

It was killing him to do this, he felt so rude for asking this of someone he barely knew but if he was serious about saving Piccolo, he'd just have to suck up the feeling of discomfort and make sure that he made it up to Ma later.

"Oh? And how can I help you?" Ma asked, both amused and curious about Gohan's uncomfortable demeanour.

The little demi-Saiyan glanced up and Ma was suddenly struck by the sense of helplessness in his eyes. Whatever this favour was, it was important, at least to Gohan and if the teleporter refused, he had the impression that the negative backlash from that refusal could cause some serious psychological damage. He threw a side long glance at Shorai and was astonished when the seer met his gaze across the meadow, giving him a barely perceptible nod before his eyes shifted back to his brother.

'_What's going on here?_'

"Uh…well…sir…I was wondering if you might be kind enough to drop me back on…Namek when the eternal dragon is called so I can make the wish to bring Piccolo back," Gohan explained.

Ma's eyes grew large beneath his hood and he found himself overcome with the sudden urge to hug the boy. Whatever he'd gone through to give him that dead, grown up look, he still hadn't forgotten what Piccolo had done for him, was still doing everything in his power to bring his friend back following that sacrifice.

"I know those two might not agree," Gohan shifted so he was looking at Sensou and Shorai who appeared to be engrossed in some complicated charts, "but…I have to do this. Piccolo asked me to when he was d…dying…"

Ma inhaled sharply and held his breath, mulling over the consequences of his next actions before releasing the pent up air.

"Out of curiosity kid, what would you do if I said no?"

Ma saw the flash of hurt like a lightning strike in those black eyes but behind that there was some sort of grim determination. If Ma said no, Gohan wouldn't rest until every other possibility had been explored. Despite the fact that it was obviously Shorai's fault for dropping Gohan into the Saiyan battle at that time, Gohan was still taking a responsibility for Piccolo's death, making it his burden.

It was an admirable and dangerous quality, to take so much responsibility, to make everything his mistake to fix or to foul up.

"Don't worry," Ma said, holding his hands up defensively. "I'm not going to say no."

Gohan beamed, unperturbed by the double negation, his face lighting up like the sun.

"Really? Thank you! We should hurry then; Vegeta already has all of the Dragonballs!"

Gohan grabbed Ma's hand and Ma felt a thrill at the contact, something that always happened when he engaged in social activity after being alone for an extended period of time. It was strange to feel the warmth of another human being and Gohan's hand was hot.

Before he knew what was really happening, Gohan was dragging him out across the meadow until they were standing above the dimension window watching a very angry prince throwing a hissy fit.

"Huh?" Gohan muttered, his head cocking to one side.

Tonbo blinked up at him, relieved to see that his friend seemed much happier after speaking with the teleporter.

"The Dragonballs aren't working," Tonbo told them. "The Saiyan's so angry he keeps muttering to himself. He thinks there might be some sort of-

"Password."

Tonbo hiccoughed and swallowed his next word, feeling a disturbance in the air as Shorai sat cross-legged beside him in front of the dimension window.

"Namekian Dragonballs require a password before the eternal dragon can be summoned. Not only that but the instructions given to Porunga need to be in their native tongue," the seer explained casually.

Gohan's face visibly fell and Ma placed a re-assuring hand on the boy's shoulder, squeezing it lightly. This gesture did not go unnoticed by Sensou who stopped to narrow his eyes at the teleporter before he sat down himself in front of the dimension window.

"This is irrelevant. How long before Frieza arrives?" Sensou asked bitterly.

"Not long," Shorai muttered.

* * *

'_I'm sorry I wasn't able to keep your son alive Goku…I hope you understand that despite everything, I'm just not strong enough…_'

'_Krillin?_'

Krillin woke slowly, dredging himself up out of the deep dark. As his eyes fell open, his breath automatically hitched and his hand flew to his rib cage. He expected to feel the unsettling jolt of excruciating pain following such a sharp action with his rib cage still shattered but to his surprise, as his fingers brushed against the rough fabric of his gi, he only felt a dull ache and the firm, rounded surface of the rib protruding from its normal place.

Someone had healed him.

Letting his hand fall back beside him, he tried to figure out where he was. He'd been taken to some sort of medical bay; that was obvious by the smell of disinfectant and medication sifting through his nose. He could hear the steady beep of a heart monitor somewhere in the room and as he turned his head, he could see a small table packed to bursting with various medications, pill bottles and liquid vials. He chuckled stiffly when he saw the empty syringe; thinking of how much Goku must have loved that, and regretted the action when a pulse of nausea made his stomach churn.

Gingerly, he sat up, noticing that he'd been laid out on a minimalistic bed. The white sheets were covered in stains, blood and mud combining to make an impossible to clean ooze. He winced as he stood but was delighted to find that he was just stiff. Pulling at the collar of his gi, he glanced down at the once damaged rib to find a scattering of purple and yellow bruises, nothing more.

Taking a deep breath in, he lowered himself onto the floor and proceeded to cautiously explore the place. As he neared the window, he could hear someone yelling in frustration, their voice muffled through the thick glass and he peered out at the irate form of Vegeta. The prince was pacing about like a caged animal, his hands flying everywhere, first crossed over his chest and then pulling hard at his flame-like hair.

Krillin simply raised an eyebrow and left him to it. Whatever had infuriated the prince of all Saiyans, he honestly didn't want to know for the moment.

He moved back across the medical bay, noting the curve of the ceiling and spotted a cluster of strange looking tanks at the back of the room, rigged up to a number of high tech machines. A shift in one of the tanks caught his attention and his eyes latched onto the suspended form of Goku.

"Hey, Goku!" he called out, his voice croaky from lack of use. He ran forward, all caution due to recent injuries forgotten and pressed his face up against the glass of the tank to check out Goku's wounds. There was an oxygen mask strapped to Goku's nose and mouth and a machine by the side was sounding out a steady, cutting beep to confirm that Goku's heart was beating out a nice steady rhythm. Already, Krillin could see that some of Goku's wounds had sealed over to leave fresh scars that would probably be gone soon. He felt himself relax, breathing out a sigh of relief, remembering that Vegeta had confirmed this was definitely Goku, no longer the body snatching Ginyu.

Vegeta…

Had the prince honestly been the one to haul them into the ship and patch them up? Krillin felt around the edge of his repaired rib, frowning slightly. If the prince had managed to make his wish to the dragon and, honestly, what was to stop him – then why had he bothered to make sure they were healed? Was it as the bald monk suspected and he just couldn't stomach facing the malignant overlord alone?

And if he had succeeded in making his wish to the dragon…then they'd failed to retrieve Gohan. He shot a pained look at his sunken best friend, dreading how he'd take the news when he was finally deemed fit enough to leave the tank…

With a pang of loss, Krillin suddenly realised that, if Vegeta had summoned the dragon already, then Yamcha, Tien, Chaotsu and Piccolo were going to remain trapped in Otherworld…But if he had summoned the dragon…

'_Why did he look so angry?_'

On a whim, Krillin decided to fortify himself and go out to meet the arrogant prince, determined to get the full scope of the current situation before he jumped the gun anymore. Leaving the medical bay, he turned, following the curve of the ship round to what he hoped was the exit.

Outside, Vegeta spewed a string of curse words that would have made his father squirm and sat heavily on one of the Dragonballs, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his head drop into his hands.

"Curse these confounded Dragonballs…I bet they only work if you speak to them in Namekian…That's got to be why Ginyu was left to guard the damn things alone…"

"You know, it's not really healthy to talk to yourself like that."

Vegeta's eyes snapped up, locking on the form of the small Earthling as he descended along the exit ramp of the ship and looked around, scouting out the area. He greeted the bald monk with a snarl and stood, inexplicably annoyed when he realised that Krillin was no longer afraid of him.

"I talk to myself because it helps me think, something you'd know nothing about," Vegeta spat, regarding the monk with disdain.

Krillin pulled a face as he came closer.

"Ouch dude."

His eyes snaked down to the Dragonballs shining tauntingly in the sun and then back up to Vegeta who was smirking mirthfully. He felt his heart leap into his throat with a sudden upsurge of joy and tried to arrange his face so it remained impassive. The Dragonballs were still Dragonballs, not just giant stone balls littering the ground like bizarre land marks, this meant that Vegeta hadn't been able to make his wish…they still had a chance to bring Gohan and the others back!

"So you think they might only respond to Namekian?" Krillin pressed, latching on to what he'd heard during Vegeta's monologue.

The prince felt his eyes narrow as he observed Krillin, noting that his facial muscles twitched slightly as he laid eyes on the Dragonballs. When all was said and done and as much as they were 'united' against a common enemy, they did still have the same ultimate goal after all, this man was still after his prize.

"I have a hunch, yes," the prince admitted. "Not that it matters much. Before he left with the Dragonballs, Ginyu took a scouter from Jeice but I found nothing when I checked Kakarot's body before putting him in the rejuvenation chamber."

Krillin just stared blankly at him and the prince resisted the urge to face palm.

"If Ginyu had the scouter when he left but didn't have it when we fought him and he'd been left alone with the Dragonballs, the only logical conclusion is that Frieza now has possession of it and is probably flying towards the last surviving Namekians, determined to make them give him the answer as to why these confounded relics won't do what they're supposed to."

Krillin's blood ran cold where he stood. Any jubilation he had felt upon finding the Dragonballs still primed for use vanished as he gauged Vegeta's words.

Frieza was out looking for Namekians to give him answers and the only Namekians left were…

"Guru…Nail…_Dende…_" Krillin whispered, horrified.

Vegeta watched as the bald monk's face contorted with interest. Fear shone unabashed through his eyes and his face had taken on the same grey pallor he had worn when his rib was digging into his vitals.

"Vegeta…if it's all the same to you…I'm gonna pay a friend of mine a visit," Krillin said breathily, staring at the Dragonballs.

The prince folded his arms across his chest and huffed.

"If you want to get yourself killed for a bunch of slugs, be my guest," Vegeta grumbled, growling once more at the Dragonballs before turning on his heel and trudging back up into the ship.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Krillin called after him, afraid to leave the Dragonballs out in the open unguarded but itching to take to the air so he could try and make it to Guru's before the tyrant managed to meet them.

"I'm going to take a nap," Vegeta said simply and the sentiment made Krillin's jaw drop.

"There's no point in guarding useless relics," the prince threw over his shoulder as he was swallowed by the shadows in the ship. "I'm better off staying with Kakarot."

A long list of profanities sprang up in Krillin's mind as he watched the cocky prince disappear but instead of taking the time to vent them, he took to the air, using everything he had to surge forward, intent on helping Guru out of whatever horrendous disaster was heading their way.

* * *

Dende flew recklessly fast, pelting through the air like a streaking bullet, leaving a burning trail of Ki behind him. A sheen of sweat was starting to break out over his forehead, the beads of salty fluid clinging to his face and flying out behind him as he called on more and more energy to keep up this insane speed. In his mind's eye, he could see Krillin's familiar stationary Ki getting closer and closer and beside him, he could just make out the faint throbbing of Goku's aura, massively depleted.

He was so intent on Krillin's Ki that he almost missed the bulging signature of the tyrant heading straight for him. He stopped in mid-air, his mouth open in a silent scream and as panic took firm root within him, he tried desperately to hold on to Guru's assurance that the dark overlord would simply ignore him. Having seen the wanton destruction of his village, he knew that the evil approaching him would kill him indiscriminately if he felt like it and Dende tried to reel in the instinct to fly mindlessly towards the nearest shelter. Somehow he felt that if he tried to make a run for it, this particular predator would give chase, whereas if he just kept ploughing forward, he would be presenting no sport…at least, that's how he hoped it would work.

Against his better judgement, he continued on, flinching when he caught a visual of the sparking aura coming towards him. It took every ounce of courage he had within him to keep pushing forward.

Frieza's scouter blipped to let him know that something was approaching and, idly, he flicked the switch on the side of the device to hone in on this new power signature. It was positively miniscule but then everything was compared to him and as he drew up to this wayward power source, he inclined his head to watch a tiny Namekian shoot past, his eyes firmly fixed forward.

'_Just my luck to come across a child first,_' Frieza thought to himself, watching the trailing aura in vexation. '_I doubt that boy has anything useful to say about the Dragonballs._'

He held up a lazy hand, aiming to simply snap his fingers and end the boy's life but at the last possible second, he stayed his hand.

'_Perhaps I should leave at least one alive…_'

The overlord's eyebrow twitched slightly as he considered. In the long run, his saving grace had been missing a few Namekians in his malevolent decimation of the planet. If he hadn't left a few alive, the Dragonballs would have been useless…One never knew when the last few dregs of a species could be useful.

He lowered his hand. What did it matter if he didn't swat down another fly? He had more pressing matters to see to at the moment.

He pressed on, all thoughts concerning Dende's continued existence out of his mind in the blink of an eye.

Dende only slowed to a halt when he had managed to put a good mile or two between himself and the nefarious overlord. He stayed hovering in the air, sweating profusely and panting, thanking his lucky stars that he had survived yet another run in with that demon. In the back of his mind, he felt as Krillin's Ki ignited and took off, closing the gap between them.

He turned on the air and glanced back the way he had come, sombre as he thought about what Nail would have to face.

'_Please don't suffer Nail. Let him kill you quickly…_' the boy thought to himself, his lower lip quivering. '_We'll wish you back, you and everyone else, just like Goku promised…_'

"Hey, DENDE!"

The boy's head whipped round until he was facing a familiar silhouette in the sun. He smiled weakly as Krillin dropped down to meet him and started shaking as he realised that despite the odds stacked against him, he'd made it.

"Oh man, what are you doing way out here?" Krillin asked, beaming at Dende like he'd just met a long lost friend.

"Guru s-sent me to give you the p-password for the Dragonballs," Dende confirmed through chattering teeth as he allowed himself to partially succumb to the fear that had flooded him.

"Hey, are you okay?" Krillin asked, his eyes suddenly full of concern as he watched the boy shudder.

"Yeah…I just m-met the man th-that destroyed my v-village," Dende told him, grimacing as he wrapped his arms around himself, trying to quell the shaking.

Krillin's eyes grew wide and his head whipped up until he was looking over Dende to the horizon with an expression of serious fear.

"How are you still alive?" He asked incredulously, his eyes still on the horizon. "You must honestly have the luck of the Irish."

Krillin didn't wait for Dende to respond, letting his aura flare up around him.

"I need to help Guru and Nail, why don't you-

"No no," Dende shrieked, grabbing on to Krillin's arm forcefully. The urgency of the boy's tone and the way he gripped Krillin's flexed muscle in fumbling fingers forced the monk to stop and pay attention, despite the fact that they didn't have time for this.

"Guru sent me to help you use the Dragonballs so you can use your wishes to bring back your friend and help save my people," Dende explained quickly, tripping over a few words in his rush to get them out.

For a few seconds, it looked to the Namekian boy that Krillin was simply going to throw him off and continue to barrel head first into the fray but as he gaped pleadingly at the little monk, he noticed the tension in Krillin's arms lessening, his Ki signature relaxing slightly.

"Okay…" Krillin said, taking a deep breath in through his nose. "Okay…" he said again as he exhaled.

Tentatively, Dende let go of his arm and watched him like a hawk in case he decided to take off again when he'd lured Dende into a false sense of security.

"What's Guru's plan?" Krillin asked, breathing in again, trying to dispel the knotted ball of urgency lingering somewhere in his gut.

"Guru has asked Nail to keep the tyrant distracted while we make the wishes," Dende said, trying to make his explanation as short and concise as possible.

Krillin's face twisted for a moment but as he exhaled once more, it cleared. Brutal, ravaging guilt exploded to life within him but he locked it down as best he could, knowing that the only way for him to be of use now was to honour Guru's plan. It was the perfect time to try for a wish with Vegeta napping and thinking the Dragonballs a lost cause. He turned in the air, fighting the grief and guilt as best he could, fixing Dende with an intense stare.

"Alright, if we head back to the ship, we can pick up the Dragonballs and use them while Vegeta's asleep."

'_He'll be pissed when he wakes up but this is important. I won't let Nail and Guru down,_' Krillin thought to himself determinedly.

Dende breathed out a sigh of relief, feeling as though a massive weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. Wasting no more time, the two of them took off once more, twin comets hurtling through Namek's empty sky.

* * *

Frieza's eyes widened in mild surprise as he came across the house atop the cliff side and wondered how they had managed to miss a location so exposed in their purge.

'_I suppose most of the search did take place across the planet a way,_' the tyrant thought to himself, shrugging nonchalantly.

Carefully, he landed on the edge of the cliff and studied the architecture of the building before him, the tint of the purple window protruding from the house like a blister. He wrinkled his nose and moved towards the door.

"Hello? Anybody home?" he called out, knowing full well that there were two power levels squatting like toads within that house.

When he received no response, the tyrant chuckled cruelly.

"There's no point in trying to hide, I know you're both in there," he stated confidently, linking his hands behind his back as he waited for the two of them to emerge.

A few more seconds passed and Frieza was starting to get antsy. Just as he was about to shoot out the glass of the purple window, someone emerged.

Frieza smirked at the Namekian, an obvious warrior by the hard set of his muscles and the steely resolve in his eyes.

"Good to see you decided to come out before I started annihilating your house," Frieza said pleasantly, as if commenting about the weather.

The Namekian warrior huffed pointedly and folded his arms across his chest.

Frieza met this arrogant display with easy familiarity, smirking at the Namekian's bold, unknowing behaviour.

"You've come about the password for the Dragonballs," Nail stated, cutting straight to the point much to Frieza's delight.

"Ah, yes, well deduced," the tyrant said.

'_I knew there was some Namekian trick to it,_' he thought triumphantly.

Nail watched Frieza's crimson eyes alight with greed and let his arms drop to his sides, trying to hold himself together in front of this demonic abomination.

"I will give you the password," Nail said, "but only if you can beat me in a fair fight."

Frieza's smirk widened, his lips turning up further at the corners and a dimple forming on one of his cheeks.

"A '_fair fight'_. This should be interesting," Frieza decided, raising his hand so two fingers were pointing directly at Nail's heart.

"Not here," Nail said, shaking his head. "We'll have to move a little way further out."

"Oh?" Frieza asked, turning to look once again at the purple window. "Got something to hide in there?"

Nail felt his heart beat falter but he sucked up the fear and tried to keep himself composed, knowing that it was vitally important he downplay how much this was affecting him. Frieza was like an animal that would become enthralled if he realised he was provoking such a strong reaction from his opponent.

"Not really," Nail said, shaking his head and appearing dispassionate. "The elder Namekian is inside but it's not really in your best interest to hurt him."

"Why's that?" Frieza asked, still squinting at the window.

"Because if he dies, the Dragonballs become useless," Nail admitted, looking at his pointed fingernails.

Frieza's eyes flicked back to Nail and he stared for a good long moment, measuring the truth in the warrior's words, surprised when he realised that Nail was actually being honest with him.

"Now that's interesting," Frieza muttered, turning away from the window.

"Alright, we'll play it your way," the overlord conceded. "Honestly, the things I have to do…"

Nail merely nodded to acknowledge Frieza's acceptance of his terms and took off, searching for a suitable place to try and keep Frieza distracted.

* * *

_So will Ma really drop Gohan on Namek in time to make the wish as he promised? Will Krillin and Dende succeed in calling the dragon? Did Vegeta really keep Krillin and Goku alive to fight Frieza?_

_Find out some completely unrelated things on the next exciting episode of…Legend of Korra!_

_(Earth bends self into bed)_

_Reviews are made of marshmallows and pixie sticks (nods sagely)_


	19. The Immortality Issue

_Ello' ello' – I'm feeling very British today for no particular reason. Maybe it's something to do with the weather. A few things to note as always:_

_1) Reactions to surprising events in this chapter may appear to be a little understated. This is in direct correlation with the urgency of the whole 'dragon appearing, Frieza is coming' situation and I find that in dangerous predicaments, people tend to become a little desensitised._

_2) A warning for bad puns in this chapter – blame King Kai. _

_3) Spelling, grammar, tense, typos and everything else has been checked and as always, you know this by now, I may have missed some mistakes so apologies for that but I will complete a clean up exercise for this story when I've finished it. In the meantime, this monster is busy eating my life in a purely creative vein so bear…bare…burlesque…with me? _

_Or something like that._

* * *

**18: The Immortality Issue**

Krillin stared through the little window into the medical bay, catching sight of Vegeta propped up against Goku's rejuvenation tank. He spent a few minutes carefully observing the prince, watching as his eyes darted under his eyelids and as his hands twitched every few seconds, indicating that he was in the middle of a REM cycle.

Breathing evenly, he gave a thumbs up to Dende who started to pick up the Dragonballs, staggering under the weight of three of the huge things. Jumping off of one of the ship's landing stabilisers; Krillin tiptoed across the grass and picked up the remaining four Dragonballs, straining to carry the heavy things at such an awkward angle. Together, he and Dende flew to an island a fair distance away and dropped the balls on the grass.

A sense of excitement began to build inside Krillin, drowning out the guilt he still harboured after leaving Guru and Nail to whatever fate they'd planned for themselves. If they actually succeeded in calling the dragon, then everyone could be brought back to life and it wouldn't matter that Guru and Nail had been left to their own suicidal devices.

First thing was first though…

He glanced back at the ship, hoping that Goku would be conscious enough to appreciate this.

'_For you buddy…_'

"Dende, is it true the dragon grants more than one wish?"

Dende nodded, flashing Krillin a confused expression.

"Would you mind if I brought back Goku's son first?" he asked sheepishly, putting his hand behind his head.

Dende felt a spike of panic as he thought about the little time Guru obviously had left. If they only managed to use the first wish and Guru…died…but then he remembered what he had said to Goku before, the hope that had radiated from the man that had saved his life. He gave a brief nod to Krillin, praying that Guru would forgive him for his mixed up priorities, and turned back to the task at hand. He stood over the Dragonballs which started to resonate as he spoke.

"Taccara poporo punga tippari parro."

Immediately, the sky grew dark. Krillin glanced up, searching for the telltale yellow of the sun but it was like a veil had been thrown over the planet. An incandescent glow started to emanate from the Dragonballs, resonating in synchronisation, providing the light in the darkness and as Dende stood over them, a huge bolt of xanthic lightning shot out of the Dragonballs, spinning through the air and growing into the form of the Namekian dragon.

Krillin watched awestruck as a huge body formed with green scaled skin and huge well built muscles. The face of this dragon was flatter than the face of Shenron, bigger but they had the same red tint to the eyes and the same aura of mystic power. Atop his head, the monk could just make out a pair of antennae reminiscent of the Namekian people themselves.

"**You who have summoned me, speak now and I will grant you three wishes.**"

Krillin simply stayed transfixed, taking in the finer details of this monumental dragon. Honestly, he didn't know what he had been expecting. When he pictured the Namekian dragon, he'd only ever been able to see Shenron. This was something else.

"Krillin?" Dende prompted gently, aware that Porunga was not a patient spirit.

"Uh…right…" Krillin muttered.

* * *

The dragon formed in the dark Namekian sky and Gohan felt his nerves jump. He sent a pleading look to Ma who nodded to show he was ready and, without warning, Gohan vaulted over the dimension window.

The next few moments were alive with chaos. Shorai and Tonbo both fell back, completely startled by Gohan's sudden, violent movement and their limbs became entangled as they rolled back into a dip in the land. Sensou too, was taken by surprise, but his reflexes kicked in and he made a grab for Gohan's foot, missing by inches as the boy flew forward, crashing into the grass through the weaving Ki that made up the dimension window.

As he landed, his head snapped up just in time to see Gohan's hand close around the hem of Ma's robe and the two of them disappeared.

* * *

"Please could you ask the dragon to bring back Gohan Son from wherever he's been taken?" Krillin asked, glancing nervously back up at the dragon, hoping against hope that this would work. Dende nodded once and began to translate.

"Imana ablaka a Gohan Son a tipl-

Something appeared before him, cutting him off mid-sentence and making him fall back on the grass hyperventilating.

For a moment there were two silhouettes outlined against the bright light still emitting from the Dragonballs, then one of the shadows disappeared, leaving a small form.

Krillin squinted through the brilliance and his heart jumped into his throat as the boy stepped forward, his face grim set and determined.

"G-Gohan?" he asked, blinking stupidly.

He glanced up at the dragon still towering above him and then down at the boy, gawping openly at the kid. Though he'd only been gone a few months, the difference between the boy standing next to him and the one that had been taken at the end of the Saiyan battle was quite frankly confounding. He had grown an inch or two over the time that had passed, closer to Krillin's height now, maybe a half a head shorter. He was thinner, leaner with more definition in the chin and his muscles were hard forming lines beneath the dark gi. His hair had been hacked short, probably for convenience, but it still stuck up in the same way as Goku's, a little matted through lack of care and wild. His eyes were hard and haunted, ringed with bruises and this made Krillin frown.

Where had Gohan been? What had his kidnappers been doing to him to make him sport an expression that only normally cropped up in true hardened warriors?

But more astonishing than the difference in his physical appearance and demeanour was the unsettling rise in Ki. It was gargantuan, especially for a 5 year old child that honestly hadn't been training that long, and it was steady – maintained with little to no effort. What exactly had Gohan been learning while he was away and just how strong was he now?

"Gohan, where the he-

"Dragon, please, grant me my wish and bring Piccolo back to life," Gohan's voice rang out clearly, the only part of him still the same since his departure from the battlefield on Earth. He swallowed as Porunga regarded him, hoping that the dragon would accept his wish in English or that the tiny replica of Piccolo standing at the foot of the monumental lizard would see fit to translate without explanation.

Dende glanced back at the strange boy recognising the immediate similarities between him and Goku. This must be his kidnapped son but…Dende hadn't finished making the wish to the dragon yet…had Porunga read his mind? He stared at the dragon for a moment and flinched when Gohan's voice rang out, asking the dragon to bring someone back. He shot a look back at the grim boy and then turned to Krillin questioningly who looked like he'd seen a ghost.

Without taking his eyes off of Gohan, he nodded once, enough of a signal for Dende to translate Gohan's request.

"Papa luschata kamana Piccolo," Dende recited, waiting as the crimson phospheresence pulsing out from the dragon's eyes intensified.

Gohan felt a lump form in his throat, his heart was beating wildly. In a few seconds, he would see his almost mentor, the man that had given his life to save Gohan's even though they'd barely spoken. What could he say to someone who would sacrifice himself like that? The boy felt humbled, overwhelmed and so very very guilty. He wanted to tell Piccolo that he was sorry, that this was part of a bigger design of fate (as Shorai had explained it to him), that he couldn't have done anything and he was sorry he was so weak…

The light from the dragon's eyes dulled.

"**Your wish has been granted. State your second wish.**"

Gohan's breath caught and his head whipped around, his dark hair flying into his face as he searched for Piccolo's familiar form.

Krillin watched him with confused eyes, catching a glimpse of the hopeful, tense expression on the kid's face. Pity enflamed in his gut, dwarfing the disorientation he was still coming to terms with following Gohan's sudden, inexplicable appearance. Once the dragon was dismissed, if they had a few minutes, Krillin was hoping that Gohan would be up to answering some questions.

"Gohan," he said gently. "That wish would have restored Piccolo's life but it wouldn't have brought him here. We'll need to use another wish for that and I'm not so sure if-

'_Hello? Hello? Krillin? Is this Krillin? Ugh, you know what Piccolo, I think I'm actually getting interference, like some sort of radio tower!_'

Krillin paused, his mouth hanging open. He'd heard this voice once before and his reaction was more or less the same as the first time he'd heard it.

'_Hey, hey Piccolo, I guess that would make me a master of RADIOLOGY huh? Huh?_'

King Kai's voice devolved into unintelligible giggles and at the back of his mind, Krillin through he could hear a low pitched sigh, the kind of sigh that spoke of a long period of recent suffering.

* * *

Piccolo grit his teeth together and massaged his temples as King Kai collapsed on the ground, laughter exploding out of him in great waves. He focussed all his energies on keeping his flaring temper in check, knowing that if he was to insult King Kai now, he wouldn't be able to complete his request and it was crucial that, now he was alive, he go back to _his _planet, the home he had never known.

"No, I don't think this is fair Piccolo," Yamcha said angrily, striding forward. "If anything, we should be the ones to go to Namek. We've been training up here while all you've been doing is sitting beneath that apple tree day in and day out."

Piccolo whipped round snarling rabidly and Yamcha found himself backing down automatically, before he could really think to stand firm.

"You think you're ready to face Frieza when you can't even muster the courage to face me? You're pathetic," he said.

He turned back to King Kai who was standing now and looking truly astounded.

"Really? Gohan's there with you? How did he-

"Gohan?" Piccolo asked, vaulting forward to place his hand on King Kai's back and almost flooring the martial arts master with the force of his accidental shove. "Let me talk to the kid."

"Ack, you think I'm gonna let you talk to Gohan after you nearly-

"Let me talk to him!" Piccolo demanded. King Kai opened his mouth to argue once again but stopped himself when he could feel the desperation lining Piccolo's Ki. They all felt it, running through his energy like a taint and King Kai realised all at once that, emotionally at least, Piccolo was still like a child. He'd never had the presence of mind to form any sort of bond to any other living creature so his attachment to Goku's son was completely unmasked and somehow it made the former demon's erratic behaviour understandable.

"Alright but if you ever do that again, I swear I won't hesitate to send you straight to judgement, alive or not."

* * *

"Oh…uh…hang on Gohan…I think Piccolo wants to talk to you through King Kai," Krillin said, feeling remarkably like he was passing over a telephone as the telepathic link King Kai was maintaining switched to the boy. Considering they had spent the better part of a good few months looking for this kid, only to have him re-appear magically through a bizarre twist of events that Krillin couldn't fathom, it was somewhat surreal to be talking to him so casually. The bald monk felt like he was having an out of body experience.

'_Gohan?_' a deep reverberating voice asked and the boy's eyes lit up despite himself, a wide smile breaking over his face making it hurt. He hadn't smiled like that in so long.

"Mr Piccolo!" Gohan stated happily.

'_It's good to talk to you kid,_' Piccolo's voice said sincerely and Gohan felt his eyes prick with unshed tears. Even after everything that had happened, it was clear that Piccolo didn't hold a grudge towards Gohan following his murder to save the boy. It made the boy feel relieved and somewhat humbled.

A million things fell across Piccolo's mind as he finally got to talk to the boy that had been taken out from under him so many months ago. He wanted to know where Gohan had been, wanted to know if he knew why he'd been taken and mostly, though he still wasn't comfortable about the feelings attached to this inquiry, he wanted to know if the boy was alright, if anything had happened to him.

It was uncharacteristic of the former demon to feel so tongue tied but through King Kai he could feel Frieza's energy enveloping his planet. The summoning of the dragon wasn't going to go unnoticed for long so Piccolo had to hurry. He pushed the awkward questions aside for later and focussed on what had to be done, comfortable on the familiar ground of tactical manipulation.

'_Listen Gohan, it's excellent that you've actually managed to wish me back but I need you to do something else for me._'

Gohan's eyes re-focussed, his expression becoming serious.

"What's that sir?" he asked and he could almost hear the smile in his almost mentor's voice as he replied this time.

'_I need you to use your second wish to get me to the planet Namek. That place is my home and I feel that I should have some say about what happens to it._'

Gohan nodded once in acknowledgement but then frowned when he heard the sounds of protest in the back of his mind, reverberating through King Kai's link.

'_You're not serious about that are you?_' King Kai asked sharply and suddenly, Gohan felt that he was privy to a private conversation. '_You promised me you wouldn't face him Piccolo, think about what you'd be condemning your people too if you died. Goku has promised the elder Namek that with your resurrection is a chance to save the Namekians as a whole – don't make him a liar._'

Piccolo growled and Gohan automatically winced.

High up above them, Porunga seemed to shift, the glow in his eyes intensifying ever so slightly.

"**Your second wish**," the dragon prompted impatiently.

'_Gohan, do it now!_' Piccolo's voice roared through the channel of King Kai's back before the link was severed and, hearing the full tone of command, Gohan automatically fell into obedience mode, as he did sometimes now when Sensou seriously needed him to follow orders.

He turned his attention to Dende, his eyes alight and shrewd. The Namekian boy simply gaped at him, still amazed that he had appeared so suddenly with, it would seem, aid outside of the dragon's power despite everything Goku had tried to do. Had he managed to escape his kidnappers somehow just so he could come and wish this Piccolo back to life?

"Please could you ask the dragon to bring Piccolo to the planet Namek?" Gohan asked carefully, a pleading look in his eye.

Once again, Dende's eyes shifted to Krillin and Krillin nodded, feeling like he was being swept up in events outside his control. He'd been completely thrown off by Gohan's re-appearance and since then, he felt like all he could do was go with the flow.

Dende took a deep breath in and turned back to the dragon, his arms held out reverently.

"Imana ablaka a Piccolo a Namek tiplit."

* * *

As a mercenary for Frieza and a frontline activist of the planet trade, Vegeta had learnt to do with as little sleep as possible. Sleep, while necessary to function, beyond the basics was a commodity that Vegeta couldn't afford and most of the time growing up, wasn't allowed.

As the prince had started learn the fundamentals of martial arts, he'd learnt to sleep with one eye open, a handy skill that he'd perfected when Frieza had started to become interested in him. It was always easier to deal with the punishment the overlord would inflict if he was awake and aware enough to brace himself for it beforehand. The few times he had slept through the tyrant's approach had forged memories carefully repressed during the prince's adult years.

Still, every so often, Vegeta would fall into a deep, dreamless sleep and in this state, nothing could wake him, not the sound of explosions dotted about the various battlefields he had been a part of, not the oncoming rampage of his most feared tormenter, not even a colossal shift in Ki or atmosphere…

The prince gasped, jolting into painful consciousness and stood up on a reflex. His head whipped round as he tried to figure out what had woken him. Immediately, he realised that the ship had been bathed in an eclipse-like light, obscuring some of the finer medical instruments in sinister shadows. Staring out of the window, he felt hysteria careen through his system.

The sky was pitch black.

Was it night time?

No, there were no stars and as he raced forward he could see the distinct green of the normal Namekian skyline on the horizon. Something had changed out there.

Without considering further, he took off into the corridor, suddenly terrified that Frieza had approached the ship without him noticing and he would have to face off against the tyrant alone, with his only support still lashed up to the oxygen mask in the rejuvenation chamber. As he shot down the hallway, sweat was starting to bead on his forehead, his hands were clammy. He and the overlord hadn't actually seen each other since Vegeta had made his split second decision to chase after Earth's Dragonballs and the prince was honestly…no, he couldn't allow himself to admit it. That was the first step to the downward spiral leading to failure and he could not fail…as the last pure royal of his breed, _he could not fail._

As he pelted past another of ship's windows, he skidded to a halt and backtracked, his mouth falling open at what he saw.

"No, it can't be!" he threw out wildly, staring in absolute disbelief at the form of the dragon he could see two or three islands over, the colossal beast looming over the surrounding landscapes.

Blind, rabid anger seemed to enflame within him. He clamped his teeth together, the fear he had felt at thinking Frieza had finally arrived morphing into barely contained fury. His stomach twisted in sickening knots as he took off, flying now like a missile along the corridor to the ship's exit. His Ki swelled violently as he felt them gathered below the dragon, the treacherous monk and two new powers, one that appeared to be quite formidable, similar to Kakarot's.

It didn't matter to the prince.

His anger drove him on.

* * *

Nail led Frieza across the water and the various dotted islands, taking the tyrant in completely the opposite direction to the Ki signatures he could feel with Dende. He had no idea how much time he'd be able to buy but if Dende was already with the others, he was sure that it would be enough if he just kept himself from panicking.

Along the route, the overlord made a few chatty comments that baffled the Namekian warrior. Stoic as he was, he'd never been one to waste words but Frieza was constantly opening his mouth to incite something intimidating or to comment on the wanton destruction of planet Namek. Nail decided it was probably part of Frieza's battle strategy to wear down his opponents with words before obliterating them. With his power though, there was no need for verbal abuse…

After a while, Frieza fell silent and Nail could tell by the irritated spikes in Ki that he was getting impatient.

"Enough," the overlord snapped suddenly. "We fight here."

Pausing and glancing back mid-flight, Nail nodded once and descended onto the grass, removing his waist coat with one smooth flick of the wrist. Frieza's smile was back in place as he descended and as he levelled with the Namekian's steady eyes; his own were alive with the promise of battle.

"You know you have absolutely no chance, right?" Frieza asked mirthfully, appreciating the fearless look on his opponent's face.

"I'm the best warrior on the planet, I'm sure I'll be able to work something out," Nail said idly, dropping into a signature starting position.

Frieza couldn't help but guffaw loudly, letting the laughter bubble up from within him and roll out on the air.

"Best huh? More like last. Being the only one of your species would make you the best," Frieza retaliated, unmoving, remaining in his casual position against Nail's martial display.

Nail ignored Frieza's taunt, focussing instead on gathering as much Ki as he could; opening the pathways of power within his system to maximise energy flow. He let the power feed out around him, pleased when the stones beneath him began to rattle and the ground began to crack. Frieza raised an interested eyebrow, entertained now that the real fun had begun and checked the numbers on his scouter as Nail's power stabilised.

"Impressive, you really are stronger than any of the other Namekians I've fought and it seems I've underestimated you."

The overlord repressed a yawn, his smirk widening.

"But your power still pales in comparison to mine. I'm probably about 500,000 times stronger than you are."

It sounded like an idle boast but feeling around the shape of Frieza's indescribable Ki, Nail believed him. He decided not to answer back, allowing Frieza to do the talking, blathering on about how he would fight with one hand behind his back while Nail searched for weak points, wondering if he should be considering the possibilities associated with that tail, an appendage that he didn't recognise or understand.

"Lets begin shall we," Frieza said eventually and Nail took the initiative, surging forward and aiming a perfect chop to the exposed skin on Frieza's neck. As he swung his hand down in a wide arc through the air, Frieza moved smoothly, tilting his head so more of his neck was exposed.

Nail's chop connected and his face contorted in horrific disbelief when he was met with cold, unyielding muscle. The force of the chop reverberated up Nail's arm and set his nerves on fire while Frieza merely grinned. He hadn't felt a thing.

"Like I was saying, I'll only use my left hand," Frieza re-iterated, gripping the arm supporting Nail's chop in one clawed hand. Pain stabbed through him as Frieza's pointed Nail's dug into his skin and he winced as the overlord's fingers sunk into his flesh. For an instant, his eyes flicked up to the overlord's face and the malice there made him try to fall back in hysteria.

Frieza's fingers dug deeper until they were literally buried in Nail's arm. Dark amaranthine blood spouted up and started to run in a quick river down the curve of his arm to drip onto the floor.

There was a flickering smile on the face of the tyrant…

…a sickening sound of ripping flesh and cracking bone…

…and his own intense screams.

His arm was torn clean from his body, a mangled stump of an appendage left in its place. All he could comprehend was the nauseating feeling of insurmountable pain and his own voice screaming out over the barren landscape. Slowly he brought his remaining, shuddering hand up to feel at the place where his other arm had been and nearly passed clean out. He would have if not for the thought in the back of his mind of Dende and the Earthlings.

_He had to find a way to remain conscious._

Dropping down onto his front, he concentrated on feeling the solidity of the ground beneath him and on breathing in the smell of the fresh grass, oxygen taken into his oxygen starved lungs. Awareness eventually began to fold in around him and he became cautious once more as Frieza approached.

"Here, you could keep this as a back scratcher," Frieza commented, chuckling cruelly and throwing his useless severed arm down on the grass before him. Nail glanced up at it and felt a sick sense of loss.

"Ha, a back scratcher, where do I come up with this stuff?" Frieza asked, a rhetorical question, one that had Nail been in a better mental position, he would have been able to answer in any number of sarcastic ways. He hauled himself up when he realised that Frieza would take his recovery time to mean defeat and concentrated on gathering the necessary Ki to regenerate his arm.

"Well, I must say, this as all been amusing but if you want to spare yourself more pain, I suggest you…huh?"

Frieza's scouter blinkered doubtfully and the overlord watched his opponent with keen interest. Aside from being a preternaturally strong martial artist, Frieza had taken to fighting with real passion and had learnt a lot throughout his time in space. New techniques intrigued him and if he liked them enough, he would invest crucial time in learning them.

It had been a long time since he had come across something that had merited interest but as Nail's arm grew back in, good as new, he made a mental note to find a way to copy that particular regenerative technique.

"Oh bravo," the young tyrant said, his eyes wide and gleeful. "It has been many years since I last found a technique that I've thought was worthy of learning."

He tapped his scouter, pleased when it was able to crudely analyse the elements that made up that technique, storing it away in the memory chip for later use.

"That was just the beginning," Nail said, breathing hard but ready now to continue.

Frieza's smirk widened. It had been too long since he'd been able to have fun with someone as interesting as this.

Without waiting to take stock of his depleted energy source, Nail once again went on the offensive, springing across the grass to land punches and kicks on the hard body of the overlord. Throughout the Namekian's fruitless assault, Frieza simply stood, sneering openly until he deemed it time to end the charade, grabbing Nail's arm and spinning him round so he could push into the Namekian's back with his Ki, shattering all of Nail's ribs in one go.

Once again, for Nail, the world clouded over in agony and he was forced to spend precious time trying to hold it together. Retching openly, he hacked up a huge clot of blood, spitting it onto the grass as he focussed his Ki on regenerating his ribs, cursing himself for not being as talented in the healing department as Dende.

Where the tiny Namekian could mend ribs, bones and organs in the blink of an eye, Nail had a little trouble fixing anything internal and it was presenting a major disadvantage in this battle.

"Wow, that last attack really got the best of you, didn't it?" Frieza asked, chortling merrily as the number on the scouter dropped drastically.

Nail stood and turned to face his tormenter, his eyes defiant.

'_It's for my people_,' his mind threw at him as he dived forward again. '_I just have to stall him a little while longer…_'

He took a while gathering his breath, watching the mirth in the tyrant's eyes fade until it had been replaced with malevolent disquietude.

"I'm getting tired of this. Tell me the password," Frieza rattled off, his long flamboyant language being replaced with abrupt sentences.

Nail took in one final breath, recognising that the loss of Frieza's interest more or less signalled the end of his life, and gathered as much Ki as he could muster.

If Frieza knew the attack was coming, he didn't move and in an instant, Nail had thrust his arm out in front of him, yelling as the Ki shifted through him and engulfed the overlord in a bright, burning blast. For a moment the world was bathed in the golden glow of Nail's eruptive attack but as it faded into repercussive dust clouds, Nail could see his silhouette, unmoved, untainted.

Despair flowered inside him.

"Consider this my last warning," Frieza said, stepping out through the smog and raising a lazy hand.

Instinctively, Nail raised his arms up to block the delicate areas around his face and in a moment, he was being barraged by a quick fire array of tiny blasts. It was like nothing Nail had ever experienced. He was used to the one shot pain that came with having his insides torn at or from taking the brunt of a huge single Ki blast but this…

Every time he tried to think, a new gash had opened up on his torso or on his legs, blood flowing freely to saturate the ground. The blasts went off like popping fire crackers, one after the other in a chain reaction like volcanoes erupting all over his body at once. He didn't have time to give a verbal response, no time to dredge up the effort to scream.

_He was going to die._

Just as he could feel the cold hand of death closing around him, the cannonade of Ki blasts ceased and he was left to fall backward onto the grass, struggling to remain conscious. A haze of excruciating pain and nausea fell over his system and he knew that he'd had enough. There was no way he'd be able to keep this unstoppable force at bay any longer.

"Now," Frieza said, watching as his opponent's Ki signature plummeted almost to nothing. "The password as you promised."

To the overlord's chagrin, the almost corpse before him started to chuckle, his battered chest heaving up and down as he laughed.

"It won't do you much good now," the Namekian assured him mid-chuckle, his eyes flickering closed and then opening again though it seemed to take a great effort.

"What do you mean?" Frieza asked darkly, his tail smashing into the soil as dread settled over him.

"I mean that my little distraction worked perfectly. By now, Dende has managed to give the password to the Earthlings and they are probably making their wishes to the dragon as we speak."

As Nail spoke, cold realisation dawned on Frieza. He remembered the little Namekian shooting across the sky, remembered how, with a flick of a nonchalant wrist, he could have ended that little pest. He wasn't just flying to the next safe house as Frieza had assumed, he was on a mission to reach the Earthlings.

_They had entrusted such vital information to someone that Frieza would never suspect._

"Oh you are such tricky little slugs," Frieza hissed through grit teeth, his blood suddenly boiling. Nail balked as he felt the overlord's Ki sky rocket, entering the realm of nightmares.

A vein was starting to pulse on Frieza's temple; his eyes were blood shot and unseeing as his Ki expanded up and outwards. Never before had the tyrant had such trouble getting his own way. Normally a meagre show of force was enough to have people grovelling at his feet. Where did these insignificant parasites get the _gall _to try and oppose him on the threshold of his ultimate triumph?

"Mark my words; I'm not through with you!" Frieza screamed, taking off like a rocket, a blinking light on the horizon in a matter of seconds.

Nail shuddered as he felt that colossal, indomitable power streaking away from him and sighed, hoping that once the adrenaline fuelling through his body dissipated, he wouldn't be left in more crippling agony than he already felt.

'_Dende…I'm sorry I couldn't do more…hang in there kid._'

* * *

Sensou sat staring at the place that Gohan and Ma had disappeared from for just a moment too long and Shorai knew it was because he was enveloped in an overwhelming wave of anger. Sensibly, Shorai stayed as still as possible, slowly untangling himself from Tonbo, appreciating that his apprentice had enough observational skills to know when to keep silent.

The pair of them watched with round eyes as the warrior god stood, backing out of the dimension window he was still standing in as Ma re-appeared.

Shorai saw as his brother's eyes flashed but was unable to follow the movement as he launched forward, his bare hands wrapping securely around Ma's throat, pressing on his jugular.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Sensou barked; the sound carrying out over the heavy silence that layered the meadow.

Ma gasped fruitlessly, his yellow eyes flicking over to Shorai and Sensou didn't miss it.

He turned wrathful eyes on his brother, dropping the teleporter into an asphyxiated heap on the ground as he strolled forward, his hand raised like a weapon.

Shorai held his own hands up; trying to placate his violent brother with a disarming gesture though he knew it never worked that way with Sensou.

"Calm yourself brother, this won't affect Gohan's performance against Frieza."

"No…but this will affect the way he develops as a warrior won't it dear brother," Sensou iterated dangerously, sweeping his hand out as the dimension window showed an image of the boy managing to wish Piccolo back to life.

Shorai winced, wishing that his brother was more foolish than observant.

"The boy deserves a break from that torture you call training," Shorai explained boldly.

"But does he deserve redemption from being the universe's allotted destroyer?" Sensou retaliated.

"Whatever you may think, I am, first and foremost, conditioning that boy so he learns the art of self control. It's a hard lesson to learn and it requires certain sacrifice. As a warrior, I know that. As someone who messes with the balance of the universe, I'd expect you to be a little removed from the psychological discipline required to master one's self."

Shorai took in a deep breath and held it, fixating on Ma as he stood slowly, rubbing his neck where Sensou's hands had clamped around it.

"That boy may seem like an innocent victim in all of this but you forget that he is the vessel containing the means for the end of _existence itself_," the warrior god chided.

The seer's eyes narrowed and it seemed that all the stress of the previous days were laid bare on his face, making him look almost as old as he actually was.

"I don't think allowing the boy to bring back his friend will aid in the destruction of the universe," Shorai said sharply, purposefully making Sensou's words sound melodramatic. "If it was going to make that much of difference, don't you think I would have seen it?"

"Not if it hasn't produced enough of an impact to truly change things yet…For all your precognition brother, the future is still uncertain."

Shorai growled and started to defend himself but Ma managed to cut in before he'd formed the first syllable.

"Sorry to interrupt the debate but Frieza approaches…"

* * *

The dragon's eyes glowed with a rubicund tint and Gohan's heart pounded. In literally a few more seconds he would be able to see Piccolo again, would be able to confirm that his friend had been brought back to life successfully. He stared intently at the empty space beside Dende until the dragon finally proclaimed.

"**It has been done, state your third wish.**"

Piccolo was nowhere to be seen.

Gohan's stomach lurched with sudden anxiety and he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the spot before the iridescent Dragonballs, as though his stare alone could force Piccolo to materialise. Krillin's head automatically jerked up and he started to search the surroundings for the familiar sombre character, his cape billowing out on the wind behind him but drew a blank.

Frowning he shot a sidelong glance at Gohan, noticing that the boy appeared to be holding his breath and then let his eyes rove up to the Namekian dragon.

"Where is he?" he asked simply, knowing that Dende would be the one to answer.

Dende too was sporting a frown and as he thought about it, he felt his stomach sink. A while ago, and it felt like a millennium now, Guru had made a point of telling the young Namekian to be careful what he wished for. Wishes made to Porunga would have to be specific or Porunga himself would make up the particulars.

The wish that they had just made was something of a mistake.

"This is our fault. Porunga's brought Piccolo to Namek as we asked but we didn't tell him specifically where to bring him _on _Namek," Dende explained in a quiet voice, his hands faltering as he held them up to Porunga.

Gohan felt his stomach sink into his shoes. It felt like fate itself was conspiring against him seeing his friend.

"We'll just have to use the last…wish…to…"

Krillin trailed off and Gohan glanced at him sharply, noticing the fear suddenly clinging to his Ki, making it quiver. His eyes were fixed on a point a little behind them to the right and Gohan followed his gaze until he found himself looking at the furious face of the prince of all Saiyans.

* * *

_So Ma has managed to drop Gohan back on planet Namek like he wanted, will this impede his development as the ruthless war machine Sensou wants? Will they survive Vegeta's wrath? Does Porunga get cold being all naked like that?_

_FIND OUT ONE OR TWO OF THESE THINGS IN THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE OF…The Lion King?_

_You can be a big pig too, OI!_

_Reviewing this story pays for Piccolo's 'national park' back on Earth (grin)_


	20. Fury

_I am currently working on chapter 24 and despite the odds, it's progressing quite well. As always, a few things to note:_

_1) The first line of this chapter was inspired by something I read in the dictionary of all things. It said that there are stages of anger, first ire as your standard sense of anger, then rage which is the more intense 'gotta punch through walls' version and then fury which is like maddeningly angry._

_2) I remember watching the fight with Frieza when it first came out on Cartoon Network way back when and being completely pulled in by this sense of real danger that the characters were facing – especially the 'disposable' characters (as in the people that could be destroyed without halting the progression of the narrative). I wanted to capture that sense of real danger in the next couple of chapters as well as the epic build up that we got to experience (before all the randomness with the 3 minutes till planet's destruction)._

_3) Spelling, grammar and other important nonsense has been checked and as I need not say at this late stage, I've probably missed a few things due to chronic ineptitude so apologies if you manage to spot anything._

* * *

**19: Fury**

It wasn't ire, it wasn't rage.

It was fury.

Bitter anger seemed to be bringing his blood to boiling point, making the world burn red hot as he shot across the land. His Ki was harsh and jagged, obliterating the dirt and foliage beneath him as he continued to break speed barriers surging forwards. As his resonating Ki hit the water, it flew up in a geyser to spray him with salty fluid and steam.

He hardly seemed to notice.

Trying to hold some semblance of rationality within himself, he flicked a switch on the scouter.

"Ginyu Force, this is Frieza…"

He waited for a response but the scouter simply blared static into his ear. Growling, he felt the fury lurch up inside him, threatening to pour out of him in a colossal show of Ki. He tapped the scouter to widen the scope of his Ki radar, hoping to lock on to the signature of Captain Ginyu and the Dragonballs but, though the scouter picked up the Dragonballs, Captain Ginyu's power level was nowhere to be seen.

"No…they couldn't have…"

He tilted his head in the direction of the battle between Vegeta and the other Ginyu Force members, his eye twitching when the scouter read nothing there too.

"Where are my superior Ginyu Forces?" Frieza hissed to himself, the well of vehemence inside him deepening. Never before had he felt a desire to inflict such pain on another living creature. When he got his hands on Vegeta and his insignificant companions, they would truly suffer before he ground them to dust.

Emitting such wrathful energy as he was, it was only a few minutes before he came within range of the ship and the sky darkened considerably.

"What the-

He flew onward; slower now that the atmospheric change had quelled his anger somewhat, allowing room for curiosity and dread.

As he drew closer to the ship, he saw it on the horizon, the glowing figure like a god descended to the planet's miserable surface. Frieza had never much liked the thought of coming face to face with something divine – something like that would put a mortal cap on his power, remind him that he wasn't the all and everything. Seeing the dragon towering over the surroundings, making them appear like toys, Frieza experienced a fleeting moment of inferiority and silently, he cursed those that had gathered beneath this apparition for denying him the chance to shake off mortal shackles and ascend to godhood himself.

'_Immortality denied,_' he thought to himself. '_Those scurvy, low life opportunists…they will pay…they will pay…_'

* * *

Vegeta's face was shadowed in the light given off from the Dragonballs, pulsing in and out of focus as the glow shifted and Porunga waited for the last wish. Gohan could sense the imprint of anger in the prince's Ki but as he squinted, he realised the prince was smirking.

"One wish left huh? Nice of you to impart that little piece of information cue ball," Vegeta said, standing with his Ki gathering in both hands. Gohan recognised the formation of an attack and raised his own Ki in response, meeting Vegeta's eyes as the prince's flicked over to him.

'_That kid again…where did he come from?_'

The prince took a moment to feel around the edges of Gohan's Ki, trying to take an accurate measurement of its depths but there was something weird about the kid's power, it was almost like it never ended.

He stared hard at the kid.

Surely this half breed couldn't be a…

No, it wasn't possible.

Vegeta shook his head and shrugged off the reading as a by-product of grogginess, something he was prone to after being caught up in a deep sleep. He advanced, the Ki slowly growing bigger in his hands as he fed energy into the blasts.

"How _dare _you summon the dragon without me, after I saw fit to save your life baldy, to save your beloved Kakarot's life. Shame on you."

The energy in Vegeta's hands bulged, burning a bright purple for a moment before he extinguished both blasts, letting out a breath and releasing the pent up Ki into the air.

"You're lucky I overheard you mention that there's one wish left. Fortunately for you and that kid, that's all I need for my long overdue immortality though I can't say I'll be feeling as merciful once this is all over considering what you almost took away from me."

Vegeta took two steps forward…

…and froze.

At exactly the same moment, Gohan, Krillin and Dende felt it too. As one, they all glanced back behind Vegeta, staring off into the distance.

A single tear of sweat ran down the side of Vegeta's face, his eyes grew small.

"Frieza…no…"

Gohan took a deep breath in and held it. He'd expected that Frieza would be strong but he hadn't really let himself think too much about just _how _strong his opponent would be. What he was feeling now was nothing short of catastrophic and the maliciousness attached to that signature, the taint of evil was almost smothering. He steeled himself against it, wondering what his mentor was expecting him to do against someone like that.

"Oh man…" Krillin whispered, taking an unconscious step backwards. Automatically, he sought out Goku's Ki and tried to determine how much longer his friend would need to recover, his thoughts turned grim as he felt his friend's energy, still greatly depleted. Suddenly, he became very aware of the fact that he wasn't on his own planet. If he died here, he'd be dying on foreign soil, away from the place he'd given his life to defend. He shot a look at Gohan, wondering if he'd be able to protect Goku's son and was surprised to see that Gohan appeared to be steadying himself.

Vegeta could hear the trilling of old fears in the back of his mind and clamped his teeth together. He strolled forward before the memories could dredge themselves out of the darkness he had spent so long repressing and picked up the small Namekian boy by the collar of his long robe.

"Ah!" Dende squealed as he was hoisted into the air.

"Listen here kid, Frieza, the tyrant that's been destroying your planet, is headed here right now. If you ask the dragon to grant me immortality, I can fight him."

Vegeta's eyes were blazing as Dende stared into them and he could see the stain of his people's blood in those eyes. He struggled uselessly against Vegeta's iron grip.

Seeing that the little Namekian was distressed, Gohan felt his power spike along with his anger, barely controlled. He tried to harness the power and calm himself but it was hard when he could see tears starting to leak from the Namekian boy's eyes.

"Hey-

"Do it Dende!"

Gohan stuttered and gawped at Krillin who had suddenly spoken up. He was still looking behind him, his eyes wide.

"We don't have a choice now! This is insane…but shoot, it can't be worse than dying!"

Gohan opened his mouth to protest but closed it again, looking at the genuine fear in the bald monk's eyes. A long time ago, Goku had told him that Krillin had died once already and the monk obviously harboured lingering scars. Shuffling slightly so he was standing next to his father's friend, he put a re-assuring hand on the older man's shoulder and smiled.

Krillin started and stared into Gohan's face, suddenly reminded so much of Goku it was painful.

Vegeta smirked and dropped the little Namekian back in the dirt.

"You heard the man," he said simply, cockiness in place again now things were running smoothly for him.

Dende stood up slowly and brushed himself off, a move that irked Vegeta considerably.

"Get on with it!" he snapped, causing the young boy to jump and face the dragon again. Porunga met his eyes with a bored expression.

"Caropa ilana teroko paringa a-huh?"

The iridescence streaming out from the Dragonballs faltered, deepening the shadows on the little island. To Dende, it looked like the dragon folded in over himself, clutching at his stomach and his chest, and the little Namekian knew what it meant.

"Guru…no…" he whispered.

Vegeta watched as the dragon's eyes blazed and as that light flickered uncertainly.

'_Come on, come on,_' he thought anxiously but already he could see the torrents of smoke spiralling up from the creature's gargantuan body. There was a popping sound and the light seemed to flush out of the dragon's face, leaving his eyes dead and black. His scaled skin paled considerably and then, suddenly, he burst into a sparkling display of dust, the veil of darkness over the sky dissipating with him.

Together, the Dragonballs rose as one and turned to stone, shooting out over the little island until they were nothing but boulders in the dirt.

Vegeta moved shaking hands up to his eyes, unease swirling inside him.

He didn't feel any different.

"What happened?" he barked. "Am I immortal or not?"

"No…" Dende responded, sinking down onto his knees, tears running freely down his face in a cascade. "You're not immortal."

Krillin latched on to Dende's distress, turning his attention away from the diabolical power still hurtling towards them so he could fix the boy with a look of alarm and confusion. Shrugging Gohan off gratefully, he stepped forward.

"Dende? What's wrong little buddy?"

Great wracking sobs seemed to be heaving up out of the little crumpled body on the grass. Krillin had only ever seen someone cry like that a few times in his life and somehow he knew before Dende spoke what he was going to say. Something in his chest caught.

"It's…G-Guru…he's g-gone," Dende hiccoughed through the sobs.

Vegeta could feel the beginnings of an irrevocable panic. His breathing was starting to become laboured, irregular and his heart was thudding out an erratic rhythm against his rib cage. It had been a long time since he had really felt the sting of mounting hysteria and he fought with everything inside him to lock it down, push it away, experiencing hot and cold flushes, the desperate desire to scream and the lurching churn of nausea in his gut.

_He wasn't immortal._

_He wasn't immortal…and Frieza was coming._

"You mean the fate of the Dragonballs is tied to the wavering health of some grand Namekian?"

Dende looked up at him through grief stricken eyes, frowning slightly.

"Of course, they're a p-part of him," he confirmed.

Vegeta stepped back.

It was like living a nightmare, an awful illusion where the sweetest dream was dangling tantalisingly in front of him like a worm on a hook only to be yanked out of the water when he got close enough to touch it. The rage built up inside him, cutting through disastrous panic and heating him from the inside.

In one simple, agitated movement, he'd backhanded Dende into the dirt, causing a feral growl to escape from somewhere deep inside Gohan. Krillin yelped when he heard such an intimidating noise coming from Goku's small son and blinked at him.

"Leave him alone jerk," Gohan told Vegeta, his Ki sparking around him.

Vegeta sneered at the boy, shifting so his body was facing the little warrior. Frustration and disappointment were warring for dominance inside him and if he was perfectly honest, he felt like he needed the release a good punching bag would provide before he was brutally murdered by his lifetime tormenter.

"Oh yes, where was I? I believe I was about to obliterate you weaklings for calling the dragon without me."

Gohan dropped into the familiar stance that Sensou had taught him, widening the distance between his legs to increase his solidity as Vegeta advanced in 3 quick strides, his Ki elevating substantially.

As soon as the boy was within swiping distance, Vegeta raised a hand and stopped.

For one wild moment, Gohan thought that Vegeta had reconsidered his attack but then he took in the wide blank look in the prince's eyes, the quivering mouth hanging wide open in an uncharacteristically undignified expression. As he watched, Gohan saw a shiver run through the whole length of Vegeta's body, making him stand a little straighter. As the boy followed the line of Vegeta's gaze, he swore he could hear the prince's teeth start to chatter.

"_This _is what you've managed to gather to oppose me Vegeta?" a cold voice asked from behind them. Gohan's eyes widened slightly as he got his first look at the malignant owner of the infernal Ki signature he had been preparing to oppose in his months away from home.

Frieza was shorter than Gohan had imagined, shorter than Vegeta, but the sheer amounts of Ki emanating from him made him seem taller somehow. He had lizard-like qualities, webbed bare feet and a long, crocodile tail twitching irritably on the ground behind him, contrasting the expression of amusement on his face. Gohan could feel his own tail swaying behind him and tried to still it. Sensou had often commented on the way his tail could be used as a blatant indicator of what he was thinking.

The overlord wore expensive Saiyan armour that looked like it had never before been worn in the heat of battle. Gohan wondered briefly if it was because it _had_ never been worn for a fight before if the people opposing Frieza couldn't even leave a mark. He highly suspected that the latter was the case.

"Hm…let me take a look see, the mighty rebellion of the prince of monkeys…a mop top midget, a dwarf, an infant slug and a washed up royal. Whatever am I going to do?" Frieza asked mockingly, stepping down from the rock he was sitting on and facing Vegeta who seemed to have gained some of his former composure.

"Hmph," the prince huffed, folding his arms across his chest. "First you'll cower and then you'll grovel and I'll enjoy it until I see fit to kill you."

Frieza simply blinked at the prince and threw his head back, letting out a booming chortle that echoed around the empty island.

"Oh Vegeta, you were always about the pre-battle banter weren't you? Such big words for someone so weak."

"Ha, me, weak? You're thinking of the old Vegeta, I am something else," the prince retaliated with gusto.

Krillin mustered up enough sense of self through his fear to shoot Vegeta a meaningful look. The prince was strong and all but there was such a thing as overconfidence…possibly bordering on delusion…or in this case it might just be a cry for suicide.

"Let me guess, you're a _Super Saiyan_?" the overlord sneered out the words and spat on the dust to punctuate the question, showing what he thought of the notion.

"I am honestly beginning to think I worried about you simians for nothing."

Strangely, Frieza's words didn't seem to faze Vegeta. If anything, the disdainful grin working its way across the prince's face seemed to gain more leverage.

"We may not look like much Frieza but you might want to check your scouter. I learnt a lot of tricks whilst I was away on my _private mission…_"

Frieza's eye twitched and he grunted. Insubordination was never something the overlord had tolerated well and Vegeta's military status had been marked as 'awol' for nearly a year. Awol without Frieza knowing where he was, awol looking for Dragonballs so he could wish himself immortal and oppose Frieza…

"…and one of those tricks was how to hide my power. I'd wager the little half-Saiyan runt over there is doing the same."

Vegeta inclined his head at Gohan who shifted uncomfortably.

Frieza frowned, a dangerous expression marring his features.

'_Half-Saiyan runt?_'

His eyes slipped over Vegeta to the pale boy on the left, narrowing to slits as he took in the monkey-like tail weaving behind him. Carefully, the overlord made a mental catalogue of solar/lunar cycles on Namek, pleased to note that the boy would be unable to transform on this particular planet. With that out of the way, he readied himself for some true verbal sparring. That Vegeta would engage in inter-species relations after he'd professed such a strong disliking for the mere thought of it so often…

But wait…the boy didn't really resemble Vegeta…

"Who is he?" Frieza demanded, "is he Raditz's son?"

Gohan bristled and opened his mouth to tell Frieza exactly who his father was but Vegeta silenced him with a barely perceived flick of the wrist. It was a subtle gesture but Gohan caught it and clammed up immediately.

"That's not really something you need to concern yourself with is it Frieza? Or are you getting in to the lives of the people you kill nowadays?"

Frieza's piercing gaze stayed on Gohan for a few minutes more and Gohan fought hard to stay perfectly still under the scrutiny of this predator before the overlord turned his attention back to Vegeta.

"Your pride used to amuse me Vegeta but recently, it's just droll."

Pulling his hand up to the scouter, he tapped the button over his ear and observed the numbers as they poured into place over his eye.

Vegeta took that as his cue to start powering up and proceeded to gather as much Ki as he could for the clash of his life.

* * *

Piccolo felt the shift between worlds and the stagnant air of King Kai's planet was replaced with the fresh breeze of a Namekian wind. Instantly, he started searching his surroundings for Gohan but when he drew a blank, he realised that the wish they'd made had been too vague. He'd been transported to Namek…_anywhere _on Namek. Cursing silently, he let his senses extend until he could feel Gohan's Ki signature in the distance.

He was miles away.

He made to take off immediately in the direction of Gohan's Ki, planning to help his young friend as soon as he could but something stopped him. It was a niggling feeling in the back of his mind that he didn't much care for, an uncomfortable twinge in his stomach.

'_This is your home Piccolo,_' a voice in his mind reasoned. '_Take a look around; see where you come from…_'

Piccolo grunted, a vein in his temple throbbing as he realised the voice in his mind sounded irritatingly like Kami's. As much as he tried to assure himself that he was an entirely separate entity to that old fart, the guardian of Earth was obviously still a part of him.

Defiantly, he took off, making a point of ignoring the turquoise foliage, the shape of the clouds drifting lazily across the sky, the fish he could see below the murky surface of the green sea. He ignored the feeling of wholesomeness spreading through him as he realised that this is where he had always belonged…

He focussed instead on Gohan and frowned when he inadvertently took a gauge of the boy's power.

'_That can't be right…_' he thought to himself, pausing in mid-air despite himself.

He had considered that the boy's Ki would have grown stronger in the time that had passed since the Saiyans but the jump in power he had sensed was quite frankly ludicrous. Even after years of intense training, Piccolo hadn't managed to achieve such a dramatic leap…

Then again…the last time he had seen the boy, they hadn't exactly met under favourable circumstances. He had literally been able to talk to the boy for a few minutes before passing on and honestly, he'd been a little distracted. Maybe he hadn't managed to get an accurate reading on the kid's power. Maybe he was subconsciously comparing Gohan with the boy he had seen change and grow over the half year he had watched over him instead of the boy he had seen briefly at the Saiyan show down.

He shook his head.

It didn't matter.

He pressed on and as he moved, he got his first real feel for the tyrant that King Kai was afraid of. The Ki emitting from that monster inspired real consternation and as he drew closer, he was able to tell by the rhythmic pulsation of energy that the creature was still relaxed. This wasn't even a reading of full strength.

Alarmingly, the Ki signature of the beast was sitting right beside Gohan and the bald monk. Neither of them had aggravated Ki so Piccolo deduced that they hadn't started fighting yet. If he hurried, he could still-

Suddenly, he felt a leap in Ki and realised that Vegeta was powering up. Concentrating as he was on monitoring the fluctuations of Gohan's Ki and taking an accurate measurement of the tyrant, he hadn't noticed that the prince was there.

Dread swirled within him.

The prince…was he aiming to get revenge on Goku's son for the events that had unfolded on Earth? Was he there to fight Frieza for the title of universe's tyrant?

'_Hang on Gohan…I'm coming,_' Piccolo thought to himself, doubling his Ki output and rocketing across the sky of his home.

* * *

Dende had never felt such a harsh concentration of energy before. It boggled the mind and laid pressure on his system, making it difficult to breathe. As the ground around Vegeta began to crack and crumble, both Gohan and Krillin moved simultaneously until they were on either side of the Namekian boy, hoisting him up and moving him back, away from the battle until he felt the pressure on his chest lesson.

"Wow…" Krillin breathed, watching the aura around Vegeta ignite a bright white, disintegrating the rubble that had started to fly up and orbit his head.

Frieza raised a mildly impressed eyebrow as the figures on the scouter moved up past Ginyu's best reading and continued to rise substantially. Clearly he had underestimated the potential in this bratty Saiyan prince but he smirked as he realised that, unless Vegeta was going to spend the better part of the day powering up, he wouldn't be able to reach even a third of the overlord's power. Not that Frieza had actually expected him to present much of a challenge. He'd known the prince since he was just a child and he honestly believed that the prince didn't have it in him to access particularly spectacular powers. The Saiyan prince may have been a tactical genius but he was never particularly successful at unlocking innovative martial secrets.

Through his power up, Vegeta took the time to study Frieza's stance and decided on a whim to initiate his attack before he'd finished gathering all essential Ki. If he was going to take the tyrant off guard, that would be the way to do it and attacking him like that would insure that Frieza's reading of his maximum energy output would be skewed.

Bracing himself and using his left foot as an anchor, he catapulted himself forward, aiming a well placed punch to the side of Frieza's skull.

Just as the prince predicted, Frieza was taken off guard, his eyes betraying his surprise as he dodged the punch by inches, retaliating with a fast flying kick to the side which Vegeta was prepared for. Using his remaining hand to block Frieza's kick, he snaked out of the way of a low ranging punch to the solar plexus and fell back, using the momentum to propel himself forward again, both fists aimed to either side of Frieza's face. The tyrant caught both fists in his hands and the two engaged in a Ki grapple.

The auras burst forth like a pair of conflicting flames, the distinct blue of Vegeta's aura pressing against the cold white of Frieza's. The air around them seemed to ignite and the ground beneath them started to sink until a massive circular crater was created, the floor worn smooth by the force of their aggressive output.

After a few minutes, it was obvious that Vegeta was beginning to feel the strain. Sweat was beginning to pool at the tip of his chin and his teeth were grit tightly together. Contrastingly, Frieza seemed somewhat at ease though his mouth was set into a thin hard line, indicating that he wasn't pleased or he was concentrating more than he let on. In truth, he was observing the numbers on his scouter with interest, intrigued that the prince's power level could jump up and down so erratically.

How had this wayward prince learnt such an interesting technique?

Had he learnt it from his misfit companions?

His eyes skimmed across to the trio gathered on the sidelines, lingering on the boy that Vegeta had labelled as half-Saiyan.

Suddenly, Vegeta's power level leapt up and the scouter exploded next to his eyes without warning.

"Ugh," Frieza uttered, flicking his head away from the debris as bits of destroyed scouter flew into orbit around them. With a disappointed jolt, the overlord realised that the copy of the regeneration technique he had seen that Namekian nobody use was on that scouter, lost forever now unless the little Namkeian boy knew the same technique.

Losing his patience, he threw Vegeta's punch away and broke the grapple, leaping up and out of the crater in a mirror image of the prince's move.

The two of them glared at each other over the rim of the crater.

"Oh man…see how they're looking at each other?" Krillin asked, wondering about the vendetta Vegeta had against Frieza. It was obvious by the hatred warping the prince's expression that the two of them had some disturbing history. The prince seemed agitated, flustered while Frieza appeared superior, almost smug in the way his eyes roved to the Saiyan prince's armour.

Eventually, Vegeta broke the stalemate, grinning uneasily.

"Why don't you transform and save us all a lot of time," he threw out nonchalantly, enjoying Frieza's twitch of surprise.

"How do you know about that?" the overlord asked curiously. The knowledge of Frieza's transformations had remained on a strictly need to know basis. Aside from the fact that his current form conserved masses of energy, Frieza enjoyed it when the occasional rebellion popped up and he was able to reveal his true self. The expressions of horror on the faces of the damned were some of his most prized memories.

"Your loving minion Zarbon blurted it out," Vegeta confirmed, folding his arms across his chest in a way that gave him an air of arrogant impatience.

On the edge of the battle field, Krillin drew back, remembering the way the grabby pretty boy they'd met after setting out from Guru's had morphed into a monster, his muscles bulking and his face widening, as though the bones of his skeleton were growing and resetting into a new, hideous shape.

"Transform?" Gohan muttered, fearful in the face of the unknown. He'd almost gotten used to the idea of having to pit himself against this already intimidating creature; faced with the possibility that this wasn't his true form made the boy's imagination run amuck, picturing new and monstrous faces. Child as he was, he jumped the gun and reacted with terror, shaking slightly as he stood beside Krillin.

'_Daddy…_'

"Oh, well I guess that ruins my party trick," Frieza said with an air of disappointment. "I hope you realise Vegeta that if I go through with this, my power level will quite literally double. You will no longer be able to compare."

Krillin tried to comprehend a power increase of such magnitude but found he couldn't. Something about that seemed to jerk him into action.

"Hey Vegeta, are you sure about this?" he called out, aware that drawing attention to himself was probably a bad idea but afraid that Vegeta, prideful as he was, was going to do something stupid.

Vegeta's nose wrinkled, his eyes stayed on the overlord.

"Relax baldy, his power won't increase that much."

Frieza's smile twitched, his eyes took on a dangerous light. Carefully he adjusted himself so his stance appeared more relaxed knowing that this would vex his Saiyan opponent.

"You know what might be nice?" Frieza asked rhetorically, looking to Vegeta with glee. "If someone gave me a countdown."

Vegeta recoiled, his eyebrow flinching. It was moments like these that made him realise why Frieza had been so fond of Ginyu; though in Frieza's case, he did this sort of thing to unhinge his opponent. Ginyu was just ridiculous.

"You can't be serious?" Vegeta asked, pulling a face of disgust when the overlord radiated anticipation. "Alright, fine 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, are you happy now?"

"I love it," Frieza hissed and with that his body started to glow.

The change in Ki was instantaneous and cataclysmal. His aura seemed to engorge around him and Gohan could see individual threads of Ki attaching themselves to Frieza's body, clinging to his physical frame. Thunderous shock waves burst out of the tyrant's body, shattering the trees and rocks in the surrounding area. Together, Gohan and Krillin stepped in front of Dende to provide a physical shield for the young Namekian. Through the petrifying power up, Dende stared at Gohan.

Though he'd only known the boy for an hour or so, Gohan was already willing to use his own body to shield Dende's and the look in his face spoke volumes of the fear he was feeling. Dende knew that the coming battle was going to be bloody and inwardly, he vowed to help Goku's son as much as he could, him and Krillin both.

The cracks appeared first on Frieza's armour and spread to the rest of his body, slanting down his legs and running along the length of his arms. Through the cracks, the luminescence of Ki shone through until it seemed that Frieza himself was pure energy, a force of destruction so completely powerful that he had transcended flesh and blood. The horns on the side of his head elongated, pointing upwards, his body lengthened substantially, his muscles bulked…

…and his Ki continued to build.

"What's that you were saying about his power not increasing that much?" Krillin shouted over the repercussive wind but Vegeta didn't seem to hear him.

The prince's eyes were small as pinpricks, his mouth was hanging open. He seemed to have seized up in place, all out of boldness and all out of pride.

The storm generated by Frieza's transformation intensified, obliterating the little island completely. Huge chunks of land; dirt, clay and foliage fell away into the ocean and sank until there was only green sea. Smaller pieces of land, trees and a few very sharp rocks were simply swept into the air until there was only chaos and frightening disorientation. Gohan lost track of Krillin and Dende as he was forced to shoot out of the path of a huge falling boulder though he could still hear them yelling over the deafening wind.

Eventually, things seemed to slow down. The remaining debris flying through the air splashed down into the water and though the dust lingered for a few moments longer, making the air sparkle in the Namekian sun light, that too dispersed and Gohan was able to make out Vegeta hovering a way above him and Krillin holding on to the small frame of Dende.

"Krillin!" Gohan called out, gasping when he saw that the bald monk had a nasty gash on the side of his head. Blood was pouring in a crimson river down over his ear and the sensation was clearly unpleasant because every so often, the monk would flinch, wiping away the excess fluid by tilting his head and shrugging his shoulder until the top of his gi was soaked an ominous red.

"I'm fine Gohan…it's not as bad as it looks," Krillin told him but the way his face scrunched up in agony said otherwise and Gohan didn't believe him.

Vegeta simply hung in the air staring blankly down at the new Frieza as he emerged from the decimated surroundings, a single thought running on a loop in his head.

'_Frieza wasn't bluffing…his power level really has doubled._'

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Frieza said with a hearty chuckle. His voice had deepened considerably with his increased body mass and the new bass tone sent a shiver through the prince's spine. For all the time he'd been preparing to face Frieza, he'd always planned to face off against the tyrant he'd known for years, not this new, more terrifying monster. When Zarbon had mentioned that Frieza could transform, he'd honestly thought that it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

_It had made such a difference…_

He watched as the monster's eyes shifted from himself to Kakarot's brat and then up to the bald monk and the Namekian kid.

An indecisive expression flickered over his face and Vegeta flinched as he realised what Frieza was doing.

He was deciding on his first victim.

* * *

Piccolo spiralled through the cloud-littered sky, his thoughts a jumbled mess. Anxiety tugged at his insides as he felt Frieza's Ki climbing into inconceivable regions and he growled when he felt the quiver of Gohan's Ki in response. The kid was becoming overwrought with terror.

_He had to fly faster somehow._

Digging deep, he increased his output until he was almost shooting out of control, soaring recklessly until the surrounding landscape was nothing but a blur of green and turquoise. He estimated that if he continued to fly like this, he might be able to get there in time to make sure that Gohan wouldn't have to fight this battle at all.

Something stopped him.

He ploughed to a halt in mid-air, his senses latching onto a quickly diminishing Ki signature almost directly below him. Squinting down, he could see the shadowed figure of a body laying face up in the dirt.

His sensitive ears picked up the rattling breaths…whoever it was, they didn't have long left.

Sniffing, he made to take off again but something stopped him. The niggling feeling he had felt when he had arrived on his home planet seemed to be intensifying into a gut wrenching feeling of sorrow though he couldn't for the life of him figure out why.

'_Why the hell should I feel like this about a planet I hardly know?_' Piccolo thought to himself restlessly, itching to continue his bee-line to his best friend's aid. Gohan was in trouble, why was he agonising over someone that was obviously beyond help?

He sat frozen in mid-air, his heart pounding against his rib cage, frustration and urgency creating a hard knot inside him.

He growled.

'_Goddamnit kid, just hold out,_' he mentally begged, making up his mind and descending to meet this fallen warrior, his brethren from a place long forgotten.

'_I promise, I won't be long Gohan._'

* * *

_Will Piccolo get there in time to make a difference? Will Gohan and Krillin survive Frieza's initial transformation? Will Vegeta ever attain immortality? _

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…The Iron Giant?_

_I dunno, this is espresso, it's like…coffeezilla…_

_Reviews place ideas in the heads of the anime makers (nods)_


	21. Death Roulette

_So I've started learning Kung Fu and Tai Chi in my spare time and already I've found connections to some of the moves in Dragonball Z. It's all very exciting. As always, a few things to note._

_1) I am so tired that I can't remember what I was supposed to note down at all this time. Ever felt like you've been hit by a freight train? With this in mind, please forgive me for the mistakes in this chapter. I assure you, this has been checked several times but I may have missed a few silly things._

_2) Ah, I have such plans for this story, such glorious, grandiose plans…I forget why this little titbit of information is important to this particular chapter…but whatever. Look out for the plot bunnies, they'll steal your left shoe._

_3) I actually don't have anything coherent left to say. Apologies, I'll try again next week. For now, thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, favourited etc, I really appreciate it._

* * *

**20: Death Roulette**

"Let me see now, who to choose, who to choose…" Frieza chanted as his eyes moved back and forth between the scattered warriors like a metronome.

In the air, Gohan tried to ready himself for what was coming, preparing to defend himself or propel himself forwards to help defend Krillin or even Vegeta if necessary. His eyes flicked up to Krillin who was holding on to Dende and he had a horrible feeling in his gut.

As he latched on to the overlord's eyes levelling once again with his own, he felt a shiver run through him from top to toe and realised that, if adrenaline hadn't been pumping so freely round his body, he'd probably be seized up with fear.

"I know…" Frieza muttered, carefully unfolding his now colossal arms so they hung loosely by his side.

Gohan felt his breath catch.

Vegeta caught the fluctuation in Frieza's Ki and saw as the overlord moved but was unable to determine which direction he was going for. For one wild moment, he thought that Frieza was going to try and lay in to Kakarot's runt and his eyebrow twitched.

Krillin knew the truth.

In a moment of uncharacteristic precognition, he shoved Dende away from himself just in time to take the brunt of Frieza's attack.

One of Frieza's horns penetrated his body.

Excruciating pain…

Pain that made the floating rib Ginyu had given him look like a paper cut.

He felt the slide of sinew and muscle as something foreign embedded itself within him. He felt the cold rush of air on the heat of his core. He felt as the horn pierced through the other side of his gi and protruded from his back like a statement.

Agonising pain…

It took a few moments for Gohan to comprehend what he had just witnessed. One minute Frieza was standing before them, the next…

He should have felt sick to his stomach, he should have felt horrified beyond words but there was nothing, a blank, like a haze of numbness over his system.

His mouth was open in a silent scream.

"K…Krillin!"

He vaulted forward on a reflex in the air, his aura enflaming around him. Frieza caught the manoeuvre in his peripheral vision and lifted up, taking Krillin with him until he was skewered on the top of Frieza's skull like a shish kebab. The bald monk was no longer able to scream but his expression shifted and Gohan stopped advancing as Frieza glanced back at him, his sharp movements causing a spasm in Krillin's body.

Thick, bright blood was starting to pour out from the open wound, trickling down the edge of Frieza's horn and running the length of his face until the tyrant stuck out his tongue and _licked away the excess, _all the while keeping his gleeful red eyes on Gohan's.

The demi-Saiyan flinched.

* * *

Shorai groaned and his eyes rolled up into his head. He whimpered as he felt something sharp ramming into the back of his skull and tears started to trickle down his cheeks; an automatic reaction to sudden, staggering pressure and agony.

In his mind's eye, he could see as Gohan reacted to Frieza's senseless attack on his father's best friend, as his anger provided a temporary key to the endless, phenomenal well of potential he had hidden inside him.

_He felt the fluctuation in the boy's Ki and watched as his fists clenched so hard he drew blood from his palms._

_His aura pulsed._

In a moment he had launched at Frieza…

_But he was still powering up…_

Punch, kick, punch, block…

_The air around him popped with mounting Ki. His tail was flicking wildly as he squatted in the air. Frieza was watching at first with mild amusement and then sombre disbelief._

He knocked Frieza to the ground and readied his final attack.

_The transformation started at the tip of his tail, the hairs slowly spiking up as Ki flowed through them, turning a brilliant shade of gold-_

"Sen…sou…"

He could hear himself slurring out his brother's name and the connection between present and future was nauseating. He was still watching as the two different realities played out before him and he could feel the essence of existence shaking as one of it's foundations was subjected to questionability, an unforgivable sign that there had been divine interference in the lives of mortals.

"Brother, what's going on?" Sensou's abrupt voice demanded from somewhere far away.

Though the seer didn't feel even remotely connected to his body anymore, he heard himself manage to spit out one crucial word.

"Go…han…"

* * *

Krillin's face was going grey; his life blood was pouring down, dripping from the point of Frieza's chin and falling to the Namekian world below. Purple bruises were blooming beneath his eyes and his lips were starting to darken. The contours of his muscles were starting to become sharply defined in the shadow of death.

"Krillin…" Gohan repeated and the name was merely a whisper.

Frieza's expression was exultant as he purposefully jerked up, causing a gurgling sound to bubble up deep within the half conscious monk's throat and the blood to fly freely through the air, splashing down onto Gohan's exposed cheek.

The boy felt the sticky heat collide with his bare skin and the numbness _moved_.

There was a pulse.

Vegeta felt it and tore his eyes away from the gruesome spectacle of the monk being jostled sadistically up and down to gape at the boy.

'_What in the world?_'

The sound of the horn slipping rhythmically backwards and forwards through Krillin's chest tainted the air. The monk's blood ran free and fast colouring the world in crimson until Frieza decided he'd had enough.

"That was over far too quickly," the tyrant complained, jerking his head roughly so Krillin's limp body went flying down to crash against the water. For a second or two, he floated on the waves before starting to submerge.

"NO!" Gohan screamed, launching himself down with a burst of Ki.

Frieza's smile quirked as he shot down in front of the boy, stopping him in his tracks. The overlord watched as the little Saiyan bared his teeth, as his tail flicked out in agitation, bristling and puffing out as the boy was almost sent over the edge with anger.

"Now, who should be next?" Frieza asked lazily, turning his attention to the petrified Namekian boy who looked just about ready to pass out and the broken Saiyan prince.

"Should it be you?" he asked Vegeta rhetorically.

"Or how about you?" he asked the boy before him, amused when the child started to growl.

"Honestly, it makes no difference to me," Frieza announced, locking eyes with the demi-Saiyan.

_There was a resonance._

Vegeta felt it but couldn't quite believe it, drawing back in the air.

_A Ki spike of such gravity that the very blood running through him almost turned into luminous rivers of energy._

The kid had gone from being someone who could barely land a hit to something cataclysmal, pumping out power like a battery and it had happened in literally a split second.

_The power seemed to be coming from somewhere deeper. He imagined that it was like a well where the hole was usually hidden. Once he had access to the water, he could go as deep as he liked but until he knew where the opening was, he was stuck on the surface. _

The kid's aura flared like a cannon ball around him, white with flecks of…gold? Static electricity started to pour out around him.

_And something was telling him to stop…He could see somehow that if he kept pushing deeper, if he kept diving down into that well of power, something irreversibly awful was going to happen…_

He moaned, his black hair flew up around him and in the thud of a heart beat; his hair had changed to a haunting gold before falling back to black again.

'_No…_' Vegeta thought, watching this monstrous spectacle.

'_He's just a child, a half Saiyan rat…not even a pure blood…surely that doesn't mean…it CAN'T mean that he's…_'

The sparks of gold within his aura seemed to fully ignite, enveloping him in a pulsating golden shield and Frieza looked on with interest. The boy's solidly black hair whipped over his face through the golden storm bursting around him. His teeth were clenched together and bared, the only way he could anchor himself to contain his anger enough and quell his rising power. Sensou's words concerning control resounded through his mind like an echo and he knew at this stage that if he went any further…it would be the end of _everything. _

Yet he had to beat Frieza for Krillin's sake. He _had _to.

"You…" the child hissed and Frieza's expression faltered.

"ANIMAL!"

Vegeta barely saw the boy move. In an instant, he was before Frieza, his aura buffeting the tyrant back, his concrete fist ploughing up to connect with Frieza's jaw. When it collided, Frieza was thrown backwards into an arc in the air, a trail of dark blood spewing out from his mouth.

Gohan didn't wait for the overlord to recover, bearing down from above to aim a series of blurring kicks to the overlord's stomach. Vegeta flinched every time the tyrant let out an undignified 'oof', a deluge of emotions warring inside him – bitter disappointment that he had thus far been unable make such a dent in Frieza's defences, a weird sense of pride that it was a Saiyan, even a half-breed, that had been able to stand up to him, overwhelming awe that this _child _had access to _so much _power…

With one final diabolical kick, Gohan sent Frieza into a freefall down towards the nearest island, following up with a powerful Ki blast to insure that Frieza would be unable to regain himself. Frieza was barely able to weather the blast and throw up a crude block before the boy was on him once more, throwing out a punch which contained one of his own manipulations of Ki. The powerful punch ricocheted off of Frieza's chest and sent him careening down to the ground where his back cracked against the hard rocks and loose stones.

Gohan could feel the rage inside himself building to a pique and fought to control it though it was hard to keep a sense of self through the haze of red over his system.

He let out a low growl, feeling himself teetering on the edge of madness and once again, in the space of a heart beat, his hair straightened, morphing from black to gold before falling back to black. The golden aura around him bulged and for a moment, Vegeta was sure it was going to explode.

* * *

Shorai's head lolled forward and his eyes re-adjusted. For a few seconds he let himself stare at the green grass before him, subject to a wave of intense nausea. His ears rang and the high pitched sound blotted out the voices of his worried apprentice and his irate brother, his fingers and toes tingled. After a while, the trilling in his ears began to ease and his eyes began to focus. He waited until he could make out every individual blade of grass before daring to move, his stomach convulsing threateningly as he looked up into the fiery eyes of his brother.

"What did you see?" Sensou snapped, one hand already clamped around Ma's wrist, waiting for the word lest he need to go and prevent Gohan from taking his assault any further.

Shorai opened his mouth and shivered violently as he recollected how close they'd been to the end of everything as the universe tried to cope with re-writing an existential staple. Indeed, the boy had started down the path to Super Saiyan ascension and it had looked like the end but at the last moment, _he'd curbed his power. _

Shorai had realised immediately why, feeling Gohan's conscious skimming the same line of sight he himself had been using. Undoubtedly tapping into that latent seer potential Shorai had guessed was buried deep beneath Gohan's more prominent talents, he had read the repercussions of his actions on the immediate future and had managed to divert his power before it destroyed everything.

It was…

Exciting…

And somewhat terrifying…

That the boy could be so powerful and possess a little future sight as well? That he could _see _for the first time and then immediately change the outcome? It was unheard of…impossible…was the boy some sort of god bound to human form?

Sensou's eyes bored into him like drills and he found himself grimacing as he remembered his promise to inform Sensou of any developments to do with Gohan's possible seer gifts.

"I…think Gohan has it under control," Shorai said simply, grateful for Tonbo who had started to dab his forehead with a cool cloth without saying a word.

"Remember when I said the boy might have seer gifts of his own? I felt him in the weave of fate with me for a moment. He read what was going to happen and managed to stop himself powering on through to the next level."

The hand holding the cool cloth to his forehead stiffened as Tonbo absorbed that information and he raised an eyebrow at his young apprentice, wondering if the boy was jealous. In truth, jealousy hadn't even crossed the young boy's mind. If anything, he was excited that he would be able to share some of his knowledge about seeing the future with his friend, paying him back for the flying lessons.

"I doubt he really understood much of it." Shorai went on. "It was a fleeting skim along the edges of fate at best, just enough to give him a gauge of the disaster waiting to befall him if he continued…to power on…through…"

The warrior god wasn't listening, his eyes shining with sudden victory. With a show of force, he threw Ma's arm aside and crouched down before the dimension window, biting his nails as his mind worked.

'_Seer gifts…even weak seer gifts are useful…if only he knew how to harness them…_' Sensou thought to himself, wondering how best to manipulate his brother into teaching Gohan how to control his newfound precognitive abilities without instilling a sense of disloyalty.

"Does that mean we're in the clear for now?" Sensou asked, feigning interest in priority events.

There was a pause as Shorai considered. He was tired after his long, unnatural vision and he was afraid to try and follow the lines of fate in his present state, choosing instead to hazard a guess.

"I don't know," he admitted. "For the moment, I'd say yes but there's no telling what could still happen. After all, Piccolo and Goku have yet to get involved in this fight."

Sensou sent a meaningful glare in his brother's direction but Shorai just waved it off tiredly.

"I already told you, it's dangerous to try and read the future immediately after falling into a crack so I'm giving you the next best thing. My estimations aren't usually wrong, I've been doing this job long enough to recognise the patterns Sensou."

'_Not that you really need to know that this case is more or less entirely unique.'_ The seer added to himself, hoping that Sensou would be unable to read the spuriousness in his expression.

Sensou stared at him for a long time and grunted his non-committal, turning his attention back to the dimension window as Gohan readied his last awe-inspiring attack.

* * *

Gohan could only comprehend the tyrant lying prone before him and the fact that Krillin had quite possibly been murdered right in front of him. The blood that had been forced from the bald monk's body clung dry and cracked to Gohan's cheek as he pulled his hands up.

At first, he was aiming to throw a 'Jinsumi' at the downed overlord but at the last minute, he changed his mind, crossing his hands up over his head in the familiar stance.

The Ki started to gather.

'_This…is unreal,_' the prince decided as he balked under the boy's climbing Ki. '_From out of nowhere, the kid explodes with power like I've never seen before…is this possibly the result of hybridising? Should I consider investing time and research into finding out if mixed genes produce stronger warriors if I live through this?_'

Vegeta's nose twitched as he glanced down at the broken looking body before him, taking an inventory of the shallow injuries dotted over Frieza's body and then up again at the power house of a demi-Saiyan.

The bright yellow Ki grew up in his hands like a balloon filling with air, engorging with energy so aggressive that it spiked out at various intervals sending static sparks into the atmosphere until clouds started to gather, making the land grow dim. Gohan's power ball illuminated the land and the sea like a sun, his dark eyes flicking down to the water as Krillin's sunken silhouette was briefly brought to light.

The boy felt the anger inside him lurch and the power ball flattened as he tried to contain himself; pushing all the gathered Ki into one hand before it could grow any bigger and completely overwhelm him.

"MASENKO!" He screamed, taking aim.

"HA!"

The ball was so large that, when Gohan threw it, it took all of the momentum in his small frame to make it go. It moved through the air at a sluggish pace, devouring everything in its path until it reached its destination and detonated.

Instant irrevocable destruction.

The air itself seemed to catch light and the incandescence of the Ki blast quadrupled in size as the resulting explosion created a dome of fire over the island. Charred debris flew up into the sky forcing Vegeta to shield himself and with an ominous belching sound, the blast grew in size again, changing colour to a dark crimson, almost like a dying star.

For moments on end there was nothing but heat and light and Vegeta couldn't help but remember the days spent in brutal combat chambers where powerful blasts were thrown at him until he went mad with rage and fear, clawing his way through his enemies like some sort of wild animal. He felt the build up of post traumatic stress inside himself but locked it down with vigour.

Such weakness could never be allowed in a Saiyan prince…

Eventually, the effects of the gargantuan blast dimmed and the debris that had been disturbed started falling back to the cratered ground or the sea. Through the smog, Vegeta could just make out the kid's pint sized silhouette and could do nothing but ogle.

The golden aura that had encompassed Gohan had dispersed and the boy felt indescribably drained, like he could barely keep his eyes open. It took everything he had to remain in the air with eyes fixed on the place he had last seen the overlord. Eventually, the smoke and ash cleared enough that he was able to see the unconscious body splayed in the centre of a massive crater. For a minute or two, his eyes remained resolutely unmoving as he waited for the barest flinch.

Nothing.

A sense of relief swept through him and he almost dropped out of the sky, catching himself as his head drooped forward and letting his eyes lock onto the water where Krillin's broken body had disappeared beneath green waves.

"K-Krillin?" the boy whispered anxiously.

"Are you there?" he added, sending out his senses, hoping to pinpoint even the barest trace of the bald monk's Ki. His lower lip wobbled as he considered the possibility that his father's friend was really dead…_dead…_and he'd been able to do nothing but sit on the sidelines, helpless as Frieza had his torturous way…

It was hard to fathom that this time; it wasn't just a mannequin that had suffered. This time, it had been Krillin himself impaled and thrown away like a used tissue. The fact that he hadn't realised that until it was all over filled Gohan with new guilt. Even if he had grown accustomed to his training, fighting off his friends on a daily basis, it was no excuse for becoming so desensitised.

Was he really so blasé about human life?

_What kind of monster was he really?_

He could feel the tears stinging his eyes but having spent enough time in Sensou's company, he refused to let them fall. Instead, he took a moment to stare at the sky which was littered with slowly dissipating clouds, waiting for the fluid in his eyes to drain before glancing down towards the water again.

He frowned, seeing something dart beneath the surface. At first he thought it was a large fish but as it burst out of the water, Gohan found himself looking down at the familiar form of the Namekian boy, Dende. The small, green boy appeared to be struggling with something for a moment and with a huge effort, he managed to pull his burden up until Krillin's head was above water. Gohan felt a jolt of hope and panic.

"KRILLIN!"

Dende glanced up at him and waved as best he could.

"He's okay, he's still breathing!" the little Namekian shouted up, starting to swim awkwardly to the nearest island.

"Are you sure?" Gohan called out after him, trying to muster up enough energy to fly down to the island and meet them so he could check the bald monk over himself.

"We don't have time to worry about him," Vegeta's voice cut through Gohan's linear concern. "If you think you've finished Frieza, just look."

Gohan's head whipped back until he was facing the prostrate form of the tyrant. With frightened eyes, he examined the body, wincing outwardly as he observed the damage his rage had caused. There were gashes all over Frieza's torso and blood was trickling freely onto the dusty floor, filtering into the dirt and turning the ground a muddy crimson. Where there weren't cuts, the skin had been burnt by his final Masenko, puckering and twisting to create new, hideous deformities. As Gohan watched, he could see the faint movement of the tyrant's chest as he breathed in and out, his lungs expanding easily.

Concentrating as he was, he was finally able to feel around the shape of the lord's depleted Ki, becoming completely petrified in the process.

Even through everything he had managed to achieve, he had only been able to cut the tyrant's Ki in half, completely draining his own in the process. He was left completely helpless; using every last scrap of energy he had inside himself to remain airborne.

He made a noise of fear when Frieza's tail suddenly whipped out, slapping the dirt so the disintegrated dust flew up around him, catching the light from the Namekian suns like glitter.

Frieza made a point of taking it easy as he rolled over, checking his injuries and his depleted stock of Ki before glancing up at the boy still hovering in the sky.

_What in the nine hells was this kid?_

In Frieza's entire reign, no-one outside his own family had _ever _been able to knock him down like that. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a particularly vicious set of kicks, had almost forgotten the fleeting feeling of humiliation and shame when he was knocked down. To be knocked down by a child of all things…

Frieza hadn't managed to fashion himself into an effective universal ruler by denying himself the truth and honestly, he had to admit he was a little afraid of the boy. If he was part Saiyan as Vegeta had said then he couldn't be very old. The overlord couldn't even begin to fathom what could happen if this _hybrid _was allowed to progress to adulthood, how much his power could potentially grow.

'_Clearly the mix of genes in this kid has produced some sort of abnormality…it might be worth finding out the formula of his genetic make up to see if I can't replicate the effects…_'

Frieza's expression was steely as he stood, angry and Vegeta shrank back instinctively. The tyrant's crimson eyes stayed locked on the boy who was completely immobilised.

"I must congratulate you kid, it's been years since I was pushed far enough to harness my third form."

"Third form?" Vegeta repeated aghast, watching as the overlord widened his feet in the dent of the crater, feeling the oscillations of his Ki as the tyrant started powering up again.

'_This is insane,_' the prince decided, watching his worst nightmare come to life before him. '_Where is he digging up all that energy from? How can he hope to control that much Ki?_'

Gohan could do nothing but watch, his thoughts frozen in the grip of complete fear. He witnessed as Frieza's domed head elongated, more horns growing up and out of the sides. He watched the face flatten and broaden, the more delicate facial features absorbed in this new horrifying metamorphosis. The overlord's body shrank, sucking in at the waist and bulking out in the shoulders. The tail seemed to gain an extra foot in length, weaving out behind him like a deadly weapon.

Frieza was completely changing before him, becoming a true monster, all the while fixing him with that sanguine gaze.

In one deadly moment, as this transformation cycle was completed, Frieza's Ki shot straight up, reaching heights previously thought inconceivable. Vegeta grimaced as the radiation given off from such a dramatic energy increase caused a headache to start pounding behind his eyes. Gohan remained completely unmoving in mid-air, his face deathly pale even in the light cast by the three suns.

"The pain you have inflicted upon me, I will give back tenfold," Frieza promised as the island around him once again disintegrated, forcing him into the air. His voice had changed once again, befitting this monstrous visage – a mix of the deep bass line of his second form's voice and the higher tones of his first form entwined together to create an unsettling double vocal that chilled to the bone.

Vegeta's mind was working on overdrive, considering angles, possibilities and the probability that he would make it out of this suicidal fight alive. His eyes grew round as Frieza appeared before the boy, a smug smirk in place.

Gohan knew he should be moving but it was like there was a short circuit in his brain.

In an instant, the tyrant's hand cut the air, embedding itself in the boy's exposed cheek. Gohan experienced the full enhanced force of Frieza's newly acquired Ki, feeling a brutal eruption of pain not only in his face but all over his body. The fleeting Ki he had remaining seemed to shatter beneath him and he plummeted down towards a wide stretch of island, dropping like a stone. The all encompassing agony stole his breath as he fell, making him painfully aware of his own anatomy as he impacted hard ground.

Frieza kept hard eyes on the boy as he struggled onto his hands and knees, appreciating the boy's fortitude and considering his next course of action. Placed as he was in the air, he'd left his back entirely exposed to Vegeta and prince didn't miss it, firing off a powerful Ki attack to the back of Frieza's neck, chuckling when it connected and detonated.

"Ha!" the prince threw out through the repercussive smoke. "Didn't anyone ever teach you not expose your back when you're up against a Saiyan warrior?"

A triumphant smile pulled across his face but as the smoke cleared, the smile faltered, morphing into a grimace.

"I believe I do remember hearing something like that," Frieza confirmed casually, glancing over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of Vegeta's expression, feeling an enthralling sense of satisfaction as he realised that the prince's pathetic pride had all but crumbled.

"Come to think of it, I think your father said the same thing before he died but I never did have much patience for monkey business."

He noted Vegeta's tensing fists and sighed the sigh of the much put upon.

"Come now Vegeta, you _are_ being rude. I believe the young _half-breed _requires my full attention at the moment but I promise, once I'm done with him, I'll be back for you."

Frieza started to descend slowly through the air, crossing his arms over his chest and smiling sadistically as he touched down in front of the kid who struggled to turn around, a black eye was starting to flourish on his smooth face and a nose bleed was dripping down off of his chin to splash the front of his gi. Taking a few deep breaths and pushing down like a spring, Gohan dug deep and launched at the overlord, kicking wildly at his opponent's scary face.

His feet flew through the air like a blur, backed up with the occasional punch. Though his speed had been substantially affected by his Ki drain, he was still hoping to land at least one or two hits but the tyrant seemed to be able to predict his every move. After a few seconds, he began to tire and the overlord had yet to strike back, smiling his cocky smile as he continued to evade Gohan's pointless onslaught.

The boy could feel the creeping feeling of desperation starting to wind its way like a vine up through his system and he began to take stock of his resources, wondering if he could muster enough energy for a Ki blast. Fired at point blank range like this, it was bound to incapacitate the tyrant, at least for a moment or two, enough time for Vegeta to come down and attack more effectively at any rate.

Making up his mind, he swung down in a two handed club that missed and changed the move as the overlord evaded into the correct stance for a Jinsumi. Just as the boy was gathering his energy, Frieza spun back, kicking off from the ground to ram his knee into Gohan's gut.

Bile and spit disgorged from his mouth and he fell limply off of Frieza's rock hard leg to land splayed out on his back in the dirt once more, breathing rapidly as his stomach made a valiant attempt to escape. Seeing that his opponent was all but helpless, Frieza's eyes sparked and he reached forward, his clawed hand sliding through Gohan's wild black tresses, allowing him to grip tight and hoist the boy upright.

Gohan whimpered but could do nothing to save himself.

"Aw…in pain little half-monkey?" Frieza taunted, shaking the boy so he was swinging back and forth by his hair. Gohan felt the sting of strain on his follicles and tears sprang to his eyes. He hissed but lacked the energy to cry out.

It seemed to go on for an age, this pain, every second trailing by like a year and still Frieza refused to let him go. He could feel the individual synapses firing thousands of tiny pain signals over his scalp until they all seemed to run together in a jagged pulse.

"I always wondered what it felt like to have hair," the tyrant confessed mock mournfully as he finally set the boy down and yanked the clump he'd been holding onto until it broke clean away from Gohan's scalp.

The boy screamed out and in the air, Vegeta felt himself wince.

For all the years he had spent plundering and killing in the name of Frieza, frequently inflicting unspeakable horrors on various living creatures, nothing had ever managed to move him, not the plea of the mothers as they strove to protect their children from the death blow, not the cries of the dying as their lives were torturously prolonged before the inevitable darkness took them….

He watched as the boy was dropped neatly back on the ground, as Frieza placed one talon heavy foot on his head, applying pressure until the boy's dark eyes flew open and he started scrabbling at the grass and the dirt around him, trying to dig his fingers down so that he could push the tyrant's foot off of himself and something within the prince _shifted._

His face twitched as he tried to keep himself impassive, becoming hot as he tried to ignore the boy's shrieks of agony and his fists balled up at his sides, his Ki rising in response to the kid's pain.

'_What is wrong with me? Why the hell is this bothering me so much? I've seen much worse than this done on a daily basis…_'

Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting crunch as Gohan's skull cracked like an egg and his screams reached a new crescendo.

Vegeta couldn't help it, he turned away.

Frieza caught the motion in his peripheral vision and turned gleefully towards the wayward prince, pushing a little harder on the boy's skull in the process.

"Feeling squeamish Vegeta? That's not like you. Perhaps this _is _your son after all and you _did _choose to mate outside the species hm? What's the matter, find it hard to resist your more animalistic urges?" Frieza taunted, digging his foot into the boy's head.

'_E…even if I could get down there…it's pointless, the boy's a goner!_' Vegeta thought to himself as the child ceased to struggle, his hand falling slack on the dusty ground, fingers twitching.

The tyrant sneered as Vegeta's eyes fell to the boy barely clinging to life, becoming hard and flint-like as he watched the small boy's chest rising and falling.

Frieza couldn't help himself. Throwing his head back, he began to laugh, great barrelling cackles of mirthful joy echoing out over the silent landscape.

* * *

Piccolo touched down on the grass before the fallen warrior, cursing himself and the weakness the kid had obviously inspired in him. He glared at the corpse-like body, unnerved when he found himself looking at someone so similar to himself struggling to hold on to life, his chest heaving hollowly as he fought to take in oxygen.

"You look like you've seen better days my friend," Piccolo said, crossing his arms haughtily across his chest, trying to apply the correct pressure to the constriction he could feel in his heart.

When the fallen warrior next breathed in, Piccolo could hear a faint gurgling noise in the back of his throat and recognised the sound of internal bleeding. Right now, his lungs were probably filling with thick dark liquid.

_Just a few minutes to live._

Amazingly, the dying Namekian chuckled, the movement causing spasms of pain to flutter across his body. Piccolo couldn't help but feel a weird sense of pride. His people obviously weren't weaklings.

"You can say that again…" the warrior whispered.

It was an effort to breathe and to talk was nothing short of excruciating but Nail could feel something in this new Namekian, something…almost familiar. Somehow it was worth using his last scrap of energy to communicate with this stranger, a stranger that almost felt like a brother.

"Are you…the one the Earthlings wanted to wish back to life?" he asked tentatively.

Piccolo's eyes widened in surprise. So Goku and Krillin had been planning to wish him back? It made strategic sense when one factored in the properties of Earth's Dragonballs…

When Piccolo didn't answer, the out of place smile on Nail's battered face widened.

"So they got to make their wishes after all…I love it. Mission accomplished."

Piccolo felt a jolt of something unpleasant inside him and growled, not appreciating this new, regretful emotion. So this guy had been heavily involved in bringing him back to this dimension, so what? Why should Piccolo care? He didn't know the guy, so the only logical explanation for his generous assistance was that he was after something…probably something that Goku had promised him…the fool…

Piccolo shook his head and blanched when he felt Gohan's Ki rising to unprecedented heights, heights that made him whip round and stare in momentary awe. For a few seconds, he was unable to speak, caught up in the possibilities of Gohan's frankly astonishing Ki signature. From what he knew of the boy…there could only be one explanation for this insane outburst.

Gohan had been enraged.

He snarled.

"Look, I don't have time for this," he snapped.

Nail remained silent, waiting for Piccolo to continue, still taking in deep, wracking breaths but Piccolo didn't speak again. He stood on the spot grinding his teeth together in mounting frustration, unable to explain why he had dropped down to meet Nail if he 'didn't have time for this' in the first place.

"You feel it don't you…the connection between us…" Nail said eventually, his voice breathy.

Piccolo's nose flinched and he scowled but said nothing to deny it.

"I can help you," Nail said simply. His mind was awhirl with flashing thoughts as an idea formed in his mind. He could remember the day that Guru had taught him of the taboo technique he was considering, something infuriatingly simple with irreversible results. It was, partially, the permanence of the technique that made Guru choose to expressly forbid its use but more than that, it was the power that could be harnessed, the sudden leap in Ki that could cause even the most peaceful Namekians to become power hungry…

If he hadn't been in his current predicament, clinging to the last frayed edges of his life, the idea to attempt this technique probably wouldn't have even occurred to him. As it was, despite the fact that he was raised to revere the natural cycle of life and death, he felt that if there was even the slimmest chance of escaping this inevitability, he would latch on to it.

Somehow, to die now just didn't feel right…

Piccolo watched the uneasiness pass across Nail's face and smirked, letting his arms fall away from his chest.

"No offense, but I don't think you're going to be much help to me in your current state," the former demon informed his half dead companion.

"You'll change your mind in a few minutes," Nail said bluntly. He tried to move his arms but his muscles didn't seem to be responding, already they felt disconnected, unresponsive.

"I can't move so you're going to have to come here if we're going to pull this off," Nail said, amused as Piccolo remained resolutely where he was, his eyes distrusting.

"I'm thinking of instigating the fusion technique," Nail said quickly, unsurprised when Piccolo's face screwed up in distaste.

"You don't have to worry too much. This technique will allow me to be absorbed into your body. My strength will become your strength; my knowledge will become your knowledge. You won't have to give up anything at all."

Piccolo pulled a face, unsure of something that sounded so…_invasive._ For someone who was used to living alone in the wildernesses of Earth, the prospect of sharing something as wholesome as _himself _was completely out of the question, terrifying beyond measure. He opened his mouth to decline Nail's offer in the most colourful language he knew but paused when he felt the sudden, dangerous drop in Gohan's Ki.

'_No…no…_'

It wasn't happening.

It just couldn't be happening.

Gohan's energy signature had gone from being something monumental to being nothing but a tiny blip on the edge of Piccolo's senses in the blink of an eye. He spun back to face the battle, holding on to the transient feel of Gohan's diminishing Ki, his heart racing against his chest.

He had never felt so panicked in his life.

It was catastrophic, debilitating, a liability that he would not have allowed himself if he was still so linearly bound to the fate of the demon King Piccolo. His throat seemed to swell, closing off his airways and his hands started to shake.

This was his fault.

_His fault._

He shouldn't have stopped to help this half dead fool.

…He had to make it count somehow.

"This…fusion…will increase my strength?" he threw back at the fallen warrior.

"More than you might think," Nail assured him.

Piccolo pivoted back to face him, his eyes full of resigned determination.

"Let's do it."

* * *

_Will Gohan survive having his skull crushed? And what about these seer gifts? Why is Vegeta reacting as he is to Gohan's torture?_

_FIND A FAIR FEW THINGS ON THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE OF…10 Things I Hate About You?_

_Because I maintain that he kicked himself in the balls._

_Reviews are the coins on the eyes of the dead…_


	22. Cat and Mouse

_So I was watching 'The History of Trunks' the other day and I must say, I was impressed at how sad future Gohan's death was. You just don't get that kind of drama in cartoons nowadays (wistful sigh). As always, things to note:_

_1) A brief warning for weirdness. Events pertaining to the battle with Frieza will be playing out closer to the original canon than they have for a while because everyone is technically where they should be at the moment though of course, you will notice some interesting changes – Frieza's transformation to his third form earlier than expected etc. _

_2) A special shout out to the reviewers of the last chapter. One amazing reviewer left me a page long critique which really inspired me to crack on with the next part of the story and revise some parts of the later plot etc so thank you very much! _

_3) Oh yeah - I do believe that Frieza's blood is meant to be a deep purple rather than red but I've been writing it in as a sort of very dark red. If this bothers people, I will go back and rectify this once this story is completed. _

_4) Spelling, grammar, incredibly poor sentence structure and mangled English checked though as always, I've probably missed something horrendous and offer my apologies for doing so._

* * *

**21: Cat and Mouse**

_Crack._

There was his house set against the back drop of the mountains, the trees around it thick with falling petals and leaves at the height of summer. His mother was outside humming to herself, hanging washing on the line as he studied his text book beneath the glorious yellow of the-

_Crack._

There was Piccolo hovering in the lotus position, his eyes closed and his expression one of deep concentration as he accessed his own inner well of Ki, moving a few rocks into orbit around him. Gohan had only just started to figure out how to survive this wild terrain and he was only just beginning to realise that there were subtle vibrations of the energy called Ki all around-

_Crack._

He was fighting multiple opponents in the dark dimension Sensou had forced him to call home over the last few months. Just as he was about to make a grievous mistake, his father made his appearance, coming out of nowhere to deliver a rock hard punch to the stomach and sending Gohan shooting back into the shadowed foliage. Not giving him a chance to recover, Gohan's other opponents started throwing out merciless attacks, beating him until he was barely conscious.

And as always when he was pushed too far, the deep power within him rose to the surface like a whale hiding in the deepest ocean.

"HYAAAAA!"

His fist connected with flesh and punctured his opponent, slipping through delicate anatomy to protrude from the other side of the body. Dark blood slid down his arm, dripping with a rhythmic patter on the ground below.

On autopilot, Gohan glanced up to find his arm half buried in his dad's body, his clothes completely drenched in the ominous metallic taint of blood slowly spreading through the thick fibres of his gi.

His heart clenched.

'_Daddy?_'

_Crack._

He heard himself cry out, saw flashes in painfully vivid colour of his father's lifeless face followed by Krillin being impaled on one of the tyrant's sharpened horns and then everything died.

Nothing left but a tiny flicker of life…

…and the tyrant's laughter.

* * *

Sensou growled as he watched Gohan's decimation play out over the dimension window, his hands balling into fists at his sides. Tonbo watched fearfully as the veins on his arms rose against his skin, pumping with hot, adrenaline fuelled blood.

He tossed a heated glare at his brother who was watching the screen with casual calmness.

"What's going on Shorai? If this continues much longer, the boy is going to die," Sensou stated vindictively.

Shorai's eyes sifted slowly over to his agitated brother.

"Just keep watching," he instructed, leaning back on the grass.

Sensou growled again, deeper this time.

"If the boy dies, you die, do you understand?"

The seer shot his brother a side long glance, making to comment about the fact that he couldn't go against the Four Winds who had decreed long ago that Sensou was to specifically spare his brother's life but as he looked at his brother, he was beginning to realise that the warrior god was a little like a wild dog, never truly tamed.

Deeming it wiser to keep his mouth shut, he purposefully turned his attention back to the dimension window.

* * *

The overlord's laughter was like a series of bullets to the brain for Vegeta. He squeezed his eyes shut in the air and tried to block out the image of Kakarot's brat lying broken beneath that clawed foot.

But no matter how much he tried to blank it out, the image seemed to have tattooed itself on the back of his eyelids and with his eyes closed, the overlord's malicious chuckling only seemed to magnify, echoing off of the surrounding islands to engulf him completely.

"AHAHAHAHAHAhrk-

The prince's eyes snapped open as the tyrant's jubilation was abruptly cut off, focussing just in time to catch as the razor sharp disk of Ki severed the end of Frieza's tail. He blinked disbelievingly, astonished that the wayward disk could cut so cleanly through the overlord's fortified skin and bone and a Ki signature pushed to the front of his mind as he latched on to Frieza's attacker with his senses.

Frieza grunted in pain and his eyes locked on to the tip of his reptilian tail as it fell heavily onto the grass, thrashing wildly. It took a few seconds for the gush of blood to follow; thick liquid falling through the air like red rain to splash on the ground next to the corpse-like boy and his anger was pushed to new limits, mixing with an unnerving sense of dread.

In all his years as ruler of the universe, no one had _ever _managed to pull off anything like this before. Entire planets had given their populations to try and dismay the overlord but he had always been able to neutralise them without breaking a sweat. Here an unknown fighter of insignificant calibre had managed to _cut off the end of his tail _on a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere.

It was completely infuriating.

He pivoted round in the air to face his attacker, spotting the bald monk standing on the most exposed hilltop with his hand in the air. An unpleasant sensation ran through him as he realised the monk had re-appeared unscathed.

Krillin kept his eyes on the overlord and his mind on the task of gathering Ki.

"DESTRUCTO DISK!"

In an instant, the disk had grown up like a blooming flower in his hand and he arched back to launch it, following up with a few more disks as the first one sped towards the tyrant. To his morbid pleasure, he found he had no trouble creating the multiple disks in rapid succession, no longer needing to take the time to gather the Ki necessary to perform a task that was once considered quite arduous.

Frieza took a second to analyse the spinning disks before dodging expertly out of the way, ducking and bending his body into weird shapes. The last two disks flew at him together, spinning through the air in complete synchronisation, one above the other. Frieza experienced a moment of mortal fear before flattening himself in the air. The disks passed over him and below him and he could feel the heat and light radiating from them like a beacon. As the attacks careened off to slice harmlessly through the landscape, Frieza righted himself, glaring at the little monk as he felt the chill of the breeze on heated skin.

Krillin tried to swallow the fear bundling in his system and grinned tauntingly at the overlord.

"Hey Frieza, wanna try another useless attack?" the bald monk goaded.

From his position in the air, Vegeta abandoned all dignity and let his jaw drop, not quite able to process how the monk could have such bravado after suffering like he had.

'_How is he still alive? Did he wish for immortality before I managed to find them with the Dragonballs? Is that why he can antagonise Frieza like he is?_'

Vegeta's eyes skimmed down to the unmoving boy, the mop of lifeless black hair rustling in the breeze.

'_Surely if they'd wished for immortality…the kid would be getting up…_'

Krillin could see the subtler facial muscles in Frieza's jaw line twitch involuntarily and knew it was an indicator as to how much rage was bubbling under the surface. He bit back the automatic response to instinctually freeze in place and threw caution, and sanity, to the wind.

He pivoted and in one smooth movement, had bent over so his rear was in prime position.

"Here's your target!" he called out, patting his backside.

Frieza simply saw red, the haze of it falling over the natural green of Namek. Veins bulged in his neck and his power spiked. There was a ringing in his ears that seemed to overtake all rational thought. He was completely given over to anger based instinct. The urge to kill flowed freely through him.

"How DARE you, you insolent little insect. You will pay for thinking you can make a fool of Frieza!"

Krillin purposefully made a point of not panicking, throwing one last glance at the lax form of Gohan before taking off at full pelt across the sky, making sure the irate overlord was following him. Wild thoughts started firing off in his head as he flew, about Frieza's hideous new transformation, the jump in power, how the tyrant could easily overtake the monk if he wanted.

So why didn't he?

_Why didn't he?_

Frieza followed his opponent and felt himself calm, the fury dissipating in an instant as he considered the possibilities of vengeance. Whatever this low life had managed to do to him, he would be sure to drag out his demise, make him beg for death and deny it before it was granted when he least expected it.

He let a small smile fall into place and breathed out the excess anger. Folding his arms across his chest, he waited until the little monk had led him down to a shattered island, the cracks providing pathways like a labyrinthine maze; a perfect hiding place for a little rodent.

Frieza grinned, hovering up in the air, watching for the moment when he could truly begin this game of cat and mouse.

* * *

"What do I have to do?" Piccolo asked, looming above Nail.

Nail was struggling to keep his eyes open, his thoughts moving sluggishly through his mind as he tried to remember the protocol required to complete this fusion successfully. It was becoming difficult to remember why this was so important…

"Just place your hand on my chest and I'll do the rest," he said, feeling the slur in his words.

Piccolo grunted his affirmation and crouched down, reaching out to lay his hand on Nail's broken chest. He didn't flinch as he felt the chill in his Namekian brother's body, having experienced the cold touch of death himself, but he had to fight hard to preserve his nonchalant demeanour. Being dead, it turned out, changed you.

Nail took a deep, rattling breath in, feeling the swirl of sweet oxygen through battered lungs and a nacreous glow enveloped him. Piccolo started automatically and tried to pull back but it felt like his hand was cemented to the dead weight of his Namekian comrade. He fought the panic attempting to bombard his gut, suddenly uncertain of this bizarre technique that promised to increase his power output enough to save Gohan and bared his teeth as he felt the first sensation of discomfort.

It was like putting on a wet gi after just managing to get dry on a rainy day. As the Ki of this stranger merged with his own, he shivered involuntarily and grunted, momentarily blinded by the intense white emitting from the dying Namekian. Memories started to flood him, vivid and strong, of life on planet Namek surrounded by an extended family so large it spanned most of the planet. The Namekians had been a peaceful people, living with nature, appreciating the land in a perfect balance of give and take.

Slowly, things started to settle down. The new Ki wrapped itself around Piccolo's own, strengthening it and providing new tangible pathways of power to access. He felt his spirit lift slightly as Nail's personality merged with his own making him calmer, more patient, and knowledge filled him. Indirectly, he experienced the cruelty of Frieza and his pulse spiked when he thought about what Gohan was facing.

As the light cleared to reveal Nail's missing frame, Piccolo stayed frozen above the empty spot with his hand still flat against the air.

He blinked steadily.

_He couldn't believe how different he felt._

He stood.

_His Ki was pulsating through his system, humming with new, untapped power._

He smiled; testing out his facial muscles, afraid somehow that he wasn't the same. The expression still felt alien on his face so he dropped it though if he was honest, the surge of such abundant new energy was making him feel quite zealous. He took a deep breath in, trying to quell the rise of strong emotions inside him. He had a new respect and sorrow for the loss of his people, an overwhelming relief coursing through him as he contemplated the fact that he was still alive and somehow, a new level of concern had been introduced for the safety of the people fighting the monster.

_Gohan…_

He let his eyes fall to the empty space where Nail's…_his _body had once been and took a second to mourn the loss before taking to the sky once more, shooting forwards at speeds he had barely been able to consider only a few moments before. Elation that coupled the feeling of free flight and gnawing anxiety clashed inside him.

'_I'm coming…don't you dare die kid._'

* * *

Krillin dodged passed sharp rocks and continued through the darkest parts of the labyrinth, wishing he could just blend into the shadows like a ninja. Whatever had possessed his former masters to train in an _orange _gi? He guessed they'd never really expected him to come up against the tyrant of the universe – a situation where he was literally forced to take the coward's way out not only for his survival but for the survival of his best friend's little boy.

At the moment he was stalling for time, leading Frieza on what could only be considered a wild goose chase while Dende moved in to heal Gohan if it wasn't already too late. The bald monk had been alarmed by how hard it was to locate the tiny spark of life left in Gohan. Just what had that poor kid been put through while he was being saved from his own watery grave?

Still, he couldn't give up.

A flash of daylight caught his attention ahead and he moved towards it cautiously, thanking the gods that Frieza was unable to detect Ki like the rest of them. As the light widened and his eyes re-adjusted, his heart snagged in his throat as he caught a glimpse of the silhouette against the sun, hovering above the water. Frieza's smirk was leisurely; his arms were folded across his chest. Beneath him, a single ripple of water spread out showing that despite his stillness, he had literally only just arrived – disturbing the air above the fluid.

"GAH!" the bald monk choked out, flailing wildly in mid-air before spinning round and backtracking swiftly through the labyrinth. This time as he flew through the dark crags and crevices, he let out a tiny noise of distress.

From his position above the water, Frieza's smirk widened and he disappeared.

For a good few minutes the same pattern repeated. Krillin would find a good opening to escape the maze of dead stone and Frieza would be waiting. At first the bald monk wondered how in the world he was able to do something like this without being able to sense Ki but as this bizarre game continued, he began to realise that Frieza was simply waiting until he had caught the tiniest movement out of the corner of his eye before using incredible speed to appear before Krillin had even managed to clear the pathway of the rocks.

Eventually, he simply stopped along one of the craggy pathways, stooping low to catch his breath.

"Man…" he muttered to himself, trying to figure out how to use Frieza's excellent reflexes against him.

In the air, Frieza was starting to get impatient. His finger flicked up and down on the bulked out muscle of his arm as he waited for the rat to show himself. Eventually, his eyes locked on to the tip of his ruined tail and he decided that he'd had enough of this game. He took aim and fired off a blast of Ki, sneering openly as it flew down into the heart of the maze and caused an eruption of dust filled smoke. A couple of seconds later, his prey emerged, coughing and spluttering.

Krillin didn't waste time, catapulting himself forward whilst he was still hacking his lungs out then ricocheting down into the water, the only way to provide cover.

Frieza huffed indignantly and shifted himself until he was hovering above the water, trying to spot the monk through the dense liquid.

Krillin felt like his lungs were burning as he propelled himself through the water and his eyes became hot. He wanted desperately to let out the dust and smoke still irritating his lungs and throat but he knew that if he did that, he would have to leave the temporary safety of the water and he was certain that he hadn't bought enough time for Dende to work his magic. He just needed to keep the monster at bay for a little longer.

His vision began to blur and his chest felt like it was swelling. He paused through the dense water, clamping his hands to his mouth to try and keep the air in but it seemed to have been fused with some sort of explosive force, breaking free to rise to the surface.

Frieza chuckled when he saw the first stagnant bubble pop on the surface of the water and he lazily raised his arms, gathering enough Ki to take out a fair sized army and aiming it into the lake. It was one of the monster's preferred moves, a Ki blast that was particularly manipulative because of how easy it was to produce. It could be used like a pin point bullet to pierce someone's chest or it could be easily blown up to catastrophic proportions and used to wipe out a batch of rebels in one easy step.

"Well this has all been in good fun except for one crucial overbearing factor," Frieza said, enlarging his blast.

His eyes narrowed.

"You cut off my tail you low life and now I'm going to eat you."

He arched back to throw the attack.

"What? No way!" A voice behind him claimed. Surprise flittered through the overlord and he turned with his attack still in hand.

"SOLAR FLARE!"

The light was instantaneous and all-consuming. Frieza simply saw a flash of white so completely bright that it became grey as his retinas burnt. Immediately, he clamped his eyes shut, dropping the energy required for his attack so it dispersed around him. Spots broke in a wave over his eyelids as his eyes tried to instantly repair themselves, exploding colours decorating the darkness.

He growled hostilely and made a blind swipe but Krillin was long gone.

* * *

Vegeta simply stared.

He stared until his eyes were sore, until the land around him was absorbed in pixelated colours creeping into the corners of his eyes.

Still the boy didn't move.

A thousand thoughts fired in the prince's head and his body stiffened as he remained immobile, almost subjected to the rigidness of rigor mortis while he was still alive.

_WHY was this kid's devastation bothering him so much?_

It was true that he had experienced a moment of pride when the kid had accessed that freakish power. That a creature with Saiyan lineage could draw the tyrant's blood brought him some kind of vengeful satisfaction. Was it something to do with that pride that had made the boy's torture so difficult to watch?

With his eyes fixated as they were, he instantly latched on to the movement of the Namekian child as he darted forward, his robe streaming in the breeze as he ran towards Kakarot's fallen half breed.

'_What do you think you'll be able to do?_' Vegeta thought to himself as he watched the boy kneel down before Gohan, his hands stretched over the dark gi. '_The boy's suffered massive head trauma, he's got minutes at most._'

Vegeta watched because he couldn't turn away, glued to the scene like a civilian watching a train crash and with his newly heightened senses, he was able to detect the flux in the atmosphere before the dim glow encased the corpse-like child.

"It's okay," Dende whispered soothingly as he worked, pouring his Ki into the damaged areas he could find. He had always been a particularly gifted healer, able to heal even the most heinous injuries he'd come across without any real effort. Krillin's injury had been the first true test of his strength as a healer. The bald monk had literally been on the edge of death and the tyrant had managed to decimate a few vital organs with his attack. Unused to human anatomy, he had struggled at first to find the right way to rebuild the muscle tissue but as he had continued, it was almost like the body had mapped itself for him, the picture becoming clear like a diagram in his mind. Dende had been proud of himself for figuring out a difficult, crucial problem, rising to the challenge and gauging something of his own power.

This injury was…

…more difficult. While the scrapes and bruises were easy enough to fix, it was the damage to the brain that was causing issue. Rebuilding organs was one thing but rebooting synaptic pathways and fixing the delicate contours of the mind without leaving scars…that was something else…Dende may have been a genius but he was still young and there were still things he didn't understand.

Still though, he had to try. If Goku's son died because he was too afraid to try something innovative then he'd never forgive himself.

As he worked, he could feel the thoughts reconnecting in Gohan's mind and felt the spark there. The boy was intelligent and had a genuine love for learning new things. He was easily fascinated and was a good puzzle solver. As Dende continued to work, a twitch formed over one of his eyebrows as he started to access the darker aspects of Gohan's memories, disturbing images flashing through his mind like brief glimpses of a long forgotten dream…

Eventually, Dende performed one last analytical sweep of Gohan's body and removed his hands, falling back onto the floor and breathing steadily, his eyes locked on Gohan's as they fell open.

For a couple of seconds, Gohan tried to fathom what had happened to him but he realised when he found the memory hard to access that whatever had happened had been horrible enough to instantly repress so he dropped it, struggling to sit up and flip himself over.

Vegeta's eyes nearly popped clean out of his skull.

"So…that's how they did it," he mumbled to himself, letting his gaze snake across to the little healer. Being the kind of warrior he was, the prince instantly started to think about how this kid's power could be used to enhance his own. With the Saiyan ability to gain a massive strength boost after taking serious damage, the little Namekian could be the key to improving his fighting prowess enough to challenge Frieza properly. His lips thinned as he turned his attention to the boy jumping up and down. Just how much had his power increased? His eyes slipped down to the tail flicking wildly around him.

"Wow, this is incredible! I feel great!" Gohan exclaimed, beaming as he sprang up into the air. When he landed, he automatically lifted his hand to his head, touching at the place where his skull had shattered under the tyrant's heel. He frowned as he remembered a moment of crippling agony but made a point of waving it away, taking in a deep breath of air. As he exhaled, he started to search for the pernicious overlord, noting with some confusion that Frieza's Ki was a fair distance from where he was at the moment.

Extending his senses, he managed to pick up on another familiar Ki signature shooting towards them at a reckless speed. His face lit up.

"Piccolo!"

"The friend we managed to wish back?" Dende asked tentatively.

Gohan turned bright eyes on his companion, grabbing Dende's hands before the little Namekian had a chance to protest. He felt the shiver run through Gohan's small frame and blinked.

"Thank you for healing me," Gohan said; excitement clear on his face. Dende bit his lip as he felt a pang of longing for his big brother Nail. "And yes, Piccolo's the one we managed to wish back. He's nearly here."

Dende frowned as Gohan turned back to the sky, looking straight up past Vegeta as he waited for his almost-mentor to arrive, uneasy.

If this man was coming here, then surely he was coming to fight and if Earth's Dragonballs were tied to the fate of this Piccolo then surely he shouldn't fight, even if he was a warrior. The small Namekian opened his mouth to say so when the tiny figure of Krillin appeared in his peripheral vision, soaring across the sky to stop in front of Vegeta.

"Hey, are you deaf or something?" Krillin snarled angrily at the prince as he ground to a halt in mid-air, puffing horrendously and doubling over. He'd been yelling to Vegeta to watch out for Frieza since he'd found the prince still levitating in the same position Krillin had left him in, staring down at the kid-

_The kid._

Krillin's head automatically whipped down and his face nearly broke in two from smiling so hard. Gohan was wearing a mirrored smile, completely healthy as he waved up to the bald monk though his gi was a little worse for wear.

"Alright, mission accomplished," Krillin declared happily.

For some reason, the monk's jubilation jerked Vegeta into action. He growled angrily, moving stiffened fingers to close around the bald monk's gi just below his throat which caused Krillin to jump out of his skin and lose the Ki he was using to hold himself up.

"What do you think you're playing at keeping an ability like that Namekian kid's a secret?" Vegeta asked furiously, enraged that he hadn't been able to factor Dende's abilities into his master plan of attack. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that this was turning into a disaster. Despite the prince's meticulous planning, the hours spent fantasizing about the day he would finally kill Frieza, this was not going even remotely as he'd thought it would…

"What do you mean?" Krillin asked indignantly, shoving Vegeta off and eyeballing the prince. "If we new he could do that, we could've had him heal Goku!"

Vegeta made a noise of displeasure and acting on impulse, he reached forward to grab the monk again.

"Listen, we won't have long before-

"I return?" an amused voice asked.

Vegeta bit back a string of profanities and spun to face the overlord, hissing through his teeth as he was met with the brutal visual of Frieza's third transformation once more.

On the ground, Gohan's expression morphed from one of joy to one of barely suppressed rage.

"Oh don't stop on my account Vegeta, please. I'm dying to know what you little insects are going to try next. I doubt if it'll make much difference whether I know or no-

The overlord cut himself off as Gohan appeared beside the prince and the monk, rendered speechless as he realised the child had escaped completely unscathed, just like the monk.

_How?_

Frieza had crushed his skull, he had _felt _the bone splintering beneath the force of his foot yet here the boy was seemingly no worse for wear.

He bit back the disquieting feeling as the child started to power up, observing with what he could only hope came across as mild interest as the aura ignited around him, burning gold every so often. This time, the kid's hair didn't change colour and Frieza didn't miss the subtle implications of this. Whatever freakish power he had inside himself, it was obvious that it hadn't fully manifested and Frieza had no intention of letting it get to that stage. He knew somewhere deep within that whatever this kid was trying to access, it was the first real threat to his life that he had ever come across. If this battle continued for much longer…

But then what was he supposed to do if they just came back fully healed every time he knocked them down…How was that possible? Had they wished for immortality before he'd managed to reach them?

'_Damn you Ginyu_,' the overlord thought to himself as he watched the bizarre unit of fighters turn to face him. '_How could you let yourself be overcome by these low lives? How could you lose my Dragonballs?_'

"I can tell that he's flustered," Vegeta said, savouring the thought as he watched the tyrant's self confidence falter. "We might actually have a chance to beat him if we all work together."

"On your signal?" Krillin asked, gathering as much Ki as he could. For some weird reason, the bald monk found himself thinking back to the battle against the Saiyan warriors on Earth, listening to Piccolo as he came up with a plan to attack Vegeta's brutish subordinate. He shot the prince a side long glance, wondering just when it was that he had become comfortable around this guy. He could remember watching in horrified awe as Vegeta had mercilessly slaughtered his ally on Earth, being so close to killing the prince when he was lying broken at Krillin's feet….

Vegeta nodded once to confirm that the monk should move on his signal. His eyes were sharp as he regarded the overlord, calculating. On the edge of his senses, he could feel the pulsating Ki of someone approaching at formidable speed and was irritated when he was unable to discern if this was friend or foe. On the one hand, all of Frieza's gifted henchmen had been taken out including the unbeatable Ginyu Force, meaning that if this newcomer was an enemy, they wouldn't pose much of a threat…

But then any advantage, however small, could tip the scale further in the tyrant's favour and that wasn't something they could really afford.

Making a split second decision, Vegeta gathered all the Ki he could for one of his best moves, something he had been ambitiously perfecting since he had first been taught to control Ki.

"Now," Vegeta said.

The order wasn't barked out as Krillin had expected but the prince's tone carried such authority that he found himself setting up for his attack without really thinking. On the prince's other side, Gohan gathered energy for a Jinsumi and the three of them fired off a series of blasts that bombarded the atmosphere.

Frieza was engulfed in the energy, groaning as he experienced the vindictive rage of Vegeta's blasts, the sophisticated control of Krillin's and the raw potential of Gohan's. They were perfectly timed to inflict maximum damage though, being a seasoned warrior, Frieza was able to tell that they had not been a team for long enough to form the true bonds of battle. New gashes were opened on Frieza's legs and along his arms, burn marks indented the skin and twisted the surface. Once again, the tyrant experienced a twinge of mortal fear and then it was over.

Dark clouds blew outwards in the aftermath, billowing over the air. Vegeta, Krillin and Gohan were all panting heavily as they regarded the epicentre of destruction, waiting for the tyrant to emerge like they knew he would.

The smile he wore was somewhat strained but still he seemed unbothered as the smoke cleared to reveal a few more cuts and bruises over his body, nothing more. Once again, Vegeta restrained from swearing, only because he didn't want Frieza to realise that he was overwhelmed. That realisation would be the death of him.

"Nice try," the overlord goaded, purposefully dusting himself off to appear nonchalant.

Gohan could feel a twinge of familiar rage building inside him and Krillin shot him a meaningful glance as he felt the kid's Ki rise.

"Gohan…" he warned.

Gohan stared into Frieza's blood red eyes and felt an intense stabbing pain in the back of his skull. For a second, he went blind as the visual of Frieza before him was replaced with an image of his own hand clawing at the soil beneath the Namekian grass as unbearable pressure was applied to his skull.

He whimpered and shook his head, clearing his vision.

"There's nothing left for us to try Krillin and I can't watch him pick us off one by one anymore."

Krillin felt his pulse spike as he watched the determination sparking in Gohan's eyes. For that moment, he could see Chi Chi in the kid and the thought made his stomach squirm. When Chi Chi made her mind up about something, there was no stopping her…was Gohan the same?

On the other side of the battle field, Frieza processed the boy's expression and grinned, on firmer ground as his opponents became desperate. A thrill went through him as he thought about the oncoming torture, even if they were immortal; death wasn't the only way to break the spirit.

Gohan didn't wait for Krillin's response to his comment, launching forward with all the force he could muster.

"Gohan, wait!" The bald monk protested, racing out after him with his hand outstretched.

Vegeta stared after them, his eyebrow twitching.

"Idiots," he muttered.

Gohan was a couple of feet from Frieza when the light burst in front of him. Thinking it was Frieza augmenting an attack; he reversed violently in mid-air and crashed into Krillin, shielding his eyes. The little monk let out an undignified 'oof' and gripped Gohan's arms to steady the child. Together, they watched as the light dimmed, revealing a silhouette in the centre. Gradually, the shape of the light changed, transforming into the Ki based aura of Piccolo. Krillin felt the boy tense up beneath his fingers.

"Mr Piccolo?" Gohan whispered. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch his almost mentor, afraid that if his fingers brushed this apparition, it would disappear on the air like a phantom. He couldn't quite believe that this was really happening, after so many months of feeling guilty for what Piccolo had to do during the battle against the Saiyans, he was here, brought back from the afterlife.

"Hey kid," Piccolo tossed back, glancing over his shoulder and offering a brief smile before turning back to face Frieza and glaring daggers at his opponent. His heart pounded in his chest and he frowned as he tried to analyse the situation.

Only moments before, Gohan's Ki had almost petered out of existence. The boy had been clinging to a barely flickering pulse of life and now suddenly he was absolutely fine, stronger than ever. Just what had happened? Had the others managed to get a Senzu bean to him?

"This is what you wasted your wish on? Bringing this low life back?" Vegeta hissed to Krillin behind him and Piccolo's lips thinned. Physically, Vegeta was positioned with Krillin and Gohan – a primal indicator that he was on their side for the moment and the way his eyes became cold when he beheld the tyrant indicated that they had some history. Piccolo figured that Vegeta was probably taking what he could get in terms of allies. Not that long ago, Piccolo had been in that very same position, using the Z Fighters to help defend Earth against the Saiyan threat. It made sense to him as an opportunist. For the moment, the prince was a comrade for the greater benefit but once Frieza was gone…would he still be on their side?

Quick as lightning, Piccolo made a sensual sweep of the area, latching on to Goku's Ki signature back at Frieza's invasion vessel. The muscles by his mouth twitched.

"This is great," Krillin said, as he pivoted to face the overlord with a serious expression. "Now we can attack him 4 on 1."

"No," Piccolo said gruffly, carefully removing his turban and cape, letting the items fall freely to the ground below. "I'll fight him myself."

Gohan felt a jolt of sudden, intense panic and jerked forward, grabbing Piccolo's arm on a reflex. He felt a rush of solidity as he realised that Piccolo was really there, that this wasn't just some hopeful hallucination.

"No Mr Piccolo, he's too powerful," the boy stated bluntly, praying that Piccolo would abandon his pride as a warrior for once and listen to him. Silence stretched between them as Gohan's panic ebbed and Piccolo didn't make a move towards the tyrant. Frieza simply hovered in mid-air before them, eerily silent as he waited for them to decide what they wanted to do. Eventually, Gohan began to think that Piccolo was really going to listen but then Vegeta spoke up and his hopes were dashed.

"Oh let him go if he wants. It's no concern of mine if he wants to get himself killed through his own misplaced self confidence."

Piccolo didn't rise to the bait but there was a low rumble in the base of his chest that alerted Gohan to the fact that he was angrier than he was letting on.

"I'll face him myself," Piccolo repeated, throwing Gohan off of his arm and catapulting upwards. When he reached a height that he deemed a safe distance from the others, he glared down at Frieza expectantly.

Frieza met his eyes and his lips curled maliciously. He shot one last unsettling look at Vegeta before ascending to meet the Namekian in the sky.

"I don't know where you people keep coming from. You're like ants – you think you've managed to exterminate them and then there's one more in your kitchen trying to make off with your food," Frieza commented languidly.

Piccolo said nothing, slipping into a stance that Frieza had seen before. The mirthful expression died on his face as he tried to place the martial form but when he couldn't identify it, he dismissed the feeling of déjà vous as nonsense. He'd killed a lot of Namekians during his time on this planet and it wouldn't surprise him if some of them had trained, however futilely, under the same master.

Piccolo made quick work of combing the tyrant with his eyes, searching for exploitable weaknesses. He knew from Nail's memories about Frieza's fortified skin though it perplexed him greatly that the Frieza he saw now and the one he could access in Nail's memories looked substantially different. The one before him now was the stuff of nightmares. Had Nail subconsciously edited his memories so he could access the valuable knowledge without being rendered immobile by terror?

"You should know that you've signed your own death warrant," Frieza said, licking his lips with a long tongue.

Somehow, the remark made Piccolo feel more at home. He was used to banter on the battle field and it relaxed him.

"We'll see," he said simply and prepared his first attack.

* * *

_Will Piccolo be able to survive against Frieza by himself when the overlord is already in his third form? Will Vegeta be able to use Dende's healing to his advantage? Is Goku mentally singing the 'Tequila song'?_

_Find out the answers to some of these questions and less in the next exciting episode of…Drawn Together!_

_(sings) Smashy crashy crush together blood and pain!_

_Reviews encourage the sun to come out for us poor UK residents._


	23. Piccolo's Precognition

_Oh God, the editing, the horrible editing (cries in a corner). As you may have guessed, this one was pure EVIL to finish but finish it I did and am now mostly happy with it (shudder). A few important messages this week folks:_

_1) As of next week, I am away from anything electrical - going camping in the great wide unknown so no luxuries for me. I'm planning, therefore, on updating next Tuesday to keep everything more or less regular but I am not sure about the week after that. It is possible that I will miss an update but things should be back to normal after 07/07/2013. Apologies for the upheaval guys._

_2) Within this chapter, I've tried to explore Piccolo's gift for battle strategy and Nail's familiarity with this particular opponent in detail, weaving the two aspects together with as much subtlety as I can muster. Uh…I can't remember why I wanted you guys to note this…I blame the pills I just took for a headache, they're making me drowsy._

_3) You may notice that Piccolo is more or less able to keep up with Frieza's third form whereas he had trouble in the canon once Frieza transformed I believe. Just to be clear, I haven't given him a randomly unexplained power boost, Piccolo's strength in this battle lies with what I've mentioned above, his intelligence and his inherited experience…I promise, I've taken everything into account when writing this, just so you know that I'm not being slap dash about it._

_4) Grammar, spelling and the fruit cake of creation has been checked but as always, I'm bound to have missed something irritating so apologies my lovelies (kisses screen) _

* * *

**22: Piccolo's Precognition**

Bulma fell face first into the dirt, huffing indignantly and trying to ignore severe cravings for a cigarette. In a fit of spontaneous fear for her health, she'd been determined to give up smoking and had thrown away all of her nicotine based products before taking off for Namek. Now she wished she hadn't been so concerned.

She waited sceptically for one of the Z Fighters to show up and rescue her but no one appeared and it just made her angry.

'_Abandoned in the middle of nowhere like some common slut. Oh sure Bulma, we'll be back once we've dealt with insert name of freelance group of fighters I can't remember here. Yeah. Right._'

Huffing again, she made an effort to flip herself over as her stomach began to complain. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten and all of her equipment to test out the safety of the food on Namek was back at the porcupine-like ship. To take her mind off of her hardship, she spent her time thinking of ghastly things to do to Krillin and Goku when they finally grew enough balls to come and find her. Forget the threatening weirdoes she'd seen flying around, forget Vegeta, they would experience the full force of her fury and it would leave them quaking.

Absently, her mind latched on to the thought of Vegeta and she frowned. He'd been a lot shorter than she'd realised he was over Baba's crystal ball when they'd been watching the battle against the Saiyans at Master Roshi's house but next to Krillin and Gohan, anyone would look like a giant. She wondered briefly if he was shorter than Yamcha, then got confused because she couldn't figure out why she was comparing the two of them anyway.

The hunger was clearly driving her insane.

Taking a deep breath, she decided she would make an effort to survive, if only to preserve herself long enough to experience that sweet moment of vengeance when she finally met up with those two _cretins _and gave them a piece of her mind. With as much force as she could muster, she heaved herself up into a sitting position and swore when she realised she'd broken one of her nails, the crack running deep into the base of her finger tip and thrumming with pain.

Giving up, she fell back down onto the grass and tried to keep herself from sobbing hysterically.

"Goku…if you've died out there and left me here…" she left the threat hanging, unable to muster up the energy to direct anymore malicious thoughts at one of her oldest friends, even if he had quite possibly abandoned her for a life in Otherworld.

* * *

Piccolo sprung forward aiming a solid Ki enhanced punch to the side of Frieza's exposed face. The tyrant smirked as his opponent lunged, reminded forcefully of his previous battle with another delusional Namekian, the one that had offered him the password for the Dragonballs, but this time, he was in no mood to mess around. Instead of tilting his head to one side to allow the hit this time, he grabbed the punch, using the strength of his hand to try and crush Piccolo's fist but somehow, Piccolo seemed unsurprised by this move. Flicking his thumb up, he grabbed hold of it and tugged until Frieza's hold broke.

The two fell back in the air and regarded each other through narrowed eyes.

On the ground, Dende strained himself to get a good look at this new Namekian warrior. Somehow, the fact that he wasn't the last of his kind comforted him beyond measure. He hadn't realised just how home sick he'd been feeling since Guru had passed, how alone he had felt even in the company of Krillin and Goku's son. Child as he was, all he wanted to do was latch on to Piccolo and the last shred of his life prior to the tyrant's invasion. He supposed he couldn't help it but he felt a bizarre connection to this older Namekian warrior and even though he knew he would be able to wish his people back again with the Earth Dragonballs, he felt better knowing he wouldn't have to bear the burden of being the very last Namekian now.

It took Piccolo less than a second to realise that Frieza wasn't going to make the next offensive move so he took his time studying the overlord, trying to pick out any features or behavioural patterns that he could manipulate into a weakness. He knew from Nail's memories how arrogant the overlord was but evidence suggested that his arrogance was more or less justified so it would be difficult to use that aspect to lure the overlord into a blunder…If only Piccolo could try and manipulate something _outside _of Frieza himself, an external entity with its own set of weaknesses. If Frieza only cared for something, Piccolo could quite easily force that to be the tyrant's undoing.

His eyes darted back to Gohan for and for a split second their eyes met and locked.

'_I have my own exploitable weaknesses,_' he thought to himself uneasily. '_Frieza did nothing but observe when I first arrived. He must know that I…care…for that kid._'

He shook his head and concentrated on his opponent. No use worrying about things that hadn't happened yet and if he managed to defeat the monster then all his concern for Gohan's wellbeing would dissipate. Without shifting his stance, he started collecting as much Ki as he could, using the fact that Frieza couldn't sense the subtle push and pull of energy to form a surprise attack. The plan was to appear to be floundering, to look like he was unable to think of the next course of action and sure enough, Frieza's smug expression intensified.

"Having trouble worm?" Frieza asked tauntingly and Piccolo suppressed a smirk when he felt the overlord's Ki relax slightly.

"I must say this is not exactly meeting my expectations and they were pretty low to begin with. Even the kid over there did better than this," he assured, glancing briefly at Gohan.

Piccolo's heart leapt into his throat as the tyrant's gaze shifted and he released the pent up energy in a spur of the moment attack.

"SPECIAL BEAM CANNON!"

The energy spiralled through the air, connecting with Frieza's chest before the overlord could even finish swinging his gaze back to his opponent, sending him careening back through a gathering of soft clouds with a pain-filled howl. Piccolo wasted no time in following up on his attack, knowing that it would be better to continue to bombard the overlord rather than let him recover and form a counter. He flew into the cloud cover, using the advantage of poor visibility to deliver fast flying kicks from various angles, listening with satisfaction to the grunts Frieza gave out every time Piccolo's foot impacted flesh.

Eventually, the clouds shifted and Piccolo's attacks relented. He pulled back in the air, his body glistening with sweat and atmospheric moisture as he waited for the tyrant to emerge. His eyes roved to Frieza's face as the foggy white dissolved around him and he gauged the dark expression.

Frieza didn't bother to mask his emotions as he stared at the Namekian before him, annoyed and somewhat unnerved that this overbearing creature could predict his moves and actions so accurately. How was that possible? As he glared at Piccolo, he could see the underlying intelligence in his dark eyes. Like Vegeta, this one obviously had a gift for strategic planning but that still didn't explain how this stranger was able to fight him like he knew his every move.

Registering Frieza's confusion, Piccolo smiled deviously.

"Having trouble worm?" he asked, repeating Frieza's earlier taunt, his voice knocking up a few octaves as Nail's personality shone through.

Frieza's eyes widened in disbelief as he observed Piccolo's change in conduct.

"You!" he gasped, vexation replacing his contemplative expression. "I thought I left you for dead."

Piccolo glanced indifferently at his nails.

"I guess you should learn not to leave a job half finished."

"Oh believe me, I won't be making the same mistake again," Frieza confirmed, surging forward and sending a forceful Ki blast at Piccolo's head which tripled in size on impact. Piccolo made a noise of discomfort and plummeted several feet, his ears ringing sorely.

Next to Vegeta, Gohan stiffened and the prince stared at the boy as his Ki began to swell once more.

It took a good few seconds for the ringing to subside to bearable levels and by then, Frieza had caught up with him, a two handed club ready to force his descent into new levels of speed. The club connected with the base of Piccolo's spine and he cried out, unable to stop himself as he crashed to the floor like a bullet, the unforgiving ground cracking beneath him.

From his position behind one of the taller rocks, Dende twitched as he felt the ramifications of Piccolo's impact and on a reflex, he jerked forward, his limbs tensed with animalistic fear.

"Uh…Mr…Piccolo…sir?" he whispered, peering into the newly formed crater as the dust and smoke cleared. There was a low groan that made Dende jump out of his skin and, shaking his head so some of the smaller, sharper rocks fell away from newly blooming bruises, Piccolo stood.

Dende winced as he took in the damage that had been done, watching as violaceous blood trickled freely from shallow cuts along his arms and part of his stomach. His gi was shredded and clinging to his body in tatters, his lip was swollen.

"You should get out of here Dende," Piccolo said in a low voice, taking a few experimental steps forward and appreciating Nail's insistence that they fuse when he realised that his stamina had dramatically increased. While it was true that he had taken some crucial damage from that last blast, it had hardly affected his Ki.

Dende merely gaped at the older Namekian, completely dumbfounded.

"How do you know my name?" he pressed urgently, needing some answers.

There was a pause as Dende waited for his answer and Piccolo remained stoically still, standing above him with his back turned. After a while, the boy began to think that Piccolo hadn't heard him but then when he glanced back, a fond smile in place, Dende just knew.

"Nail!"

"You didn't think I'd go down that easy did you?" Piccolo asked in Nail's familiar tenor.

"Nail you…when…but that technique…it's…" Dende blustered.

Piccolo shook his head and the fond smile disappeared, replaced with a sudden, sombre expression.

"Get out of here kid," he said simply, his voice returning to its lower pitch as he took off to face the tyrant once more.

Frieza was waiting for him in the air, a malicious gleam in his eye. When Piccolo slowed to a halt opposite him, the tyrant was pleased to take inventory of the damage he had done, experiencing a new level of satisfaction when he thought about the fact that he was able to mortally wound the same person more than once. It was a treat he had honestly never enjoyed before.

"I must say, you Namekians get full marks for resilience," Frieza said earnestly.

Piccolo said nothing, dropping back into a ready stance and facing his opponent with a critical eye. With Nail's guidance, he had known what to expect when the overlord landed a hit but it still came as a shock to the system to take so much damage so quickly. He took a deep breath in and held it for a moment, feeling the air of his planet circulate through and cleanse his system.

He could do this, he would just have to make sure that the overlord didn't land another hit.

Gohan's teeth were clamped together as he watched Piccolo and Frieza face off once more, their punches and blasts colliding in the air and producing shockwaves that Gohan could feel running across his skin. His fists shook as he watched the overlord punch the back of Piccolo's neck and as a blast nearly tore through his almost mentor's foot. His Ki was beginning to climb into dangerous territory but he couldn't bring himself to curb it when someone he cared about was in trouble. Gohan's personal attachment aside, if Piccolo perished in this battle, he took the hope of not only their fallen comrades, but the hope of all other Namekians with him.

"Yo, chill out dude," Krillin's soft voice sounded next to him and he flinched as the bald monk put a hand on his shoulder.

Gohan glanced back at the concerned face of his father's friend and remembered what Sensou had taught him about self control, hissing out through his teeth until he felt himself calming.

"I know you want to help Piccolo," Krillin said soothingly as he felt Gohan's Ki beginning to sift off. "But Piccolo chose to fight Frieza by himself and we need to honour that choice okay?"

There was a moment of critical silence, then Goku's son nodded stiffly, his shoulders remaining rigid under Krillin's light touch. His attention returned to the fight at hand and haphazard adrenaline spiked through him as he watched Piccolo gathering the biggest Masenko he had ever seen.

It was a magnificent display of energy and Gohan's breath caught as he watched it. The polychromatic light grew up until shadows were cast over the land and over Frieza's monstrous figure. It was a perfect orb, an artwork created by a master and somehow the boy was able to feel the gravity of the legacy he had never learned, the demon technique that he was able to use because of a mistake in the universe. The sight of Piccolo wielding this technique stirred something within him.

"MASKENKO!" Piccolo cried out as he heaved himself forward, releasing the energy so it barrelled towards the overlord. The attack wasn't as fast paced as his Special Beam Canon but it carried a harder punch of energy, eating the atmosphere around it as it surged towards the tyrant. Frieza had to admit, he was somewhat impressed when it smashed into his chest and pushed him back through the air, igniting in his gut and turning the world an aurulant yellow.

Gohan could feel the lick of heat as the energy ruptured and bled out into the atmosphere, discharging in random directions as it came up against the hard wall of resistence that Frieza's energy produced. He shielded himself from the heat and light, watching through the slits of his eyelids as the energy eventually died down and everything settled once more.

As the aftermath cleared, Piccolo felt for Frieza's catastrophic Ki and flinched when he realised he hadn't even made a dent.

Frieza emerged from the dying smoke with his eyebrows raised. It had been a long time since someone had provoked tingles to shoot up through his nervous system, blooming out from the space on his chest where the energy had slammed into him. Not since he'd fought his brother or father had he had to deal with that kind of force. He glanced down to check himself over, noticing to his chagrin that he had a few visible burn marks and some slashes dripping dark blood that stung a little when he moved but he was otherwise unmarked.

He scowled up at the Namekian who was staring down at him with a particularly blank expression.

A moment of helplessness.

'_King Kai was right._'

He'd put almost everything he had into that attack, tapping into the newly combined power of both himself and Nail to forge something monumental.

'_I shouldn't have tried to fight for a world I've never been a part of._'

It had done absolutely nothing.

'_I should have accepted the fact that I don't belong anywhere._'

Before he could stop himself, his eyes roamed to Gohan and locked with the demi-Saiyan's; black on black. A silent conversation seemed to pass between them and instinctually, he took stock of the boy's bulging Ki, smiling a tiny, proud smile.

'_You've really done well for yourself kiddo,_' he thought to himself and with a jolt he realised he was subconsciously preparing for the end.

Frieza seemed to know that he had his opponent beaten, flying lazily up until he was on a level with the Namekian warrior. The overlord radiated smugness as he as he unfolded his arms, lifting up his right hand and forming a tiny, razor sharp Ki blast on the end of his middle and index finger. It glowed a luminous mauve, rotating slightly on the edge of his fingers and Piccolo swallowed the saliva gathering in his mouth as he steeled himself.

"You are quite possibly the most talented Namekian I've fought," Frieza admitted, leaning forward slightly so his shoulders and head looked even more bulbous. "But you're still no match for me and I've had enough. You've interrupted my grudge match against these low life wretches, waylaid my quest to avenge my stolen wish and managed to inflict ostensible damage on me. For that, you will pay and trust me, I will not hesitate to finish you off properly this time."

With that said, Frieza flicked his wrist and let the first of many tiny blasts fly. To Piccolo, it felt like that first single attack had suddenly grown up into a monstrous explosion as the tiny blasts detonated together and merged to form something larger. As the rain of attacks kept coming, he could feel slashes opening up on his hands and legs, on both sides of his face and all the way along his back. He felt hot, sticky blood start to pump out of his body, cascading down to decorate the world below them.

It was an awesome attack. Though the energy used to create the blasts was tiny, they could be created in no time at all so Frieza could fire them off within milliseconds of each other and never give his opponent time to dodge or recuperate.

Gohan couldn't help himself this time.

Unable to restrain himself anymore, he let the pent up energy inside himself go, his Ki leaping into the regions of madness once again. Krillin reacted a second too late as Gohan took off in a sling shot manoeuvre around the tyrant and his almost mentor, his fingers missing Gohan's foot by inches as he jolted forwards in the air trying to grab the boy.

Gohan shot upwards, only slowing to a stop when he was sure he was far enough away. His hair whipped out over his face as he collected his mounting Ki, channelling it _all _so that he could launch the most powerful attack he could muster.

"MASKENKO…HA!"

The blast he managed to create by pouring everything of himself into one phenomenal attack was simply colossal. It was almost three times the size of Gohan himself, giving off energy in seismic waves as it assaulted the atmosphere on it's way down to meet the overlord. Everything was bathed in a haze of gold and both Vegeta and Krillin had to throw their arms up to protect themselves from the buffeting winds given off by such a powerful display.

Frieza saw the energy out of the corner of his eye like a yellow sun plummeting down from the outer reaches of space. Firing one last miniature blast at his damaged foe, he turned his full attention to the attack, calculating how much power he'd need to tap into to subdue it. Throwing his hands out, he caught the ball, surprised by the force behind it.

"What the-

Slowly, ever so slowly, the power ball started pushing him down towards the ground below and the tyrant's eyes darted back, an unpleasant shiver running through him as he realised that if this magnificent energy was allowed to impact ground and detonate it could actually do him some substantial damage in this form.

The energy was hot under his fingers and heavy. Every time he tried to launch it back towards the brat, the pressure seemed to increase and he would slip a little further through the air towards the ground. Electric sparks erupted over his skin, setting his nerve endings alight as he continued to hold it off and he flinched involuntarily as the sparks activated his knee jerk reactions.

Gohan continued to hold on to the power ball, pumping more and more energy into it so it would push Frieza down. He was starting to perspire profusely and his hand shook as he held the energy but he refused to let go. If he could just push Frieza a little further…

"I've had enough of you Frieza!" he yelled out, gritting his teeth as he dug deeper and pushed another concentrated wave of energy into the power ball, causing it to almost double in size.

Frieza shrieked as the new Ki collided with him, pushing him down far enough that his tail touched the dirt, skimming along the small rocks and the grass.

"Just a little further Gohan!" Krillin called out from his position in the air, feeling his heart jump as he realised that the tyrant was sincerely struggling with the boy's relentless energy.

Frieza felt his hold on the power ball buckle and with a surge of adrenaline-fuelled panic; he pushed up with gargantuan strength, managing to toss the ball back up into the air away from himself. Piccolo saw it, his eyes darting from Gohan's deadly attack, reversing spectacularly through the sky, to Gohan himself who suddenly seemed so small and his stomach tightened.

Reflexively, he took off into the sky, using Kami only knew what Ki to keep himself in the air, ricocheting towards Gohan at breakneck speed.

It just wasn't enough.

Gohan's dark eyes were huge as he realised that he was about to be torn apart by his own Ki based phenomenon. He had no way of avoiding the attack, still tied to it indefinitely by the channel of energy he was using to pump more power into the destructive ball. There was no way out, this had to be it.

He felt a pin prickle sensation at the back of his scalp and a shiver flow across his skin. The same pin prickle began to develop in the side of his neck until a twitch was born and Gohan found himself whimpering as he remembered what it had felt like to have his neck snapped like a-

_Crack._

_He could feel the pressure of the tyrant's foot on his skull and the agony was unlike anything he had ever experienced. There was absolutely no way out of this, no way to escape his inevitable end. These were going to be the last coherent thoughts he had before Frieza decided to crack his head open like the shell of a nut._

_He struggled futilely, feeling the ebb and flow of panic in his system which eventually seemed meaningless. The tyrant was talking above him in a mocking tone but he didn't care._

_With the last of his sanity, he sought out and latched on to his father's recuperating Ki, holding onto it as hard as he could._

'_Daddy…_'

_Crack._

Gohan was only aware enough to feel as the channel connecting himself to his monstrous undoing was obliterated. His eyes refocused and he watched dumbfounded as something crashed into the side of his rogue energy, sending it careening off in a completely wild direction to explode.

Instinctively, Gohan wrapped his tail around himself and brought his arms up to shield his eyes.

There was a teeth shattering boom and Gohan's energy fragmented, dispersing into millions of smaller energy balls which flew haphazardly over the battle field, annihilating the landscape or discharging harmlessly in the sea, simply creating salty geysers and sea spray. Where the energy hit the ground, there were a series of smaller explosions which forced the land itself to give way or created monumental craters. Eventually, the dust and smoke settled, revealing the new shapes of the remaining islands and Frieza who was looking angrier than ever.

Piccolo shook with the effort to remain upright, tremors running through his body as he regarded his opponent. His vision was starting to warp worryingly round the edges and thanks to that last minute intervention; he was completely spent of energy.

He couldn't believe what Gohan had managed to produce.

He couldn't believe that the tyrant had managed to survive it and though it looked like he had been taken somewhat off-guard, judging by the less than impressed expression he was now sporting, Piccolo knew they had absolutely no chance to beat him if an attack like the one Gohan had just tried had failed.

'_Hm…perhaps this Saiyan's lineage merits investigation after all…_' Frieza thought to himself as he glared at the boy in the sky. '_There's no way the misfit of a prince could be his father…and I doubt those other fools could have produced someone this…interesting._'

The overlord made a point of studying the kid's features closer than he had on his initial inspection, noting once again the resemblance to Raditz. His brow furrowed. Had Raditz been stronger than he remembered? Or was he merely the carrier of a more potently powerful gene passed down to a new generation? Perhaps it wasn't his Saiyan lineage that Frieza should be calling into question, perhaps it was the boy's mother…but then what sort of species was she?

He took a deep breath in and as he exhaled again, the furrow in his brow relaxed.

'_No matter, they all must be expunged anyway…_'

Frieza let his gaze shift from the boy to the other three warriors and Vegeta tried not to cringe under the overlord's scrutiny. As Frieza's eyes roamed to Piccolo, Vegeta let his own eyes dart up to Gohan who looked like he was about to fall out of the sky and then down to the ground where they sought out Dende.

Something inside him squirmed as a far-fetched plan started to form in his mind.

"Well kid, I must say you're two for two. Through what you may have considered an act of heroic bravery," his eyes rested on Piccolo and the Namekian felt his blood run cold, "you have forced me to unleash the true potential of my final form."

'_Final form…_'

Vegeta repeated the words in his head but still couldn't bring himself to believe it. This still wasn't enough? This monstrosity of Ki and muscle _still_ wasn't enough? How much more excessively powerful could one being hope to be without risking their life? Surely it would be impossible to exude more Ki without the danger of severe fluctuations.

The prince wondered if he was finally bluffing but when he felt the first rolling buffer of discharged energy knock into him, he knew the truth. Growling and making up his mind in an instant, he turned to the bald monk beside him and gripped him by his gi.

"Hey what the hell?" Krillin complained as he was hoisted up in the air.

"Blast me," Vegeta said simply, his eyes hard and bright. Krillin stopped squirming enough to blink at the prince.

"Excuse me?" he asked disbelievingly, not daring to repeat what he thought he'd just heard.

Vegeta hissed out his frustrations as Frieza started giving off a resonating light, the repercussions of his oscillating Ki causing ripples to form and flow outwards in the water next to the island he was currently situated on.

"Ugh, can't you feel it?" Vegeta asked quickly, turning so both he and the monk were facing the exhausted kid in the air. "That brat's power has increased since he was nearly fatally wounded by Frieza. How could you have lived with a pair of Saiyan warriors for what I presume is most of your life without realising that Saiyans grow stronger after they've sustained serious injuries?"

Krillin pouted indignantly.

"I'm not an expert on Saiyan specific Ki you know," he snapped.

"Clearly," Vegeta drawled, his eyebrow rising cynically.

Krillin scowled at the prince's patronising tone and almost attacked him on principle.

"How the hell is me blasting you now gonna help?" he asked, squirming again in Vegeta's grip. "You think Dende will heal you up again?"

The condescending expression on the prince's face relaxed into a new expression of mild surprise. He honestly hadn't thought, following how hard it was for the monk to grasp the basics of his plan, that he would catch on to the last part of it so quickly.

"That's the general idea, yes," the prince conceded, throwing Krillin back in the air and preparing himself, fully expecting the little monk to help him out now that he understood.

Krillin shot a fleeting glance at the changing tyrant, tensing as he felt the unsettling instability around the overlord's terrifying Ki. Already his form had become difficult to discern, though it was obvious to see that he was shorter than he had been.

He flinched uneasily and turned back to Vegeta, his hands itching.

"Any time baldy," Vegeta commented coldly, his eyes betraying the pressure he was clearly feeling.

Krillin squeezed his eyes shut and his hands balled into fists at his side.

"I can't Vegeta…I may hate your guts but I can't just blast you without remorse…"

Vegeta's eyes were like ice as they narrowed and Krillin shivered under the chill.

"What?" he muttered.

Frieza's skin was cracking, running with veins of Ki and Gohan watched dumbfounded. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught as Piccolo faltered in the air and before he really had time to think, he'd pelted forward to catch his almost mentor and slow his descent. Purposefully ignoring the mesmerising spectacle of Frieza's final transformation, he made a point of locating Dende's Ki and taking Piccolo as far as he could that way, praying that Dende would heal him.

Being the kind of intuitive boy Dende was, he met Gohan on the grass and took the beaten Piccolo without a word, setting to work immediately. Gohan observed with wide, fascinated eyes as a warm glow enveloped both Dende and the unconscious Piccolo, unable to decide whether to keep an eye on Frieza or if he should continue to watch Dende.

In the end, he decided to observe the end of Frieza's transformation, gasping as a Ki storm began to erupt around the tyrant, obscuring him from view. For a few minutes, the storm was uncontrollably wild with half formed tornadoes smashing down into the water, hurricane force winds driving any remaining trees and bushes from the surrounding area and forks of jagged lightning cutting pathways to the ground. Through it all, Gohan witnessed the rise of a dome of solid energy in the centre, the eye of the storm where Frieza was transforming like a caterpillar in a chrysalis. Then, as the storm was reaching a high tensioned crescendo, everything died down.

Both Vegeta and Krillin paused mid-argument as they felt it, the shape of the tyrant's last transformation, the ultimate Ki of the lord of the universe.

Vegeta glanced down and swallowed, his bravado failing ever so slightly.

'_Why did the royal Saiyan house have to come up against this monster? Why have I not been able to fulfil my father's prophecy and attain the legend…when that brat…_'

His eyes darted to the boy standing on the edge of a ruined island and he felt a full surge of bitter jealousy hit his system. _Jealousy…_for the power of a half Saiyan _toddler._

"Don't give me that do-gooder remorse garbage," Vegeta snarled. "Blast me or I swear I'll kill you."

Krillin's eyes were fixed on the space below him where Frieza's silhouette had just become visible, he could make out the smooth contours of the overlord's muscles and the long, fleshy tail. He had never been so scared in his life.

For some reason, Krillin's terror seemed to set something off inside the Saiyan prince. He felt something give way inside him, a barrier breaking and with a wild yell; he lunged at the monk, his fist parting the air as it curved round towards the monk's cheek in a blatant right hook.

Krillin yelped and reacted automatically, firing off a reflexive blast of Ki that pierced straight through Vegeta, throwing him back in the air.

A cascade of blood.

The falling Saiyan prince.

Gohan glanced up as he felt Vegeta's Ki take a drastic plunge and stared with horrified eyes as the prince dropped out of the sky, leaving a sanguine trail through the air like an arrow pointing to the culprit, the initiator of that deadly attack.

Krillin's face was turned away; his expression was hard and strained. He honestly hadn't considered the possibility that Vegeta might push him to this and just as he had when he'd fought Guldo, he felt an immense sense of guilt and self loathing. Even if the prince had pushed him, he should have been able to restrain himself.

Gohan frowned hard at the monk in the air for a moment, trying to figure out just what the hell could have happened to provoke Krillin to do something like that but his attention was drawn back to the tyrant as the dust and debris disturbed in the Ki storm began to settle.

This form was smaller than Frieza's previous forms, standing close to that of his initial height though the truly nightmarish Ki signature attached to this form made him seem gargantuan. The ridged pink skin on his arms and legs had been replaced with defined muscles of smooth white, his nose had become small and flat. The domed head had shrunk back to normal proportions and the horns had disappeared. It seemed to Gohan that, compared to what he had looked like before, he now appeared almost featureless, devoid of any definition.

Somehow the effect was worse than the elaborate nightmare of his third form. He looked like a sleeker, more efficient fighter and fear gripped Gohan.

"This is madness," a voice behind him said. Gohan glanced up, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of Piccolo over his shoulder. His clothes were ragged, ripped to shreds by the bombardment of tiny Ki blasts but his body was pristine, devoid of the cuts and burns that should have been his most prominent features. He offered Gohan as small smile when he realised the kid was staring at him, a rarity.

"Thanks for your input kiddo," Piccolo said, putting his hand on Gohan's head. The gesture was so absent-minded yet so tender that it made the boy ache with regret and remorse. How many times had Gohan accidentally demolished his Namekian friend in the dark training dimension Sensou had dropped him into? How many times had he watched his friend fall limply out of the air, never to rise again?

'_You are a danger to them_'

He opened his mouth to say something but Piccolo's attention had diverted as the tyrant stepped slowly, smoothly over the lip of the crater he had created with his Ki storm. He took a deep breath in, letting his lungs expand and his incarnadine gaze rested on Gohan.

Gohan bit the inside of his cheek to keep his lower lip from wobbling.

"This has been most invigorating but I'm tired of these games," Frieza said simply. To Piccolo and Gohan, it looked like he hardly moved at all. A simple twitch of the arm and a Ki blast like a laser beam was heading towards Gohan. Piccolo merely caught a glimpse of it refracting the light in the air before it hit, throwing the kid backwards into a jagged rock formation.

Horror.

Complete and all-encompassing horror.

Piccolo had been standing right next to the boy, _right next to him _and had been able to do nothing.

He searched for Gohan's Ki as the energy exploded, levelling a substantial part of the island they were standing on, panicking when he couldn't feel anything at all.

_There was nothing he could have done. _

Vegeta clambered to his feet as the first explosion of re-engaged battle erupted over one of the close islands and he felt as the kid's Ki slipped. Biting back profanities, he lurched forward, spotting Dende through bleary eyes in the sky as the small Namekian flew in Vegeta's direction, away from the destruction.

The prince tried to fortify himself and cry out but as he tried to force out something vocal, his body gave a painful retch and blood spewed out from his mouth, trickling down his face in a truly macabre spectacle. He doubled over, fighting off the need to pass out and heaved uselessly. Mentally, he cursed the little monk for going overboard and glanced up at the green sky, watching as the boy flew overhead.

"Hey…boy…" he managed weakly and slumped onto his knees, clutching at his wound with both hands.

With his super sensitive ears, Dende heard the whisper and his head jerked down, his eyes locking onto the broken form of the Saiyan warrior.

He hesitated.

'_Guru taught me that our abilities should only be used to help those with pure intentions…but Guru was never in a situation like this._'

He peered out through the clearing air, searching for Gohan's Ki. When he couldn't sense it right away, he whimpered, trying to contain the mounting hysteria and dig deeper, focussing everything he had on finding the familiar signature of Goku's son. And sure enough, it was there, coming to light at the edge of his mind. He breathed out a sigh of fast relief before turning to scrutinise the tyrant. When he saw the way the overlord was looking at Piccolo…_Nail_…he made up his mind and dropped out of the sky, landing warily before the Saiyan prince.

Vegeta only noticed when Dende's feet came into view, touching down lightly on the grass before him.

"Heal…me…" he managed to demand though talking cost him. He fought not to drop forward onto the grass, refusing to succumb to the need to just pass out for a while. He could feel himself coming apart at the seams, only his Saiyan pride keeping him from giving in.

Dende glared at him, feeling a confusing wrench of pity and intense dislike. He could see the dark intent attached to this man like a black aura and it honestly made the young Namekian want to turn away. Indecisively, he warred with himself, letting his fists clench and unclench as he tried to decide what to do. What was really for the best? Would healing a tainted soul like this contribute to the greater good?

_Would Nail be saved?_

"Listen, I will heal you…but you have to promise that you'll fight Frieza while I heal Goku's son…and Nail…if he needs it…okay?"

Vegeta was sure his ears had filled with blood as his precious life-fluids attempted to drain through any orifice available. The boy's speech had sounded mangled, off but he had caught the essentials. The boy would heal him but he had to promise that he would fight Frieza. The Saiyan prince simply nodded as he felt himself reaching the end of his tether, sinking forward until he was resting in an oozing puddle of his own blood.

Dende took a deep breath and held it, letting his hands work over the body of the Saiyan prince.

Frieza held up a hand, purposefully making a slow, precise movement to play with his Namekian opponent. He smirked as the green skinned man flinched and let the energy dance on his fingertips.

'_Try predicting my moves now scum,_' he thought to himself as he made to launch his attack.

There was a moment of ominous foreboding.

Piccolo braced himself.

'_Gohan…I'm sorry…_'

Time seemed to slow and Piccolo was immobilised, watching the energy burst freely from Frieza's fingers to skim along the water towards him. Contrastingly, his heartbeat seemed to be thundering out a million miles an hour, pounding against his chest as his breath caught, urging him to do something. At the last possible moment, he closed his eyes.

* * *

_Will Piccolo be killed outright by the full power of this monster? Will Vegeta come back as a Super Saiyan when Dende's finished his mystical magical mumbo jumbo? Is Gohan going to be okay?_

_FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON…Teen Titans!_

_(sings) When there's trouble you know who to call…Z FIGHTERS!_

_Reviews nullify the pain in my noggin' (sobs)_


	24. The Psychology of Prince Vegeta

_Tuesday update as previously promised so that I can leave you with something to keep you going while I'm away in the vast wide world. As always, a few things to note:_

_1) The reference that King Kai makes to Enma. Generally, I believe this term is simply another name for King Yemma. It would make sense for King Kai to use his various names due to his collective knowledge of Otherworld and the mythologies that permeate his particular galactic sector. Plus, I think, somehow, using various names makes King Yemma seem more powerful. Don't ask me why._

_2) I've tried to be in depth with my exploration of Vegeta's character and have tried to keep things more or less in canon. I am aware that King Vegeta and Frieza didn't actually use the exact words that I have written but I'm sure the gist is more or less the same. Hopefully there's nothing too pivotal that I've missed or changed but if there is, apologies, it was probably tweaked for plot purposes._

_3) As always, spelling, grammar and the weather for this week have been obsessively checked but as always, if I have missed anything at all, I apologise._

_4) Thank you so much for your reviews, favourites, follows etc. I really appreciate the support and the comments and hope that you continue to enjoy this story!_

* * *

**23: The Psychology of Prince Vegeta**

With his eyes open, Piccolo had always been able to hear the general sounds of the world; the scuffling of creatures as they snuck through the trees and bushes that littered his home on Earth, the low rumble of the cities in the distance and when he had been looking after Gohan, he had been able to hear the kid muttering to himself from a fair few miles away.

With his eyes closed, Piccolo could hear in much higher definition. He could hear not only the pounding of his own panicked heart, but the steady thudding beat of Gohan's as the kid lay sprawled out amongst the debris behind him. He could hear the sizzle of Ki as it barrelled towards him and he could hear the parting of the air as someone pelted towards him at high speed.

There was a grunt and a hit and Piccolo listened to the sound of the energy changing direction, shooting off in an arc to harmlessly decimate a nearby island. Not daring to believe what could possibly have happened, Piccolo let his eyes fall open until he was staring straight at the prince's back.

Vegeta sneered at Frieza, his arm vibrating in place, smoke billowing out from his closed fist where he had knocked the blast wild. Frieza simply met this defiant expression with a cold look, un-amused.

Piccolo gaped openly at the prince, completely staggered by his dramatic rise in Ki. Only a few moments before, his energy signature had been within the realm of reason but now it was pushing into new, phenomenal territory. What was going on? Had the prince been holding back all this time to catch Frieza off guard? Why would he wait to reveal his true power until Frieza had transformed? Was it because he wanted to defeat Frieza at full capacity to prove himself?

Piccolo shook his head, Vegeta's power didn't matter.

"Stay out of this Namek," Vegeta spat back at Piccolo without turning round to regard him. "This is my fight."

"Be my guest," Piccolo muttered, edging back towards the rock formation where Gohan was yet to emerge. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dende creeping forward with far less practiced stealth. He prayed that the boy wouldn't draw attention to himself, perturbed when he felt a genuine concern for the kid's wellbeing due to Nail's inherited memories.

Frieza's lips quirked up as he scrutinised the prince of all Saiyans. No matter how over-powered he was, he was going to enjoy crushing this little monkey prince. Though he'd had a lot of satisfaction tormenting this emphatically proud character over the years, he could not tolerate an outright rebellion and he meant to deal with it as ruthlessly as possible.

"My Vegeta, coming to face me all on your own after seeing the true power of my final form? I never really took you for a suicide case," the overlord jeered.

Vegeta cocked his head to one side, his eyes sharp, and the sneer still in place.

"Perhaps I just don't want to share the glory when I finally kill you."

Frieza chuckled once, a harsh sound in the stillness following the recent chain of attacks.

"I suppose that _is _like you," the tyrant admitted, raising his hand to beckon Vegeta forward.

Vegeta simply shrugged before launching forward, engaging in a furious grapple with his former tormenter, throwing out swift punches to the face and midriff that Frieza could only dodge.

As the two of them took off, Dende knelt and started digging frantically through the rocky rubble, moving stone slabs and pebbles until he caught a glimpse of Gohan's black gi. Piccolo kept his eyes on the fight, or as much as he could follow, before he deemed it safe to move back and help Dende excavate his fallen friend. After a few minutes of furious digging, Piccolo gripped Gohan's limp wrist and tugged him up, laying him carefully out on the ground so Dende could start to heal him.

It was as Gohan was surrounded by incandescence that Frieza happened to glance back and spot the group huddled on the island. He watched, intrigued as he dodged Vegeta's onslaught, noticing as the wounds on the demi-Saiyan started to close, as the kid opened his eyes, blinking rapidly.

_The little Namekian boy was healing him._

'_So that's how these cretins managed to survive my attacks,_' Frieza thought to himself, feeling indignation and rage bubbling up sickeningly through his chest.

'_How dare they defy me._'

With a yell, Frieza tossed out a vindictive Ki blast that caught Vegeta in a glancing blow as he tried to dodge, sending him plummeting down towards the water. As the prince fell, before he could right himself and re-engage in battle, Frieza lifted his hand up, took aim through squinting eyes, and shot a pin point blast of energy.

They had no time to see it coming.

No time to react.

Dende simply felt something explode on his chest, his hands faltering over the last of Gohan's wounds and then his whole world was fire.

He didn't feel the choking heat, couldn't feel the fire licking at his skin, encouraging burns to ravage his green flesh. All he could comprehend was that these were quite clearly going to be his last moments and he was too afraid to feel the pain.

Through the flame, his eyes locked with the little demi-Saiyan's for a split second before everything clouded over.

Piccolo made an involuntary noise of horror as Dende's Ki ebbed away, unable to do anything to save the poor kid. In the back of his mind, he felt a pang of real, powerful sorrow related to Nail's close connection with the boy and struggled not to throw up.

"H…hey…"

Gohan's hand seemed to lift of its own accord, reaching out to the boy still engulfed in slowly dying flames. On a reflex, Piccolo grabbed on to the black gi and yanked Gohan out from beneath the body as it fell face forward into the space that Gohan had just vacated. In one smooth movement, he pulled the boy into a fierce embrace, making sure that the demi-Saiyan's face was buried in the folds of his gi so he couldn't see the resulting charred mess that was once the Namekian child.

He held his breath as he felt the tension in Gohan's small frame.

In the air, Vegeta had managed to halt his descent, pausing as he gathered energy for his next attack when he felt the little Namekian's Ki drop and then vanish. With a sense of dread blooming deep in his stomach, he turned back to survey the damage, snarling as he caught a glimpse of the roasted body and the adult Namekian clinging to Kakarot's half breed.

Piccolo's eyes met Vegeta's and the two of them exchanged meaningful glances.

"Oops, my aim must have been off," Frieza commented blithely above them, smirking as Vegeta shot him a withering look.

The prince could feel the energy tingling in his fingertips, growing exponentially as he was filled with a primal anger. Frieza had just taken away the key to his power increases, a vital advantage that could have insured the overlord's defeat. Now, he was stuck like this…The power up that he had received through Dende's rapid healing session had to be enough this time.

The energy pooled in his hands as he thrust them out to either side of his head, casting the world into icy blue shadows. Static electricity twined across his body, slowly being sucked into the blasts as they grew stronger. He put everything he had into them, using his pride to dig deeper than he had ever dug before, reaching down into the deepest recesses of his energy reserves to find even the barest scraps of energy. This time, he wouldn't be defeated. He would prove himself as a Super Saiyan and avenge his people. He would fulfil the legend as his father always said he would.

With a howl, Vegeta clapped his hands together so the two extraordinary balls of energy merged and began to spiral up towards the tyrant.

Frieza's expression faltered as he watched the power ball barrelling towards him, bolts of malicious energy flicking outwards like lightning as it approached. The overlord took in the jagged shape of the blast, considering its un-kneaded potential before admitting that this was the most impressive display the prince had ever managed to put on. If he had been in any of his other forms, he would have been somewhat damaged but as he was now, as close to godhood as he was able to get, it was completely ineffective.

He smirked again and dropped towards the energy; his arms crossed over his chest as he sunk below the blast and aimed a swift knee to the underside of ball, watching with interest as it shot up through the sky like a crashing meteorite in reverse to explode harmlessly in space.

There was a flash of flooding light and Piccolo's eyes snapped shut against the harshness. A resounding boom shook the land a few seconds later and Piccolo could feel Gohan's fist tighten almost imperceptibly in the folds of his gi. A heat wave rolled out over the land and then everything became still. Waiting for a few seconds, Piccolo tentatively opened his eyes to find himself facing the most awe inspiring mushroom cloud he had ever seen blooming up above him and covering their island in newly formed grey cloud.

Instinctively, he glanced up at Krillin to make sure the bald monk was okay, his eyes narrowing when he saw the monk with his mouth hanging wide open.

* * *

"Oh no…it was such a good effort…no."

Yamcha paused in the air above Tien, stilling the fist he was about to send flying into the triclops' abdomen to throw a look of concern at King Kai's back. Tien kept his eyes on his opponent for a moment longer before he too let his eyes flick over to the old master.

There was a moment of silence broken only by the sound of ruffling fabric as King Kai slowly linked his hands behind his back and lowered his head.

A mark of respect.

Yamcha felt his stomach jump up into his throat, falling out of the air as his concentration slipped to land awkwardly on the ground. He staggered for a moment before breaking into a lope towards King Kai, pressing his hand gently against the old master's back.

"What is it King Kai?" he asked, fearing the worst. Every time he thought about how his friends were engaged in a battle with a tyrant that made the combination of Nappa and Vegeta look like harmless civilians, his skin crawled, sending uncomfortable shudders along his nervous system. When he thought about how close Bulma was to all of this…well honestly, he felt a little sick.

"It's Vegeta," King Kai said solemnly and Yamcha felt a wave of relief roll through him.

"The prince has literally given everything he has to avenge the loss of his planet and his people but it just wasn't enough. He knows he's going to die."

Yamcha felt his heart still for a moment.

"By Enma, Frieza's cruelty knows no bounds…he's dragging it out, knowing that Vegeta is inches away from breaking down. He wants the prince to suffer in every way possible, not just physically but mentally and spiritually as well, waiting until Vegeta begs for death."

Yamcha heard the sharp intake of breath from Tien behind him and suppressed a shudder. So what if Vegeta was suffering? He'd caused enough problems when he'd landed on Earth, had probably murdered enough innocent people…

He took a deep breath in and held it, trying not to pity the fallen prince.

"Vegeta has lived his entire life under the rule of the tyrant," King Kai whispered. "He's spent every waking minute of his life envisioning ways to destroy that power and now, because he was unable to fulfil the legend as his father predicted, he'll die like a dog – alone on some alien world."

Behind the old master, Yamcha grit his teeth as he felt the prince's desolation through the connection to Namek that King Kai was maintaining and slowly, he removed his hand from the old master's back. The crushing abjection faded and Yamcha felt a swirl of shame replace it. Vegeta may have been essentially a villain, but nobody deserved what he was feeling…nobody deserved to have their life end that way.

In the silence that followed King Kai's last whispered statement, Yamcha let his hands connect behind his back and he bowed his head.

* * *

Frieza's smile was triumphant as he looked on the dejected prince in the air.

"Out of ideas Vegeta? I guess that means it's my turn."

For once, Vegeta was unable to respond, motionless in the air as he tried to process the sudden realisation that had hit him.

This was futile.

_All of this _was futile.

He'd put everything into that last attack, absolutely everything, maybe even a little bit more and still the overlord had emerged without a scratch.

Hopeless.

_He still remembered the moment. _

He stared at the tyrant smirking cockily at him and felt the heat rise in his face. All stratagems seemed to dissolve in his mind; it was simply him and his tormentor.

_The throne room on the invasion vessel was smaller than any of the constructions he had seen on Frieza's conquered planets but it still reeked of authority as his father strolled towards the overlord. His father walked with the confident air of royalty and he, prince Vegeta, was so proud of that man, proud to be the prince of all Saiyans – his destiny to follow in that man's footsteps. The insignia of Vegeta's royal house flashed on his father's chest._

He'd done everything he could and had still failed, even after his father had predicted that he would achieve the legend, even after Kakarot's half breed brat had showed the first signs of achieving something that _looked _remarkably like what his father had described. Vegeta had trained for years with that goal in mind, had pushed himself to the limit and beyond – what had the kid done to achieve it?

"_Lord Frieza, I've come to discuss the terms of the treaty as previously agreed."_

_King Vegeta folded his arms across his chest as the tyrant regarded him out of disturbing, blood red eyes. For a long while, the two were engaged in an intense staring match before Frieza broke eye contact, looking over a series of monitors depicting a gathering of Saiyans in the upper atmosphere of planet Vegeta. _

_The rebel army._

Frieza breathed in, letting his muscles flex fluidly, knowing it would upset Vegeta's composure if he showcased his enjoyment of this moment.

"Shall we?" he asked and didn't wait for a response. Vegeta hardly managed to blink the hot, unwelcome tears from his eyes when the first strike connected.

_King Vegeta's composure was never shaken. His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly but his stance didn't shift. The prince watched from the shadows, convinced that Frieza was about to pay for what he'd done to the Saiyan populace via his corrupt 'Planet Trade'._

"_Men!" King Vegeta barked, ordering his accompanying soldiers to advance but even though he was surrounded by their planet's equivalent of the elite, warriors that had attained this title by being the bravest, most accomplished fighters on Vegeta, each and every one of them was frozen in fear. _

Vegeta hacked up a mixture of bile and saliva as the strike impacted major organs. For a moment, he was suspended on the blunt, anvil like end of Frieza's fist but then he felt the Ki fluctuation as the fist was fortified with strength so it could drill further into his body, putting pressure on his vitals.

He let out an involuntary whimper which turned into a grunt as he was thrown through the air.

_King Vegeta turned back to face his men with an expression of quiet, burning disappointment before strolling forward to face the beast himself. From his hidden position, the prince watched as Frieza's lackeys shifted so their stance was more threatening and held his breath, his tail weaving out agitatedly behind him._

"_Hold Zarbon," Frieza said, fixing King Vegeta with a cold gaze as the man continued to march forward._

"_Honestly Vegeta," the overlord said. "A rebellion? After you so cleverly arranged a treaty to put your people under my protection? What's brought this on?"_

_King Vegeta smirked, pausing inches from Frieza's throne, towering over the lizard-like tyrant._

"_Word through the network is that you're afraid of us Frieza," King Vegeta hissed, his voice low enough that only Frieza and his two closest henchmen could hear._

_Frieza's smile faltered ever so slightly and the prince did not miss it. _

He smashed into the water, sinking below the waves until all he could see was the reflection of light on the water's surface above him. Automatically, he sucked inwards, getting a mouthful of water for his troubles. His side felt like it was on fire and the flames were starting to spread through him, setting other parts of him on fire. The water in his lungs did nothing to put out the inferno raging through him and he barely felt as his back touched down on soft mud through the pain.

_Frieza's eyes seemed to be boring holes into his father's head but King Vegeta stood as firm as ever. _

"_The general consensus among my advisers is that you're planning to wipe out the entire Saiyan race. As King, I cannot allow that."_

_Frieza took a deep breath in through his nose, pinching the space between his eyes for a moment to indicate that he was deeply frustrated._

"_You really are loathsome little monkeys aren't you? As lord of universe, I cannot allow that."_

_Frieza sneered and the prince could see a vein starting to throb in his father's temple. He felt the jump of his own pulse and watched excited as his father drew back, his closed fist aimed smartly._

Darkness was starting to close over him and reality started to merge with his memories in a truly disconcerting manner. In a moment, he was stuck squatting in his hiding place, watching the encounter between his father and the tyrant, then he was lying at the bottom of the Namekian ocean, waiting for the crushing black oblivion to diminish the remainder of his life.

He could see Frieza standing above him on a rock far to the surface and watched sluggishly as the tyrant started to part the sea with his Ki until the water drained around him. He spluttered uselessly and curled in on himself.

Frieza watched him shrivel up like a slug that had been subjected to torture by salt. He grinned nefariously and slowly descended into the bowl of water he had created. He paused for a moment to take a mental picture of the broken prince, relishing the thought of reliving this moment later on when he was bored.

"Oh Vegeta, you really have been a worthwhile investment. I haven't been this entertained in years."

His tail whipped out from behind him, slithering forward to wrap around the prince's exposed throat.

On the surface, Gohan's own tail twitched in response. Piccolo caught the subtle movement and grabbed the boy's shoulder, holding it firm. Gohan threw Piccolo a dark look over his shoulder but his expression softened when he read the understanding in his almost mentor's expression.

They were not to interfere.

_It was something the prince would never forget._

_The surge of power emanating from his father, lighting the room as his fist flew true. The barely perceptible movement from the overlord as he rose, his high kick connecting with the king's jaw. The sharp snap as King Vegeta's neck broke._

_The prince flinched as his father fell back through the air, dead before he hit the ground. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. It took an eternity for King Vegeta's body to make it to the ground and the young prince caught the flash of the royal house insignia as it reflected the lights set into the ceiling of Frieza's invasion vessel._

_The tears fell freely and it was the last time he would ever cry._

Frieza dragged the prince up by his neck and pulled himself back up out of the bowl of water, letting his Ki control go so the water splashed back into place. He landed on the island that the prince's comrades were situated on, purposefully trying to goad a reaction from the party gathered there.

His eyes locked on the half-Saiyan boy's and he smiled victoriously as he began to punch Vegeta in the lower back, squeezing his jugular as he did so.

_Yes, he still remembered the moment._

_His father fell, he was the king of Vegeta but in the next couple of minutes, Frieza took it upon himself to decimate his planet, the rebels and any hope the prince had left._

"_The prince was off-world you say along with that numb skulled soldier?" Frieza asked as he sank back into the ship. The destruction of planet Vegeta played like a light show over the monitors and Frieza watched it with glee._

"_Yes sir, we believe that there are two more confirmed lower class Saiyans currently with off-world assignments with the possibility of a third. We are unable to find data regarding potential exile cases."_

_Frieza waved his hand nonchalantly._

_He didn't care._

Vegeta felt something horrific building inside him, something unnatural. He juddered violently in Frieza's grip, causing the tyrant to falter in his assault and with a sudden agonising writhe; he vomited up a huge amount of thick, tar-like blood. Frieza smiled wanly as the blood melted into Vegeta's chin and ran down into his Saiyan armour, staining the dark material an even darker colour.

There was a harsh tension in the prince's muscles for a moment longer before he fell lax in Frieza's grip.

The overlord sighed a self satisfied sigh and tossed Vegeta aside. The prince flew limply through the air to crash against one of the erratic rock formations, crumpling into a dying heap at the foot of it. His chest heaved laboriously as he fought to breathe.

_This was it._

* * *

The first thing he noticed was that there was something uncomfortable attached to his face and he didn't like it at all. He tried to shift to remove whatever was obscuring his mouth and nose but he started when he felt the uncanny sensation of his limbs moving through fluid.

Carefully, he opened his eyes, surprised to find himself suspended in what appeared to be some sort of high tech fish bowl. At first, he was sure the liquid surrounding him was water but as his eyes focussed and his mind started to clear of the remnant haze of unconsciousness, he realised that this was denser than water, more like a dark blue soup.

Letting his hands flow through the fluid, he touched the nozzle of the oxygen mask, realising that this discomfort was necessary if he wanted to continue breathing.

There was a pause.

And he remembered.

With a sudden lurch, Goku felt at his rib cage, prodding at the space where the hole had been, astounded that everything appeared to be just fine. With meticulous care, Goku checked himself over, searching for wounds, remembering as he did so that he had somehow re-merged with his body. He was himself again and Captain Ginyu was probably dead.

Finding nothing in the way of damage, he took a deep breath and concentrated on the power levels blooming to life in his mind, wrapping his senses around Krillin's Ki which was tainted with fear, _Piccolo's _Ki which was concentrated and battle worn and…

His breath hitched.

He sat up straighter.

Tears leaked out of his eyes to mingle with the thick liquid around him and his fists clenched as he felt around the shape of his son's Ki.

_Gohan's _Ki.

It was agitated and far larger than Goku remembered, astoundingly so in fact but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that his son was out there, somewhere discernible, somewhere…close, oh so very close to Frieza's abominable signature.

He had to get out of the tank.

As if on cue, a monitor in the room outside the tank started beeping, the light flashing a distorted purple through the blue liquid. Around him, Goku could feel the liquid start to move but he didn't have time to wait. Ripping the oxygen mask off of his mouth and nose, he used a resonation of Ki to crack the glass of the tank open, stepping out in his battered orange gi. He took a brief moment to make sure that his clothes were still practical for battle before taking off, sprinting through the corridors of the ship towards the exit.

'_I'm coming Gohan._'

* * *

Frieza folded his arms across his chest as he waited for the prince's choking Ki to fade away completely. Silence reigned over them, punctured only by the shallow, gurgling breaths of the dying Saiyan and the harsh breaths of the demi-Saiyan child as he willed his rage and sorrow to dissipate.

Piccolo was right of course, they shouldn't interfere. While it was true that Vegeta could have been saved if Gohan had jumped in to help earlier, he would have lived a half life in the shadow of that defeat. For a Saiyan, that was almost worse than death and Piccolo understood that because he too was prone to bouts of insane pride.

The tyrant tutted, breaking the silence and rolled his eyes. Before any of them could figure out what he was up to, he'd strolled across the grass and had grasped the fabric of Vegeta's Saiyan armour, lifting him up just enough.

"Always so stubborn Vegeta, you never did learn how to give up the fight," Frieza said with an air of intense boredom. He lifted a clawed hand up, his fingers taut and straight so the sharp nails were pointing at the prince's exposed throat.

"N-

Gohan stopped himself but the noise made Frieza glance up at him, his eyes hard and effervescent. His lips curled upwards and Gohan blanched, turning away as he realised what was about to happen.

The tyrant's hand sped through the air.

Vegeta's eyes closed in acceptance.

'_Father, I failed our people…can you ever forgive me?_'

Suddenly there was an upsweep of air so fierce that Frieza's hand stilled just as the first pointed tip of his nail was pressing into the soft flesh at Vegeta's neck. It took them all a few seconds to realise that the rush of air had been the result of someone landing on the grass of the island, his form glowing with Ki output.

Gohan felt his heart jump into his throat as his eyes adjusted to the luminescence.

Frieza didn't need a scouter to judge the quality of the power on display though when the light dispersed and he was able to see this newcomer's details, he was surprised to see Captain Ginyu or…

Frieza let Vegeta drop back unceremoniously onto the hard ground and straightened, his eyes narrowing as he tried to figure out what was wrong. There was something about the way that Ginyu was holding himself, something about the raw potential in the power he had just witnessed.

Goku's eyes were on his son and despite the fact the universe's notorious tyrant was standing literally 6 feet away, he took three purposeful strides forward and dropped to his knees before a startled Gohan, opening his arms and pulling his son into a tight hug before the boy could protest.

He felt the warmth of his son's skin and the softness of his cheeks. He ran his hand through the thick, wild tresses of Gohan's hair smelling the unfamiliar scents of Namek, blood and a few other things he couldn't place. He could feel that beneath his arms, the kid was a lot skinnier than he remembered and harder, leaner. He'd obviously been training diligently.

Gohan initially stiffened in his father's embrace, bombarded with a monumental feeling of guilt. Didn't his pure-hearted father know that he was out rightly hugging a monster? Didn't his daddy know instinctively that he'd done some horrifying things in his time away?

Eventually though, the guilt began to melt into that embrace and Gohan tentatively put his arms around his father to return the hug.

"Gohan…I'm so sorry I wasn't quick enough," Goku whispered, stroking the boy's hair. He'd been alarmed when he'd felt Gohan tense but he wasn't sure why he should've expected anything else. He had no idea what had happened to his son in his time away, no idea.

Gohan's breath hitched as he realised that his father had been feeling guilty about his capture since the Saiyans had landed on Earth a couple of months ago. He tried to swallow the lump that seemed to have formed in his throat, patting his father awkwardly on the back.

"It's okay daddy."

"I wasn't going to give up, I was going to find you," Goku assured his son, needing the boy to understand that he had never been abandoned.

Gohan didn't respond but his arms tightened around Goku's form and Goku squeezed back, only pulling away when he was certain that Gohan wasn't going to disappear again. As the initial shock of seeing his son again wore off, he was able to get a better look at the boy and what he saw made him feel both proud and sorrowful at the same time.

The boy was still wearing the strange black gi he had been wearing the day of the Saiyan invasion. He'd grown an inch or so in the time that had passed and his hair had been cut. He was indeed noticeably slimmer than he had been when he'd fought the Saiyans, a little undernourished but not starving. His muscles were hard forming lines beneath the shape of childhood and his tail was still swishing out wildly behind him.

It was the eyes and the expression on his son's once innocent face that made Goku feel that pang of hard edged guilt and regret. Gohan had seen things; there was no denying the flint-like edge in his dark eyes, the haunted expression. He had seen things that would test anyone's sanity and the marks they had left were as visible as physical scars.

Gohan shifted uneasily under his father's scrutiny, his hand automatically flying up to clamp over a spot on his neck and Goku frowned, trusting his parental instincts when they warned him that there was something wrong there.

For now though, he shook it off.

"Gohan, you need to tell me what happened to you. We'll have to sit down and have that long talk when this is all over but for now, I need to deal with this and I need you to get away from here."

Gohan opened his mouth to protest but the seriousness in his father's eyes made him recoil, stepping back so he was standing behind Piccolo. Slowly, Goku's eyes rose until they met the Namekian's. For a few seconds, silence passed between them and then almost imperceptibly, Piccolo nodded.

'_Yes Goku, I'll make sure that he doesn't disappear again._'

Goku breathed out and turned to face the tyrant for the first time.

Frieza had let the whole sweet reunion play out without interference, pre-occupied with important thoughts. This was very obviously not Ginyu. This unknown third class Saiyan had obviously managed to re-obtain his own body, a feat unheard of before now which meant that Ginyu was definitely dead.

By the way he had reacted upon seeing the half Saiyan brat, they could only be related. This must have been the boy's mysterious father which made sense when Frieza really thought about it. Ginyu had mentioned that this Saiyan had more power than he had ever seen in an unknown which would account for the kid's phenomenal power output. The question was, then, how strong was this unknown Saiyan really? As a third class warrior he should have been at a natural disadvantage but it appeared that this wasn't the case.

"What's your name?" Frieza asked suspiciously.

There was a pause as Goku glared, taking in the aura of intimidation and sadism around the tyrant. His eyes slipped to Vegeta on the ground and his heart clenched.

"His name…is Kakarot…"

Frieza glanced down at the discarded prince, surprised to find that even with such severe internal wounds, he was still conscious.

"Kakarot?" Frieza repeated, trying to place the name.

"Yes…that's right…" Vegeta managed through gasping breaths.

"Vegeta…don't talk so much," Goku began but the prince silenced him with a look, struggling to find the strength to say what needed to be said.

"Listen…Kakarot…your son…he…almost did it. He almost…became a super Saiyan…"

"Oh here we go," Frieza said, crossing his arms impatiently.

Goku's eyebrow flinched and he glanced back at his little boy who looked completely clueless.

"I know…that you can do it…this time. You have to…destroy Frieza…for our people."

Goku's expression cleared as the prince's voice got weaker and he shifted slightly so he could catch Vegeta's last words. The prince of all Saiyans used the last of his strength to stretch out his fingers pleadingly.

"You have to understand…Kakarot…he made me what I am. I've lived…my whole life under his rule…he forced me to _enjoy _what I did…You can't let him do that…to anyone else."

Goku felt the gravity of those words and his eyes were intense as he watched the transparent tears gathering in the corners of Vegeta's eyes. Something pulled at his insides as he regarded the broken prince, filling him with cathartic empathy. Whatever Vegeta had done under the tyranny of Frieza, whatever atrocities he had committed; he couldn't be blamed for it, not really.

"Please, no more," Goku whispered.

Vegeta could no longer hear him.

"You have to beat him," he rasped. "You have to…Kakarot…"

"Oh for heaven's sake, die already," the overlord muttered. He raised his hand and the Ki blast flew from the tip of his stretched out index finger like the bullet from a gun, piercing straight through Vegeta's chest and stopping his heart instantly. The prince grunted as the blast hit and fell motionless, his hand still outstretched towards Goku's boot.

Goku felt a lurching wave of rage and sorrow wash over him and turned dark eyes on his opponent.

"Why would you do that?" he growled out through clenched teeth. "He was no threat to you."

Frieza threw Goku a judgemental look.

"Oh you'd understand if you'd been subjected to his whining for the better part of a decade," Frieza said easily, his eyes remaining steady as Goku's expression changed to cold disapproval.

With languid grace, the overlord widened his stance, preparing for a battle against a new unknown opponent but to his offense, Goku strode purposefully towards Vegeta, using a controlled Ki manipulation technique to open up a fairly shallow hole in the ground just big enough for the prince.

Crouching, Goku scooped up the limp body of Vegeta and placed him in the make shift grave.

"I think I understand you a little now Vegeta," he mumbled as he started to cover the prince with freshly up-heaved dirt. "You made a lot of mistakes…but it wasn't entirely your fault. Thank you for protecting my son, my friends…I won't let you down."

"Aw," Frieza scoffed as he watched the burial. "Is your little simian ceremony over? Just think, if you'd arrived a few minutes earlier, there was a possibility of sparing him this heinous fate."

Goku stood once more, fixing the tyrant with an intent stare. He fell down into his usual stance without a word, indicating that he was ready to fight.

Frieza let the adrenaline pump through him once more as he too fell into his favoured stance. The two regarded each other for a long time, each mentally preparing for the fight at hand.

For a long time, neither of them moved, their eyes locked in a heated staring match.

The wind blew across the land, whipping Goku's dark hair over his face and as a particularly thick lock of hair swept across Goku's eyes, Piccolo caught as they flicked away from the tyrant towards himself and his son for a split second before falling back to his opponent.

"Come on Gohan," Piccolo said, nudging the boy with his foot as he took off to meet Krillin in the air.

Gohan hesitated, waiting with his father for a moment longer.

_And he had the sudden, violent urge to confess to everything he'd done in that horrible dimension under Sensou's tutelage. His father needed to know that he was a monster._

He swallowed uneasily and opened his mouth but closed it again when he realised that this was a bad idea. His daddy couldn't be distracted right now. He had to fight Frieza with everything he had.

_Gohan would just have to hold on to his revelation._

"You can win dad," he said simply, nodding once before taking off after Piccolo.

Goku smiled a small smile, holding on to his son's Ki in his mind's eye, and waiting until he was sure they were far enough away before turning full focus to Frieza.

The overlord was smirking openly and his stance had shifted ever so slightly. Goku noticed this fluctuation and changed his own accordingly, pushing out into a more offensive starting position.

"You think that sending your son away from the battle is going to stop me from destroying him?" Frieza hissed out, savouring the stony look on his Saiyan opponent's face.

"No," Goku replied levelly. "I think that defeating you will."

Frieza's expression flickered and in that single moment, Goku pushed off, kedging his left foot hard in the ground and using that as leverage to catapult himself through the air. As he flew forward, his arm swept out until his hand was a hard line over his shoulder and as he met the tyrant, his hand flicked out, aiming a well placed chop to what Goku could only hope was a vital anatomical point on Frieza's alien body.

The chop, however, was caught in Frieza's controlled grasp and the attack was easily swept aside. Goku veered off course and dodged on impulse as Frieza's tail came crashing through the air towards his head.

He righted himself in the air in time to stop Frieza's follow up Ki blast with his own nullifying energy and just like that the first grapple was over. Both opponents landed lightly on the grass, eyes intense as they regarded each other.

After a few moments, Frieza's lips quirked up. In one controlled manoeuvre, he crossed his arms over his chest, observing his opponent with a smug expression.

"Well, this is going to be interesting."

* * *

_Will Goku be able to defeat the legendary tyrant? Will he be able to attain Super Saiyan as Vegeta believed he could? Will Gohan be able to confess to the things he's done under Sensou's watchful eye?_

_Find out next time on…Silent Hill!_

_Because colouring is fun!_

_Reviews make waffles - make waffles, not war!_


	25. Struggling

_Apologies for the slightly late update. I am still on holiday until 07/07/2013 and have only just re-acquainted myself with the internet.…A few things to note as always:_

_1) Apparently magma sits at around 700 degrees Celsius to around 1,300 degrees Celsius - this is important to note for Shorai's comment later on regarding a Super Saiyan's inability to survive in temperatures that hot. This may be debatable considering how Goku emerges from the crust of the land after Gohan's re-appearance but I'm sceptical. I believe that Goku's Super Saiyan transformation could have elevated his speed and strength enough for him to deal with the magma effectively but I like to believe that he would still have some serious issues if it touched his skin, otherwise, why the hell did he take so long to re-emerge and why the hell did Gohan lose track of his Ki so suddenly?_

_2) Uuuuuuuuuuuh…I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to mention something about Shorai and Sensou's harebrained scheme in this chapter but I can't remember what as usual._

_3) Spelling, grammar and important belly button lint has been checked. A note on the word 'taloned' which doesn't exist on dear Microsoft word but it worked so well as a description that I left it. I know, I should be taken out to the back wall and shot for my crimes._

* * *

**24: Struggling**

After the first few clashes, Goku realised that he was matched and even exceeded in almost every possible way.

If he aimed a well placed kick to the stomach, Frieza's own foot was there to counter, if he managed to draw a string of blood then the overlord had matched that injury elsewhere on Goku's body. It was like fighting a freight train, something fast and strong, barrelling towards him at an unstoppable rate and all he could do was stand there, waiting to take the hit, hoping to do some damage back somehow.

When they fell once again to one of the battered islands, Frieza tilted his head to the side.

"Where _does _a third class Saiyan like you get this kind of power? You certainly don't fight with usual Saiyan techniques…"

From his crouched position opposite the overlord, Goku smiled knowingly, wiping at a trail of thick crimson leaking from the corner of his mouth with the back of his sweaty hand.

"I'm not really a Saiyan," he said, watching as Frieza's eyes narrowed.

"I know you simians think that just by removing your tail you can pass for something worthwhile but I think we all know the truth here. If you're not a Saiyan, what are you?"

Goku planted his feet firmly on the ground and took a deep breath, feeling his muscles bunch up with flowing Ki.

"I'm an Earthling," Goku stated, letting the burning red aura of his favoured technique ignite around him.

"KAIOKEN…X…3!" He cried out, gritting his teeth against the strain on his body as the rivers of Ki inside him engorged and broadened, allowing room for more power to process. His muscles heaved, his bones seemed to stretch and he could feel his tendons tearing but even through the familiar strain, he could tell that this technique amplified to this level didn't take nearly as much effort as it had during his battle with the Saiyans. He knew that if he wanted to take this technique further now, if he wanted to break away from everything he had been taught to dive head first into the pool of innovation, he would be able to pull it off.

Frieza watched the display with interest, mentally cursing his lack of scouter. If there was ever a need to take a measurement of his opponent, it was now, and while Frieza was certain he was still unbeatable, he was also beginning to think that this particular Saiyan, if left to his own devices, may actually pose a very real threat in the very near future. Trying not to get worked up, the tyrant fought to place the Saiyan's age but before he could even begin to rationalise that this Saiyan could only be as young as the death of planet Vegeta, he took a fast flying fist to the centre of his face. His opponent's hard knuckles connected with the bridge of his nose and he heard a heart-stopping crack.

There was a moment of insatiable agony.

Discolouration between red eyes mad with rage and involuntary tears collecting on the edge of damaged tear ducts.

He pulled back and _refused _to raise his shaking hands to his face, watching with mounting fury as the Saiyan disappeared right before him only to appear a moment later behind him, aiming a hard elbow to the back of the overlord's exposed neck.

But the tyrant had caught up with the Saiyan's increased battle tempo and spun round to catch the elbow in a clawed hand, engaging in a new grapple. Goku inhaled sharply and tried to throw himself away but before he could shake the disbelief that someone was able to match his indispensible Kaioken technique and act, Frieza's tail had swept up from behind him to wrap around Goku's throat.

* * *

Sensou straightened on the grass before the dimension window, watching through focussed eyes as Goku appeared on the scene, asking Gohan and the others to take a step back so he could concentrate on simply beating the enemy in front of him. Carefully, the warrior god's eyes slipped from the picture presented on the screen to his brother who was still watching the battle intently.

"It's not over yet Sensou," Shorai muttered, knowing what his brother was going to ask.

The seer frowned as he watched Goku moving across the battle-worn landscape, feeling something tug at the back of his mind. Being a seer, he knew not to ignore even the slightest tingle in his nervous system, not to bypass it off as some misplaced paranoia even if neuroticism often accompanied the gift of future sight. Anything mistakenly brushed off could be a sign of a disturbance in the complex and delicate lay lines of fate. Tentatively, he let himself search the weave of fate, following the progression of the battle past Goku's legendary transformation to…

"Oh…Sensou we have a problem…"

Sensou glanced sharply at his brother's frightened eyes and felt the first inklings of dread saturate his system.

* * *

Goku's ears popped and he flinched involuntarily, provoking the overlord to smirk at his struggling opponent. With precise casualness, Frieza crossed his arms over his chest and adjusted himself so he was leaning with his weight on one foot.

"It is such a pity that it had to end like this, I was expecting a little more out of you considering what your son was able to do," the overlord said, examining his dark nails.

Goku let out a choked gurgle in response, his fingers digging into the pure muscle of the lizard's tail. His windpipe constricted and he bucked as panic-fuelled adrenaline flushed through his system like new blood but in a moment of rationality, he remembered what he had been taught about strangle holds and how to get out of them.

While there was no easy martial technique that could be used to escape a situation like this, it was imperative that he didn't let the reactive panic control him. Instead, he took a millisecond to calm himself, ignoring his opponent's useless banter to focus on moving his chin down slightly. It took a moment for Frieza to realise what his opponent was trying to do, pre-occupied as he was admiring the purple tint that Goku's face had taken on, and by the time he had even the vaguest idea, it was already too late.

Goku's chin dipped down underneath the tail, between his neck and his opponent's hard muscle, and opening his jaw wide, he bit down hard.

The tyrant's eyes went wide for a moment and his tail slackened on a reflex. Goku seized his opportunity and pushed forward, staggering onto the grass as Frieza gave out an un-dignified yelp and clutched at his damaged appendage.

"What is it with you parasites and my tail?" Frieza cried out furiously, massaging at the spot where Goku's teeth had sunk deeply into his flesh.

Goku simply spluttered uselessly for a moment, letting his lungs fill with sweet oxygen. Over the other side of the battlefield, he could feel his son's Ki rising anxiously and willed Piccolo and Krillin to keep the boy in check. In Goku's mind, he could still see Vegeta's planet killer bombarding the atmosphere, bathing the planet in resonating waves of fiery Ki and his son, his tiny son shooting through the air screaming for his daddy and launching an attack of equal quality to save the world.

He couldn't let his son do that again.

He tried to pull himself together but Frieza recovered faster, flying out to aim a taloned kick to the Saiyan's exposed neck. Goku felt it coming and was able to dodge so that Frieza's kick was thrown off course, connecting instead with Goku's muscular arm. A tremor passed over Goku's frame and he hissed as his body absorbed the impact.

Knowing that Frieza wasn't about to let up, he used the resulting shockwaves to launch himself back through the air away from the tyrant, giving himself a second to re-calibrate the angle of his stance before Frieza ploughed forward with a punch to the face and a chop to the stomach.

The two of them re-engaged in a grapple and Frieza was forced to admit as he was bombarded with a wave of solid Ki, that this was probably the most invigorating battle he had ever fought outside the few spars he had been allowed to engage in with his brother.

* * *

"We don't have much time," Shorai said urgently, beckoning his brother forward until Sensou was sitting stiffly in front of him. "Once Goku has transformed, there will be a moment where Frieza loses his composure and sends a devastating blot of Ki into the centre of planet Namek, causing the planet's core to become unstable."

Sensou's lips thinned and anxiety bounced around his stomach like a ping pong ball. Would Gohan still be on the planet when it became too dangerous? Of course he would. Sensou had to applaud the fates for bombarding his super weapon with such frequently life threatening situations. Perhaps Gohan was destined to become so powerful because he actually _needed _that power to simply survive.

"There will be a grapple which Goku will lose and he will disappear beneath the planet's surface to struggle with a pathway of magma. Super Saiyan though he may be, he's still not impervious to temperatures over 1,000 degrees and he won't be fully in control of his newly transformed state so he will need to take time out to pull himself out of that mess."

Sensou was frowning, trying to work out if the legendary Super Saiyan was actually supposed to die in this battle. He thought back to the compendium he had dug out of the recesses of the library, wondering why he'd never thought to see if it mentioned anything about this particular battle.

"Gohan will sense his father's Ki diminish and will assume that he's dead. He will take over the fight with Frieza – and here's where we hit the problem."

Shorai took a deep breath, running his hands through his hair as he fought not to fall into the crack that had emerged in the web of fate, eager to get everything out so they could start trying to figure out how to avoid this foreseen disaster.

"Originally, Gohan was to fight to keep Frieza at bay, managing to survive until Goku returned by enticing the overlord into a game of chase. Now…there's a rift…Frieza may very well just kill the boy."

Sensou blinked, his eyes bugging out slightly.

Frieza was just going to kill the boy.

A snap of his taloned fingers and the warrior god's super weapon would be no more.

He'd worked so hard to train the whelp…

_It could not happen._

"What can we do?" Sensou asked, his voice monotonous as he tried to quell the rising dread inside him.

"I was hoping you might have an idea," Shorai admitted, looking hopefully at his brother.

Sensou took a deep breath in and held it as he frowned, pinching the bridge of his nose as he thought. There had to be some way out of this mess, some way to convince Frieza to…to what? Spare the boy? After what Gohan had managed to do to him? Impossible.

Shifting into a crouch, the warrior god turned to face the dimension window once more, churning over the information Shorai had presented to him. He watched vaguely as Goku took a bludgeon to the head and shot down into the peak of a volcano. The scene on the window shifted to Gohan as the boy's Ki spiked and Sensou could see his tail whipping out behind him agitatedly.

_His tail…_

"Shorai…you said Frieza's energy blast makes the planet's core unstable, correct?" Sensou asked slowly.

Shorai raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out what Sensou was getting at.

"Yes?"

"Surely that would have detrimental effects on the planet…freakish weather etc, right?"

Shorai took a brief look at the landscape of Namek through the memory of his vision, cataloguing the devastation - the thick, tar coloured clouds, the lightning storms and the tornadoes touching down violently in water or on broken land.

"…Yes?" he said eventually.

Sensou's eyes were alight with cunning as he responded.

"If the sky is dark enough, the conditions would be right for a Ki blast that replicated moonlight…"

Shorai's eyes widened as he cottoned on to his brother's plan.

"Gohan would transform…"

"…and could keep Frieza subdued," Sensou finished, pulling a face. "I never taught the boy the technique to replicate moonlight…with Namek's suns; I didn't think it would be a worthwhile skill to learn for this battle."

Shorai felt his heart beat stagger in his chest and gulped uneasily. He had an idea of how this particular obstacle could be overcome but he didn't like it. Still, desperate situations called for desperate solutions and this was certainly becoming a desperate situation.

"We can ask permission of the Four Winds to create the ball of moonlight ourselves," Shorai said quietly. "Ma could take you so you could create the ball…"

Sensou's expression morphed from stoic concentration to intense disbelief. The change would have been comical under different circumstances.

"Have you lost your mind brother? We are not permitted to make physical changes in dimensions that are not our own. Our own fates could unravel if we interfere, I'm not even a seer and I know that."

Shorai nodded, waiting until Sensou was finished before replying.

"I know that brother but this is not exactly a normal situation. There's a rift involved and the rules can be bent to right things again if necessary. The least we could do is ask…I don't know about you but I don't exactly have a better plan at the moment and Goku's not far away from transformation."

Sensou regarded his brother through steely eyes before glancing back at the dimension window, watching his super weapon vibrating on the back drop of the green Namekian sky.

"Alright…how long have we got to make this request?"

* * *

Goku dodged beneath Frieza's attack and aimed a sharp jab up into the tyrant's exposed rib. Frieza jerked automatically as he felt the stab of hard fingers in a sensitive area giving Goku just enough time to gather the energy he needed.

"Ka…me…ha…me…HA!"

The sky was bathed in azure light as the energy flared to life in the air. It barrelled down towards the overlord much faster than Krillin remembered it ever being and connected. The ball of energy exploded so shots of wild Ki rained down over the battlefield, deepening the craters that had been left behind after both Gohan and Vegeta's earlier attacks.

For a moment, blind hope jumped up in Krillin's system but then he saw the monster appear behind Goku without a scratch on him. His hope slipped away but he tried not to let his facial expression change in case the vibrating boy beside him caught on to his despair and surged forward rashly to try and help his father out of a situation deemed futile.

Goku sensed Frieza's shift and moved reflexively, throwing himself back in the air for all the good it did him. The back of the overlord's hand connected with Goku's jaw and the Saiyan warrior staggered under the impact. When he managed to correct his stance to face Frieza once again, a new trail of dark liquid was slipping down from a cut lip to mingle with the dirt on his face.

"My, you are absolutely filthy," Frieza commented casually. "I don't think it would be wise to continue fighting with wounds that could become infected. Why don't you take a moment to have a bath?"

Before Goku could figure out what Frieza meant by that particularly cryptic taunt, the tyrant's fist had collided with the side of his face once more and he was sent free-falling down into the water below, skimming on the surface like a rounded pebble before sinking beneath the waves.

Frieza smirked unpleasantly and flew down, dipping his foot under the waves to rest on his opponent's head. His muscular feet locked in Goku's hair and in a moment, the pathetic monkey was panicking.

Goku struggled beneath the water, clamping both hands around the tyrant's leg but it was like trying to shift a vice. He could feel his lungs starting to burn and his vision start to waver as he fought to hold the air in but it was no use. In a moment, flashes of darkness seeped over his eyes and he lost the precious air he had been trying to hold in. The bubbles spiralled up in the water before him to break on the surface and Frieza's smirk widened when he saw them popping just in front of his water-logged victim.

"It seems it was too difficult for me to wash away the filth contaminating the Saiyan blood line. Oh well, I guess the only thing to do is drown the parasite infested creature so it can't spread the corruption," the tyrant muttered to himself.

Beneath the surface of the water, Goku sagged like a sack and closed his eyes, out of energy and out of time.

* * *

_There was a wind._

_But the wind was lonely._

_It blew across a barren landscape littered with craters and cracks. _

_There had been a battle here._

_Every so often, he'd be able to see the finer details of a village smashed to ruin with tinted glass littering the ground and fallen rubble crushing the many vegetable patches the Namekian's had obviously spent time and care nurturing._

_Eventually though, there was nothing but the wind running over the landscape…_

…_and the body._

_At first, Goku thought it was Vegeta. Someone had obviously dug the prince up though Goku couldn't figure out for the life of him why anyone would want to desecrate something as sacred as a grave. Sure, Vegeta's burial hadn't exactly been the state affair it probably should have been what with him being royal and everything but Goku had created Vegeta's grave out of respect and that, to him, was enough._

_As he drew closer though, pulled by some invisible force, he realised that it wasn't Vegeta laying stomach down in the dirt, his face turned away to stare out at nothing._

_The breeze tugged at the baggy fabric of his orange gi, the relentless sun glinted on his domed head. The eyes, still open in death, held an expression of fear though they were shadowed with the lack of life._

"_Krillin?" Goku cried out and as soon as he uttered the bald monk's name, the invisible force pulling him forward changed direction, skirting around the lonely body on Namek and yanking him away._

_There was a shift and the backdrop was fire._

_He knew by the buildings and the bodies carpeting the ground that this was Earth. In the distance, he could just make out Bulma's home, the Capsule Corp as it fell to the fire, crumpling like it was made of paper Mache rather than bricks and mortar._

"_No…" he whispered._

_As he watched the decimation of his oldest friend's home, he tried to feel out the Ki of his loved ones, pictures of their smiling faces running through his head, superimposed over the fire to create something sinister._

_He felt out for Tien and Chaotsu in the mountains but drew a blank. He felt out for Yamcha at the local stadium but drew a blank. He felt out for Master Roshi, Oolong, Puar, then Yajirobe and Korin, the Ox King of Fry Pan Mountain – even Kami and Piccolo…_

_Nothing._

_With a terrible feeling in his heart, he felt out for Chi Chi at their home, picturing her face in his mind – the dark hair whipping over her face as she opened the window in the kitchen, the way the light caught on her porcelain skin as she dug up the garden on a sunny day, the way she would get so angry and lash out at him only to give him tender reconciliation later on._

_But again there was nothing._

_Then he heard it._

"_Daddy!"_

"_Gohan!" Goku called out, his voice shattering the eerie silence that hung over the decimated city. He tried to take off towards his son, feeling the flickering Ki, the last life in the world, the most precious one of all but he was stuck steadfast watching Bulma's collapsing home._

"_Daddy!" Gohan's voice cried out again, more terrified now and Goku fought with everything he had to break free of these bizarre restraints. What was holding him here? Why couldn't he shake it off to go to his son's aid? Why did it feel like an anchor on the top of his head?_

"_Help me!" Gohan's voice cried out once more before he heard the sickening sound of something skewering flesh._

"_NO!" Goku screamed, feeling something deep within himself stir._

_There was a primal shift._

_A thudding heart beat._

_And Goku felt his power output breaking the boundaries of conventional thought. _

_But even that power surge was not enough._

_Through some bizarre twist of omniscience, Goku was able to watch as his tiny son crumpled in the rubble from his imprisoned position. As the light left Gohan's eyes and he fell, Goku was finally able to see the tyrant laughing maniacally, his right hand covered in blood and gore. _

_Everything went dark._

"_Kakarot."_

_Goku whipped round in the inky black looking for the fallen prince of all Saiyans. His eyes fell on a shadow in the darkness slowly becoming more defined as Goku stared._

"_What you have been shown is just a taste of what Frieza will do if he's actually able to leave this planet alive."_

_Ever so slowly, Vegeta came into focus and Goku could feel himself gawping openly. The Saiyan prince was completely naked, his muscles providing dynamic shadows as they were bathed in light from an unknown source. His tail had grown back, much longer than Gohan's and left freely to dangle behind him rather than wrapped around his waist as it had been on Earth, a sign that he had thrown off the confines of regiment that he had learnt under Frieza's rule. _

_Other than this, he was exactly the same as Goku remembered him though there was something different about the eyes. The prince still wore his patented look of condescending disapproval but the eyes were calmer, less full of vanity and pride._

"_You can't be soft this time Kakarot," the prince said and his voice echoed through the dark nothingness._

"_You have to have the guts to finish him. Avenge our people completely or watch your own world fall."_

_Goku said nothing in response, knowing somehow that he shouldn't speak. _

"_You can feel the Saiyan blood burning through you, I know you do. I saw the shift in your power, like your son's; I know you can become a Super Saiyan. You just have to grasp on to that legendary power and accept your heritage."_

_Vegeta's image began to fade back into the shadows and Goku felt a profound sense of loss though he wasn't sure why._

"_Grasp onto that legendary power," Vegeta's voice was barely a whisper and Goku had to lean towards him to hear it._

_Then suddenly, though Vegeta's visage had blended completely back into the shadows, it seemed like the prince was right behind him. His voice sounded in Goku's ear._

"_Do it now!"_

* * *

Frieza felt as Goku stopped struggling, his hands slackening around the overlord's ankle and dropping like lead weights into the water. Triumphantly, the tyrant tossed a glance at the others in the sky, regarding the aura of the young boy which was pulsating around him like a distant flame.

"Well, that takes care of that," Frieza muttered smugly.

In true methodical fashion, the tyrant started to separate his remaining opponents in order of how much of a threat they posed. It was obvious that the boy would have to be the first to go. With his power and his naivety, Frieza would-

He glanced down sharply as the water around the foot still holding on to the unconscious Saiyan started boiling. For a few seconds, Frieza simply stared disbelievingly at the water before pulling his foot out and complaining mightily as he examined blistering flesh. With livid eyes, he glared at the water, wondering what the hell had just happened until there was an upsurge and a geyser of heated liquid erupted up and outwards.

Frieza scowled darkly as his opponent emerged with the full flaming aura of a pissed off Saiyan. He flinched when he saw the sparks of gold glinting within the bulging white of Goku's Ki output like a sign of the apocalypse. The overlord dropped back as the Saiyan touched down on the grass, his attire dripping.

Goku stared at the tyrant and his shadowed eyes were intense.

"Kaioken…x…10!" He shouted.

'_Grasp on to that legendary power._'

There was an explosion that seemed to run the length of his veins, bathing his body in liquid fire. The aura around him resonated and burst outwards, creating a dome of violent red energy sprinkled with tiny static sparks of gold. He lost himself to the inferno, struggling to hold his body together though his muscles no longer felt like they were attached to his skeletal frame. He grit his teeth and felt the friction between his jaws, grateful for the anchor to his strained body.

In the back of his mind he could hear someone ranting and realised that it must be King Kai but the opponent before him was getting ready to move and to Goku, it seemed that Frieza was shifting in slow motion, his movements graceful. Like this, Goku could see clearly what he was up against, could see how smoothly executed Frieza's attacks were and in a weird way, he appreciated the overlord's precision, the obvious martial talent.

Goku took a moment to decide on a counter attack and fortify himself before propelling himself forward.

Frieza saw the attack before it was able to come to fruition and was able to block by jabbing an elbow out at the last possible minute. The high kick that Goku had been aiming to embed in the soft part of Frieza's back crunched against Frieza's arm and the overlord felt an unpleasant sensation run beneath his sinew and muscle. Surprise and irritation intermingled in his system as he tried to push the Saiyan off and was met with crippling resistance. Somewhere inside he could feel a twinge of fear blooming up like a flower in his system.

Where in the world was this Saiyan pest getting his power? What was the distinctive golden spark in the auras of both this Saiyan and his half-breed son all about? Why did Frieza feel this uncomfortable squirm every time he caught a glimpse of it?

Eventually, Frieza was able to throw Goku off to gain the upper hand, tossing out one of his favoured Ki blasts, a spike of energy designed to drive straight through his opponents so their innards decorated the ground. Goku saw it coming and simply extended his arm, batting the energy away like an annoying fly when it was within range.

Using Frieza's resulting confusion and with the light emanating from the blast to hide him, he darted forward, ramming a flat palmed hand to the side of Frieza's face.

Frieza felt the sting of the collision and was thrown backwards in the air.

'_This can't be happening._'

He landed at a harsh angle and almost bent one of his arms back on itself.

'_That monkey cannot be doing this to me._'

Reactively, he poured his energy into his arm, fortifying the bone so it didn't crack as he skidded along the dirt, pulling up defenceless foliage on his way past with little remorse.

'_I won't allow that monkey to do this to me._'

He ground himself to a halt in the soil and made a point of standing straight back up, ignoring the swell of pain in his arm as he moved. Carefully, he felt around the substantial graze, prodding the puckered skin and staring at the blood on the tips of his fingers.

He growled as he turned to face his opponent this time, vexed that the burning red aura was still firmly in place.

On the other side of the battlefield, Gohan released his Ki so the aura around him dispersed, breathing out slowly as he focussed on the battle. When his father had been booted into the water, he'd jolted, intending to rocket forward with a Ki enhanced kick to the tyrant's face but Krillin had reacted, remembering how Gohan had taken off during the Saiyan battle when his daddy was in trouble, and gripped his shoulder hard.

"Goku's fine," Krillin had assured him. "Just feel his Ki."

Gohan had simply stared at the bald monk. His Ki? Couldn't Krillin see what was happening? Even if he was okay now in a few minutes, he'd lose the air in his lungs and die…

"Krillin's right kid," Piccolo assured him, putting a gentler hand on Gohan's other shoulder. Gohan had glanced up into his almost mentor's eyes, noting the serious expression on his friend's face and had made a point of exercising everything he had learnt about self control. The aura had inflamed around him and Piccolo and Krillin had released his shoulders, feeling the calming thrum shoot through Gohan's output. This was a way for Gohan to extricate unwanted energy, the way to keep calm in a scary situation and both older warriors understood it.

As Goku had emerged to confront Frieza once more in an impressive display of shooting water and red Kaioken enhanced energy, Krillin had watched Gohan relax and felt himself following suit. He had enough faith in Goku's abilities and it was obvious that his old friend was putting up more of a fight than any of the others had, the proof was in the grazes and bruises appearing on Frieza's body, in the way the overlord was starting to get frustrated, but Krillin couldn't help the uneasiness that came with watching Goku struggle like that. Even against King Piccolo, Goku hadn't had this much trouble, even against Vegeta…

Frieza's eyes seemed to be trying to pierce through Goku and he tried to prepare himself for what was to come, knowing that the overlord would increase his speed in response to Goku's Kaioken. He estimated that he had about 5 minutes of Kaioken infused energy left before it petered out and he was left exhausted in the dust, at the mercy of the tyrant. He knew it was a feat of astronomical significance that he was able to tap into so much energy using this technique without being torn apart but he wasn't entirely sure what state he would be in once that energy left him.

Aware that he was running out of time, Goku took the initiative and launched an offensive. Frieza saw it coming and smirked as he readied himself to perform his own interesting technique.

It was a technique that he had learnt fighting his brother in the wastes of one of their decimated planets. Cooler had been besting him for most of the match and, enraged by this, Frieza had inadvertently tapped into a strange ability, encompassing his brother's Ki in a bubble which allowed him to take full control of the body. Frieza had spent a delightful couple of hours whimsically smashing his brother into various ruins and rock formations. It was still one of the only times he had ever won a spar against that beast.

Of course, the downside of the ability was that, once the user released his hold, it left him quite drained. Frieza had spent the better part of 2 days asleep on one of his invasion ships and had awoken in a foul mood.

Still, it would be fun to really play with this monkey.

Stretching his arm out casually, Frieza created a binding web of intricate Ki and released it just as his Saiyan opponent was about to release a right hook to his stomach. To Goku, it felt like walking through a spider's web and he knew the moment that a deep yellow glow encompassed him that something was wrong.

With a flick of his index finger, Frieza forced Goku to halt his attack in mid-air, his muscles taut and bulging. Goku reeled back in surprise but found he couldn't even do that, stuck fast in the air before the wicked overlord, completely exposed. With a mounting sense of serious unease, he tried to move anything he could, trying first to wiggle his toes, then to move his fingers but even his eyes were stuck firmly in place.

"You know what I always liked to play as a child?" the overlord asked devilishly, moving around Goku's trussed up body like he was examining a work of art.

His lips curled upwards, his eyes flashed.

"Pinball," he said simply and kicked Goku hard in the side, sending him into the air. Goku felt a harsh wave of serious pain sweep through his system as he became haphazardly airborne though he was unable to move his arm down to clutch at his damaged side. Before the pain from that first attack could disperse, Frieza had appeared a few feet in front of him, aiming another kick to Goku's other side.

For the next few minutes, Frieza took pleasure in beating Goku around in a complicated game of 'pinball'. As the game dragged on, Goku's phenomenal Kaioken died and a number of concerning injuries started to crop up on his body. There was a gash on the side of his ribs that cut through the shredded orange gi and the blue shirt beneath to draw a harsh line of crimson blood, there were dark black bruises already staining his arms and shoulders. His neck looked like it had been punctured and all the while Goku took damage, Frieza smiled that crocodile smile.

"It seems we have come to the end of the road where this is concerned," Frieza whispered neatly in Goku's ear as he caught the Saiyan in the air. With a precise pull, Frieza released the shattered body of the Saiyan from his control, punching Goku into free fall so he landed with a ground shattering crunch on the side of one of the remaining rocky hills.

Goku felt as his back cracked against the jagged edge of the hillside and he let out an involuntary shriek as the agony shuddered through him, spreading out from his spinal cord. The hill side beneath him crumbled into rubble and as the rocks fell around him, he could hear the diabolical laughter of the tyrant.

'_Goku…Goku?_'

Goku concentrated on regulating his breathing as his body started to go into shock. He shivered harshly and curled in on himself.

'_King Kai…_'

'_Goku…the Kaioken isn't working, you're going to have to use the Spirit Bomb._'

Goku kept his eyes locked on one of the skittering stones as it came to a stop. He didn't have much time; the overlord would be through the rubble in a moment to begin the game anew.

'_It won't work King Kai,_' Goku told his friend and mentor steadily. '_There's not enough life left on the planet._'

He took a deep breath in and held it as a spasm of pain enveloped him and only let it out as the spasm passed.

'_So use the surrounding planets. The energy will take a little longer to get there but it will be worth it._'

Goku closed his eyes against the pain, wishing that he could just defeat this enemy with his own energy.

'_I don't have that kind of time King Kai,_' Goku tried to explain.

'_Look, it'll be a repeat of the Saiyan invasion; your friends can keep Frieza occup-_

'_No! I won't put Gohan through anymore and I need Piccolo to watch him to make sure he won't disappear again!_'

King Kai felt the sudden surge of genuine fear lining Goku's Ki from his position in Otherworld and his heart cried out to the man. It made sense for Goku to harbour a lingering despondency following the disappearance of his still very young son, a parental instinct that made talking logic very difficult to process. But this needed to be done; the Spirit Bomb had to be used.

'_Goku, if you don't use the Spirit Bomb and end this now then your son will disappear anyway. He'll be killed, along with the rest of you._'

Goku bristled, uncurling slightly as irritation lined his features.

'_I know you want to make sure that nothing happens to Gohan but you have to trust your friends too. They'll help you, all of them will, Gohan included._'

Goku took a deep breath in, taking just a single moment to appreciate how much he did not like this plan before exhaling the stress and standing, using the rubble to hide the fact that he was preparing to try and gather energy from the surrounding planets. Holding his arms up straight, he cleared his mind of his anxieties and focussed.

In the air, Frieza was honestly beginning to think that his opponent was dead, or if not dead then alarmingly close to it. Tossing a look at the Saiyan's useless companions, he started to descend into the rubble. As a young adolescent, Frieza had learnt early on to always check for bodies if the fight was particularly off-putting and though the tyrant loathed to admit it, this fight was definitely one that merited the term 'off-putting'.

Sheltered as he was by rocks and stones, Goku stretched out with gentle senses and started to tug the energy away from the planets that surrounded Namek, calling it to help quash a threat to the solar system. Carefully, he used the technique that King Kai had taught him to form the gathered energy into a growing orb in the sky and as the ball took form, Goku was able to measure how much energy he would need to stop the overlord. This particular power ball was going to be immense.

Frieza swooped low over the debris catching sight of the Saiyan standing with his arms stretched up to the sky and mistook the stance for a gesture of surrender.

"Putting your arms up is not going to stop me from shooting you," Frieza informed him, his feet resting easily on the ground as he landed.

Goku said nothing, praying that Frieza wouldn't look up in the next couple of minutes. The overlord regarded him through icy eyes.

"Come now, this isn't like when you were a child and you thought the monsters would go away if you simply stood still enough. I am paying full attention to you my friend, you should feel honoured," Frieza went on.

Again Goku said nothing, concentrating instead on feeling the tiny granules of energy streaking through the sky and grass.

For some reason, the lack of movement from his opponent irked Frieza and in a moment of wild agitation, the overlord launched himself forward to smack Goku clean through the remaining rocks into the ocean, glinting under the high sun.

Piccolo frowned as he watched Goku take the hit, confused when his old nemesis refused to fight back. It just wasn't like Goku.

"Oh man…" Krillin whispered beside him, blinking as he realised that he recognised that stance, the same stance he had seen his best friend take up when he was planning to use King Kai's 'Spirit Bomb' technique on Vegeta.

"What is it?" Piccolo asked sharply, aware that Krillin was somehow privy to what Goku was up to.

Krillin's eyes skirted up and sure enough, there in the sky like another sun, was Goku's gathered energy for the Spirit Bomb. The bald monk's mouth fell open as he tried to comprehend the sheer magnitude of that attack, a ball that lit the sky like a meteorite hovering on the stratosphere – waiting for the signal to fall from the heavens and decimate everything within the surrounding area. He could feel the heat glancing off of his head and found himself wishing, in all randomness, that he'd thought to put on sun cream.

"Uh…guys?" Krillin whispered, pointing disbelievingly at the orb in the sky.

Piccolo and Gohan glanced up as one and both of them wore identical expressions of shock and awe as they too tried to fathom the true magnificence of that attack.

The sound of splashing water had them dragging their eyes away from that awesome spectacle as Goku aimed a distracting punch to the tyrant's face, all the while keeping one hand raised in the sky to hold on to his energy. Piccolo twigged immediately how the technique worked, despite never really having seen it before, and judged that now was a good time to interfere with the fight.

"Listen up," he said gruffly so the others would pay attention. "Goku has to hold on to that thing while he gathers the necessary energy for it which means he's really just stuck out there like a sitting duck for Frieza. It goes against protocol for a fight like this but we're going to have to jump in."

Gohan nodded, a serious expression in place on his young face. Releasing the restraints on his Ki, he let his power build.

Krillin shot Piccolo a terrified look.

"I've got nothing left Piccolo," he admitted, grimacing as he remembered his freakish, reflexive attack on Vegeta as he had lunged for him in mid-air. Curse that Saiyan prince and his wild ideas. It had been a waste of time and energy in the end.

Piccolo grunted in affirmation.

"You need to stay back then, you'll only get in the way. Keep an eye on the proceedings. If it looks like we're in trouble, we might need you to try and muster up the energy for a surprise attack."

Krillin saluted earnestly.

"Aye aye sir."

Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Piccolo took off with Gohan in tow towards the tyrant.

On the battlefield, Frieza was giving Goku a judgemental look as the Saiyan stood before him with defiant eyes, still holding his hands up to the sky like it was going to offer a solution to his current, futile situation. The overlord was sure he didn't know much about Saiyan religion and he knew even less about human religion so perhaps this was some kind of weird prayer?

"I'm not entirely sure what you're up to but I have to confess, it's beginning to irritate me," Frieza said darkly, frowning as he watched Goku's eyebrow twitch. "If you're trying to find some absolution from some great deity before I finally kill you, I'm afraid…you're…going to be…"

The tyrant trailed off as his eyes snaked up into the sky, following the direction of Goku's outstretched hands.

His mouth fell open.

'_What in the world is that?_'

He had never seen anything like it. Even his own Ki blasts could never match the size of that thing, the rippling intensity. It was monstrous, overwhelming and completely superior to anything Frieza could produce. That thought alone was enough to unhinge the tyrant. He _knew _that he was the be all and end all of the universe, the core of existence itself. Not that he was arrogant enough to proclaim himself able to re-arrange the cosmos but he certainly had more input than anyone else. Planets had bowed down before him, he had created a systematic network of populaces that knew only his leadership…how could something like this even be _possible_?

A trick, it had to be a trick.

"How are you doing that?" Frieza asked crudely, pointing up to the power ball in the sky like a child. His eyes were small and panicked.

When Goku didn't respond, Frieza's expression seemed to warp into something almost…manic.

"I need to know how you're doing that, tell me now or I'll obliterate you!"

Goku caught the tone of hysteria lacing Frieza's voice and knew that his attack was almost ready. He could feel the surrounding planets literally giving the last of themselves to help destroy this creature. The nightmare would end today.

When Goku once again did not respond, Frieza lost it completely, screaming unintelligibly and vaulting forward with a distinctive pink Ki blast already forming in his fist. In a dark moment of surprise however, the tyrant felt as two completely solid objects impacted the sides of his face at exactly the same time. The overlord caught the brunt of both collisions on his ears and crumpled mid-attack, howling as agony and white noise enveloped him.

Gohan and Piccolo dropped down beside Goku, lowering their knees and widening their stances. Goku blinked first at Piccolo before throwing a lingering look at Gohan.

"How much time?" Piccolo snarled as the tyrant started to get back up.

"I only need another minute or so," Goku confirmed, wishing with everything inside him that he could reach out to touch his little boy.

"Alright, both Gohan and I are going to try and distract him for the time being. When that thing's ready, you have to let us know," Piccolo told the Saiyan – his eyes sharp as he observed Frieza shaking his head, trying to rid himself of the ringing obviously still plaguing his now sensitive ears.

"How?" Goku asked urgently.

Gohan glanced back at his father as Frieza fixed them all with an infuriated glower. Familiar black eyes met Goku's and the Saiyan felt a pang of acute homesickness when he could see Chi Chi reflected there.

"It's okay Mr Piccolo, I saw this move once before when we were on Earth against the Saiyans, I think I'll be able to tell when dad's about to throw it," the boy promised.

Piccolo gave Gohan a long stare but by this point, they were out of preparation time, Frieza was raising one of his hands to form a Ki blast while the other was pulled back by his side in a budding fist. Seeing this, Gohan shot forward to engage the tyrant with Piccolo flanking on Frieza's exposed side.

Goku felt a pull of serious parental anxiety in his gut as he watched his son start fighting the monster that even he himself had trouble dealing with but knew that he had to concentrate if he was to finish forming the Spirit Bomb in the next 30 seconds or so. The last of the trickling energy was pouring into that resonating light in the sky and Goku could feel the right time to launch his attack drawing near. His heart rate increased in anticipation.

Of course, Frieza wasn't stupid. While he hadn't heard the hurried conversation that had taken place, he knew a distraction technique when he saw it and despite Piccolo and Gohan's intervention, he kept aiming his attacks at Goku's vulnerable form.

For every blast he launched though, either Piccolo or Gohan was there to swipe it away, risking serious injury to do so. As Frieza's attacks became more frantic, the two warriors were starting to show the wear. Gohan was sporting a nasty gash to the forehead, blood seeping through his thick hair, slipping into his eyes so he had to keep blinking and flicking his head to clear the visual obstruction. Piccolo was clutching at his side which was starting to bruise beneath his thread bare gi, showcasing what was most likely a cracked rib.

Somehow though, despite the odds, they seemed to be surviving.

Then Frieza managed to grab Gohan's tail.

* * *

Shorai paused as both he and Sensou made their way across the meadow to the dimension door and crumpled on the grass until he was sitting in a hunched up, cross legged position breathing heavily. Sensou recognised the signs at once and his breath hitched as he fell back to crouch before his brother, his expression serious.

"No…no…" Shorai was whispering, terrified.

"What, what is it?" Sensou hissed, unnerved by his brother's frightened face.

"Frieza…will…"

He was finding it difficult to talk as he watched all paths converging into a single, negative line. Frieza had managed to grasp on to Gohan's tail and if he managed to remove it…if he managed to remove it…

Sensou watched with a shudder as his brother's eyes rolled forward, his forehead lined with a sheen of sparkling sweat. Shorai gawped up at the warrior god through blood shot eyes.

"Frieza has managed to get a hold on Gohan's tail. If he removes it, Gohan is destined to die," the seer said.

* * *

_Dun, dun, dun! Will Frieza remove Gohan's tail? Will Gohan fall without it? Will Goku fulfil the legend and become a Super Saiyan as expected?_

_Find out next time on…ADVENTURE TIME!_

_(sings) Adventure time, come on and grab your friends…_

_Reviews are the marshmallow in the middle of the shmor of life. _


	26. The Legend's Trigger

_Ah, I remember writing this one fondly…Luckily, after my holiday; I haven't actually lost that much of an advantage chapter-wise which is encouraging. As always, things to note:_

_1)Lots of child psychology in this chapter (pulls face). When I was young, I always remember assuming the worst of a situation and within Dragonball Z, I appreciated Gohan's slightly more pessimistic approach. Goku's natural optimism is admirable but I always appreciated how Gohan had to learn how to be optimistic. That said, I tried to pull out Gohan's pessimism in this chapter and show that despite expecting the worst to happen, he never just sat idly by waiting for it._

_2)I've checked all sorts of continuity in this chapter – continuity coming out of my ears and my asshole but if I've committed some horrible, B move-esque continuity foul up, I do humbly apologise. PM me and I'll see about tweaking it if you find something._

_3)Spelling, grammar and the local shop has been checked for ice cream…mmm…ice cream. A note on spellings while we're on the subject; as you may or may not know, I am British and generally try to use British spellings so words like 'honour' will be spelt with 'u'. _

_4)Imaginary chocolate hearts for all readers, reviewers, favers and alerters from the last chapter though if you're planning on eating chocolate in this weather, I may have to commit you to the asylum._

* * *

**25: The Legend's Trigger**

The tyrant grabbed on to Gohan's tail.

The boy cried out in blatant agony.

Goku felt his airways constrict as he held himself.

_He couldn't drop the Spirit Bomb._

Every muscle in his body was aching to launch into action, every voice inside his head was screaming at him to do something before Gohan was taken from him the same way he had been taken after the battle against the Saiyans.

_He _couldn't _drop the Spirit Bomb._

Piccolo's reaction was instantaneous but Frieza was able to block the oncoming attack, swinging round with Gohan's tail still firmly in his grip. The boy shrieked as the momentum enhanced pull on his tail caused serious pain to shoot through his spine and Goku felt his facial muscles twitch.

'_You need to get him out of there Piccolo, come on!_'

Piccolo felt as though his heart was on fire as he watched the tyrant man-handle Gohan's tail in such a manner, remembering the pain it had caused both Raditz and Goku. The boy was crying, something Piccolo had never tolerated well but he knew that in this case, the demi-Saiyan just couldn't help it.

He glared daggers at the creature that would dare to make Gohan cry.

He took a deep breath in, preparing himself to perform something incredible in half the time it would normally take, knowing it would strain his body and possibly kill him.

'_I sacrificed myself for you once kid…when I was in Otherworld, I sometimes questioned why, wondering if I would do it again given more time to consider…now I know._'

His muscles bunched, he exhaled and extended his arm.

"Special Beam Cannon!"

The spiralling beam cut through the air, pouring out from the two fingered release point in Piccolo's outstretched hand. With serious difficulty, Piccolo stretched out his other hand, feeling his life energy start to drain as he dredged up everything inside himself to produce a crude Ki blast to barrel down towards the overlord _at the same time _as the Special Beam Canon.

The energy bloomed out of him in an array of colours, techniques combining to make a bewitching light show in the air. Frieza saw the blasts pushing their way towards him and raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

Never before had he witnessed a technique like this, to produce two different attacks at once…surely it was impossible…what that Namekian was doing was impossible. He glared at the verdigris man through the iridescence and noted that his skin was slowly losing colour, fading to a pale olive.

Ah, so it was possible, but not really recommended.

Comfortable now that he had figured out the downside to this particular onslaught, Frieza turned his attention to avoiding the manoeuvre, flying up with the demi-Saiyan's tail still clamped neatly in a clawed hand.

Piccolo watched the overlord leap up and his heart seemed to fall into his shoes as he spotted Gohan still dangling limply by his tail. The idea was to make Frieza drop the boy in his need to evade the attack…and now that had failed. Piccolo was at the end of his endurance, the attacks dying off unspectacularly as he fell back in the dust, staring up at the sky where Frieza was hovering mercilessly.

'_Gohan…_'

The tyrant regarded the attacks as they petered out and almost felt like chuckling, casually swinging the boy back and forth on the air by his tail so that he whimpered pathetically.

"I'm not sure what you were trying to achieve with that dare devil stunt Namekian bu-

"DESTRUCTO DISK!"

Frieza heard the cry and reacted reflexively. He didn't have enough time to shift and catch a glimpse of which direction the disk of Ki was coming from, relying instead on damaged ears to catch the echoes on the breeze.

At the last possible moment, he bent forward, flattening himself so the disk skimmed along the small of his back and in the same moment, _he dropped the kid._

* * *

Shorai took a moment to finish hyperventilating before shakily lying with his back to the floor. The world above him was starting to spin as he sensed the re-divergence of the paths of fate, showcasing different scenarios once again, carefully falling back into the pattern he had seen before Frieza had been able to grip the boy's tail.

"By the gods…he's free…Frieza's let him go," Shorai whispered breathily.

Sensou took a moment to let that news sink in, allowing himself to sit on the soft grass rather than squat over it as he comprehended. For a few seconds, the brother's were silent, each lost in thought before Sensou saw fit to break the silence, glaring heatedly at his brother.

"What the hell did you do that for?" he growled angrily, fighting the urge to seriously maim his sibling.

"Do what, inform you of the relevant dangers?" Shorai replied hotly.

Sensou decided to let his brother's snarky remark slide just this once considering the pressure they were under but he made a mental note to cripple Shorai at a later date.

"Why did you tell me that Gohan was destined to die if Frieza was just going to drop him again so quickly? Why didn't you check ahead?" He almost added that the whole thing had scared him half to death but thoughtfully omitted that revelation at the last moment. No need to decrease his intimidation factor where it wasn't necessary.

Shorai simply shook his head, looking suddenly exhausted.

"The fates surrounding that particular battle are volatile at the moment, I don't actually _know _if things are going to play out one way or another and I can't even begin to estimate. If anything, this little hiccough has shown us how important our current mission is. Gohan must be allowed to transform into a great ape if he has any hope of surviving the coming battle – that tail of his is the key."

Sensou slowly ran his hands through his hair, feeling at the little wrinkle between his eyes as he frowned.

"This is completely ridiculous," he muttered to himself, standing tall and waiting as Shorai did the same so they could continue their sprint to the dimension door.

* * *

Goku watched as Gohan plummeted and in that instance, with all the control he could muster, he threw the bomb.

It arced through the air, emitting a thunderous thrum of electrical sound as the atmosphere parted around it. The resonating light engulfing the land slowly grew brighter and Frieza felt a pulse of fear.

He straightened…

…and saw the planet sized Ki blast travelling towards him at some speed.

His mouth fell open.

There was no plausible way to avoid this; no speed that Frieza could reach that would ensure that he escaped the brunt of the blast. He was going to have to stay and tackle the thing head on.

The energy connected with Frieza's hands, pushing him down the same way that Gohan's Masenko had but this time, the energy was relentless. It wouldn't slow, no matter how much effort Frieza put into stopping it and in the refractive depths of the light, he thought he could see his own black soul squirming.

It was retribution, pure and simple.

And it was long overdue.

The Spirit Bomb hit the ground and detonated with Frieza beneath it. Everything was levelled in an all-encompassing white brilliance; there was heat and light and nothing else. The ground disappeared, reduced to nothing but atoms trailing through Namekian air, the sea seemed to have been swallowed up by some colossal mouth, even the sky was completely overwhelmed by the repercussions of such an unimaginable Spirit Bomb, giving way to the dark void of space for just a moment.

Following the light, there was a momentary suction and then a sound like a drum half the size of the galaxy being beaten. The sound sent out a massive vibration that seemed to shake the very fabric of existence itself and when the light cleared, a pillar of smoke and excess energy had grown up from the impact like a doorway to a different dimension.

Eventually, everything settled back into place. Though most of the Namekian islands in the area had been completely obliterated, the water ran clear to a gargantuan, bottomless hole – the legacy left behind after that insane attack.

For a couple of minutes, all that could be heard was the sound of running water…

It took Krillin a while to get his head around what had just happened and where he was. He remembered being blown away by Goku's Spirit Bomb and somehow he had ended up in the water. Luckily, he hadn't dropped down too deep and, righting himself, he kicked up, swimming gracefully to the surface. Braking the film of the water, he took in a huge breath of much needed air, grabbing on to the nearest rock he could, a square of saved land barely big enough for him to stand on.

He heaved himself up and sat dripping and panting, gazing at the crater with a dumbstruck expression on his face.

'_That's…a little beyond reason,_' the bald monk decided as he sprawled out over the rock like a wet rag, trying to sense the Ki signatures of the others whilst catching his breath.

Purposefully keeping himself calm, he completed a methodical sweep of the area, only feeling a slight twinge of panic when he was unable to sense anything out there at all.

Taking another deep breath and appreciating the light from Namek's relentless suns, he tried again, slower this time and as he passed a point very close to the crater, he latched on to the first Ki he could find.

'_Goku…_' he thought to himself in relief.

With Goku's Ki in his mind, Krillin took a moment to simply appreciate the feel of the ultra violet rays on his skin, warming him after his impromptu dip in the Namekian Ocean. He took a deep breath in through his nose and exhaled through his mouth, revelling in the feeling of being alive following the recent trauma with the diabolical overlord. He gave a sullen thought to the people of Namek, a tug of grief pulling at him when he thought of Guru, Nail and Dende, then he stood, wobbling on the little rock as he started searching for Goku.

When he didn't see his friend in the immediate area, he started to feel a pinprick of unease through his newfound relief, confused that he was able to sense Goku so close without seeing him. Just as he was about to give himself over to the revelation that something was very wrong, Goku's dark head broke the surface of the water near a levelled island almost on top of the depths of the crater.

"Yeah, Goku!" Krillin cried, jumping off of the rock and almost falling with an undignified belly flop back into the water.

With his energy so readily depleted, it was difficult to fly, requiring all of Krillin's concentration. After using his precious energy on that last ditch Destructo Disk, it was a miracle that he was able to fly at all, even with such harsh concentration. Focussed as he was, he almost missed as Goku shoved a small, wet bundle up on to the island, following by dragging the prone form of Piccolo behind him.

Once he was sure his cargo was safe, Goku collapsed in a panting heap, letting the water roll off of himself as he took in sweet gulps of air, his eyes fixed on the steady rise and fall of his son's chest. Next to him, he heard Piccolo cough up water and moved forward to make sure his son's airways were clear.

The boy's eyes were on him as he wriggled forward with an uncharacteristically solemn expression on his face.

"Da-

"Shh, don't talk yet Gohan, I have to check you over okay?"

He started by checking the vitals, the nose, mouth and ears for any obstruction before moving on to the wounds the boy had sustained from taking on Frieza. Goku himself was battered and broken with a number of injuries that probably required immediate attention but in the short time that his son had taken the tyrant, Gohan had suffered worse.

The gash on the boy's head was worrying though it was no longer bleeding so freely. Goku wondered vaguely if Gohan had a concussion and quickly checked the boy's eyes for any sign that his pupils were dilated. Surprisingly, he seemed to be focussing just fine which probably meant the cut was a lot shallower than it actually looked. One of the boy's arms was at a slightly odd angle which, Goku realised, was a sign that he had probably dislocated a shoulder. Bulma would most likely be able to fix that back on board the ship but it was gonna hurt like hell.

"Hey, Goku!" Krillin called, crash landing onto the little island and running forward, slowing only when he caught sight of the grim expression on his friend's face. Fearing the worst, he glanced down at Gohan, surprised when the boy sat up, a little grey in the face and torn up but otherwise just fine.

Throwing his son a lingering look, Goku got to work on helping Piccolo to sit up, propping the tall ex-demon up against one of the rocks facing the crater.

"I should probably…congratulate you for that," Piccolo said in a strained voice, inclining his head towards the evidence of Goku's magnificent Spirit Bomb. He was both amused and irritated in equal measure that his old nemesis had just managed to outdo anything he could ever hope to produce.

"You too," Goku said. "It's not every day you get to see someone using two separate attacks at once."

Gohan watched his father and his ex-mentor yearningly, dreading the moment when Sensou would appear to take him back to the gloomy dimension that he had called home for the last few months. Though he hadn't been told to wait for Sensou, he knew somehow that the fighting wouldn't end with Frieza.

Carefully, he scanned the little island and the surrounding stretches of clear Namekian Ocean for any sign of life but, perplexingly, he drew a blank. Through the post-battle euphoria, Krillin caught on to Gohan's scouting and cocked his head to one side.

"What are you looking for little buddy?" he asked, peering out into the nothingness. "Everyone important is he-he-herewetotallyforgotaboutBulma!"

Goku felt a stab of guilt as he pivoted back to meet Krillin's eyes and the two of them wore identically comical looks of fear. Gohan chuckled freely, rubbing at the base of his spine where his tail began, massaging out the lingering ache following Frieza's abuse.

Goku's eyes swept across to his son and Gohan averted his gaze, unable to face the unabashed love shining through his father's easy-going gaze.

'_Oh daddy, if only you knew the truth about me…_' Gohan thought to himself, shifting uncomfortably under Goku's paternal gaze and trying to stave off the memories of his fist sliding through his father's shattered rib cage.

Goku's eyes remained steadily on his son as he moved into a crouched position before the boy and Gohan found he had no choice but to hold the intensity of that look, dark eyes meeting dark eyes. A million things seemed to pass unsaid between father and son and Gohan felt that lurching reaction inside him, the need to spill his guts about every heinous thing he had done under Sensou's harsh tutelage.

Would his daddy understand?

_Would he be forgiven?_

"Gohan," Goku began gently, resting a warm hand on the child's shoulder. "I need you to tell me-

"Uh…Goku?" Krillin interrupted sheepishly, stepping forward and pushing his index fingers together in an awkward fashion. "I know it's important that you two talk but can it wait until we're on the ship home? I bet Bulma's frantic with worry and to be honest she's probably _worse _than _Frieza_ when she gets like that and I…I'm homesick."

Goku turned slowly to stare at his best friend and laughed heartily when he caught sight of the red hue across the bald monk's cheeks. Of course, it made sense that Krillin was homesick, a lot had happened since they'd left the Earth behind and Goku knew that Krillin was probably thinking longingly of the beach on Master Roshi's island. The hot sun, the hot sand, a drink with a little umbrella in it and if he was lucky, the sight of Launch or Bulma in a swimming costume.

Goku himself couldn't wait to take his son home where the two of them could have one of Chi Chi's delicious home made meals before taking a hot bath together out in the open air. The thought was pure bliss.

"You okay with that little man?" Goku asked, beaming down at the boy and Gohan couldn't help the squirm of hope inside as he thought about the possibility of going home, actually seeing his mother again – though he knew somehow that this was a futile hope.

He smiled weakly.

"Sure dad."

Goku's own smile faltered ever so slightly as he regarded his son's lack of enthusiasm but he tried not to let Gohan pick up on his anxiety, re-assuring himself that everything would be brought to light when he was finally able to sit down with the boy and discuss what had happened to him. Whatever anguish the boy had suffered, Goku would be there for him, he was determined to make up for not being able to save his son in the first instance.

With their next course of action decided, Piccolo made an effort to get up, wincing as he felt the chronic ache in his legs. Gohan was at his side in an instant, supporting his weight so he didn't have to worry about the possibility of crumpling. The ex-demon gawked at the young demi-Saiyan before letting a small smile grace his features, the first true smile he had shown since he'd died on Earth.

"Thanks kid," He said, ruffling Gohan's dark, matted locks.

Gohan glanced up at his almost mentor with wide eyes and beamed. Without really meaning to, Piccolo found himself checking the kid over with a critical eye for injuries both physical and mental while they were in such close proximity. He was relieved to see that while Gohan was beaten badly, he didn't seem to be suffering with anything particularly crucial in the physical sense, aside from what appeared to be a dislocated shoulder though it hardly seemed to be bothering the boy. Mentally, it was obvious to Piccolo that the child had suffered deeply though he was unable to tell at a glance just how far that mental anguish had pushed him. He watched with fearful perception as the boy flinched, touching at a space on his neck that was completely undamaged and then chided himself for feeling…

Feeling what?

Over-protective?

Kami, what was he, the kid's mother? If only his proud father could see him now, the son of the great demon King Piccolo fretting over a little boy, a son of the enemy no less. He should have just made Goku leave him to drown in the Namekian Ocean.

"Hmpf," he grunted irritably. "You've gotten a lot stronger Gohan but your technique still needs a lot of work."

Gotten a lot stronger…_that _was possibly the understatement of the century. The kid was phenomenal but Piccolo wasn't about to issue such high praise, even if it was deserved. It just wasn't his way.

Even so, Gohan's smile widened if that was even possible, his expression seeming to light up the devastated planet.

"Thanks Mr Piccolo," the boy chirped. "Sensou says the same thing all the time."

Goku experienced a leap of something unpleasant in his system as he heard the boy mentioning an unknown name, remembering the two that had taken his son in vivid detail though he'd only caught a fleeting glance before his little boy was snatched away to Kami only knew where. He could still replay the moment that Gohan had leapt forward, desperation on his young face, only to have the figure with the freakish Ki signature clamp onto his tail. A moment of penetrating agony and they'd disappeared, _vanished_ to a place that Goku was unable to reach.

Something primal seemed to be surging under his skin as he thought about it, an adrenaline lurch so powerful, it felt like he'd overdosed on caffeine about a hundred times over. Piccolo glanced up sharply as he detected Goku's steep rise in Ki, his eyes widening.

This behaviour…it wasn't like the man he knew.

"Goku…" Piccolo said softly, glancing pointedly at Gohan who was chatting idly to Krillin about what he would do once they were all safely back on Earth.

Goku followed the ex-demon's gaze and took a deep breath in, trying to disperse the anger rolling through him but it was difficult. He had never been so angry in his life. Honestly, if he had been able to meet Gohan's kidnappers, he wasn't sure if he would be able to give them the time to explain themselves before unleashing the full pent up power of his rage.

What possible reason could there be for tearing a young boy from his family?

Krillin was in the middle of explaining the particulars of a long island iced tea to a pensive Gohan when he stopped mid-sentence, his face paling instantly.

"Krillin?" Gohan asked uncertainly, feeling a ripple of unease spread through his system as he followed the line of the bald monk's sight back over his shoulder.

What he saw turned his blood to ice.

* * *

The void had the same feeling of desolate emptiness it always had – the white nothingness stretching on for an eternity.

Shorai shivered as they made their way across the windless landscape, his eyes adjusting every so often trying to focus on objects that just weren't there to be focussed on. Contrastingly, Sensou walked with the gait of someone completely comfortable in such barren surroundings. His eyes were fixed straight forward, his mind was awhirl with serious thoughts.

Eventually, the two of them came upon the familiar white table and they took up their usual places at opposite ends. Shorai took a deep breath in to calm himself and took a moment to order his thoughts.

'_Strange that we'd come here under such amiable terms,_' he thought to himself, glancing idly at his brother who had taken up a quiet meditation. '_I honestly didn't think it was possible that we could get along so well…The recent threats to my life have almost been…idle…now that I think about it…_'

They waited in silence for a few more minutes, Shorai staring intently at his brother. Eventually, Sensou cracked open an eyelid, frowning irritably.

"What?" he snapped.

"I was just trying to figure out what you were thinking," the seer confessed.

"Ha. Good luck with that brother," Sensou snorted, reclining leisurely in the hard backed chair. "Even with all your precognitive abilities, you couldn't begin to fathom the simplest elements of my plans."

Shorai's jaw dropped.

Was his brother honestly that arrogant? _Really_?

To blow off the abilities of the universe's most competent seer…was Sensou really that foolish or did he honestly have some grandiose scheme in mind?

Did it involve the demi-Saiyan?

"Sensou, if you think that-

"Why have you summoned us?"

The voice cut through Shorai's retaliating comment and filled the void, giving the illusion that there was more within the bland white of this dimension than Shorai or Sensou could see.

"My lords," Shorai greeted, dropping his head in the preferred honourific bow.

As before, Sensou simply grunted and inclined his head, his own mark of respect.

"I have seen something somewhat catastrophic," Shorai began, launching straight in. "This is concerning the fate of the demi-Saiyan known as Gohan Son, relating to the vision of the end of the universe originally told to yourselves during the Earth age 761."

Shorai paused to allow for comment, his eyes flicking up to lock on the shadowy forms just visible on the void, but if the Four Winds wanted to say anything, they abstained and Shorai took that as his cue to continue.

"Currently, Gohan is fighting with his father on the planet Namek against the tyrant known as 'Frieza' and his original destiny was to survive that battle despite the odds. Due to various anomalies that I have been weathering, his fate has changed. He is due to die in the final clash against the tyrant but Sensou and I both feel that this would be somewhat devastating to the fate of the universe."

There was a pause as this knowledge seemed to seep into the void and somehow, Shorai got the feeling that, had the Four Winds had something as definitive as a bridge of the nose between them, they would have been pinching it in exasperation.

"The boy is important to future affairs, true, but how do you propose to over-write an altered fate seer? Are you suggesting that this new fate can be changed back to the way it was?" The Wind's asked, using the same tone of voice a teacher might use when a smart kid has made a particularly stupid mistake.

Shorai winced as the voice rolled around him and steadied himself before replying.

"Not exactly. I don't actually believe it's possible to restore Gohan's original fate but if we were allowed to travel to Namek ourselves to produce a Ki ball that replicates perfect full moonlight, Gohan will transform into a great ape and save himself," Shorai confessed.

There was an ominous pause.

"You are asking us, then, for permission to _directly interfere_ with the physical realm of mortals outside our original agreement following your vision to remove Gohan Son from his fated existence on Earth," the winds hissed and Shorai shuddered as the void darkened subtly. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out as Sensou sat up a fraction straighter, clearly unnerved.

The seer had been prepared for this resistance. To gain permission to extract Gohan from his home was something of a miracle to begin with. The only reason the winds had agreed so readily to such dramatic interference was because of the overwhelming evidence presented pertaining to the end of existence should they leave Gohan to his own devices. This situation was a little less readily acceptable. To ask for permission to directly interfere with someone who's fate had already been changed by divine interference whenhe was engaged in a battle that included an existential staple was precocious, suspicious and to provoke such a volatile transformation not originally written into the line of fate…

Not only that but with the dangerous cracks littering that particular episode of fate, Shorai was unable to present the winds with an evidential vision as he had before. All in all, the whole thing was highly suspect.

"We need only interfere so far as it protects Gohan and restores the original line of fate," Shorai assured the Winds, annoyed when his voice sounded a few octaves higher than it had previously. "We will teleport to Namek, create the ball of fake moonlight and when Gohan is once again safe, we will destroy the ball so that Gohan will change back into his usual human form. Once Gohan returns to normal, we will collect him and he will continue his training. As far as I can tell, there would be no adverse ramifications following our interference and honestly, if Gohan were to die on Namek, the repercussions are not positive."

For a few moments, the void continued to darken and the shadows of the Fours Winds seemed to grow, becoming elongated and creepily slim. Around them, new shadows seemed to seep outwards, tiny spiders of darkness crawling across the pristine white table and hanging from the edge, larger monsters reflected in the back drop of the void.

"We feel it necessary to remind you that when we gave our permission to obtain the boy from his home, we did so only because he was a direct threat to the universe's continued existence. We allow you to transport him via dimensions so that he can fulfil the important parts of his destiny and prevent the lay-lines from re-setting indefinitely.

"Should we give our permission this time," the Four Winds said, the usual singular voice being replaced with a chorus of voices rumbling together through the void. "and you deviate from the plan you have presented to us, you know the consequences for interfering more than is absolutely necessary. We will cut your threads and write you out of fate itself."

Shorai swallowed the saliva balling at the back of his mouth and nodded before remembering that he would have to give a verbal answer.

"Y-yes, of course."

The darkness enveloping the void seemed to recede somewhat and the monsters casting shadows on the edge of perception seemed just a tiny bit less real.

"Then, despite the fact that this goes entirely against the grain, we shall give our permission," the Four Winds stated in a singular voice once again.

"Thank you," Shorai said, taking a few steps back before turning to leave the void. After a few seconds, Sensou appeared beside him, falling into step as the void continued to lighten and the elongated shadows of the Four Winds began to fade. Neither of them spoke until they had stepped through the dimension door and were safely back on the soft grass of Shorai's dimension.

* * *

He stood on the tallest point of the island, sea water pooling at his feet. One of his eyes was swollen shut and a large chunk of his tail was missing, the bloodied stump leaking a string of thick life fluid, but aside from that, he was unharmed.

_Unharmed._

"No way…no way he could survive an attack like that…" Krillin mumbled disbelievingly, his eyes unseeing as Frieza raised his arm, his finger pointed towards the little group of fighters gathered below him.

Both Krillin and Gohan were too stunned to react to what was about to happen, though they all felt the resonance as an invisible blast of Ki discharged from Frieza's hand. Piccolo saw it refracting the light from the Namekian suns as it hurtled forward and knew who Frieza had aimed for.

"Goku, no!" he shouted, launching himself forward and shoving Goku aside just as something sharp pierced his chest.

A pause in the movement of space time and Piccolo was frozen, a silent scream locked in place on his usually stoic face as pain impacted his lungs like a knuckle duster enhanced punch. There was a moment where his synapses seemed to be firing off at breakneck speed. Within an instant, he had thought about why he'd thought to dive in front of Goku to take a hit for his arch nemesis, what this was going to mean for the little boy that had watched him fall twice now, how he could feel the weight of his entire race on his shoulders – counting on him to survive so they could be brought back to life…

Something rose deep within his chest and the violent urge to vomit accompanied it. Before he could really try to contain it, blood had burst forth freely from his mouth in a projectile towards the wicked overlord and he had collapsed, dropping face first onto the decimated island where he could bleed out.

Gohan watched the whole thing with a wide, blank expression; his face tinged a darker shade of grey. He flinched as Piccolo vomited copious amounts of blood and moved into automatic action as his friend dropped to the ground, unmoving.

"Piccolo, no…" he whispered, flopping to his knees before his fallen friend. His hands shook violently as he set about ripping a generous length of cloth from the leg of his gi and his eyes streamed with hot tears that he was unable to stop. Blinking rapidly to clear his sight, he got to work applying pressure to Piccolo's wound, hoping that if he could stop the bleed out, Piccolo might survive long enough to get back to the ship.

Goku watched his son work on the downed Namekian with horrified, heat filled eyes. The anger he had felt at Gohan's kidnappers was flaring up inside him like a bonfire in his stomach, directed now at the overlord who was chuckling on the hill top. His fists were bunched up beside him and his fingers were pressing into his palms so hard that he could feel the pain of the pressure, something to anchor him to reality, to stop him falling over the edge until he was drowning in all-encompassing rage.

"Gohan, Krillin, get Piccolo out of here," he hissed through gritted teeth. "Our ship shouldn't be too far from here…and if that's out of order, you can always try to use his."

Gohan pushed down slowly on Piccolo's wound and turned to his father, his eyes defiant through the overwhelming fear and nausea.

"I won't leave you to fight him alone!" Gohan stated resolutely. "I can help you, I know I c-

"Go, now!" Goku ground out and Gohan recoiled from that voice, the harsh tone that his father had _never _used when speaking to him before. It moved something within him, created an unsettling feeling in the core of his being and, being as young as he was, he was unable to rationalise why his father would want to speak to him like that for trying to be helpful and brave.

"We can't leave without you," he whispered in a dejected voice.

"I must admit that 'Spirit Bomb' of yours really packs a punch," Frieza said tauntingly, lifting his hand once more. Goku watched the movement with wide eyes and something spiked inside him.

"Frieza, stop this!" he cried, preparing to defend the others as best he could but whatever technique Frieza was using, Goku was completely unfamiliar with it. He paused mid-vault as Krillin was lifted into the air, yelling out in panic. For a moment, Goku was confused as to why Krillin would be crying out if he had managed to avoid Frieza's attack by flying upwards but as the bald monk continued to gripe hysterically at the air, Goku realised what was happening.

Before he could adjust himself, Frieza's hand shot up and Krillin's body mimicked the action, flying up into the stratosphere.

"No!" Goku screamed.

Frieza's open palmed hand constricted into a punch.

In the air, Krillin shrieked.

"Help me, ah-

His body engorged for a moment and then burst like a balloon.

There was no prolonged torture.

No chance to save the man's life.

Just there one minute and gone the next.

Blood and gore rained down from the sky which had begun to darken, dropping neatly into the Namekian water where the fish could feed on Krillin's remains. As Gohan caught sight of the minced flesh floating on the water's surface, he realised that nothing discernable was left, nothing to identify the person that was Krillin.

"Heh, pop goes the weasel," Frieza jibed in a sing song voice.

_There was a violent lurch of Ki._

Gohan started from his horrified trance and stared at his father. Power was undulating from Goku's vibrating form in waves that created distorting heat lines against the ground. His muscles were flexed, drawn as taut as they could possibly go, massive as they pumped with power. A vein was throbbing on his temple and slowly, oh so slowly, his hair was rising up until it was a black flame on his head, reminiscent of Vegeta, reminiscent of the Saiyan elite…

The breath huffing out from deep within him created steam on the air, reminding Gohan of an enraged bull about to charge. Static electricity was starting to pop in the air around him, concentrated on the space where his aura should have been visible.

For the moment, at least, Goku was the embodiment of rage itself. There was nothing else.

"I won't…let you get away…with this," Goku barked out in a cracked voice, his shoulders hunching as his Ki bulged.

There was a magnified thud – the sound of a heart beat projected from an invisible megaphone and Goku's neck arched, his hair burning from black to a magnificent, flaming gold.

Above them, thunder boomed out across the land and lightning streaked down from the sky to crash haphazardly in the water though this was unlike any lightning Gohan had ever seen. There was no flash preceding the descent of raw electricity to the world below, only veins of luminescent light so close that Gohan thought he could see the lightning made up of tiny pixels of energy.

Goku's Ki was erratic, flinching jaggedly as it transcended to new heights and for a few petrifying moments, Gohan wondered if he was going to over-power himself.

With one last roaring yell, Goku's aura finally inflamed around him, white fading to mesmorising gold and his eyes lightened – colouring from black to an unsettling teal. As this new, terrifying transformation was completed, his Ki stabilised, staying steadily within the realms of inconceivability.

Standing as he was on the hill, Frieza simply gaped, sporting roughly the same expression as a dead fish. He knew intrinsically that whatever had just happened, it wasn't good for him. He could still remember the beating he had taken from the brat when he had threatened to undergo a similar, freakish transformation and this time, with this Saiyan…it seemed to be a lot more controlled.

'_This isn't good,_' the overlord thought to himself, gulping when he started automatically thinking about Vegeta's constant reminders of the Saiyan legend.

'_There's no way the legends could be true…not about this pathetic third class survivor…Vegeta was always going on about how it was the right of the Royal House to obtain the legendary state known as Super Saiyan…_'

Goku could feel the anger twisting in his gut and the responsive power setting his veins on fire. This Ki was…intoxicating, primal and he found himself struggling to hold on to rational thought. As he regarded the universe's tyrant, he found himself itching to engage in battle, not only so that he could escape this forsaken planet, but for the pure adrenaline fuelled thrill of clashing with something cataclysmal – playing the game of gods and monsters.

Nothing else seemed to matter now, nothing else would ever give him greater pleasure…yet there was enough of himself remaining to turn to the stunned boy sitting by the limp body of the Namekian that had taken a blast for him.

"Take Piccolo and go now," Goku ordered, his voice hard-edged.

Gohan remained frozen in place, completely dumbfounded by what he had just witnessed. His father honestly seemed to have become some sort of super entity, the power he was pumping out was insane, completely baffling.

When Gohan didn't respond, Goku felt an upheaval of serious fury roll through him, something he had never experienced in regards to his son before. He knew that getting angry at the boy like this was going to be unnecessarily damaging. Gohan was just a little boy caught up in a situation that would be beyond normal adult comprehension. It wasn't his fault if he was experiencing a moment of shock but somehow Goku just couldn't keep himself in check.

"This is the last time I'm going to tell you!" Goku ground out, trying to curb the rise in vocal volume and control the damage he was about to do.

Gohan seemed to snap to attention as he heard the threat in his father's tone. For half a second, his eyes lingered on the bright spectacle of his father, the unfamiliar golden hair, the prodigious, pulsating aura and the icy eyes before he hoisted Piccolo swiftly onto his tiny shoulders and kicked off into the sky.

Goku watched his son with level eyes, feeling his lungs expand as he breathed in, turning only when the boy was more or less a dark dot on the horizon.

The tyrant was staring at him with wide, enraged eyes. His teeth were bared.

"You think anyone is allowed to leave this place without my permission?" Frieza screeched, raising his hand up until he had the retreating figure in his line of sight. He smiled triumphantly and started to shoot out a blast of Ki but at the last possible moment, his opponent appeared before him, grabbing his hand and snapping it back so a bone in his wrist broke. The tyrant blinked slowly, disbelief making it difficult to process the pain but when it caught up with him, he cried out in anguish, pulling uselessly at the hand still in an iron grip.

And the thing of it was that despite using _all _of his strength, _he was unable to brake the Saiyan's hold._

Goku's expression was unyielding as he watched his opponent struggle and his eyes seemed to reflect the darkness of Frieza's soul.

'_The same, they're the same colour as that awful Spirit Bomb attack,_' Frieza thought to himself, horror clawing it's way out through his gut and mixing nauseously with the acute pain shooting out from his wrist.

This had never happened to him before.

_Never._

Frieza had travelled throughout the universe and had never found another soul to match him in strength. He had always dominated, always held the pace of a fight. When he had sparred with his brother, the two were almost always evenly matched – sometimes one had an advantage over another but they had never been leagues apart. Frieza had never felt that his efforts had been…_ineffective. _

He had never felt outclassed before.

Letting his Ki build freely, he used everything he had to pull back and Goku only released him when he was sure that the tyrant had felt the sting of his own helplessness, his own mortality.

Frieza flew back in the air, hovering now above the tiny island where Goku's transformation had taken place. He was panting heavily and rubbing at his damaged wrist, he eyes fixed on the Saiyan's relentless gaze.

Those eyes irritated him.

"Well I see the monkey has a little bite after all," Frieza sneered, hiding his newfound uneasiness behind arrogant words.

Goku said nothing, simply slipping back into a ready stance, the wind whipping golden hair over his serious face.

* * *

_Will Sensou and Shorai's plan to save Gohan work? Will Goku defeat Frieza now that he's managed to turn Super Saiyan? Will I ever be able to spell like a normal human being again?_

_Find out next time on…Despicable Me 2!_

_Bottom…BWAHAHAHAHAHA…_

_Reviews are like the ice cream truck of life…full of clotted cream for my greedy taste buds. _


	27. This is Life

_It's so hot that my brain melted. Anything useful that I had to say about this chapter has devolved into useless over-heated sludge in my mind. A few things I will try and remember to note:_

_1) Oh dear, I honestly can't remember. I suppose it can't have been that important if I've seriously gone and forgotten._

_2) Grammar, spelling and various other minute errors checked but I'm certain I've missed a few typos in this one due to the heat so apologies for that._

_3) Love for people that faved, followed, alerted, sneezed on and/or reviewed this fic. _

* * *

**26:This is Life**

Carrying a limp, muscular warrior over a dislocated shoulder was one of the most prolonged and agonising experiences of Gohan's young life. In the torture chamber of Sensou's training dimension, if Gohan had sustained any serious injuries, Sensou had healed him with some funny tasting concoctions in a matter of moments, stating that to leave the boy injured was a waste of valuable training time. Now that he was in this situation, he wished he had been left injured a little more to encourage growth in stamina, even if that was a bit of a backwards wish.

Shifting Piccolo so he was slightly easier to carry and checking on the tattered gi cloth clogging up the Namekian's open wound, Gohan concentrated on ignoring the awe-inspiring clash between his father and the tyrant, though it was difficult when that much Ki was emitting outward like a beacon, and instead focussed on trying to feel out Bulma's tiny Ki signature.

It was hard going. Though Gohan was diligent in his efforts to ignore the legendary battle taking place across the planet, every so often, the resonating energy would knock into his extended senses and disorientate him meaning he would have to start combing the surrounding area for Bulma's Ki all over again. Not only that, but the pain in his shoulder was starting to prove impossible to ignore. A film of sweat had broken out over his face and he kept on having to stop and rest for fear of passing out and dropping into the water.

Frustrated, he dropped down once more and took a few deep gulps of much needed air, wiping the sweat from his forehead and shivering as a spasm of pins and needles shot along the length of his arm to the tips of his fingers. Allowing himself a momentary break, he glanced back at the place where his father was even now meeting with the tyrant in an epic battle to the death.

His eyes shone as he felt around the colossal shapes of Frieza and his father's Ki.

'_Be careful daddy, you can do it,_' he thought to himself, nodding adamantly and hoisting Piccolo back up onto his back.

A wave of nausea almost forced him down onto his knees as Piccolo's large frame rested over his shoulder once more and somehow, as he was trying to compose himself and take off, he felt the tiny blip of life force in the back of his mind like a miniscule mental prod.

"Bulma!" The boy exclaimed breathily, his eyes shining as he huffed and took off, flying shakily through the air. Once he had a fix on the technician's signature, she wasn't hard to find. As Gohan flew out over the chaotic waters of the Namekian Ocean, he could hear various barked out swear words echoing across the sky in a pissed off feminine voice and his lips quirked up in an almost smile. Keeping his eyes peeled, he was eventually able to spot her caught in a painful looking position between two thin vertical prongs of rock.

Bulma was concentrating hard, muttering strings of curse words that Gohan had never heard before. Her legs were spread out in an awkward split as she tried to hold herself between the rocks and her fingers dug in to the jagged edges. There was a ripped scrape along one of her arms indicating that she'd slipped down to her current position from somewhere much higher. Gohan's eyes snaked out behind her to the ruined islands and he realised she must have been caught in an earthquake of sorts, a by product of the massive Ki outputs currently bombarding the planet. His eyes snapped back to the genius technician when she let out a whimper, clinging desperately to the rocks as a strong gust of wind tested her grip, blowing her hair over her eyes in a pattern of weaving green.

"Hey Bulma!" Gohan called down, his voice quivering as he forced out the sound, his energy threatening to buckle beneath him.

Bulma heard the comment almost lost in the strong wind and shook her head so her hair flew out behind her.

She stared at the boy in the sky.

'_No way..._'

"Gohan?"

There was a violent rumble and the ground beneath her shook. The tremors ran along the length of her arms and made her teeth clack together. Fluttering panic exploded in her system as she felt one of the pronged rocks start to topple, its balance destroyed by the new quake but she needn't have worried. In an instant, Gohan had plucked her out of her bizarre prison by gripping the thick fabric of her dress length body warmer and was flying on towards their ship.

Glancing over her shoulder, Bulma watched as the two thin pillars of rock collapsed into more featureless rubble and breathed out a sigh of serious relief.

"Thanks kiddo…I gotta say, you've got a knack for timing just like your-

She cut herself off when she glanced up at the boy whose eyes were fixed straight ahead. He was sporting a grey pallor that automatically set off warning bells in her head and now he was closer, she could make out the limp form of Piccolo draped across his back.

"What's going on?" she asked tentatively, checking the boy over with an analytical eye and noticing that one of his arms appeared all but useless beside him. "Are you hurt?"

"Daddy's fighting Frieza," Gohan stated bluntly. "Krillin was killed…"

He bit his lip and flinched when grief-filled pain stabbed at his heart.

It had just slipped out so callously.

_How could he have said it like that? _

He felt as Bulma stiffened in his hands and silence stretched out before them like the endless Namekian Ocean. For a long time, Gohan wondered if Bulma had simply passed out from shock but then he felt the tiny tremble reverberating up through his arm as she started to cry and pity engulfed everything else.

"Daddy said we should leave the planet while he fights Frieza. He wouldn't let me stay…" Gohan told her.

Bulma glanced up at the boy through tear stained eyes, noticing the grim set of his mouth and the determination in his eyes. He was just so different to the little boy she had met at Master Roshi's almost two years prior, so much more mature than the little child who had quite happily told her that he wanted to be an orthopaedist and was nervous around the turtle of Kame House. Now, that little boy was resolutely taking both herself and an unconscious Namekian to a space craft situated Kami only knew how many miles away whilst sporting quite a debilitating injury himself so his father could engage in battle with a nightmarish tyrant, all the while thinking that he should be there to help.

'_You can be proud of your son Goku,_' Bulma thought to herself, wiping her excess tears on the back of her dark sleeve. '_I didn't see it at first but he's just like you used to be._'

* * *

Frieza just couldn't understand it.

There was just simply no way that this was possible.

He was the most powerful being in the universe, the only creature in existence that had ever been able to tap into so much energy…

And yet this Saiyan nobody was _winning._

The two super powers fell back in the air after finishing their most recent grapple. Frieza was breathing heavily, clutching at a blossoming bruise on his side and glaring at Goku through slit-like eyes. Unhinged crimson met relentless teal and Goku's own eyes narrowed for a moment before he relaxed his stance, breathing out slowly.

"It's over Frieza."

It took a few seconds for the overlord to realise that Goku was calling the end of the fight before it had really kicked off. It was clear by the way he stood tall, exposing vulnerable areas without second thought, that he basically considered Frieza to be no threat whatsoever.

Frieza scowled.

"What?"

"It's over," Goku repeated without a trace of arrogance. "I can sense your power starting to wane and I've not even begun to tap into the limitations of this new form."

Frieza's heart lurched inside his chest. A manic smile flickered into place on his face followed by an expression of bitter outrage.

"You're lying Saiyan. No one in the universe is more powerful than me," Frieza told his opponent matter-of-factly.

Goku simply stared at him and the indifference in his expression made Frieza recoil.

'_You don't actually believe that he's more powerful than you, do you?_' Frieza chided himself as he tried to consciously slow the fast paced beating of his heart.

He hated to admit it but this Saiyan was starting to…starting to what exactly? Get under his skin might be something along the right lines.

He made a point of snarling at the Saiyan but as his eyes met the startling colour of his Saiyan opponent's, _he knew._

He just knew.

"No," Frieza whispered, shaking his head, the unstoppable power that he had always relied on quivering uncertainly beneath him.

"No, no, no, you're _just _a stupid _monkey_!"

Goku said nothing and something about his opponent's controlled silence seemed to skew Frieza's sensibilities. His eyes were wide and blank as he raised his hand above his head and Goku reacted instinctively to the presentation of a threat, dropping back into a more offensive stance.

"The problem here is, of course, that you can only be the strongest warrior ever conceived so long as you can hold your breath."

Goku frowned at the cryptic comment, eyeing the ominous black ball that had formed on Frieza's outstretched finger tip and tried to brace himself for another trip into the ocean but to his complete surprise, Frieza started laughing, channelling an impressive amount of Ki into the black blast until it was bigger than the island they had been standing on. With deliberate precision, Frieza launched the black attack straight into the ocean, missing Goku completely.

Silence followed for half a second and Goku's stomach dropped into his shoes.

There was a catastrophic rumble. Goku looked on horrified as cracks started to split along the little island below them and through the sea. Sea water bulged above the cracks and sunk into the new threads of devastation spreading across the planet. After a few more seconds, the land started to shift uncontrollably, creating the impression that the whole planet was convulsing, trying to spew out the effect of Frieza's evil. New mountains appeared along the shifting ground belching up thick raining clouds of smoke and ash until the sky had been stained a sooty black. Then came the geysers of lava.

"What did you do?" Goku asked in a horrified whisper, awestruck by the arches of molten rock creating orbital rings of fire in the sky, a natural phenomenon that was terrifying in its beauty.

Frieza chuckled triumphantly and relaxed his stance as Goku had only moments before.

"You're right monkey, it _is _over. I've just sent a blast directly to the planet's core. It's only a matter of time before this planet is reduced to a worthless pile of ash and unlike you, I can breathe in space. All I have to do is out distance myself from the blast while you and hopefully that half breed _parasite _of yours will die a pathetic death here."

The overlord watched gleefully as Goku's eyes widened in horror, his mouth falling open ever so slightly as his mind worked over the probability of his survival.

It wasn't good.

His eyes rested on the dark hole in the water where the blast had sunk through liquid and then sedimentary rock towards the heated core of the planet, the fatal wound in the land that would insure Namek's destruction. For a moment, his senses sought out Gohan's Ki and with everything he had left inside him that wasn't feral anger, he prayed that his son would make it off the planet in time.

'_Please…_' he thought desperately, his eyes casting up towards an unknown deity.

Frieza took a moment to appraise how distracted his opponent was and decided in a moment of cruel mirth to capitalise on it. Grinning perfidiously, he charged forward with a deadly spike of Ki forming in his hand like a sword.

* * *

By the time that Gohan touched down outside the porcupine-like space ship, he was barely able to remain conscious. His arm throbbed hideously, pushed into a sickening angle by Piccolo's muscular weight and the gash on his head had re-opened, bleeding copiously. He shuffled until Piccolo was safely settled on the grass and then tried to follow Bulma as she scrambled up, his vision swimming.

"Piccolo," Bulma said with clarity at the ship, glancing back just in time to watch Gohan totter unsteadily. With a panicked lurch, she staggered forward to offer a supporting frame as he stumbled, catching him as he was about to crash forward and pass out.

Gohan felt the warmth of Bulma's stomach on his head and blinked for a few seconds, disorientated enough to think that his mother was holding him. Tentatively, his arms snaked around Bulma's waist, gripping on to her body warmer with hard, desperate hands.

"I'm sorry mum…" he whispered sadly, trying to control the lump growing up in his throat.

Bulma heard the whispered comment and a pang of sorrow and lenity seemed to bleed out from her heart. Though she didn't really know the kid, she knew the rough outline of what he had been through and she knew both of his parents. Gohan was still so very young and already he'd been involved with the ruthless Saiyans, with Frieza…and with whoever had taken him. With a jolt, Bulma realised that he hadn't seen his mother since he had been kidnapped by Raditz on that fateful day at Master Roshi's. _Bulma herself _had seen Gohan more recently than Chi Chi had.

Holding back the feelings of distress, she put a smooth hand on Gohan's matted hair, stroking through the knots. Gohan seemed to sigh beneath her fingers.

"It's okay kiddo," Bulma whispered comfortingly.

With Bulma's hand rhythmically stroking his hair, the disorientation laying a haze over Gohan slowly dissipated. After a while, he seemed to realise what had happened and pushed off from Bulma's body, watching her with wide, vulnerable eyes.

"Oh, sorry Bulma," he said, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. "We need to get Piccolo into the ship."

Before Bulma could reply to say that there was nothing to be sorry about, Gohan had darted over to Piccolo's mangled body, hoisting his friend up over his shoulder again. His stomach gave a violent jerk when he saw the dark blood stain on the grass where the drenched make-shift bandage had soaked clean through to the ground and frantically, he checked on Piccolo's Ki, breathing out slowly as he realised that his almost mentor's energy signature was fluctuating but still fairly strong for the moment.

Bulma watched the boy trudge towards the door to the ship and shivered as the sky darkened suddenly. Awkward feelings warred inside her as she moved stiffly forward to help support Piccolo's weight. Together, they managed to heave him onto the platform and scramble on after him. Bulma's sharp eyes stayed on Gohan as he fought against the lure of unconsciousness, uncomfortable with the fact that the poor boy had to try so hard to be brave, to hold it together. She grimaced dolorously.

"Goha-

The sudden, violent earthquake cut her off.

* * *

Frieza drove the spike of Ki down with precision, aiming to skewer Goku the same way he had skewered Krillin off of one of his sharpened horns but at the last possible moment, Goku sensed the influx of Ki and dodged just enough for the spike to graze his side. Goku hissed out through grit teeth as he felt the sizzling heat of energy burning through his shirt and his skin. As the energy slipped away from his bare flesh, he tried to right himself in mid-air but he was too slow. Frieza brought a two handed club down on to the top of his spine, sending him shooting down into a pool of bubbling lava that had just erupted to the surface.

The tyrant watched with barely restrained excitement as the Saiyan disappeared from sight.

* * *

Bulma found herself in the grip of intense terror as the earthquake juddered across the land, causing the space ship to rattle alarmingly. Throwing herself down on the platform, she griped uselessly for anything solid to hold on to, latching on to Piccolo's lifeless hand and squeezing hard.

Gohan kept his footing, his face turned to the epicentre of the earthquake, watching as the sky turned black above them. Though he had never seen a planet subjected to serious duress before, instinct told him that an apocalypse wasn't far off.

They had to get off of Namek and fast.

'_I can't leave you behind daddy…_'

There was particularly violent lurch and the land rolled. To Gohan it looked like a huge beast was moving beneath the surface of rock and grass, like a snake under a rug. On a reflex, he grabbed on to Piccolo's arm with his good hand and took off, flying the rest of the way into the ship with Bulma dangling from the end of Piccolo's body, shrieking hysterically. It turned out that this was a good move. The ship tipped unsteadily as the ground beneath one of the landing stabilisers caved into the water below; if they'd still been standing on the platform as it rose, they would have likely fallen into the swirling vortex of water and rock beneath them.

Despite petrifying levels of animalistic fear, Bulma fell into 'stressed technician' mode and slid down towards the control panel, booting the computer with a few well-placed Namekian phrases and asking it to move them a few degrees across the island. While Bulma worked, Gohan plonked down beside Piccolo and held on to his friend's body as the platform clicked into place. Groggily, he checked on Piccolo's wound and, ripping up another part of his gi, changed the cloth stifling the blood flow, wincing as he pulled off the old saturated fabric.

The ship slowly started to ascend, moving up and tilting itself back into a more natural position. Bulma breathed out a sigh of relief as the quaking stopped, running a quick maintenance check on the ship to make sure that it was space worthy.

Then Gohan felt it.

A Ki signature blinking instantly out of existence.

Extinguished.

'_Daddy…_'

He concentrated hard, trying to push down the rising panic in his throat and focus, stretching out his senses towards the epicentre of the earthquake though it was hard. His perception was warped by exhaustion and the instability of the planet made it difficult to pick up anything definite…

But he was attuned to his father's Ki.

"Bulma…"

Bulma was immersed in difficult calculations, glancing over trajectories and sweeping graphs predicting the best route of escape and the time it would take for the planet to properly disintegrate. She bit her cheek when she read over a sheet that told her they should have taken off 5 minutes prior if they were to escape the planet's destruction unscathed but engrossed as she was, she still heard the small voice uttering her name.

"What is it kiddo?" she asked without glancing up, desperately craving a cigarette.

"It's daddy…he's dead."

Bulma froze in place above the control panel, her mouth dropping open.

_Goku?_

"Are…you sure?" she asked shakily, turning back to glance at the hunched up figure of Gohan.

The boy seemed lost for words, nodding gently up and down once to confirm that he was sure, he had checked.

Bulma's eyes stung, her chest constricted…but there was work to be done. She could grieve later.

"I hate to say it Gohan, but if your dad's dead then we need to get out of here before something awful happens to us too."

When the kid didn't reply, she twisted back in the control seat to watch as he wandered across the floor towards the exit. Looking at him from that angle, he seemed so tiny, still a baby. His arm was hanging awkwardly.

"Gohan?"

"How do I get out of here Bulma?"

Bulma's heart thudded unpleasantly against her rib cage. Surely he couldn't be thinking of…no way.

"No way," she said, shaking her head, her weary nervous system complaining as a new wave of panic flooded her.

"Please Bulma, I have to go. I'm part Saiyan after all…Frieza's going to hunt me down if I go home…I don't want to be a danger to anybody."

Hearing him speak like that provoked something inside her to resolve itself into a hard knot. Her jaw tightened. She wouldn't let this kid fly off on some suicidal mission, noble as it was. Aside from the fact that Chi Chi would be furious if they ever made it home, it was just plain wrong for a child to think that way.

"That's nonsense, let's go!"

Gohan crouched by the exit, examining the doorway, radiating an aura of intense calm that left Bulma humbled. Uncertainly, she turned back to the controls, letting her fingers move freely over the key pad, her mind occupied with what Gohan had said.

Gohan heard the steady tap of the key pad and focussed on the doorway, his eyes skimming to the body of Piccolo.

"Piccolo would understand…" he muttered to himself and, as if pulled open by some sort of divine intervention, the platform cracked open and started to descend. For a moment, Gohan was startled that the door would just open by itself but then he remembered the way that Bulma had addressed the ship, using Piccolo's name like some sort of command to open the door in the first place.

Bulma heard the mechanisms moving to open the exit and her heart nearly failed.

"Gohan no!" she yelled, vaulting out of her seat to try and stop the little boy before he took off.

"Take care of him for me," Gohan shouted over the wind tunnel that had been created by the streamline from the platform still descending, glancing down at Piccolo's unconscious form, "and tell my mum that I love her."

"Gohan, you can't put this on yourself. You're just a kid! This is…this is suicide!" the technician cried out, struggling against the wind.

Gohan turned back to look at her then and the expression on his face was so much like Goku's that she almost broke down sobbing under the weight of recent loss. His eyes were alight with fire and energy, morbidly optimistic considering the futility of his choice. The small smile he wore was accepting and Bulma knew that no matter what happened to her after that, she would be haunted by that sad smile for the rest of her days.

"No way, this is life!" Gohan declared, allowing his Ki to build back up enough for him to fly into the fray.

"So long," he called out, rocketing up before Bulma could gain enough leverage to take another step towards him.

"No wait, Gohan, don't leave me!" Bulma called out after him but it was too late. He was long gone.

* * *

Frieza hovered for a good measure above the crippled landscapes, waiting for the Saiyan to emerge from the pulping fire beneath him. After a few minutes, he cautiously let the victorious feelings swell within him, the grin he was sporting nearly cracking his face in two.

"Yes, I can't believe I actually did it, he's gone…he's actually gone," Frieza stated, venting into the air, his excitement building to a pique as he fully realised that he had been victorious.

There was a jubilatory moment where the overlord felt completely invincible, like nothing in the universe mattered more than his current happiness. He puffed his chest out and laughed into the air, listening to it echo over the barren lands below him, appreciating his sudden solitude.

It took him a little while to sober up but when he did, he automatically glanced up at the sky, his crimson eyes narrowing as he tried to work out how long it would be until the planet exploded. Judging by the natural disasters, the darkness of the sky and the feel of the heat on the wind, it wouldn't be long.

He took a moment to contemplate travelling back to his ship but decided against it. There wasn't anything particularly irreplaceable on that ship and he'd be able to commandeer another one on the next planet he came across with civilisation advanced enough to invent space travel.

His eyes skimmed across the landscape, taking one final look at the devastation before him when something caught his gaze and held it, a pinprick of white on the horizon.

Hysteria bloomed inside him like a mushroom cloud and he breathed in slowly, sucking in oxygen and holding it.

'_No…it can't be that good for nothing ape…it's just not possible…I watched him burn._'

His eyes were glued to the horizon as the shimmering white grew ominously bigger. Something was coming towards him at great speed, something alive.

_He and that ape were the only two left on the planet._

Unless he'd missed another Namekian…

If he'd had the time, he would have been perturbed by the fact that he was so worried about the golden haired warrior, the Saiyan who was quite probably a _Super Saiyan_. Nothing had ever been allowed to challenge his power before, he had been completely confident in his abilities. Now, his confidence was shaken…and shaken badly. If this tenacious monkey had popped out of the wood work, what else was waiting in the wide expanse of potentially limitless universe?

He gawped as the blinking white light moved into range and a small body began to take shape, dark hair flying about his face as he powered forward.

A couple of seconds later and Gohan halted in mid-air, the white aura dying around him as he faced the villain.

Frieza's eyes widened in surprise.

_Hadn't the brat escaped with that last Namekian?_

Gohan panted heavily on the air, smoothing dark locks out of his eyes with his good hand. His dislocated shoulder throbbed unpleasantly and nausea churned in his stomach. In this condition, he was honestly unsure of how long he could last…but if he could just hold on for long enough then Frieza would be caught in the planet's explosion…

He was certain now that the planet Namek was due to die and with the escalating rate of natural disasters bombarding the planet, it was obvious there wasn't much time left, maybe even minutes at most. He only had to endure the torture for a few minutes…_and then he'd be with his father again._

'_I can do it daddy…_'

"My, my, a pint sized Saiyan," Frieza said tauntingly, relaxing his stance which had been, to his dismay, too stiff. "I thought you'd already escaped like your pathetic father told you to but I guess you lack the proper discipline. Heh, saves me the job of having to track you down I suppose."

Gohan ignored Frieza's banter, paying close attention to how strong he appeared. He was acutely aware of how his arm must look to the tyrant and was determined not to let the brute see it as a weakness.

"I'm just trying to finish the job," Gohan told the tyrant, feeling a power store dredge up from somewhere deep inside him, energy that he didn't even know he harboured. Without too much forethought, he dipped into it, allowing his white aura to orb round him once again, a few sparks of tantalizing gold flaring to life.

Frieza's expression slipped ever so slightly.

Gohan powered up as much as he could, trying to drag it out, allowing the energy to flare around him. As he pushed himself beyond his limits, the excess Ki gave off harsh resonations like thunder claps mingling with the distinct thunderous rumble emitting from the now storm-tossed skies. Frieza regarded him warily, feeling a twinge of anxiety as the golden sparks began to intensify.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, Gohan took off like a bullet through the sky.

Frieza's anxiety melted away as he watched the little demi-Saiyan run.

He loved it when they ran.

He licked his lips sadistically and followed.

* * *

Sensou skidded to a halt across the grass, stopping inches from a cowering Tonbo with his eyes fixed on Ma.

A rush of wind seemed to catch up with him, bombarding the surrounding area so harshly that Tonbo was knocked clean over and the dimension window blurred like a pool of water, strong ripples distorting the surface.

"We need to go."

"Where is Shorai?" Ma asked, his eyes sharp.

"My useless brother is far too slow, we need to go," Sensou repeated, his foot tapping agitatedly on the grass.

"I won't leave here unless Shorai sa-

"What are you, my brother's goddamn lap dog? Teleport to him first and then teleport to Namek if it bothers you so much to do something without his express permission," Sensou barked, getting more frustrated as the seconds ticked by. His eyes flicked to the dimension window and he growled as he saw that Gohan had already appeared to re-engage with the overlord.

Ma opened his mouth to say something derogatory back to the warrior god but stilled himself when he took in the warrior god's agitated posture, the darting eyes and the quirk of the lip. He let his eyes fall on the tiny figure of Gohan as he faced off against the tyrant, wondering if it what he'd heard in Sensou and Shorai's previously strained conversation was true and the poor boy would die if they didn't get to Namek to produce the power ball to turn him into a great ape.

Seeing the little boy stand up to something so fearsome, Ma knew he had absolutely no choice. He pinched the bridge of his nose as he grabbed Sensou's arm and the two of them disappeared, leaving Tonbo alone with his thoughts.

* * *

Gohan flew as fast as he could, feeling the strain on his body as he tried to keep up a stupendous pace. Below him, the land seemed to melt away into a never-ending river of molten lava and he was forcefully reminded of Sensou's first training dimension. He didn't have time to speculate too much on the similarities, nearly ploughing into Frieza as the overlord appeared before him. He tried to skid to a halt in the air but the wind was against him and Frieza was ready with a backhand as soon as he was within range.

Gohan felt the sting of the connection reverberate into his arm and stifled a cry as he free fell towards the decimated land before him. The wave of pain was powerful but as it calmed, Gohan stopped his fall and flew off sideways, moving before his thoughts had caught up so that he could catch the overlord off guard. He flew in a wide arch, focussing on speed for a few seconds before letting his senses expand, keeping tabs on Frieza who was alarmingly close behind.

Suddenly, Frieza's Ki seemed to teleport out from behind him to a location about 3 feet in front of him. This time, there was no backhand as Gohan successfully managed to apply to brakes.

The tyrant regarded him through cold, judgemental eyes.

Gohan swallowed the excess saliva pooling in his mouth, wishing that he could think of something to say to keep the tyrant talking.

'_Come on planet…explode already,_' Gohan thought to himself, unnerved at his own impatience for the end of the world to come. Oddly, the thought of death didn't scare him as much as the thought of being tortured by this malignant creature. Perhaps it was, he reasoned, because the threat of torture was so much easier to comprehend for a 5 year old boy…

"Nu uh," the tyrant said, shaking his head. "You're not going to get away little abomination. You made a choice to come and challenge me and it is important in life to learn to honour one's own choices."

Gohan could feel the fear shuddering through his body. His stomach was threatening to pitch so he refused to respond, trying to be brave, trying to act like the hero his daddy was.

"Daddy…" he whispered.

Frieza's eyes widened significantly and his face flooded with superiority and vindictive glee.

"Oh, there's no use waiting for your daddy now kid, I killed him. It was easy really…I always find it easier to kill those that cry like babies and beg for mercy."

Though he knew the accusations of his father's cowardice were untrue, the words stung him deeply. There was just no way that Goku would have died anything other than a hero's death, he knew that; yet the implied dishonour…_burnt him. _Rationality seemed to dull as his mind clouded with anger. His teeth clenched together of their own accord and his aura bulged as he dropped deeper into that well of mysterious power. His tail shifted convulsively behind him and as his senses heightened, he thought he caught a spark of life on the edge of his mind, flickering just out of focus range.

"You hurt my dad, you killed my friend," Gohan ground out.

Frieza's smirk was challenging as he regarded the child before him.

"And?"

Gohan responded with a kick to Frieza's face that surprised the overlord with its speed. He dodged and felt the disruption of air before him where Gohan had launched forward with serious force and as he concentrated on his evasion, the boy took the opportunity to escape again, flying forward in an enticing arc. Frieza watched him through narrow eyes as he returned to his former position, understanding all at once that this wasn't just cowardice on part of the boy.

With a flare of flame-like Ki, Frieza took off after the kid, his arms folded as he pursued and pondered the current situation at the same time.

He watched the kid, noting nothing peculiar about his flight pattern or his energy output but…every so often…_the kid would turn back to make sure Frieza was following._

Why would he want the tyrant to follow? Wild goose chase? A trap of some…sort…

Sudden comprehension hit the overlord like a well placed punch to the gut and his insides heaved violently forward. The boy was trying to engage the overlord the same way the bald monk had earlier. He was buying time and the only thing left to buy time for was the planet's destruction. He was planning on catching the tyrant in the decimation of Namek.

Growling hideously, Frieza increased his output almost to max and easily overtook Gohan, his eyes murderous.

"Where in the universe does a kid like you get such a suicidal idea?" Frieza barked. "You know that you would be caught in this planet's destruction right along with me right? Sorry, transaction cancelled!"

Gohan felt his stomach sink, the hope draining from his system. If the overlord had managed to figure out his scheme, there was no way he would be able to continue the bait and flee strategy. He had no choice but to face the monster head on so the real torture would begin now.

He tried to prepare himself, as much as his 5 year old mind would allow, for pain like he had never imagined.

The overlord didn't disappoint.

* * *

One minute, Shorai was running along the sweeping grass of the meadow towards Ma and the dimension window, watching as his brother shot onwards at unfathomable speeds, the next, he felt something grip his arm and he was running across a bone dry, brittle island on Namek, looking up into an ominous black sky.

He skidded to a halt just in time to whip round and watch his brother create a perfect orb of luminous energy, rotating lazily in his palm. For a moment, Sensou's eyes were calculating and then, with pinpoint aim, he threw the ball into the sky.

Shorai watched its ascent like a moth drawn to an LED lamp, his eyes widening as the ball quadrupled in size in the sky, giving off cold white light on the backdrop of the black, belching clouds.

"That should do it," Sensou said, staring at his brother expectantly.

* * *

Frieza somersaulted through the air, cart-wheeling down so his tail connected with Gohan's exposed neck – the attack enhanced by the momentum gathered in the rotation. Gohan felt the impact and gasped.

_Frieza's visage was replaced with the image of Recoome and Gohan was charging forward, running across the ground with determination pumping through him. His body swung back as he launched his attack but the brute managed to dodge, his leg flicking out to connect with-_

The demi-Saiyan fell through the air, his mind scrambling as he fought against the negative aspects of post-traumatic stress associated with the vision gone awry in Shorai's misleadingly friendly dimension. It was like having a reboot function in the brain that was jammed, only dislodging and processing normally after he'd impacted hard ground. The colossal thud and the pain as his body hit rock jerked him back to reality. Blinking up at the sky, he tried to assess the damage that had been done, noting with some relief that his neck was still in tact before something caught his attention.

A white ball in the sky like a star or a m-

_Thud…thud…thud…_

Frieza sunk in the air towards the ground, observing the boy's blank face with a smug expression of his own. He hadn't expected the kid to go down that easy; perhaps he'd over done it a little. But then again, with the planet's destruction dangerously close, over-doing things was perhaps natural. As he got closer, he realised that the child's body appeared to be jerking rhythmically, almost like he had hiccoughs.

'_Hmpf, scared witless no doubt,_' the overlord reasoned, dropping down until his clawed foot was on the child's head once more, one of his talons dangerously close to the boy's unseeing eye.

_Thud…thud…thud…_

He started to put pressure on the boy's head, aiming to finish this the same way as he had the last time he and the boy had fought one on one for dramatic irony but without the audience of Vegeta, he didn't particularly need to drag it out.

He could feel the resistance of thick bone beneath his feet.

Gohan didn't even squeak.

_Thud…thud…thud…_

* * *

_Will Gohan manage to transform into the great ape? How will it change things? Is Goku really dead?_

_Find out next time on…Bakuman!_

_Because it's all about the free flowing movement of the characters yo?_

_Reviews are ice cream to the over-heated masses!_


	28. Frieza's Downfall

_Ah, for we are finally at the end of the Frieza saga – I remember finishing this chapter with a monumental sense of achievement. As always, things to note:_

_1) A warning for events being chronically changed, squashed, re-ordered and generally messed with. _

_2) Spelling, grammar and the cognitive hamster wheel of my brain checked (and in the case of the hamster wheel, oiled). As always, apologies if I've missed anything, especially typos. My patience, it does nothing._

_3) Love spam for everyone that reads, reviews, favs, follows and otherwise just generally enjoys this fic. It makes me smile when I know I've managed to entertain._

_4) I forget the rest x_

* * *

**27: Frieza's Downfall**

Within seconds, Gohan's body had begun to transform and he was lost to the misty light emanating from the power ball in the sky. Having seen the transformation many times before, Frieza realised right away what was happening and panic rose like a tidal wave within him. On a reflex, his head jerked up until he was looking at the white orb in the sky, the moon that had appeared below the level of black clouds obscuring the Namekian suns.

"How, how is that possible?" he uttered, unnerved as he considered the fact that Vegeta was the only one on the planet that knew a technique to replicate moonlight like that. At least…that was as far as he knew.

_Had the prince come back from the dead?_

He was forced out of his eerie musings as Gohan let out a deep guttural sound almost unnatural for a creature so small. Frieza cringed. Though he had been able to handle the giant apes in the past with ease, he had never fought one that boasted so much potential power and he was run down after his fight with the blonde Saiyan…more so than he liked to admit. If the kid managed to complete his transformation…

"No…NO!"

He pushed on the kid's head with everything he had; aiming to crush it like a nut in a nutcracker, but it was like Gohan's skull had been reinforced with titanium. The boy let out a primal shout and swiped at the overlord with a hand that was bulking out and elongating, forcing the tyrant to take to the air. As the boy's eyes discoloured into pools of angry red, he kept them on the tyrant and Frieza found himself actually fighting the urge to gulp.

Hair was starting to sprout along Gohan's back and chest, course brown strands that streaked along his body. His mouth cracked and re-set into a snout, his teeth grew - sharpening into fangs and with a heart stopping pop, his damaged shoulder cracked back into place. In one painful growth spurt, his feet burst out of his shoes sporting an extra thumb and his ears became larger, pointed. The boy continued to double in mass, triple in mass, quadruple in mass until he was lying along the full length of the island, covered from head to toe in dark fur watching the instigator of his pain with his long tail moving like a snake before him.

Frieza glared daggers at the beast, disgusted by this heinous turn of events, the primitive Saiyan transformation and this kid's sudden battle advantage. He could tell just by looking that the boy had no control over this form but at this stage, that would just make him dangerously unpredictable and despite the destructive urges that often accompanied the ape-like transformation, the boy seemed to have locked on to him like a predator with prey.

It was the worst possible situation to be in at the moment and logic told Frieza that he should flee, get clear of the planet's explosion and watch the last of these monkeys burn alive. Deciding to follow what logic dictated, he turned in the air to blast off but something colossal wrapped around him, huge fingers squeezing him roughly before he could muster the Ki to take off.

He struggled in Gohan's grip as the huge ape drew back, staring at him through primitive eyes. He pushed against the muscular fingers but just as they had been against the boy's father, _his efforts were ineffective._

Something seemed to snap within him, panic and fury merging to create a negative emotion so strong it was overwhelming. Frieza was spitting mad as his own crimson eyes met the incarnadine taint of the beast's.

"You STUPID MONKEY!" Frieza screeched. "Why can't you just die off like EVERYTHING ELSE I'VE SOUGHT TO ANNIHILATE?"

The ape before him winced, his ears flattening against the domed skull. For a second or two more, there was an unsettled silence. Then Gohan opened his mouth and let out a deafening roar. The ground shook beneath him and the molten lava still bubbling up through the crust of the planet seemed to seep through that much quicker. Frieza took the brunt of the sound and became completely disorientated, wriggling futilely against the massive hand still holding on as tight as it could.

Frieza felt an uncomfortable jolt in his stomach as the ape's fist dropped to the floor and the ground came up to meet him. The exposed part of his body slammed against rock and grass and despite his re-enforced reptilian skin, he felt the impact, bruises exploding along the length of his body. When the hand that was holding him lifted again, he hacked up uselessly, alarmed when he coughed up a string of dark blood. He didn't have time to react beyond that as the ground came up to meet him once more.

This went on for several minutes, the monstrous monkey lifting him up and slamming him down into the jagged ground again and again until his face was bloody and his bones threatened to shatter. Every time he felt the rush of air beneath him as he was pulled off of the ground, he tried to struggle out of the ape's seemingly unbreakable grip but it was like trying to negate existence itself.

Eventually, Gohan seemed to grow bored of repeatedly slamming the lord of the universe into the floor and lifted the broken form up, staring him in the eye. Frieza let out an angry growl as he faced the ape and let the Ki rise into his eyes. Gohan bared his own teeth as he felt Frieza's Ki moving but before he could fling the overlord away from himself, two laser-like Ki blasts shot towards the apes exposed lip directly from Frieza's pupils, searing soft flesh.

The ape gave out a hideous cry, dropping the tyrant and clutching at his injured mouth, blood dripping through the gaps in his fingers. In a moment of reactive rage, Gohan opened his damaged mouth and let a wave of white hot Ki wash over the falling figure of the overlord.

* * *

"You have to destroy the power ball now," Shorai told his brother calmly as he watched the unfathomable energy disgorge from Gohan's open mouth, enveloping one of the universe's greatest threats completely.

"What? But Frieza's not dead," Sensou stated pointedly.

"And he won't be dead for a couple of years yet," Shorai said, glaring at his brother. "You heard the Four Winds; we're here to make sure that Gohan survives the battle, nothing more. If he kills Frieza now, a lot changes and that's probably putting it mildly."

Sensou opened his mouth to protest, inclined to argue about warrior's pride and finishing what one starts, but paused when he registered the urgent expression on his brother's face. As much as he hated to live by the imposed rules of others, in this case, he knew he would need to make an exception if he was to continue to retain Gohan. In this case, it was obviously just more beneficial to do as he was told.

Grunting, he flicked his wrist, calling the power ball back to himself and the three of them, Shorai, Sensou and Ma, speculated as the glowing orb retracted through the sky.

On the island, the great ape gagged and howled as it felt the constant barrage of energy streaming from its mouth falter. Growling hostilely, it turned to seek out the reassurance of the moon's light only to find the dark sky empty of anything but rumbling clouds. Letting out a rage filled shriek, the beast abandoned the crumpled body of Frieza on the ground below and started stamping manically up and down the island, picking up large rocks and flinging them uselessly into the water. Sensou watched in fascination as the beast started to shrink, slowly at first and then more rapidly, the course hairs receding and shedding.

As Gohan's eyes shifted from unnerving scarlet to their normal sharp black, Sensou made a mental note to check out what the compendium had to say about the transformation, how it could be manipulated.

With a pop, Gohan's jaw re-set and as he finally completed his metamorphosis back into a small boy, the sanguine taint on his pale lip stood out.

Sensou watched incredulously as Gohan wiped his eyes with the back of his hands, blinked groggily, took a step forward and then passed clean out, landing on the grass before Frieza with a soft thud.

"You have about 15 seconds before Frieza rouses," Shorai warned, raising his right hand and gesturing wildly.

"Go and get Gohan now!"

Ma didn't need to be told twice, teleporting to the little island Gohan and Frieza were sprawled out on as soon as Sensou had grabbed his arm. In one swift movement, Sensou had crouched down to retrieve the boy, tucking him neatly under one arm. Ma watched as Sensou straightened again and frowned as the warrior threw an envious look at the downed tyrant. As if on cue, Frieza let out a low groan and Sensou took a step back, grabbing on to Ma's arm once again so they could disappear.

In what felt like one smooth move, they had appeared beside Shorai and then they were back on the meadow with a baffled looking Tonbo staring at them gormlessly.

* * *

Everything hurt.

Every tiny movement he made sent fluttering spasms of pain along the length of his body. The simple action of stretching his fingers out in the dust made his insides quake. He had never felt anything like this before, had never been in this condition. Somewhere, in the back of his exhausted mind, he wondered if he should feel a sense of guilt or pity for those that he had killed before, subjecting them to this torture but the truth of the matter was that he felt absolutely no remorse at all, just the bitter sting of humiliation that some low life _creature _was able to do this to him.

He cracked open an eyelid, trying to figure out where the ape was and if he could make a plausible bid for escape but he found himself alone on the island. Wherever the monkey was, it was nowhere near him now. Gingerly, he sat up, wincing as his muscles protested, and took inventory of the damage done.

It wasn't pretty. How he was going to explain this to the men at the nearest space station, he wasn't sure. He'd just have to give it due consideration while he was travelling through space. At the rate he would be able to fly, it would take him quite a while to get anywhere worth paying attention to.

He tried to stand and paused when he felt something below his unsteady feet, a heat coming up from beneath the ground. As tired as he was, he had no control over the new launch of panic in his system, yelping uncharacteristically and jumping back as-

_As something gold broke the crumpled surface of the island._

"No…it's not possible…it's not…"

Frieza's mind promptly went into overdrive, his thoughts cramming together to fast, they were hardly coherent. Was it the kid? Had his powers manifested enough for him to complete the transformation like his father? Was the transformation to great ape a trigger? Was it the original blonde Saiyan back from the dead? Retribution? Had he died himself, joining this Saiyan in a hell that looked just like the doomed planet Namek?

He stared thickly as the burning gold continued to rise out of the soil until he could see the flaming blonde locks and his breath caught.

The eyes of the fallen Saiyan were still relentless, judgemental as he pulled himself out of the soil. The top part of his gi had been completely obliterated. Frieza had never been particularly religious, having been exposed to various gods and cultures across the galaxy but on the backdrop of darkness, this golden _freak_ looked like some sort of avenging demon.

"It can't be…I saw you dive into the _lava_."

Goku said nothing, assessing the damage Frieza had sustained while he was struggling with the magma below the crust of the world. A frown twitched across his brow but he decided not to dwell on what could have happened. All that mattered now was that he had a sudden, massive advantage over the tyrant. He could smell the bitter odour of defeat, the sour taint of desperation. He could win this.

He would win this. For Krillin and Piccolo…and Gohan.

Slowly, with all the assured confidence of knowing this battle was already won, he sank into his beginning stance and waited.

Frieza regarded him through wide, fearful eyes and he knew that…he knew _what exactly_? For him to be…defeated…it just wasn't a possibility? There was no force in the universe to match him, he was the be all and end all. He was the closest thing to a god among mortals, he was…

_Finished._

'_No! I won't allow it. I won't allow it!_'

The fear in Frieza's expression morphed unpleasantly. His eyes darkened, his blood stained teeth were bared, his nose scrunched up as he scowled harder than he ever had before.

"You filthy simian! I will destroy you and then I will hunt down your good for nothing abomination child and I will slaughter him too!"

Goku still said nothing, his own nose wrinkling as he was hit with the bitter scent of Frieza's last desperate pulse of anger. He watched warily as the overlord raised his arm, the pupils of his eyes devolving into mad pin-pricks as a disk of Ki not unlike Krillin's innovative Destructo Disk formed on his outstretched hand, glowing a malicious pink in the darkness of the dying world.

Goku eyed the energy, did a quick mental assessment of Ki and his own fortitude before the tyrant threw it with an ear splitting yell.

Goku launched up on a spring board of his own Ki and took off, angling sharply to the left through a loop of magma shooting out of the ground to try and encourage the disk to catapult harmlessly off into the distance. He realised his mistake when the disk turned a sharp right angle in the air and continued to barrel towards him.

Cursing inwardly, he shot forward, weaving an invisible path through the air for the disk to follow.

On the island, Frieza laughed like a lunatic.

* * *

'_Mr Popo? You've gathered the Dragonballs?_' King Kai asked, wincing as he touched the complex matrix of the djinn's mind. Behind him, he heard a sharp intake of breath as Yamcha removed his hand from King Kai's back. Being connected to someone like Mr Popo, a djinn with more synaptic pathways than lay-lines in the universe, was taxing enough for King Kai who had been telepathic for centuries; Yamcha had only been exposed to long distance telepathy for a few months. Surprisingly, little Chaotsu kept his hand firm against King Kai's back, his breathing slow and even as he concentrated.

'_Yes sir, I have indeed,_' Mr Popo confirmed, observing the mystic light show as the dragon arose like someone might observe a fireworks show put on at the same time every year.

'_I'm going to contact Goku to confirm the wish, stand by,_' King Kai instructed.

Pulling away from the djinn's mind, he groped blindly for Goku's and latched on to it, reeling when he felt the primitive intensity attached to his friend's normally easy-going thought pattern.

'_Goku, the eternal dragon is about to be summoned on Earth – what's the wish?_'

Goku flew between the twin peaks of a mountain pass as the ground shifted, ramming the two rock formations together. The disk still following him sliced through the rocks while Frieza shrieked out alien profanities. Shards of granite and dust particles flew over the black sky like a shimmering veil.

'_Wish everyone on planet Namek killed by Frieza or Frieza's henchmen back to life,_' Goku instructed blankly.

King Kai blinked. He'd been expecting Goku to think solely of Bulma and Gohan, wishing them off planet before the end enveloped them. Instead, Goku was…what was he doing? The planet was literally seconds away from being completely devastated, how would bringing anyone back to life there be any good?

'_Is that really the best wish to make?_' King Kai asked carefully, concerned that the phenomenal power Goku was currently using was going to his head.

'_Trust me King Kai, making that wish will bring all Namekians back, including Guru who died of grief for the loss of his people. If Guru returns the Namekian Dragonballs-_

'_Will return as well and then we can use the last wish with the Namekian Dragonballs to move everyone on Namek to Earth,_' King Kai finished urgently, excitement rising in his voice. '_But Goku, how do you know Guru died of grief? Is that not considered a natural cause?_'

'_I could sense it in his energy,_' Goku told the old martial arts master simply. '_His body couldn't handle that much stress when he was already unwell. Frieza and his men caused Guru's demise indirectly but if it wasn't for them, Guru would still be alive now._'

King Kai took a deep breath in and held it before exhaling. It was a grey wish, only to be granted on a technicality and a huge gamble. If the Namekians were brought back only to die in the confines of space with their exploding planet, it would be a tragedy of huge proportions. Was it worth it to see if Guru would return? To try to save an entire race?

Goku thought it was.

'_Alright Goku, if Porunga re-appears, I know just the Namekian to speak to for this wish to be made. Hang tight._'

* * *

Mr Popo received the message and proceeded to address Shenron. The dragon looked on forlornly, his eyes pulsing in a crimson display as the wish was granted.

On Namek, Dende stirred, blinking loosely and sitting up – his mind kick-starting to try and process what had happened to him. He remembered kneeling over Gohan's prone form, cleansing the boy's system of injuries and then…

Then…

There was a terrifying moment where he re-lived in vivid detail what it was like to burn to death. Whimpering, he slapped at invisible flames on his body, gritting his teeth against a phantom agony before blinking and realising that he was no longer on fire. He was no longer dying...or dead. He glanced down at his clothes, his eyes widening when he took in the pristine robes.

Before he could comprehend anything else, something glowing caught his attention and he stared gormlessly as the stone Dragonballs came together once more, losing the rough texture of stone as they became smooth and orange. They resonated once and a silhouette appeared in the dark sky, a shadow slowly solidifying into the dragon Porunga.

Dende's heart almost stopped beating.

_Guru._

'_Dende...am I speaking with Dende?_'

Dende blinked. This was too much.

He took a deep breath in and let the air fall out of him, shifting slightly so he was sitting solidly on the ground. Slowly, he started to try and filter through his thoughts, controlling his response as he came to terms with what had happened to him.

Okay, so he had died, that much was obvious. He wasn't sure how much time had passed but looking around him, he figured that it must have been a good while. The planet was a wreck. The ground was hot, the sky was storm-tossed and he could see tornadoes skipping across the scattered islands in the distance. Someone had obviously wished him back to life along with all the other Namekians if Guru was alive once more.

_Guru..._

Suddenly, the boy wanted nothing more than to see the eldest Namek. He stood on tottering legs, aiming to take to the sk-

'_Dende? This is King Kai, I believe I spoke with your friends earlier today about a fighter named Piccolo?_'

Dende plonked down on the ground again and fought not to hyperventilate as memories of the events leading to his death flooded him. He remembered both Goku's son and Krillin talking with some disembodied voice...then the malicious prince of Saiyans...Frieza...

'_No, no it's alright son, it's alright,_' King Kai assured the boy, realising that the poor lad was about to go into shock, a common occurrence following resurrection after a particularly brutal demise and Dende was young.

'_Listen, Frieza is quite far away now fighting Goku so you are safe...well...as safe as anyone can be on a planet that's about to explode...oh no...don't read too much into that...oh bother.'_

Dende heard the words and felt a sickening jolt of panic, sorrow, horror...before he made a point of taking a calming breath and closing his eyes to focus on the still darkness behind his eyelids for a moment. When the surge of crippling emotional trauma had died down, he opened his eyes and subsequently, his mind, preparing himself to converse with this strange disembodied voice that seemed to have followed him from Otherworld.

'_H...hello?_' he asked uncertainly.

'_I'm sorry Dende, there really is no time to explain,_' King Kai responded, regret lacing his words. '_I need you to make your way over to the dragon Porunga to make a wish as soon as you can..._'

* * *

Goku ducked beneath a flow of gushing magma, glancing over his shoulder to watch the disk crash recklessly through, and spraying glowing sludge everywhere. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glint on the atmosphere as the dragon returned and hope flared like a rejuvenating beacon within him.

It had worked. It had really worked. Shenron had determined that Guru's cause of death was unnatural and had returned him. He knew by the noticeable absence of King Kai's jubilatory words that the next phase of the plan was being put into action without him. It was only a matter of time before the newly revived Namekians, Bulma, Piccolo and his son were wished home.

Home...

How he longed to go with them...he desperately wanted some of Chi Chi's dim sum, to ask Gohan just what had happened to him...to hold the boy until the kid fell asleep in his arms...

But he couldn't.

Fate had dealt him this hand, had given him this power to make sure no one else suffered at the hands of this tyrant. He had to finish it...had to do what the apparition of Vegeta had told him and avenge his fallen Saiyan race. The raw primal instinct that had been unleashed with his Super Saiyan potential would not let him walk away from this until it was well and truly over.

Frieza was caught in the mad throngs of desperate hysteria, cackling as he willed the disk to follow the Saiyan through the air, amused that the golden monkey was forced into such an un-dignified game of chase while he simply rested safely on the ground.

But even through the madness tinting his thought process, he saw the smile flicker into place on the Saiyan abomination's face and his eyes jolted off to the left, following his opponent's line of sight until he saw it like a mirage reflected in the disturbed surface of the Namekian Ocean.

His jaw dropped.

* * *

Dende was, above all things, a practical boy. It generally came with the territory of healing. At an even younger age, when the Namekian elders had determined Dende's talent for the delicate craft of medical care, he had been subjected to various heinous injuries and had taught himself to waylay his negative reactions for later. The result was a concise and efficient worker who could fix a burst organ in a few minutes before throwing up copiously in a bush behind the elder's house. Dende applied the same mental discipline to the current task, pushing aside the recent trauma and his misgivings and focussing on the task at hand.

He flew steadily to the foot of the dragon, carefully ignoring the fire fly like glow of the warrior zipping around in the distance, though he could tell it was Goku and that his power was quite frankly terrifying, and proceeding to address the dargon in the politest way possible.

There was a stir in the atmosphere as Porunga inclined his head a little to listen to the Namekian boy.

Dende steadied himself and opened his mouth to speak in a clear, crisp voice.

* * *

'_The dragon...the dragon is back...how? Why? My immortality..._'

Frieza's thoughts were jerky, joltish as he processed the sight of the dragon before him, looming once again over the horizon like a deity in destruction.

The dragon.

His immortality.

While it was far too late to escape the planet's eventual destruction unscathed, if he could ask the dragon for-

"Hrk."

Pain.

Complete, all encompassing pain consuming his current train of thought.

A white flash.

Lightning? Or the light behind his eyes as his synapses fired off volts of electricity trying to process what had just happened.

What had just happened?

The world seemed to have devolved into a series of snap shots, still pictures in place of what should be a running continuum. Time no longer seemed to be moving in an interminable stream. There was a picture of his Saiyan opponent standing before him on the ground as he fell back, golden strands of hair caught in the gale as the planet dissolved around him. There was a grotesque glimpse of his own legs and tail severed from his body, flying back at a bizarre angle and a view of the dark, bloodied mess where his major organs had been exposed. Another arm, entirely separate from the two completely unconnected parts of his body was flying freely off behind him, also severed.

He hit the ground.

What had just happened?

Goku watched the disk of energy as it turned wild, spraying Frieza's blood over the landscape like black rain and soaring off into the tar-like clouds, disappearing from view. He turned to what remained of the overlord, the scattered pieces of his opponent and noted the confusion in Frieza's eyes.

"You were hit with your own energy disk," Goku stated coldly, observing as comprehension and horror dawned on the face of the overlord. The grey shadow of death was starting to fold over Frieza's face as another geyser of magma erupted close by. Goku felt the heat on his face and all his anger seemed to disperse as the flow of lava from the geyser slowed.

Just like that…it was over.

He had been meaning to say that it was the tyrant's own greed, his absorption with the need to become immortal that had been his undoing, a careless mistake for someone considered the tyrant of the universe but Goku could see by the haunted expression clouding Frieza's dying face that he understood his folly.

Goku's hair was like a halo in Frieza's misting vision but his eyes were in sharp definition.

Retribution had finally come.

"I'm tired of fighting," Goku said simply, turning his back on the overlord. Forks of lightning split the sky before him and Frieza was unable to separate that natural phenomenon from the power of his opponent.

"I'm going home."

Goku shuffled forward and the sound was magnified through the soil. Every step that the Saiyan took sounded like a hammer colliding with a concrete slab to Frieza or the pounding of his own heart beat.

'_I don't want to die...not here...not like this..._'

"No...please..."

Goku faltered.

* * *

There was a pop and sense of movement and Dende found himself looking up at a bright blue sky littered with fluffy white clouds. He breathed in carefully, appreciating the taste of clean oxygen into lungs that were beginning to taint with the pollution on his own planet. He glanced down at the light-dappled trees, perplexed by the weird colour allocations on this alien planet but that was as much as he was able to take in of his surroundings before he noticed the Namekians scattered about the vast clearing.

Hundreds of them.

No, thousands of them.

Excitedly, he pushed his Ki down and used it to launch himself up into the sky, a grin breaking out on his face as he saw them, all looking around in complete confusion over several pasteurised fields. Tears collected in his eyes and slid down his cheeks as the grief finally caught up with him. His people had been destroyed, he had been killed but they'd all been brought back, transported somewhere safe...all of them.

He could see elder Moori consoling some of the more distraught Namekians in the field across the way. He could make out his brother sitting beneath a tree, clinging to the grass like someone might cling to the side of a rocking ship and in his own field; he could see the Earthling woman, Bulma.

"What the..."

Bulma had been tackling a particularly tricky mechanical problem on board the space ship when she'd found herself lying face up on a soft bed of grass staring at a distinctly blue sky. It had taken her a few minutes to adjust to the situation but being as intelligent as she was, she'd guessed quite quickly the general gist of what happened.

"Goku?" she called out tentatively whilst reaching into the deepest pocket of her body warmer to pull out a GPS. Sure enough, satellite signals flickered to life on her screen and, had she been standing, she would have gone weak at the knees.

She was home.

_Actually _home.

With the trees and grass and...

"Cigarettes," she muttered reverently, sitting up and beaming at the nearest Namekians who looked at her fearfully.

"Hey, Bulma!" Dende called, waving and soaring down towards her, laughing as he crashed into her waiting arms.

"Dende, you're okay! We're okay! This is amazing! What happened? Did you see Goku? Gohan?"

Dende nodded enthusiastically.

"I saw Goku when I came back to life just for a minute. His power was huge...I didn't have time to look for anyone else though, I was busy making the wish to the dragon to move everyone to Earth."

"You made the wish?" Bulma asked, her eyes darting over the clearing, searching for the tell tale wild black hair of either Goku or Gohan.

"Nail!" Dende exclaimed suddenly, vaulting over to a body hanging limply from a branch of a particularly thick oak tree.

"Oh," Bulma mumbled guiltily, only remembering her charge as she followed the boy and helped him to pull Piccolo out of the tree so he could get to work and heal the wound in the warrior's chest. While Dende worked, Bulma kept a look out for Gohan, concerned that he was possibly wandering around by himself, disorientated and still injured; and as she searched, her eyes locked on to Vegeta's for a moment.

The prince was sitting under a tree, trying to come to terms with the fact that he was alive and what he had seen on Namek just before he had been moved to Earth.

The burning, golden aura of a Super Saiyan.

The disk slicing through the middle of Frieza's stationary body.

The falling overlord.

He held the woman's gaze.

* * *

"No...please...you can't leave me like this...you can't."

Goku moved one more step forward and stopped. His hands balled into fists at his side as he remembered the moment that Krillin had been destroyed. The bald monk had cried out, appealing to the overlord's mercy but Frieza had shown none.

Goku's teeth were clamped together as he turned. His eyes were harsh, shards of ice against the fiery background of this Namekian hell.

"Why should I help you? What have you done to deserve my pity? You've brought this on yourself."

He pivoted back round and started walking, his piece said but Frieza's choking voice stopped him once more.

"I'm...sorry...so...rry..."

And it was there, a small spark of pity, forgiveness in the core of his soul.

King Kai felt it like a white tarnish on Goku's primitive Saiyan power and bit his thumb. His muscles tensed until Yamcha was raising an eyebrow behind him, feeling the martial arts master's normally soft back becoming as hard as a wall.

'_No Goku!_'

Ki swirled within Goku's outstretched hand, dark yellow in colour, feeding off of the Super Saiyan aura still flaming around him. With a yell, he arched back and threw the energy at the overlord. Immediately, Frieza felt the sense-stealing pain ebb away to a dull ache.

He blinked uncertainly and tested his muscles against the hot, flat of the floor.

"I've given you some of my own energy," Goku told him as the overlord rose into the air, supporting his pathetic frame on nothing but Ki. The lower half of his body was still sprawled out on the floor, lifeless, useless.

"Use it how you wish. You said you could survive in space without needing to breathe? I suggest you escape into the void and just drift for a while. That will give you plenty of time to think about your defeat."

Frieza's eyes swept across his remaining fist which was covered in blood, but functioning. They swept out over the landscape of Namek which had been painted in colours of black and dark incarnadine. Then they swept up to the Saiyan warrior who shone like a sun as he rose upwards, turning those judgemental eyes away, disregarding his fallen opponent.

_And Frieza could feel his anger, his fear, his...shame intermingling together and churning his stomach._

He had known that he was finished the moment that monkey had shifted his stance, had seen the light of assured victory in the eyes of retribution but he had been unable to accept it. Even now, a shell of his former self, presented with irrefutable evidence that this lower class simian was far superior to him, he was unable to fathom how something could be more than him..._him..._the be all and end all, the lord of the universe.

"Nothing but a monkey..." Frieza muttered, feeling the borrowed energy move through his system into his fist.

"No, there's no way you can win...no way...that you can defeat me. I am lord Frieza, I am overlord of the universe...you are a lowly beast...a nothing...dispensable, replaceable...a monkey..."

The energy in his fist was starting to take on the distinctive, malicious pink hue of an attack, something vindictive, destructive...full of insanity.

"You cannot win...because I am mighty and you are not."

It was a fact, plain and simple and Frieza believed in it as much as some people believe in an all-powerful God. Goku hadn't just shattered his self-confidence or taken his empire though these things had crumpled in the last few minutes. Most important of all, Goku had taken his way of life, his philosophy, his understanding of the universe and, consequently, Goku had taken his sanity.

This was not possible, his defeat was not possible and if his defeat was not possible then this could not possibly be reality.

To kill this monkey...would be to restore his faith in reality.

He ground his teeth and stretched his remaining arm up to Goku's retreating figure, aiming for the bright aura like an astronaut aims for the stars.

"See what happens when you mess with the lord of the universe!" Frieza shouted and released his energy.

It was thick and fast and reckless. Goku sensed it shooting up behind him and turned with desolate anger to meet it.

"You fool!" he cried out and his answering blast shot out from the flaming aura, absorbing the energy he had readily given to his hopeless opponent and continuing to knock down to his stricken adversary.

It was truly Frieza's downfall and it was truly the end.

* * *

Gohan woke up just in time to witness it. Despite his disorientation, he scrabbled up from his resting place beside the dimension window and observed wordlessly as Frieza fired a vengeful missile of energy at Goku's back. His breath hitched as his father turned in mid-air, his eyes furious as he released his counter, a beam of purging energy created from his own Super Saiyan aura, no clever martial techniques required.

Gohan's eyes were wide as the overlord's form disintegrated beneath the blast and Goku was left alone on a decimated planet.

Alone and vulnerable.

The dimension window faded.

"Huh? Hey, wait a minute," Gohan protested weakly, his hand reaching out. He was still trying to get to grips with the idea that his father was still, miraculously alive even after Gohan had felt his Ki signature drop off of the proverbial map and now it looked like that realisation was going to be seriously tested.

How could his father survive the planet's destruction? Was it actually possible for him to escape at all? Had Frieza had the last laugh after all?

He felt a light tap on his shoulder and glanced up into the reassuring face of the seer.

"It's okay Gohan, your dad will survive the planet's destruction but he'll disappear for a while after that."

"Just like you will," Sensou said cruelly, unsmiling as he hoisted the boy to his feet. Gohan gave him a black look, swaying slightly as he tried to draw himself up to his full height.

Sensou simply met the defiant glare with his usual stoic indifference.

"Another threat to the people I care about?" Gohan asked, already knowing the answer.

Sensou nodded.

"Something far more powerful than your father's Super Saiyan transformation."

The boy could hardly believe it was possible. Having seen the change as Goku had transformed, he just couldn't comprehend how anything could process _more _power without simply exploding. He glowered at Sensou, his mind trying to sift through the fog that had settled over him following his exhausting transformation to great ape.

"Why are there always threats one after the other like this? When can I go home?"

Sensou's eyes flashed dangerously. After the frankly ridiculous events that had taken place on Namek, after all the foul ups and the haphazard solutions, his patience was virtually non-existent. Two brisk steps and he was before the boy. Without a word, he bent over and gripped Gohan's swishing tail in an iron fist.

Gohan nearly went blind with the pain.

"You can go home when I say you can go home," he hissed. "If you don't want your friends to die brutally one after the other, if you want your father and mother to live then you will do as I say without question."

Gohan couldn't process a counter argument. He heard the threat in his mentor's tone and knew that the danger to his loved ones was real. He had no choice and he'd known that all along really but to not question it seemed almost inhuman.

Sensou watched the clouded resignation tumble through Gohan's agonised expression and released the boy into a limp heap on the ground.

"If you must know, the threats aren't 'one after another'," Sensou spat out, folding his arms across his chest. "This threat is still 5 years away but you will need all that time to prepare. In 5 years you will have to surpass Super Saiyan and unleash a power far beyond it, something cataclysmal, something...diabolical."

Gohan glanced up wearily at his mentor, and then let his eyes rove to Shorai who nodded his affirmation that Sensou was speaking the truth.

The disappointment that Gohan felt was more intense than any of the beatings he had taken from Frieza.

_5 years..._

But...then...did it really matter how much time passed for him in this place?

He was beginning to realise in no uncertain terms that the threats might never stop...that there might always be something else for him to train to fight against...that he might...never go home.

It was too much for his young mind to process.

All of it was too much.

Above him, Sensou was saying something but he could no longer hear anything intelligible. He let the darkness of oblivion take him gratefully and promised himself that even if he was woken in the near future, he would simply roll over and go back to sleep.

That, at least, was still his choice to make.

* * *

_Will Gohan achieve what Sensou expects in 5 years time? What will have changed while he's been away? What will Goku do when he finds out his son has gone missing once more?_

_Find out next time on…ATTACK ON TITAN!_

_(blasts the theme tune at the screen)_

_Reviews make the pygmies dance…DANCE MY PRETTIES, DANCE! (__ It's the heat) _


	29. Interval - 5 Years

_The weirdness begins. A few things to note as always:_

_1) A warning for warped canon, entirely new events, bad continuity (I've tried to check everything but I'm only human so apologies if I've missed something important) and other plot based things. This story can almost be split into two parts, the first part where things play out similarly to how they did before, the second where everything goes mad and the DBZ universe is sent totally banaynays._

_2) A warning for chapter length as well – this one is long but it was necessary to fit everything in. On the bright side, it is broken up into sub-sections so you can more or less take it as four mini chapters in one heh._

_3) Garlic Jr is mentioned as an event that doesn't require Gohan's interference in the first paragraph – this goes against the grain I know but all will be explained at a later date._

_4) Spelling, grammar and all other things checked like a boss. Obviously, you know me by now and know that I have a tiny attention span (if any at all) so if I've missed anything, my sincere apologies._

**28: Interval – 5 Years**

A lot can change in 5 years.

Within 5 years, the Earth was threatened no less than 3 separate times - by Garlic Jr who wanted revenge on the son of Goku for trapping him in the notorious Dead Zone for little less than eternity, by Frieza who had returned from space a mechanical marvel just so he could seek revenge on Goku for his actions on Namek and then eventually by the lunatic creations of the mad scientist Dr Gero who had studied the Z Fighters over a matter of decades to create the ultimate weapons, the ultimate revenge.

The last of Dr Gero's weapons was considered the perfect warrior, a blend of the best of Z fighter genes and techniques, a bug-like warrior with a Super Saiyan aura that went by the name of Cell.

Gohan had not been seen since Namek and, with each new threat, did not re-appear.

The Darkness

With Frieza defeated and with Gohan's current fate restored, Sensou wasted no time in continuing Gohan's training. The boy had almost been looking forward to going back to the familiar shadowed dimension but as it turned out, with the power and control he'd showcased in his last battle, he would be moving to a new dimension.

There would be a new training regime.

Sensou keyed the destination into the dimension window and crossed his arms over his chest, glancing disapprovingly at the boy's battered clothing. The remains of the weighted grey shirt clung to the boy's skin and Sensou bit his bottom lip as he waited for the Ki of the new dimension to form.

'_The boy fought Frieza with his weighted clothing on…I forgot to make him remove the shirt before the battle began but he obviously doesn't particularly feel the weight anymore._'

Gohan stared at the doorway as the Ki resolved itself and stepped through in synchronisation with his mentor.

As Gohan had expected, there was darkness.

But this was…

_Total _darkness.

He could discern nothing around him, no shadows, no shapes vaguely picked out against the grain of the dark, just complete, all encompassing darkness.

He blinked to try and make his eyes adjust but try as he might, he still couldn't see even an inch in front of himself and the longer he looked, the more it felt like the darkness was seeping into his eyes.

"Uh…sir?" Gohan tried to say but as he opened his mouth, no sound came out.

There was a moment of serious panic. Gathering everything inside himself, Gohan tried to call out for Sensou but try as he might, pouring all his energy into expelling vocal noise on the air, not even a whisper could be heard in the darkness.

Gohan let out an unheard whimper and tried to rely on his other senses, sniffing the air to try and catch the familiar metallic pang of Sensou's armour, reaching out blindly to try and touch something solid.

But of course, he found nothing to grip and there was no scent on the air.

He was completely sensually deprived.

'_Gohan,_' a voice said in Gohan's mind and the boy clung to the new sound with primal greed.

'_This training dimension has been specifically designed to enhance the elements of your mental and physical control. As you are no doubt discovering, the need for your senses has been completely removed. This will force you to use alternative methods of survival and will hone your reactive abilities._'

Gohan nodded in the dark for all the good it would do him, perplexed when he could feel the muscles of his neck moving up and down in high definition. The feeling was so vivid that he was sure he could feel the different tendons pushing and pulling as he performed the simple action, could separate them out and confirm their function.

Was this what Sensou was talking about? How was the warrior god talking to him anyway? His voice had a similar mental echo that King Kai's had taken on when the old master had spoken to Gohan on Namek. It was obviously some form of telepathy.

Then something about what Sensou had just explained to him clicked in Gohan's mind.

'_No…surely you can't leave me here…I can't find food…I can't…_'

Silence accompanied this thought and Gohan couldn't tell if the warrior god had already left him or not.

In response, the boy did the only thing he could.

Panicked.

* * *

Hours ran into days and days ran into weeks. For the first month, Sensou left the boy to his own devices in that lonely dimension, watching as the boy reacted to phantom noises, observing as the demi-Saiyan broke down, covering his eyes or his ears and rocking backwards and forwards. Occasionally, the boy would completely lose his head and try to light up the endless dark with a series of brightly coloured Ki blasts and every time he did this, though he brought his own body to light for a few seconds, he was able to see just how far the darkness reached, just how featureless this dimension was.

And for someone yearning for detail it was nothing short of a nightmare.

Featureless though it was, it was not completely devoid of resource. There were bushes of berries and animals that scuttled about in the void, enough to sustain a life but not much more. For a while, the warrior god was forced to keep an eye on the boy's diet so he didn't lose too much muscle mass, dropping food surreptitiously in Gohan's path until the boy figured out how to rely on his Ki to detect his own food.

After that first sanity testing month, Sensou tentatively started paying the boy visits, staying only long enough to listen to the boy's pleas to get him out of that dimension. He'd do anything that Sensou asked; take any punishment he would need to endure to surpass Super Saiyan if only Sensou would remove him from that solitude. The warrior god simply fixed him with a blank gaze and left him once more to endure the crippling darkness.

When the pleas stopped, Sensou began his training anew, allowing opponents to come at Gohan through the darkness. In the beginning, the boy was knocked unconscious in a matter of seconds, unable to fall back on the tried and tested senses he had been forced to abandon but as time went on, he was able to dodge the attacks and throw some of his own back. He won his first battle after 6 months in that dimension and with that, Sensou re-introduced the war mannequins masquerading as his friends, Goku, Krillin and Piccolo in turn.

This time, when the blasts left his hands to tear through the vulnerable flesh of his loved ones, he was left with nothing but the sound of his own guilt. There was nothing to detract from his own monologue of self deprecation.

The Sight

Gohan stirred the minute he felt Sensou's Ki. Trapped as he had been in the dark dimension for so long, his Ki sensing ability had grown exponentially. He could feel the flickering essence of Sensou's Ki before it crossed the threshold of the dimension door. While he didn't realise it himself, this technically meant that Gohan could sense Ki across dimensions, a feat that had never been mastered by mortals before.

'_Boy,_' Sensou greeted in the traditional monosyllabic way and Gohan nodded his response back, knowing that the warrior god didn't necessarily have to see the gesture to realise he had been acknowledged.

For a moment, Sensou simply stood in the dark dimension and Gohan took the wasted time to map out a visual of the warrior god's stance using a series of minute detection techniques to follow the lines of Sensou's Ki fluctuation until he was presented with a glowing visual of the area in his mind.

He grinned when he realised that Sensou's posture was a little lacklustre. That could only mean one thing.

'_We're going to see Shorai and Tonbo,_' Gohan said excitedly, ignoring the disdain he could feel pushing through the warrior god's Ki.

The warrior god didn't need to tell Gohan to follow him. They moved across the landscape together and Sensou found himself appreciating the change in Gohan's movements as they advanced. Instead of following along in a loping gait as the boy had been prone to doing before, he followed with light, graceful footsteps, hardly touching the ground at all. His body was poised like a snake or a spider on the air, unnervingly still with precise, sudden movements. If Sensou himself was not acquainted with this particular training technique and the results, he would have found the movements creepy, off-putting.

They reached the door together and Sensou keyed in the destination.

'_I warn you, Shorai's dimension is going to seem unnecessarily bright after this place. You may need to start with your eyes closed._'

Gohan nodded; fear blooming inside him as he prepared himself to enter the light for the first time in a long time.

Discouraging thoughts swirled in his mind as he sensed the strange Ki of the dimension door turning.

Surely his outward appearance had changed dramatically in the months that he had spent in this awful place. Would he have become the monster he knew himself to be on the inside? Would he no longer be able to hide his sins behind the façade of an innocent boy? Would Shorai be able to tell that he had gone crazy in that dimension? That the darkness had sucked out any goodness that had remained in the boy once known as Gohan Son?

It was…terrifying…

The thought of being bathed in the light was terrifying.

And to think only months before, he had been begging for Sensou to let him back into the light.

He didn't deserve to be illuminated.

The dimension door finished forming and Sensou gestured for Gohan to step forward.

Gohan found himself rooted to the spot.

A cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

'_I…don't know…if I should…_'

'_If you don't, Shorai will probably have a fit and to be honest with you, I can't take much more of his whining._' Sensou snapped, massaging his temple as he himself stepped through.

Gohan gulped, too afraid to read too much into Sensou's give-away statement and took a step back into the safety of his dark void. The dimension door shifted in front of him, inviting him to the experience the salvation of the familiar meadow.

Even as someone condemned, even as something evil without question, he still craved the light.

He took a deep breath and felt the air circulate.

His Ki swelled pleasantly in his system.

With careful precision, he closed his eyes and stepped through.

The first thing that hit him was the heat. It was like walking into a wall, like a slap in the face and Gohan staggered, immediately breaking out in a harsh sweat. Before he could get to grips with that, his ears were bombarded with a cannonade of sound. The trees swaying in the distance, the blades of grass clashing together as the wind blew over them. The wind itself sounded like the slipstream of a train careening down a track a million miles per hour. Somewhere in the distance, a bird chirped and Gohan whimpered when it sounded like someone screaming directly into his ear drum.

"Oh, I forgot to warn you about the noise," Sensou said carelessly, throwing the boy a withering look as he dropped into the foetal position on the grass.

The warrior god raised an eyebrow when he realised that the boy was still wearing the same tattered gi he had been wearing the day he had fought Frieza. With the months of wear and tear in the featureless dimension, it was beginning to look like it was held together simply by Gohan's willpower and with the strange abilities that often cropped up in that place, Sensou wondered if that wasn't, in fact, the case. Rolling his eyes and berating himself for not seeing to the boy's clothing sooner, he concentrated on the fabric clinging to the boy's body and carefully changed it, swapping it out for a gi that fit his slightly taller frame a little better.

This time, the undershirt was red, the next weight up from the grey he had become accustomed to and the new weight more than anything else forced Gohan out of the foetal position. Tears streamed down his face as he grit his teeth and tried to bare the agony of the simple atmospheric sounds around him. After a few minutes, the deafening sounds around him seemed to fade into the background and he was able to get his bearings. Carefully, he stood and opened his eyes just a crack so a sliver of light could trickle beneath his lashes.

It was like having a hot poker shoved into his optic nerve.

He winced in serious pain but made a point of keeping his eyes open just that little bit, determined to let himself re-adjust to so much light.

"You'll find the transition from a dimension such as the one you are currently calling home to a dimension such as this becomes a lot easier as time goes on. You'll develop a way of honing your respective senses to suit your environment," Sensou told his pupil lethargically as he started to make his way across the meadow.

Gohan followed, stumbling every now and again as his eyes warred with the now natural instinct to utilise Ki to map out his surroundings.

Tonbo was the only one to greet them when they finally made it to Shorai's preferred spot. The seer himself was caught in a vision and was sitting cross-legged on the hill top, his hands folded neatly in his lap, his eyes vacant. Gohan had managed to open his eyes half way and was taking in the vivid detail of his surroundings in awe, almost walking into Sensou in the process.

The warrior god glared at him.

Tonbo stared without restraint as Gohan all but felt his way up the hill. It had been almost a full year since he had last seen his good friend and the change in the boy was frightening. He had grown a little taller, lankier though it was obvious by the hard lines of his muscles that he still trained. He was wearing what looked like a brand new gi and was struggling to make his way up the hill like an old man, indicating that his clothing was weighted somehow and that he wasn't particularly used to it.

His hair had grown thick and wild, trailing down his back like it had done before the Saiyan invasion. All of this was not what made Tonbo cringe as Gohan approached.

It was his skin, once holding a healthy pallor, now shock white to the point of translucence. He looked like a vampire as he sat cross legged before Shorai, the dark blue colour of his veins rising to the surface as he sweated in the light. There were heavy, dark bruises under his eyes and his lips were set into a thin, hard line. When he was finally able to open his eyes fully, Tonbo recoiled from the emptiness in the dark orbs.

They were the same eyes that Tonbo had seen the day that Shorai's vision had gone awry and Gohan had been caught on the edge of death, thinking that his neck had been broken.

Gohan stared intently at the seer, watching as Shorai's lips moved to mouth words as his vision progressed. He tried to lip read but it was virtually impossible. Whatever Shorai was mouthing, it was slurred, his mouth hanging slightly slack. After 15 minutes or so, Shorai stirred, his eyes rolling forward into focus, his brow sweaty.

He was met with the full visual of Gohan staring unblinkingly at him and jumped clean out of his skin.

"Ah!" he said, shifting back. Gohan raised a puzzled eyebrow at him, unnerved by the seer's reaction, proving that he probably really did look like a monster now. He tried to tell Shorai that he was sorry for startling him but realised after a few moments that he was speaking to the seer naturally from within his mind rather than out loud. He flinched and concentrated on forming words.

"Sorry," he croaked, bringing a hand up to the familiar point on his neck. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Shorai gawped at the boy, and then turned hard eyes on his brother who met his disapproval with practiced nonchalance. How could the warrior god have done this in a year? Gohan was so different, so…closed off, emotionally stunted. During his time with Sensou before the Saiyans and before Frieza, Gohan had started to take on the features of a hardened survivor but this was something else. He had been tested to braking point and further. Shorai could see that he had adapted rather than lose his mind, had shut himself off.

With the cracks that kept occurring in the line of Gohan's fate, a potentially dangerous development, Shorai had managed to convince Sensou to honour their agreement and Gohan's fate was to be checked by contact every month from now until his battle with the next major enemy. With the seer gifts that he had managed to utilise in his battle against Frieza, Shorai had managed to extend Gohan's sessions into lessons which meant that whatever Sensou was doing to the poor boy, he would at least get a break once a month.

Shorai didn't intend to waste his time.

"It's quite alright Gohan," Shorai assured him, offering him a tentative smile. "You've grown since I last saw you."

Gohan met the comment with a flickering smile that didn't reach his eyes. Shorai lifted his eyes heavenward, praying with no one in particular that Sensou hadn't managed to damage the boy's purity yet.

"If it's alright with you, I'd like to start by checking your future and then we can see about teaching you some basic seer techniques okay?"

Gohan's eyes widened slightly and for just a moment, Shorai was sure he could see a spark in the dull darkness of his eyes.

"Oh? Sensou didn't tell me that I'd be learning to see the future…" His voice cracked and fell away, almost useless after a year of neglect. He tossed a furtive look at Tonbo who grinned encouragingly.

Shorai watched the little wordless exchange between the two friends and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. If anything, Gohan still valued the opinion of his friend. That was something, definitely something to work with.

"Well, we'll see how it goes," Shorai said. "We'll have to take a measure of your gifts to determine what you can learn but hopefully we can teach you something useful."

"Is…uh…I mean…" He was finding it difficult to form the words, his brow furrowed in frustration as several excited ideas rammed together in his mind. If he could see the future, he could have something to keep him company in that heinous dimension. If he could see the future, he could check up on the safety of his loved ones for himself. If he could see the future…

Shorai's hand found its way to the boy's shoulder as his eyes lit up and his mental walls crumbled. He recognised the devastation that excessive hope was causing in Gohan's battle worn system and sought to calm it. While hope was a brilliant thing for Gohan at this crucial juncture, too much could send him over the edge. He needed to let the hope trickle through Sensou's bitter training to sustain the boy's soul as he delved further into the depths of the warrior god's depraved plans.

"The art of future sight is…a little difficult to try and…typeset. Not everyone has exactly the same abilities. You may not ever have a full blown vision; you may only be able to feel if something particularly awful is going to happen. You may only be able to see a couple of seconds ahead. You may only be able to read a future that directly applies to yourself. Do you see what I mean?"

Gohan nodded uncertainly, feeling his stomach drop.

"What I'm trying to say is that there are different abilities and limitations. It will take you a while to get used to what you can do."

Gohan nodded again, hiding the disappointment and desolation behind the closed expression of his previous blank stare. Wordlessly, he held out his hand for the seer to take and Shorai gently touched his open palm.

Shorai made a point of keeping level with Gohan's gaze, examining the expression, trying to gauge how twisted Gohan had become in the year away.

"I promise, I'll do what I can for you," he mumbled sincerely.

Gohan frowned as the seer's eyes sank back into his skull, mulling over that simple statement. It had sounded like Shorai was simply promising to do his best to bring out Gohan's potential as a seer but it almost seemed like there was more to it than that. Having been alone for so long, Gohan had almost forgotten how to read the subtler subtext of a meaningful statement but the questionable semantics for that particular statement, the way it was delivered, seemed obvious.

Was…was Shorai going to try and look out for him?

Something unpleasant squirmed within him as he sat still, waiting for Shorai to return from his vision.

He shouldn't be relying on someone else to look out for him.

Shorai shouldn't have to look out for someone as monstrous as him.

Didn't the seer know that Gohan could more than take care of himself?

Didn't he know that there was nothing good left to look out for?

'_You are a danger to them._'

The Hag

"Where are we going?" Gohan asked as the Ki for the dimension door clicked into place and they stepped through into a dim swamp. He winced as he heard his own voice like a sledge hammer to the skull but through his various trips to Shorai's dimension for seer training and through a few trips that Sensou himself had taken the boy on, Gohan had learnt to deal with the transition from the darkness and silence into a Technicolor world.

The details of multi-dimensional background noise no longer crippled him.

"To see an old…_friend _of mine," Sensou told Gohan with a notable shudder. Gohan raised an incredulous eyebrow but said nothing as they made their way into the thick sludge of the swamp.

As Gohan's eyes adjusted to the half-light, he began to take an interest in the plants around him, examining the sweeping set of the weeping willow trees, their dark green tendrils dipping down into the boggy swamp and shifting restlessly though the boy could feel no breeze on the stagnant air. There were a number of exotic looking flowers dotted around in enticing colours of dark purple and red but Gohan knew to stay away because of the malicious Ki signatures attached to them, veins of energy running with the taint of poison. There were dark shrubs on the shallower inlets of ground covered in sharp thorns, pioneering roots thrusting downwards into rich soil and thick, foul smelling moss covered everything.

As they ducked below a particularly thick tree branch, little vines slithered forward to coil around Gohan's arm.

"Ugh," Gohan intoned, throwing his hand out and shooting the vine with a thin Ki blast. To his surprise, despite the humidity of the atmosphere and the moisture that covered everything within the swamp, the vine quickly caught fire, giving out a horrible hissing shriek as it burnt.

He felt a surge of regret and horror.

He hadn't meant to kill it like that. It was just supposed to act as a warning shot.

When he realised that the boy had stopped moving, Sensou stretched back - grabbing on to Gohan's frozen arm and heaving him under the low hanging tree branch.

"Do not pay attention to anything here," Sensou told him authoritatively. "This dimension is designed to unhinge you in ways that you aren't yet accustomed to."

Gohan blinked, unnerved by the hyper-awareness in Sensou's eyes, nodding mutely and following a little more closely behind his mentor as they progressed.

Eventually, a little house came into view through a thick mist that seemed to wrap around them as they drew closer. After a while, the white mist enveloped them completely and Gohan could no longer see his mentor though he knew Sensou was right before him. Switching to his Ki detection technique, he continued to follow Sensou unperturbed as the two of them approached the house.

Gohan heard a heavy iron knocker being lifted and slammed down hard. They waited for a few seconds, Sensou's Ki spiking with agitation, before the door creaked open.

Gohan squinted through the mist as a new Ki signature flared to life in his mind, only coming to light as the door was opened.

He frowned. After his time in the blank dimension, Gohan had begun to rely on his Ki detection like someone might rely on their eyes. He had been completely certain that there was no one inside that house, no one aside from himself and Sensou for miles in this sinister swamp and yet there was definitely someone standing across from Sensou now, a short, squat figure dressed in a ragtag assembly of variously coloured fabrics with a Ki signature as vibrant as daylight.

Gohan shook his head and sternly told himself to keep an open mind. After all, he was used to Ma's strange abilities and he could quite happily pop up right beside Gohan without prior warning via Ki.

"Oh I don't think I can quite believe this," the figure at the door said in a highly amused tone. Surprisingly, the speaker was feminine, though the voice was deep and gravelly. Gohan watched in vague surprise as Sensou recoiled slightly, an out of place, awkward look on his face.

"Yes, Majo, I thought I'd, ah, pay you a visit."

Gohan's eyes widened as he listened to the jerkish, guilty way his mentor spoke to the mysterious woman at the door of the little house covered in swamp moss.

He peered through the mist which had thinned considerably since the woman had opened the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of her face.

"Nonsense," the woman said good-naturedly, stepping aside and gesturing with a long-fingered hand for them to follow her inside. "I know you only ever come to see me when you want something Sensou. No need to try and be polite now."

Sensou winced, hesitating before he stepped over the threshold with a heavy thud, his boots tracking mud over a dark, hard-wood floor. Guardedly, Gohan too stepped over the threshold, spinning back as the door closed by itself behind him.

His eyes bored a hole in the door handle as he glared it and with a jolt, he realised that this was the first time that he had been inside a house since he had been taken from his own home so very long ago. Being inside somewhere so sheltered seemed much more claustrophobic than he remembered, he felt caged in, trapped and hideously homesick as glanced over at a large cast iron stove, remembering with a pang of loss how his mother would stand above their own stove at home for hours on end, cooking up enough food to satiate Goku's gargantuan appetite.

Tearing his eyes away from the stove, Gohan glanced around the rest of the interior, his eyes resting first on a moth eaten sofa at the back of the room by a clumsily constructed staircase set in dark wood. The staircase was hung with what looked like cloves of garlic, strung up in decorative streams. The place had a low ceiling and windows that looked out into the marshy swamp, currently covered in a bright grey veil from the mist outside. In the middle of the room, set into a pit in the floor was a vast black cauldron. This made Gohan double take and on a reflex, he sought out the woman once more, starting when he realised she was facing in his direction, smiling a toothy smile.

Gohan held his breath.

She had silvery hair which seemed to be moving separately to the rest of her, as though caught in a tugging breeze that just wasn't there. It was especially weird when Gohan saw that Sensou's long, dark hair was perfectly still, hanging down his back limply. She wore a pair of black, crossed bandages over her eyes but Gohan got the impression that she was looking at him anyway, raising a silvery eyebrow as he gawped without restraint.

"So," the woman said, her face still turned disconcertingly towards Gohan. "What the in the nine hells do you want Sensou?"

Sensou paused, staring at her incredulously. He had never enjoyed dealing with Majo and today she seemed to be in a particularly…lively mood. It made things that much more dangerous and, if he was truly honest with himself, it made him that much more uncomfortable. Majo was not someone to be trifled with and, if he had a choice in the matter, he wouldn't have to confront her at all, let alone ask a favour. But time was getting on and though Gohan's power output continued to increase, it was obvious that there was some sort of barrier in place stopping him from achieving his full potential.

The warrior god had been mulling over the situation for weeks, checking the Saiyan compendium, spending an inordinate amount of time with his brother looking for clues, much to his chagrin and eventually, he had hit on the answer.

_It was Guru._

During his time on Namek, in the original set of fate, Gohan had been due to have some of his latent abilities forcefully awoken by the eldest Namekian and, though he had attained new levels of strength and stamina under Sensou's tutelage, it was obvious that having those latent abilities awakened had allowed him to make the transition to Super Saiyan that much quicker, had allowed to understand himself and push the boundaries that much quicker.

Sensou wasn't about to lose an advantage so he had called on the only being that could possibly help him.

Even if she was so very, very dangerous.

And even if she did have something of a vendetta against him.

Just a little one.

"It's the boy, Majo, I need you to look at him."

"Oh?" the woman asked in a sensual voice, gliding forwards and circling Gohan who had the sense to stand as still as possible. Something about this woman was setting his instincts to flee on overdrive. He fought them, standing his ground. She couldn't be worse than Frieza.

Right?

"Oh, the boy has already been messed with. I can see the fingerprints of both you and your brother all over this kid and he's not one of ours is he?"

She moved a fraction closer and Gohan flinched when he could smell an enticingly floral scent on her sack-like garment. Taking in a deep drag of air, she smiled another toothy smile at Sensou who shifted.

"He's from the _mortal _realm? Well this _is _unexpected… and you've taken an interest in him? You never take an interest in _anyone _unless there's something in it for you Sensou…Tell me, what _is _in it for you?"

Gohan felt his breath die in his throat.

He stared at Sensou, watching the truth in his mentor's expression, panicking as he realised that he might have been _lied _to all this time. Sensou wasn't trying to train him to fight the threats to his loved ones; he was trying to train him to fulfil some other purpose. It made perfect sense, why would Sensou be interested in saving Gohan's friends anyway? What did they mean to him? Why should he care about Gohan's wellbeing and train him so diligently unless he was going to benefit in some way or other?

"Believe it or not, it's not just what's in it for me," Sensou responded cryptically and the woman beside Gohan smirked, her lips curling up in a way that reminded Gohan of Frieza in the moments when he was being particularly degrading or malicious. He stiffened as he felt her hand on his shoulder. Her touch was light, floating so it almost felt like he had walked through a spider's web. He fought the urge to brush his hand over his shoulder, keeping wide eyes on his mentor.

"Well…colour me intrigued," the woman hissed, leaning further towards Gohan who blanched as her hot breath fell over the tip of his left ear. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the movement as her remaining hand slipped towards his throat and let his Ki build just enough to defend himself if he needed to.

"Majo."

Sensou's voice was stern and she paused, remaining unnaturally still for a moment before turning sharply towards him, her expression unimpressed.

"Of course, I want payment for my services," the woman said, deliberately removing her hand from Gohan's shoulder and taking a step back towards Sensou. The boy exhaled a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding.

Sensou too, felt himself relax. He was on firmer ground when they were discussing business and though Gohan was throwing him a series of highly suspicious looks, he didn't seem particularly flighty following Majo's revelation about how Sensou operated which was a relief.

'_Blasted woman, she could have destroyed everything I've worked so hard for,_' the warrior god thought bitterly.

"Of course, I was thinking-

"Nuh uh, I will determine the price when I have determined the work." The woman said, interrupting him freely. "The more effort I expel on whatever needs to be done, the higher price. These are the terms that you will agree to before I proceed."

Sensou frowned; his eyes alight with intense dislike and distrust. To have a price named after she had taken a measurement of the boy's power, to have her in complete control of the payment…and once he agreed, he was bound to pay, there was no arguing…

But it was obvious that Gohan needed his latent abilities awoken. After all his time traning, he still hadn't attained Super Saiyan, despite his performance against Frieza, reaching False Super Saiyan when Sensou had originally introduced the concept of the war mannequins. They only had a short time to master a legendary transformation and surpass it, only a short time before Gohan was forced into another life threatening situation.

He had to be ready this time.

Sensou shook his head.

"Name your price wench."

Another curling smirk replaced Majo's current, serious expression and she slipped around so she was standing before Gohan, her neck slightly craning.

"Hold still boy," she said gruffly, speaking to Gohan directly for the first time as she placed one of her long hands over his thick black tufts. The little hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

Just what was she going to do to him?

For a good 5 minutes or so, nothing happened, and eventually Gohan plucked up the nerve to ask Sensou what was going on, but as he opened his mouth to give volume to his first syllable of speech, he realised that he could hear a low hum resonating throughout the room, quiet at first but getting louder and louder.

The woman frowned as her hand hovered above the boy's head. She could feel it, the power sleeping within this boy, and it was…_colossal_. It was like a huge black shape at the bottom of the deepest ocean, a beast that had been sealed in the darkness to stop it from wreaking havoc. She tried to take a measure of it, letting her own senses extend around the circumference of this power but it was like trying to map out a continent using nothing but a single tape measure.

A spark of excitement grew within her as she withdrew. It was a monumental request that Sensou was asking which meant that, by her own terms, she could ask for something almost priceless in return and he was bound to pay because of his own foolhardy agreement but, just this once, she was going to cut him a bargain. A bargain the likes of which had never been seen in her hovel before.

And it wasn't because she was dealing with someone she liked either.

She giggled as she withdrew her hand, her grey cheeks taking on a slightly pink hue as she drew back, basking in her own knowledge.

"Well?" Sensou asked a little impatiently, folding his arms across his chest.

The woman coughed out one last chuckle, sobering up as she turned back to Sensou.

"It's not going to be cheap," she lied. "I want 2 centuries for this."

Gohan's brow furrowed as Sensou's face grew a little pale.

"Isn't that a little excessive?" the warrior god asked indignantly, stepping forward but the way she turned her face towards him, blind eyes directly level with his own, made him freeze in place.

"Decidedly not," she said. "Take it or leave it Sensou, I'm a busy hag."

Gohan suppressed a gasp when he hard the word 'hag', an entirely childish reaction to something that shouldn't be that surprising. After all the cauldron was a dead give away if he thought about it rationally.

Sensou looked like he wanted to throw out a punch and to be honest; Gohan would be lying if he said he wasn't interested to see how his fearsome mentor would hold up against this witch. He had a feeling that, despite Sensou's superior Ki signature, the witch could quite easily win the battle with a few well placed tricks.

Eventually, the warrior god grunted out his frustration and disapproval before nodding that she should go ahead and do it anyway.

The woman jumped up like a giddy school girl and shot across the room to her cauldron, starting a fire with a snap of her fingers and pulling across a chipped, wheeled cabinet out of which she took various bottles and boxes. Muttering to herself, she started working, her hands moving with surprising speed over the bottles.

At first, Gohan was curious, peering into the glass bottles to see if he could catch a glimpse of the various liquids and concoctions she was throwing into the cauldron but as he peered over the lip of the cabinet, he caught sight of what looked like a pickled, human head and decided that he'd rather not be privy to any more information.

It took a while for the fire to settle into the proper heat and for the ingredients to boil to the proper consistency but as it started to glow a faint blue, the hag smiled, reaching up to touch at the dark bandages.

"Boy, come forward, stand still and whatever you do, _do not turn your head away from me_. Do you understand?"

Gohan gulped, remembering what Sensou had repeatedly told him about not showing his emotions. He kept his face blank as he nodded and stepped towards the cauldron, staring straight at the witch.

Reaching forward, she gripped his face in two feather light hands and guided him forward a few more steps, pulling him until he was bending low over the cauldron, his face illuminated in the light blue.

"Uh…" Gohan mumbled uncertainly.

"Don't turn your head," Majo repeated as she slowly undid the bandages covering her eyes and let them fall to the ground.

Gohan was left slack-jawed.

He'd been expecting to be greeted with the sight of a woman suffering from severe cataracts or for her to be completely blind, eyeless. What he discovered instead was that she had one, fairly large eye set into the middle of her forehead above the bridge of her nose. The iris was bright yellow in colour, the pupil and the sclera were both midnight black. As Gohan stared openly, he realised that in the vibrant colour of her iris, close to the pupil, there was a ring of red that ran all the way around, almost like a scar.

"That's the ticket," she said and her voice sounded like it was echoing from far away.

_Then he felt the shift._

Without warning, his Ki sky-rocketed, pushing the boundaries of anything he had ever felt before in his life and continuing to climb higher and higher until he felt like he was going to burst with energy, like he was so high up that the air was thin and he could barely breathe.

"Ah, n-no…" he protested but his words were thick, laced with Ki.

In the back of his mind, he thought he could see something like a shadowed picture or a washed out black and white photograph. Focussing on that to deter his focus from his laboured breathing, he tried to call whatever it was up to the forefront of his mind and-

_There was a flash, and he felt it, the Super Saiyan power running loosely through his veins, stampeding through his heart. It was hot and heady and ready to burst out of him. He felt himself grit his teeth, his fists balling beside him as he tried to hold on to it, tried to maintain control but he couldn't maintain something he'd never had._

"_Gohan?"_

_It was a blank. One minute, he'd heard Piccolo's voice, the next, he felt the impact of Piccolo's fragile frame on his fist and his friend was flying through the air. He watched in horror as Piccolo's back cracked against the side of a sharp rock formation and he dropped like a stone out of the air, his Ki plummeting wildly._

_For a second, he was frozen in shock and terror but something made him move. He was almost on autopilot as he took to the sky, dropping down and staggering over to Piccolo's inert form._

_The light was leaving his friend's eyes…_

_What had he done?_

_A trickle of lilaceous blood was running out of the corner of his mouth._

_He was…a monster…_

"_G-Gohan…"_

_He was going to say something, Piccolo needed to say something, he could see the determination in his friend's eyes but the light simply dulled out before he could form anymore words._

_A moment of solitary silence._

_Gohan could feel something building within him, something that wasn't quite himself – it was a horrible mash up of grief, intense anger, Ki based power and insanity, a ball of darkness and twisted light that he could never hope to contain. With sadness clouding his judgement, he did the only thing he could._

_Allowed himself to succumb to the agonising build up of devastation inside of him._

_There was a surge of raw, horrifying power. He lost himself to it, becoming a part of it as it ravaged the atmosphere around him. For a moment through the fire and electricity, he thought he could hear his father's voice but then…_

_Nothing._

Gohan blinked as the witch pulled back suddenly, panting heavily and leaning on the side of the cauldron as she bent down to pick up the bandages lying in disarray at her feet. Gohan didn't realise that he too was breathing heavily until he inhaled, listening to the noisy sound of his own ragged breath as he tried to sort out his muddled mind and get a grip on what had just happened.

What was that he had just seen?

What was that power he had felt consume him?

"How do you feel boy?" Sensou asked; his eyes wide as he regarded the demi-Saiyan pulling back from the cauldron.

It was only then that Gohan was really able to fathom how he felt.

There were no words.

He felt…_invigorated. _Wonderful. Like someone had fed him a mad amount of sugar and like he was never going to come down from the high. He breathed in experimentally, feeling his Ki swell, watching with interest as a thin, glowing layer of white wrapped around him.

"I feel…good sir," Gohan confirmed, unable to stop himself grinning at the witch as she hid her eye once again beneath the crossed bandages. She simply glanced once at him, or so Gohan presumed, before turning to fix Sensou with a blank look.

"Payment Sensou," the witch muttered, holding out a long hand.

Sensou's glazed expression cleared as her hand reached out to him and he shuddered.

"2 centuries," his mentor repeated, glowering at Majo as he placed his own hand in the hag's. There was a momentary pause and a flash, then the pungent smell of burning flesh. The woman was beaming as she dragged her hand out of their bizarre hand-shake and Sensou was wincing, tugging back a flinching hand which had been branded with a complicated black mark.

Gohan glared at it, feeling the hairs rising once again on the back of his neck.

"Our business is complete," the hag announced, slipping back towards the now empty cauldron. Gohan cocked his head to once side, trying to remember if he'd seen the woman empty its contents. Sensou grimaced, pulling on a length of fabric hidden in the depth of his armour and wrapping it round the dark mark still visible on his hand, glaring at Gohan when he realised the boy was watching him with sharp eyes.

"I must say, I was prepared not to enjoy this little visit Sensou but this has turned out to be much more productive than I'd hoped."

Sensou muttered something unintelligible that had an awfully sarcastic undertone. The woman either didn't hear or chose to ignore it, hunched up over a work surface over by the stove now, humming an eerie tone under her breath as she reached for a prune in a little wooden bowl just across from her.

Gesturing with a wave of the hand, Sensou beckoned Gohan to follow as he turned around, making his way towards the heavy door and the exit back into the dank swamp. Gohan let his gaze linger on the ecstatic witch one last time, inhaling deeply and appreciating the vibrant feel of freshly released Ki pulsing through his system before turning his attention to his mentor.

Suddenly, he had a lot of complicated questions for Sensou and he wasn't particularly inclined to keep up with the warrior god's brutal way of life without answers.

The witch speculated gleefully as the heavy door was pushed open and as her guests disappeared into the swirling mist. The door clicked shut with a loud clunk and her hand paused above the prune she was about to squash under the broad side of a crooked knife.

_That boy…_

Never before had she been presented with such an interesting mortal specimen.

She smiled as she thought about it, allowing a few stray chortles to escape as she revelled in something she was certain only she knew.

If she knew Sensou, and considering their past association, she was certain that she did – then she knew he was only interested in the boy because he was part of some master plan; an elaborate one by the looks of things, considering he had just given her 2 centuries to access the boy's latent abilities. She wasn't sure how much of a gauge Sensou had on the boy's power but she knew that if he was aware of the fact that this boy had the potential to be more powerful than the warrior god himself, he would have rid himself of the kid already.

"Oh this is just too much," she spluttered out to herself between increasing cackles. "He doesn't know what he's dealing with, the fool. What a laugh, what a laugh."

She allowed herself a full 5 minutes of laughter before settling back to the prunes she was in the middle of crushing, smiling benevolently every time her mind wandered back to the whole affair.

The Truth

Although Gohan had resolved to confront Sensou about his motives for training him before he consented to continue with his current difficult lifestyle, the demi-Saiyan moved willingly back into his dark dimension, appreciating the solitude so he could sift through his thoughts and make some sense out of his accusations before he dove blindly into the sea of doubt that had been presented.

When Sensou next paid the boy a visit, he noted the change in the boy's stance and knew what was coming. Of course, with the absence of blatant questions following their visit to Majo, Sensou had appreciated the time to prepare as much as Gohan had.

'_Sir, what that woman said…about why you were training me…why am I really here? Why did you take me from the ocean that night?_' Gohan asked bluntly, unwilling to beat around the bush.

There was a pause as Sensou considered the question and the boy before him. His senses worked to take in the minute details of how Gohan was dealing with this, testing the rate of his heart beat and the stability of his Ki which were both surprisingly calm. He fixed the darkness with a cold, blank stare and sighed inaudibly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

'_We took you because of a vision that Shorai had a few days before hand,_' Sensou confessed carefully, keeping his focus on the boy's vitals. The warrior god had known that this truth would need to be revealed at some point during Gohan's training. It was a fact that would aid the warrior god considerably in persuading the boy that his training regime was for the best. If Gohan was presented with the irrefutable evidence that he had been destined to destroy the universe, the guilt alone would make him willing to follow Sensou, who was offering to help him learn to control such a diabolical power.

Of course a revelation like this could also provoke a stable situation to turn somewhat volatile. Sensou still had no idea how the boy would take the news, if he would accept that he was more or less a cataclysm in his own right or if he would lash out, become wild or mad. Honestly, the warrior god had been hoping to wait until the boy was a little older, a little more disciplined until he revealed this particular truth but thanks to that _woman's _interference, he had no choice. Gohan was asking him outright and if lied now, it could only be bad for him.

'_Honestly, it would be easier to show you the vision then tell you about it,_' Sensou explained.

'_How does that work?_' Gohan asked; his mental voice low and level.

'_Just as we're currently speaking telepathically to one another, we can also project images. You will need to have an open mind for this to work._'

Gohan said nothing and Sensou took that as his cue that the boy was ready. Intently, he remembered the vision that he had seen within the Four Wind's council, aware of Gohan's heart beat as it started to elevate.

Gohan simply stared as the vivid image played across the darkness. Within seconds, he realised the he knew what was coming. He'd seen this before in the moment that his latent powers had been awoken when they'd gone to the witch but he'd never dreamed that this could be something real. He recoiled seeing it from a third person perspective, struggling not to throw up as he watched an older version of himself twitch round; his fortified fist almost disappearing into Piccolo's gut. As the matter of the universe started to dissolve around him, he could feel the horror in his system climbing to new heights and, as his breathing became ragged, Sensou cut the vision short.

Gohan collapsed in a heap in the darkness, thankful that Sensou couldn't see or hear him as he completely freaked out. He curled as tightly as he could into the foetal position, letting the image of his own power replay in his mind as he tried to process it.

This was…

…proof, honest, undeniable proof that he was a monster.

More than a monster…

…a nightmare.

'_We took you because of what you were destined to do to the universe. The idea was to train you so you could still make a difference in the key battles that crop up along the line of your particular fate whilst learning the indispensible art of self control,_' Sensou told the boy, waiting for a response.

A lifetime seemed to pass before the boy replied.

'_Why not j…just kill me and remove the th…threat from existence altogether?_' Gohan asked. His mental voice rang with false calm so Sensou proceeded with the utmost caution.

'_You were too valuable for that._'

Sensou felt the flinch in the boy's Ki but there was no vindictiveness, no blame. This was going better than he'd expected.

'_You have provided some crucial input to some of the battles that have determined the fate of the universe. To kill you would cause more trouble than we were worth._'

Another flinch in the boy's Ki and for a moment, the warrior god was taken off guard as something flashed a distinct gold through the dark.

'_If this is real…then I really can never go home…I can't risk being near my family…_'

Another flash of gold through the dark and Sensou could feel his excitement mounting. This was going much _much _better than he thought it would. The boy was coming to exactly the right conclusion, channelling his grief in exactly the right way and Sensou could see now that he was right to go to Majo, whatever it had cost him. The boy was only just coming up to 7 years old and already he was…

There was an undulation of pronounced Ki and Sensou could almost taste the boy's desolation through the darkness. Somehow, the silence seemed to deepen, a magnified calm before a thrum of energy pulsed outwards from the boy. Another flash of burning gold and in that instant, Sensou caught a glimpse of the demi-Saiyan set against the backdrop of his thick, black surroundings, his lean muscles bunched and bulking, a vein in the side of his temple throbbing as he grit his teeth against an upsurge of Ki that went beyond his current limitations.

He was going to do it this time, Sensou could feel it. His power had already shifted and his mind was slowly taking on the taint of primal rage associated with the initial transformation. He could see now why the compendium of Saiyan knowledge had outlined the pain of loss as the primary trigger for this spectacular metamorphosis. It seemed to be working like a charm for Gohan.

'_Why didn't you tell me in the beginning?_' Gohan asked; his mental voice loud and laced with hysteria.

Sensou made a point of keeping himself calm, regulating his heart beat and keeping his Ki in check as he replied.

'_You weren't ready,_' the warrior god told him simply.

There was another pregnant pause and then Sensou's mind was blasted by an outlet of berserk shrieking. Grunting in discomfort, he blocked out the child's mental anguish, peering through the darkness as the bright Super Saiyan aura fully ignited around the boy, staying in place this time. Slowly, the colour of the boy's tail started to fade from a dark brown to a magnificent flaming gold and as the colour changed, his tail stood straight up, an indicator of just how furious he was. The long black locks falling over his shoulders started to rise, fading up into the same bright colour as his tail. With a pitch and one last push, Sensou watched the boy blink and when he opened his eyes, they were the same icy teal that his father's had been, reflecting the shadows of his surroundings and the turmoil within.

The transformation was complete and the image of the demi-Saiyan lighting up the darkness with his aura was almost iconic. Despite himself, Sensou felt himself drawn forward like a moth towards a flame.

Gohan's teeth were clamped together and bared. His fists were balled so tightly beside him that his fingers were drawing blood from his palms. Primal anger raged within him, all of it directed inward at himself, at the disaster that had destroyed the universe.

'_I'm a monster…a monster…a monster,_' Gohan repeated to himself, chanting the words over and over again as though it would help him to come to terms with that simple revelation.

He was the monster that had destroyed the universe, succeeding where even Frieza had failed.

Sensou's eyes remained glued to the kid set in a flame against the nothingness until eventually, Gohan's aura petered out and he sank back into the pitch black. Silence and emptiness rained down as the warrior god latched on to the boy's Ki. He waited, letting the anger gradually siphon off until all that was left was despair.

'_Now you know how this arrangement benefits me,_' the warrior god said softly, unsurprised when Gohan didn't reply. '_This was simply the best solution. It's imperative that you learn to control your impressive powers. Under my tutelage, it is possible to change Shorai's vision and allow existence to continue._'

Again the boy said nothing and after a few more minutes of waiting, Sensou pivoted on his heel, intending to leave the boy with his thoughts for a while. As he left, he was already planning how he would test out Gohan's new Super Saiyan form – how he would increase the battle tempo to further challenge the boy and coax him to reach the next level.

Gohan could feel as Sensou's Ki moved away but he was nonplussed, staring blankly into space. His thoughts had jumbled together and he was exhausted from the transformation – no longer able to make sense of anything but the notion that he was just like the villains his daddy fought so diligently, just like them but a thousand times worse because somewhere, somewhen, he had actually succeeded in destroying the universe.

He stayed perfectly still in the darkness, unable to move, to continue living until one robust thought resolved itself over the clanging mesh of shattered debris in his mind.

'_I don't deserve to live._'

* * *

_Will Gohan get strong enough to face the up coming threats? Will he be okay following the revelation that he was supposed to destroy the universe? _

_Find out next time on…Pacific Rim!_

_Where's my goddamn shoe? _

_Reviews are like pieces of apple in an apple pie, the bits that have extra cinnamon…mm…cinnamon…_


	30. Cell's Final Challenger

_An important warning: this chapter marks the end of chronicled canon as far as this story is concerned. After this, I've pretty much taken the DBZ universe into my own twisted hands. A few things to note as always:_

_1) I checked all the sources I could for the appropriate information regarding Cell and just what DNA he has floating around in his system. Apparently, Cell does have some of Gohan's DNA and at least partial data on the boy's battle techniques. I've tried to be careful about the information that Cell would have access to considering Gohan's frequent disappearing acts but if I've missed something that screws with continuity, my apologies._

_2) I've thought about Goku's instant transmission technique and how this could possibly be used to traverse to Shorai's dimension but as far as I'm aware, this technique is based on Ki detection so if Gohan's Ki is undetectable because he is 'off-dimension' then Goku's technique is rendered ineffective. Ma's technique, whilst similar, works under a different set of rules._

_3) I'm pretty sure there was something else important to note about this chapter but I have no brain left. Instead, a small note about the technique Gohan uses which literally translates as 'flame fist' – another horrifying mash up of the Japanese words 'netsu' and 'tsuki'._

_4) Spelling, grammar and other narcotics checked but as always, please note that I have a rubbish attention span and have probably missed a few things due to carelessness. My humblest apologies if you spot something. _

* * *

**29: Cell's Final Challenger**

Goku fell back, panting on the air and clutching at his stomach with shaking hands. He fought not to fold in on himself and choke up bile, alarmed by the power that his opponent had packed into a single glancing blow.

In the air opposite him, the biological marvel known worldwide as the monster, Cell, smirked triumphantly, folding his arms across his chest in an arrogant manner.

"Is this all you've got Goku?" the android asked, chuckling mirthfully as his Saiyan opponent wiped a layer of thick sweat from his forehead. "Honestly, after all the trouble you gave Dr Gero, I was expecting more."

Goku glared up his opponent, struggling to pull his hands back beside him like a pebble in a slingshot. Cell looked on with un-masked ease.

"Ka…me…ha…me…"

A spark of something ignited on the atmosphere above him as Cell prepared his counter attack and Goku grit his teeth, pouring everything he could into his attack, digging deep into the recesses of power he had been able to awaken during his time in the hyperbolic time chamber.

Cell's smile was gleeful as he lifted his arms above his head.

"Ma…sen…ko…"

"HA!" Both warriors shouted in unison, releasing their attacks at precisely the same moment.

Piccolo knew which one was the stronger the moment the energy left their hands and felt his stomach drop. He let his eyes linger on Goku who was holding on to his energy like a life line in the air, examining the Saiyan's output with his enhanced senses to check for any unforeseen problems but as he feared, there was nothing wrong, Goku simply wasn't strong enough to fight against this opponent.

While it was true that Goku had been set back by the heart virus that crept up on him during his initial battle with Dr Gero's twisted creations, Piccolo knew the truth. The Saiyan just hadn't been the same since his return from space to find his son had gone missing once more. Piccolo could still picture the swimming look of horror, devastation and anger on Goku's face as they'd broken the news to him. They'd checked with Kami and King Kai, both of them confirming that Gohan was once again off-dimension, irretrievable.

Goku had tried to turn around a leave right then, aiming to seek out new Namek to ask for permission to use the Dragonballs to help find his son but Vegeta's time warping son had stopped him. Trunks had confirmed that he had come back from the future specifically to enlist Goku to save everyone from the android menace. Though they were not due to arrive for another 3 years, it was imperative that Goku stay on Earth because of the heart virus that he was due to get sick from.

Goku had no choice.

Piccolo had opted to train with the Saiyan during the 3 years before the android attack. At first, he'd told himself that it was to get stronger fighting the strongest being in the universe consecutively, but eventually he'd admitted that part of it was a favour to Gohan, wherever the kid was. He was keeping an eye on the boy's father and would help him when he needed it.

And he had needed it.

Piccolo had never quite grasped how much Goku loved his son until he'd gone to live with the broken Son family for those 3 years…

There was a flash of light and a resounding boom as Cell's Masenko finally finished eating into Goku's Kamehameha. The heat burnt Piccolo's face but he forced himself to stay facing the blast, watching through squinting eyes for any sign of his friend.

Sure enough, he caught sight of something dropping out of the air like a stone, his gi mostly shredded as he careened down towards the ground. Letting his energy pour out freely, Piccolo vaulted forwards, aiming to catch Goku before he impacted hard earth but someone beat him to it.

He lifted an arm up to his face, aiming to block out the light enough to see who had caught him and glimpsed a tell-tale flame of blonde.

Vegeta flew back towards the ragtag assembly of Z Fighters slowly, Goku hoisted over his shoulder. As the smoke and excess energy cleared, Cell watched with an amused expression as the prince landed, wordlessly dropping Goku's limp form before the little monk who sank down towards Goku with a Senzu bean ready. Piccolo kept his eyes on Vegeta as the prince slunk to the back of the group, purposefully avoiding eye contact with his future son as he took up a ready stance. He glowered at Cell still hovering high above them before he felt the pressure of eyes on him and turned to meet Piccolo's pensive look.

'_What?_' the prince's expression asked defensively.

Piccolo held the prince's gaze for a moment before turning his attention purposefully back to Goku. Throughout the years, it had become apparent that both Piccolo and Vegeta were creatures of the same habit – deeply rooted in evil but with redemption in their make up. Piccolo could boast an understanding of the prince that the others couldn't even dream of but still, Vegeta often surprised Piccolo with his childish demeanour and his insane pride.

After a few months with Goku's son, Piccolo was willing to admit that he had changed. After years at Capsule Corp, after having a son of his own, Vegeta still stubbornly refused to acknowledge that the assembly of people gathered before Cell today were the closest things he had ever had to friends. He still would not admit that he had joined them to take a stand against this new threat to save a planet he had once considered a worthless mud ball.

Goku barely had the presence of mind to chew the bean as it was pushed gently into his mouth but somehow he managed it. The others looked on anxiously as Goku's wounds sealed and he opened his eyes, still a haunting teal despite the damage he had taken.

The death glare he gave the creature in the air would have frozen even the most hot-blooded of animals. Cell took it all in his stride.

"I think that counts as a victory for me," Cell told his fallen opponent casually. "And as there appear to be no more challengers, I do believe that means I have won my very entertaining Cell Games."

Goku's eyes narrowed and he said nothing as he took up a ready stance once more, indicating that in his eyes, the battle was very far from over. Cell's lips curled up higher.

"No Goku, just because you have taken a Senzu bean and are back on fighting form, it doesn't mean you can nullify my victory. This match is over and all that's left is for me to obliterate the Earth."

Goku's heart leapt into his throat and his ready stance faltered. As Cell raised a pale hand, insanity alight in his malevolent face, Goku did some quick mental arithmetic, measuring Cell's swelling power against the boost his own power had received after he'd recovered from serious injury.

His blood ran cold as he realised that it just wasn't enough. Though his power had increased substantially, it still wasn't enough to match what Cell was managing to do in the sky.

They were all going to die.

And it was all Goku's fault for not managing to progress to the next level of power.

Grief and guilt filled him up as he watched the ominous ball of destruction forming in Cell's hand. He stared with wide eyes as Krillin stepped up to stand beside him, throwing him a glance that spoke volumes as they stood together. Piccolo came to stand on his other side, offering his support even though they had once been mortal enemies. He threw a quick look over his shoulder, watching as Trunks side stepped closer to his father and as Vegeta fixed him with a cold stare, a stare that told him that no-one blamed him for what was about to happen.

And no-one did.

Cackling manically, Cell released the dark energy, watching as it bombarded the atmosphere, consuming the clouds and air as it barrelled down towards the land below, static pulses of power running along it's circumference as it doubled in size, then tripled in size, then-

Cell's laughing ceased.

The ball jerked to a stop in mid-air.

There was a moment of confusion as Cell watched the ball remain suspended in the air. If not for the crackle of electric Ki still dancing across the dark surface, he would have wondered if Trunks had not somehow managed to harness the power of the ingenious time machine and stopped the ball dead. Then slowly, the ball began to rise like a meteorite in reverse.

"What? What is this?" Cell asked angrily, glaring down at the assembled Z Fighters, mentally counting them all off in his mind to see who could possibly be doing this to his finishing move.

His eyes finally locked on Goku and his brow furrowed as he took in the look on the Saiyan's face. Being an android, even one that was bio-engineered from the collective DNA of the Z fighters, one that had grown up and developed, more a living creature than a robot, he had trouble reading certain social cues. The look on Goku's face quite frankly did not compute.

The power ball beneath him suddenly picked up speed and he was forced to dodge awkwardly out of the way as it passed him to explode harmlessly in the upper atmosphere. The heat that bathed the decimated arena was full of malignant energy and some of the rock formations in the surrounding area crumbled, unable to withstand the intensity.

Cell could feel pure fury flowing through him, hot and heady as glanced back towards the ground, aiming to catch sight of the fighter that had managed to throw off his attack like that.

_And he was there._

Goku simply stopped functioning as he felt the Ki signature flare to life in his mind, something colossal, inconceivable and coloured with the familiar uniqueness of his son. The thoughts tumbling through his pressured mind halted as he focussed everything he had on that Ki. His son's Ki.

_Gohan…_

Piccolo felt it and his jaw slackened. With one precise movement, he cocked his head to stare at Goku, afraid of what was happening and how the Saiyan would react.

What _was _happening?

Was that new, terrifying signature really…

Cell glared daggers at the figure standing below him as he descended, accessing his databases to try and place the face of this midget. As he drew closer, he was able to take a closer look, realising almost immediately that the one to knock his planet killer away was nothing more than a boy.

_A boy with the iconic Super Saiyan hair and eyes._

There was no mistaking the child's heritage with eyes that particular shade of turquoise and thick hair coloured almost platinum against the sunlight. His eyes sank down to the boy's tail swinging lazily out behind him, also coloured unnerving platinum. He raised an arched eye ridge as his data came back, placing the bone structure and gene composition – labelling this unknown fighter as Gohan, son of Goku.

Ah, so that was what Goku's mixed up expression was all about.

Cell's data confirmed that not much was known about Gohan outside of his fighting abilities, which hadn't been measured since he was 5 as the boy kept disappearing. Now at 10, it was obvious that his skills had grown significantly. At some point he had evolved into a Super Saiyan, making him the youngest of his kind. Even Trunks had not managed such a transformation so young.

With his facts limited, Cell decided to rely on his senses to gauge the boy's power.

His expression shifted as he tried to map out the boy's Ki.

Gohan regarded the creature out of stark, impregnable eyes, feeling as Ma and Sensou disappeared back to Shorai's dimension to watch the action undetected on the corner of his perception. Purposefully, he kept his eyes on his opponent, afraid to look over and catch the eyes of his father or Piccolo, afraid to see their expressions of shock after 5 years.

Goku was vibrating next to Piccolo as he stared at the boy that was definitely his son. Though the boy looked nothing like the son he'd known, the Ki signature was inarguable. He couldn't believe how much Gohan had changed. The blonde hair, the light eyes, the taller frame, the way he held himself like nothing could move him if he didn't first give permission. All hint of the vulnerable, sweet boy Goku had known was gone, in his place was this strange, silent character facing off against the monster.

He couldn't restrain himself.

"Gohan…" he whispered.

Piccolo managed to catch as Goku's control slipped, grabbing on to one of the Saiyan warrior's arms as the bald monk did the same on his other side. For a moment, Goku didn't put up a fight at all; his eyes hollow as he watched Cell strut towards his son but then Piccolo felt the resistance as he tried to surge forward.

"GOHAN!" Goku yelled out, his voice layered with hysteria.

Gohan kept his indifferent expression as his father's voice rang out over the arena. Cell's eyes twitched towards Goku and the other fighters for a moment, a smug smile playing over his lips.

"So, you're the mysterious son of Goku, the disappearing boy that those fools couldn't recover, even with the Dragonballs."

Gohan said nothing, squatting low with his legs spread wide, an invitation to fight that Cell didn't miss. Though he'd already announced the end of his tournament, the Saiyan genes within him were telling him that this would be an interesting battle, an opportunity to experience the pure invigoration of a potential challenge. The boy's Ki was off the charts though quite frankly, he wasn't sure he trusted that reading. It had confirmed that the boy's Ki, whilst resting, was higher than his own whilst fighting and he couldn't get a handle on that considering that he was perfect.

"Alright boy, you've just bought this planet one last chance. Should I defeat you, I will not hesitate to destroy this world."

The boy's face didn't change and somehow, Cell found it slightly off-putting that this child could appear so completely nonchalant.

"Fine by me," Gohan snapped out, his words precise and hard.

Without further ado, Cell sprang forward, aiming a kick to the Gohan's midriff on the left side, his data confirming that it was a weakness of Gohan's to leave that side exposed during battle but he felt an agonising crunch as his leg hit the broad side of Gohan's arm.

Cell blinked.

Gohan was crouching below the kick with his arm held high above in an obvious block. Cell hadn't seen him move.

Goku stopped struggling for a moment, awed by what he had just witnessed and with one last ditch effort, Piccolo pushed the hand that had been trying to travel towards Goku's forehead with two fingers outstretched down, holding on to it as he followed the stunned Saiyan's gaze down to the battle.

He blanched when he saw Gohan blocking the kick from the monster but, always more rational than Goku, he knew not to jump in. Gohan's Ki was perfectly stable, unbothered and serene – that kick had hardly phased the demi-Saiyan and Piccolo was beginning to see that his initial, stupendous reading for Gohan's power might have been dead on the money.

"What the-

Gohan changed the angle of his arm, dropping the block so he could grip on to Cell's leg. Concentrating, he threw Cell's leg away and aimed a swift punch to the gut.

Cell felt like he had just been hit by an anvil. The initial impact winded him and as the child's fist continued to push into him, he felt his Ki start to flicker and diminish. Only then, as agony erupted over him, sending his body into a spasm, did he see the tiny static sparks of free energy skipping over Gohan's skin, flashing in the depths of the boy's eyes.

Gohan held the punch for a few seconds before releasing his tension and drawing back. He stood tall as Cell dropped to one knee, one hand over his stomach and one hand over his mouth as he coughed up a distinct trickle of heliotrope blood.

He stared at the demi-Saiyan.

'_What's…happening?_'

Gohan stood above him, still with that same indifferent expression, his eyes boring ruthless holes into the creature before him and Cell squirmed under such an intense gaze. The stoicism had been understandable before they had really met each other in battle but Cell's programming told him to expect a change in expression if his opponent ever managed to win a grapple. There should have been a glimmer of triumph, a victorious smirk but there honestly was nothing. It was almost as though the demi-Saiyan wasn't really there.

"Wh-what are you?" Cell stuttered out, feeling the first inklings of fear start to circulate his systems.

It was the first time he had ever felt that particular emotion and he didn't much care for it.

Gohan stiffened as he stood before the creature and the lines of static energy flowing over his body became more agitated, spiking up and pulsing out into the atmosphere. The severe expression on his face finally softened, his eyes widening as he drew back, increasing the space between himself and his pained opponent. His mouth pulled down at the corners, slackening slightly as he drew into himself. His hands were balled into tight fists beside him.

'_What am I? I'm a monster…something even worse than you Cell…a cataclysm destined to destroy the universe. I don't deserve to live._'

Goku saw as Gohan hesitated above Cell, watching with sharp eyes as his son backed off a way. His Ki, so stable a moment ago, was oscillating wildly and as the boy hunched up before them all, a golden aura ignited around him, a huge, flaming storm of gold, thrumming with veins of jagged electricity.

"What happened? Did Cell hurt him?" Krillin asked urgently, concern apparent through the awe in his voice.

Goku shook his head, knowing exactly what had happened without needing to know the details. He always knew what was wrong with Gohan.

"Cell upset him," he said softly. Piccolo was the only one that heard Goku's quiet comment.

The storm of Ki continued to engorge around the demi-Saiyan who stood tall in the centre, his teeth clamped together.

'_I don't deserve to live._'

Cell's eyes were glued to the child as he witnessed the bulge in power. He had thought to take advantage of the obvious slip in the child's control but as the boy's power had built up before him, he'd thought better of it.

'_I don't deserve to live._'

Through the self hatred and through the turmoil, Gohan allowed himself a moment to glance at his father and his heart stopped. The storm died down around him, the enhanced Super Saiyan aura dying off until only a few sparks of loose static electricity were left crackling over the charged ground as evidence of what had happened.

Goku looked exactly the same as Gohan remembered, a little older, a little more sombre and a little tired but still exactly the same.

The man was still his father.

Goku smiled carefully at his son, his eyes warm…and Gohan recoiled, turning to face Cell with an apathetic mask back in place.

'_You can't seek comfort from him. You're a danger to them,_' Gohan reminded himself carefully, falling into his familiar stance as Cell stood back up, fixing his young opponent with a strained expression.

"What are you?" Cell repeated, wiping the scabbing trickle of blood away from his mouth. "You're clearly not just a boy."

Silence stretched between opponents while Cell waited for an answer and Gohan looked on with cold disdain.

"What does it matter what I am?" Gohan asked, responding rhetorically. "All that matters is that I'm going to destroy you."

Cell's nose wrinkled before he threw his head back and let out a brash cackle of laughter. It was an automated response to an overly confident threat although, if he was truly honest with himself, he wasn't sure that this boy's statement could just be attributed to over-confidence.

No, he wasn't ready to admit that yet.

Gohan waited until the creature had finished chortling, standing unnervingly still as he waited to re-engage in battle. The two eyed each other, Cell with his amused expression and Gohan with an indomitable demeanour. The lingering smile playing over Cell's lips died as he comprehended how serious Gohan had been.

"You honestly think you can destroy me child? I hate to disappoint you, but it's completely impossible. I have been made from the genes of almost everyone here, the best fighters in the universe including yourself. I am perfect."

Gohan's eyes narrowed slightly and Cell caught the slight fluctuation, letting out another barking laugh.

"Ha! Duly afraid of me now you know what you're really up against boy?"

"Shut up and fight me," Gohan demanded, sinking just a little closer to the ground.

Cell growled under his breath as something akin to humiliation squirmed in his bruised gut. Somehow the boy had made it sound like he was employing a delaying tactic to the situation, talking instead of fighting because he was…afraid. He wasn't afraid. How could he be afraid of a creature that was imperfect, a blemish on the universe? The boy had simply managed to land a lucky hit and he was obviously more powerful than the Dr Gero had estimated he would be at this age that was all.

Cell was ready for him now. The boy would not be underestimated again.

Releasing the remaining restraints on his Ki, Cell allowed new energy to flow through him. The Super Saiyan aura flared, creating a wind tunnel that forced pieces of shattered rock and wispy foliage to swirl around him. The golden colour of his aura burned brightly until even he was forced to squint through it. His muscles bulked out and his senses heightened until he was certain everything was moving in slow motion. His eyes flicked down to the crouching demi-Saiyan still wearing an unimpressed look.

'_Probably scared witless,_' Cell rationalised as he stood tall before his opponent.

Krillin balked under the pressure in the atmosphere as Cell powered up once more. He wondered briefly where the blasted thing was getting all of its power and shot a sidelong glance at Goku, hoping that his best friend would keep his cool and not wildly jump in to defend his son.

Because despite Cell's power increase, it was obvious that Gohan was still far superior…at least in terms of Ki detection. Cell's energy was monstrous, nightmarish but Gohan's was so high…it was almost out of Krillin's detection range. The bald monk observed with sharp eyes as the creature stood tall, imposing against Gohan's still small frame but the aura around him wasn't quite as impressive. It was still just an aura, there were no static sparks of free energy dancing over Cell's skin the way they were with Gohan.

A sliver of hope seemed to worm its way into Krillin's system, dispersing the resigned acceptance that had fallen over the bald monk following the moment that Cell had decided to create his planet destroyer.

Goku may have been defeated but maybe Gohan could do it this time.

Cell took a deep breath in, flexing his muscles and trying to get a feel for maximum output before launching at his opponent.

The attack was almost instantaneous and Gohan didn't dodge, taking the full force of a hit to the face that threw him back. Piccolo felt Goku stiffen but to his surprise, the man didn't move to recklessly dive into the fray as he had almost done at the beginning of this bizarre clash. Instead, his eyes were glued to the boy whose feet were still planted firmly in the same stance. Cell hadn't shaken him at all.

Cell allowed himself a triumphant smirk as his fist connected but when Gohan opened his eyes once more, the android drew back in the air, recoiling before he could catch himself. Despite putting his full power into that punch, the boy's face was _still _completely stoic, unchanging.

_Nothing _seemed to faze this kid.

The tiny static bolts of electricity running over the boy's skin gave out ominous snapping sounds as they intensified and the next thing Cell knew, something concrete impacted the side of his face causing light to explode behind his eyes.

Gohan dropped back, lowering his extended foot to the ground in one precise move. He watched through callous eyes as Cell fell to his knees before him, his eyeballs bugging out of his head, his bunched up muscles tensing so much he looked grotesquely deformed. As the creature's eyes cleared, slowly falling back into place, Gohan could see real terror reflected there and knew that Cell was beginning to understand his fate.

Cell struggled to stand up, his databases going haywire as they tried to complete damage reports. He opened his mouth to speak but there was a violent movement somewhere deep inside and he fell forward again, clutching at his mouth as nausea tumbled through him.

"What did that boy just do?" Vegeta asked, his nose wrinkling in disgust as he took in the sight of Cell retching, thick heavy gunk running down his mouth through his pale fingers.

"I don't know," Trunks admitted, staring down at the small version of his beloved mentor. He had never seen this side of Gohan before, so ruthless and controlled. It was both scary and awe-inspiring in equal measure and Trunks wondered if he'd ever get the chance to talk to his friend, the last member of his family that he had lost so tragically in his own time.

When he had returned to the past using his mother's time machine, he had been particularly nervous about meeting young Gohan. With his own conception still a while away, there was obviously going to be no recognition in the younger version of the man Trunks had grown to love so dearly and he had tried to prepare himself for the pang of hurt he was sure to feel.

Of course, when he'd appeared only to discover that Gohan had been missing in action since Namek, he had experienced a disappointment and loss so profound that he'd nearly been forced to double over with the pressure. Piccolo, ever suspicious in the presence of new company, had asked him gruffly what was wrong but Trunks had just shrugged it off, carefully regaining his composure and shoving the matter aside for analysis when he returned to his own time.

As far as he was concerned, right then, it was all about his talk with Goku.

To see Gohan again when he had appeared to tackle Cell had filled Trunks with childish excitement. The man had been his father, had been there for him when he'd been scared of the androids, had protected him the best way he knew how. He wanted to talk to the boy, ask him about his insane power, how he'd accessed it, where he'd been, how he was doing…

'_C'mon Gohan,_' he thought to himself as his eyes stayed fixed to the heaving android.

Cell was making sickening sounds now, staring up into Gohan's impenetrable eyes as he expanded, unable to stop the inevitable release of what was coming up inside him. With a squelch and a splatter, he'd vomited up the striking figure of Android 18 who lay prone at the feet of the monster.

Krillin's heart stopped beating.

_18…_

Instantly, his mind replayed the moment she had kissed him, her lips soft as they brushed against his cheek. Even when he had been dating Marron, though he had kissed her a few times, he had never felt such heat flare up into his face, had never felt his stomach flip quite so violently.

"He…vomited 18," Trunks stated, revolted, behind him and Krillin remained as still as possible, trying not to give away the fact that he was suffering a traumatic upsurge of emotions at the moment.

Who was he to love an android?

What kind of pervert was he?

He stared at her innate form and couldn't help but appreciate the perfect set of her features through the slime despite the current situation.

Cell's skin was burning. Torrents of foul smelling steam were spiralling up into the crisp air, blistering bubbles popped along the surface of his arms and legs and his skin slowly darkened to a forest green. Gohan cocked his head to one side, taking in Cell's stockier features, the face less human than it had been a moment ago.

"Well, that's interesting," the demi-Saiyan commented in an idle monotone.

Cell's eyes blazed as he scowled at the child, feeling his control slipping. He had been at full power, _full _perfect power and this boy had reduced him to something half-formed. _Imperfection _once more.

No…he was perfect…he was perfect and this boy would die, they would all die. This whole mistake of a planet would perish, destroyed by his purging hand. He was the perfect being, anything imperfect was unacceptable…_unacceptable…_

Something shifted inside the creature and Gohan recognised the insanity flitting across his face as he vaulted into the sky. Cell's mind was unravelling. He had been built to be the perfect being and with the ejection of Android 18 had been rendered imperfect. His programming was suffering as it tried to process the fact that, as an imperfect being once more, he was as unacceptable as the rest of creation.

Gohan followed Cell's slowly diminishing figure with his eyes, suddenly weary and during the time he had before Cell released his next attack, he threw another, fleeting glance at the assembled fighters, giving in to self indulgence though he knew it was generally a bad idea.

Piccolo's eyes connected with Gohan's for a moment and he felt a jolt of something. Words bubbled up in his throat but his tongue seemed to have swollen to twice its usual size. He was unable to say anything as the boy's eyes roamed once again to his father.

Goku's eyes burned into his.

And he could feel his own emotional control being tested.

He turned away.

'_I am a danger to them. I don't deserve to live,_' Gohan repeated to himself, turning his attention to Cell as the creature pulled his hands back in the air the way his father had done before.

"Ka…me…ha…me…"

The fighters felt the pull of energy and knew that this was it. Cell's Ki was desperate and with desperation came a feat of strength that they could never have fathomed. On a last minute impulse, Krillin sprung forward to grab Android 18, pulling her back to the group and holding on to her tight, her blonde hair whipping up over his face as repercussive wind bombarded the planet.

There was an agonising pause as Cell collected the last of the energy needed to form his attack; sweat was dripping down his dark face as he tried to handle energy he would have struggled with in his perfect form.

His eyes were on the tiny figure below him, an insignificant ant beneath his trembling fingers.

'_My powers are beyond perception. You will die. I am perfect'_

"HA!"

The bright blue ball descended and it was like heaven itself was falling out of the sky. As it approached, Goku felt its magnitude but was unable to let it sink in until the ball covered the horizon and everything was that intense Kamehameha.

He shielded his eyes and tried to see the boy before him. Krillin was busy with the android, Piccolo was busy shielding himself.

Everyone was blinded.

He put two fingers to his forehead and tried to focus on his son's Ki. If he was about to die, he was going to do it embracing his lost son.

He hesitated when he heard the hardened voice over the roar of the energy moving down to destroy them all.

"Ne…"

Goku squinted through the cerulean iridescence, just able to catch sight of the boy as he shifted his weight onto his back foot, letting his left arm arc round in a perfect circle. When the two hands were lined up diagonally opposite each other, a crimson spark grew up in both palms.

"Tsu…"

Out of the corner of his eye, Goku could just make out as Piccolo moved, turning his face towards the phosphorescence as the demi-Saiyan's power crept up. This was completely insane.

Leaning forward once more, Gohan let his left hand push down while his right pushed up, the dark red sparks meeting in the middle to form an angry, red ball of sparking energy. Cell's attack was almost upon them and he could feel the heat of it licking at his face. He turned both palms outwards.

"KI!" He cried and released his attack.

The red energy clashed with the brilliance of Cell's incogitable attack and the intensity of it blew most of the Z Fighters away. Only Goku, Vegeta, Trunks and Piccolo remained standing though they were using everything they had to keep themselves upright and protected from the extraordinary shock waves. The land was bombarded with a scorching heat, an inferno. Fragments of rock and the plants that had been uprooted were burnt to cinders while the fighters still struggling to stay in the area were forced to cover their faces.

Only Goku dared to continue watching the diabolical spectacle, his Super Saiyan aura keeping most of the destructive heat at bay.

Slowly, the red energy pierced through the middle of Cell's Kamehameha and Goku heard a cry in the air as the bio-engineered creature felt the strain on his Ki. As Gohan's attack pushed the final Kamehameha further up into the sky, Goku saw with wide, disbelieving eyes as the incarnadine Ki started to eat into the energy, absorbing the attack as it continued to force its way upwards relentlessly.

Cell began to shriek in earnest as the energy approached him, licking at his skin.

How could this happen?

How?

He was perfect.

He had all the necessary data he needed on Goku's son. How had the boy become so powerful? _Why _had this happened?

_He was perfect._

The energy consumed him, enveloping him and detonating on the air like an exploding sun. Reacting instinctively, Piccolo threw himself at Goku and knocked him down, shielding his friend with his body and aura as the choking heat obliterated what had remained of the Cell Games arena. Close by, Trunks did the same thing for his father.

A lifetime seemed to pass and a never-ending storm of fire seemed to have been born of Gohan's attack. The heat and the pain took Goku back to Namek for those few lonely minutes before the planet had exploded, the terrifying seconds ticking by as he tried to find a way to save himself.

This time, the planet wasn't about to explode. Eventually, the heat died off, fading away on the atmosphere as the planet became stable once more. After a few quiet seconds, Piccolo released his protective hold, pulling Goku up into a standing position.

Goku's eyes automatically locked on to Gohan still standing in the middle of a deep crater, little static bolts running through the cracked rock and sand around him. His eyes were turned to the sky and his body was still tense so, with dread in his heart, Goku checked for Cell's Ki signature though how anything could have survived an attack like that…

…It was beyond him.

He let his senses extend, probing into the surrounding area, finding the others easily enough, surprisingly unharmed though a little shaken up. With methodical vigilance, he swept the sky, pausing on a minute spec of a Ki signature flaring to life in his mind behind a cloud.

"Oh…"

Without warning and without glancing back, Gohan took off. With his instant transmission technique, Goku was able to perceive speeds faster than was really conceivable so his eyes alighted on the space in the sky when Gohan appeared there, shooting out a small Masenko into what appeared to be an innocent white cloud.

The Ki signature that Goku had felt blipped out of existence.

* * *

"Huh, that's interesting," Shorai muttered, staring at the dimension window with hard, pensive eyes.

"What now?" Sensou asked wearily. Honestly, he had been expecting some sort of oddity to crop up considering their history with these events but perhaps not at the end of the battle, with the enemy defeated.

"Goku was destined to die during this battle, sacrificing himself when Gohan fails to kill Cell in a moment of superiority. Due to the nature of the second Super Saiyan ascension, Gohan's judgement, in the original line of fate, is somewhat skewed by instinctual pride."

Sensou snorted but waited for his brother to continue.

"As he has obviously been in control of this power for a while now, he did not fail in his judgement and killed Cell when it was most advantageous. Goku was spared. Looking forward, I can see no heinous effects as a result of Goku's survival…nothing like the anomalies we've experienced before. I'd quite like to know if it's because of Trunks, because he already altered things by sparing Goku the heart virus."

The seer glanced down at his young apprentice who nodded once to acknowledge an unspoken request and checked the line of fate for himself, diligently searching for instabilities or problems. As Tonbo had become older, he'd been able to access the abilities necessary to dive into the weave of fate at will, a feat that had dispersed his fears about not having the talent to be a seer like his master.

When Tonbo's eyes cleared and he simply shrugged, Shorai knew that he had been right about there being no adverse side effects to Goku's survival though neither of them had been able to see through the fog obscuring Gohan's 14th year, the year he was destined to destroy the universe. Shorai was, if he was truthful, stumped but then he had been struggling to keep his head above the proverbial water since Trunks had shown up just over 3 years prior and everything had been thrown off of its axis. A change of this magnitude was almost guaranteed to produce at least a crack or two in the weave…

Perhaps fate was simply becoming adaptable with all these bizarre little changes and tweaks over the years. Perhaps Goku's survival really didn't matter.

"So we can go and collect the boy without trouble?" Sensou asked casually. Shorai paused a moment before nodding, deep in thought, trying to pick up on anything he may have missed that would provide further understanding of the whole situation. He stared blankly into space as the cognitive wheels turned.

Sensou rose and dusted himself off once he'd caught his brother's slight inclination of the head, signalling for Ma to leave his preferred perching place amongst the shadows of the nearby trees and teleport them to the mortal world to pick up the demi-Saiyan.

"We shall return momentarily," Sensou informed his brother, hesitating only when he realised that Shorai still wasn't moving. His eyes narrowed.

"Shorai?"

As if in response to the sound of his own name, the seer started mumbling, croaking out unintelligible sounds. Alarmed, Tonbo ran a cool, damp cloth along the length of Shorai's forehead.

"A vision? Now?" Sensou asked, anxiously staring at the dimension window where Gohan was slowly descending back to the ground. The boy's expression was still pertinacious, cold, which made Sensou frown. There was no way that Gohan would try and resist coming back with them, was there? Not when, by the natural progression of affairs, he was still due to destroy the universe…

Gripped by sudden doubt, Sensou clasped Ma's wrist.

"Go now!" he barked, a visible threat burning through furious eyes. Ma opened his mouth to argue that they should wait for Shorai to return and confirm what was happening before they disappeared on a rash retrieval mission but thought better of it as he regarded the intensity in the warrior god's expression. If he was to put up a fight, he would be dead before Shorai returned and damn the consequences.

With that in mind, Ma concentrated and the two of them disappeared.

* * *

Gohan lowered his hands following that final Masenko and performed one last Ki based sweep of the area, searching for any remnant of Cell. Considering what Shorai had told him about Cell's ability to regenerate if even a single piece of him remained, he didn't want to take any chances. Eventually satisfied, he glanced down towards the pinprick fighters below him, his phlegmatic mask remaining firmly in place as he started to descend.

Goku watched him, completely transfixed while the others around him started to celebrate. In the background, he could hear Yamcha picking at Krillin for taking an interest in Android 18.

A thousand thoughts ran together in his mind as he finally let himself process the fact that Gohan was here.

He was here.

The years that had followed Gohan's disappearance had been hard, some of the most difficult years of Goku's life. There wasn't a night where he went to bed not thinking of Gohan, wondering if his son was healthy, happy, hoping that once he was done with the current threat, he could go out and look for his little boy again. There had been times throughout the years where he'd almost lost his sanity agonising over the whole ordeal. His friends and family had never seen him in such a state, had never seen Goku riled in such a way, not even when things had looked hopeless in previous situations.

Having a child had changed him.

He flinched involuntarily as he observed the boy slowly moving down to meet them. He was itching to abandon his restraints and teleport to the kid, meeting him in mid-air and sweeping him up in a hug that could last for days but too much time had passed. Goku no longer knew how Gohan would react to that sort of thing, and the last thing he wanted to do was scare the boy half to death.

"Easy Goku," Piccolo whispered behind his friend, sensing the agitation in Gohan's Ki as he moved downward despite his impregnable expression. Piccolo was a master at reading the unreadable as he himself had been particularly dependent on putting on an indifferent facade every time he felt particularly emotionally or mentally stressed. He recognised Gohan's current Ki signature and was afraid the boy might try and bolt if Goku jumped the gun.

A lot had obviously happened over the past 5 years.

Then he felt it.

A flicker on the edge of his mind and then a colossal Ki signature, bigger than Cell's, bigger than Gohan's, burst to life behind him. For one wild moment, he thought that Cell had returned somehow but as he threw a look over his shoulder, he was able to make out a stranger that was distinctly humanoid with long, flowing black hair and hard, impenetrable looking armour.

"No…no…" Goku whispered and Piccolo's eyes snapped back to his friend who had gone shock white, his eyes small and unseeing.

Above them, Gohan let his eyes trail over to his mentor, noting the tension plainly visible on Sensou's face and abruptly changed his flight path, dropping down until he was standing a few inches from Sensou, his tail curling round to bob beside him.

"Come on," was all the warrior god said. Gohan inclined his head at Ma, asking for permission.

Piccolo's stomach was turning flips as he observed Gohan's interaction with these strangers. Beside him, Goku had started to vibrate. He watched with horrified eyes as his son reached out to grip the robe of the much weaker of the two that had appeared and his hand flew to his forehead.

"GOHAN!" he cried out and this time, as he moved, no one was quick enough to stop him.

Gohan felt the shift in the air and turned around, stunned as his father appeared inches from him, lunging forward to clasp on to his wrist.

"No dad!" Gohan yelled but it was too late.

There was a bitter shout, an angry scream and Goku felt a sense of displacement. Though he was sure he hadn't moved, he felt his stomach quiver like it had many years ago when he and Chi Chi had been newly married and they'd made a point of visiting the fare in the city, riding the biggest roller coaster they could find.

Goku blinked rapidly and when he opened his eyes, everything had changed. Instead of standing in the broken wasteland left behind after the Cell Games, he was standing in an open, grassy clearing with trees dotted all around. The sky was clear, the air was moderate and he could hear the sound of rushing water somewhere close by.

"Why in the nine _hells _would you teleport with him locked on to the boy the way he was?" one of the strangers yelled and Goku let his son's wrist go as he whipped round to watch as the thinner, hooded figure was hoisted into the air. The armoured individual was wearing an expression of absolute rage, his teeth were clenched and his eyes were mad. His Ki was oscillating so much that Goku found it hard to breathe so close to so much power.

But Goku was only interested in them for a second. His eyes fixed on Gohan.

The boy was just so different, had grown so much in his time away. Goku felt tears pricking at the edge of his eyes as he regarded the boy that was his son. The hard muscles, the hollow cheeks, his hair teased up into a flame by the Super Saiyan power save for a single rebellious lock hanging loosely over one of his eyes. Despite Goku's rash response to the re-appearance of Gohan's kidnappers, the boy's eyes were still arrantly blank.

"Dad, you can't stay here," Gohan said, fixing his father with a gaze that radiated disdain.

"What do you mean? What's going on? Who are these guys? Where are we?" Goku asked, the torrent of questions leaking out of him before he could stop himself. He took a step forward, opening his arms to allow Gohan to run into them like he used to when he was a little boy but Gohan took a resolute step backwards. Behind them, Sensou dropped Ma into an undignified heap.

"You can't be here," Gohan repeated, wishing that Ma would get up and just take his poor father away before he suffered anymore than he was obviously already going to.

Goku's eyes hardened and Gohan felt something pull deep inside him.

"What do you mean Gohan?"

"I mean that…that you have to leave. Ma will take you back to Earth and you can tell mum-

"I'm not leaving without you," Goku declared, taking another, firmer step forward. Gohan shrank back like a frightened animal and shook his head.

"No dad, you have to go and I have to stay here."

A look of intense hurt crossed Goku's features for a moment and somewhere inside, Gohan felt a part of himself crumple. His father glanced up at Sensou still hovering behind him and the pain was replaced with an expression of blazing malice.

"What have you done to him?" Goku barked out making Gohan flinch.

Sensou didn't reply. He had no interest in interacting with Goku. Anything he said would probably just damage his relationship with the boy and he couldn't have that, not after the years of progress he had managed to make. Instead, despite his better judgement, he decided that the best thing now would be to let Gohan deal with his own father. It was a good test of Gohan's resolve to complete his training, to stay away from his loved ones to prevent the end of the universe.

"I asked you what you did to him," Goku repeated through grit teeth. "Why did you take him after the Saiyan invasion? Why after Namek? Why are you trying to take him now?"

"Dad…" Gohan began. He needed to explain the situation to his father so the man would understand but he couldn't do it. He just couldn't bring himself to explain to the person he loved and admired above all others that he was the reason, potentially, that the universe was going to cease to exist in just a few short years. He couldn't take the look of disappointment, shock and horror that was sure to cross that man's face.

Goku looked down at the resigned misery on his son's face. The boy was honestly convinced that he had to stay here and the thought made Goku's heart clench. How many nights had his son cried out for him only for him to not be there? How much had Gohan suffered?

_Well, he didn't have to suffer anymore._

Goku didn't realise that he had powered up to Super Saiyan and beyond as he advanced on the man with the stupendous power level behind Gohan, pulling his hands back into his signature move.

"Ka…"

"NO DAD!" Gohan shrieked, leaping forward to try and pull Goku's hands away but before his hand had even brushed against Goku's arm, Ma had appeared next to Goku and had placed a hand on his shoulder.

Goku, in true warrior fashion, kept his eyes on his opponent though he knew somehow that he would feel that same unsettling shift in a moment. His eyes bored into Sensou as he disappeared.

For a few minutes, silence reigned over the meadow and then Gohan flopped forwards on to his knees, powering out of Super Saiyan so his hair fell back into its usual rough cut black. His eyes were fixed straight forward and the warrior god watched him warily.

'_Dad…why did you have to do that?_'

He heard the crunch of fresh grass under feet as Tonbo came running frantically up to them both but was unable to lift his head and look at his friend after the confrontation with his father, both ashamed and drained. The young seer's apprentice asked Sensou a series of urgent questions, explaining that Shorai's vision had been a warning about how they should pick Gohan up, that Goku was destined to use a bizarre technique to follow them causing an anomaly that transcended dimensions. When Sensou explained that Goku had been returned, Tonbo took a moment to check the line of fate, confirming that everything was okay for now.

He tactfully left out commenting on how this particular hiccough was due to affect Goku and Gohan's mental health.

* * *

Goku made a point of not closing his eyes this time as he was shifted between dimensions, hoping to be able to learn the technique that this bizarre figure used to move between spaces the same way he had learnt the instant transmission but it just seemed to him that he had blinked involuntarily. A split second of darkness and then he was standing back in the wasteland. Before he could shake off the disorientation, the figure that had teleported him was gone.

He could hear people anxiously shouting his name, Piccolo's deep tenor cutting below everyone else's but he was too caught up in what had happened to respond.

Gohan.

He had seen his little boy, not so little now. He had managed to defy the odds and follow the kidnappers to wherever it was they had taken the kid and in the end it had proved fruitless.

Gohan had said that he needed to stay there and Goku was so…irrationally furious with the people that had caused all this that he had been unable to ask his little boy why he thought that.

And now he had no way to find them again, no way to see his son until he turned up in the same mysterious way he had been doing now for most of his life.

_Why _hadn't Goku held on to his son? If he'd been holding on to the boy, it was quite probable that they wouldn't have been able to just teleport him back like they had.

It was too much for him. The guilt, the sorrow, the stirring of an old depression relating to how much he had not been able to protect the most important person in the world fell upon him like an impossible training weight. He collapsed under the strain and sat in a dejected heap where Ma had left him until Piccolo came forward, heaving him up and dragging him off to the lookout.

* * *

_Will Goku ever find his son again? What's going to happen now that Gohan's attitude has changed so dramatically? How will the brief interaction during the Cell Games change both Gohan and his dad?_

_Find out next time on…KUROKO NO BASKET!_

_Because I am the shadow to your light! _

_Reviews make me feel good will towards all men…_


	31. Meticulous Planning

_Plot-ache alert! Good thing I've been watching Death Note or my brain would not be up for processing the plot bunnies in this chapter. As always:_

_1) A warning for hard to follow plot, madness, deviation from canon, happy Sensou, slightly OOC Gohan (though for good reason) and blood accidentally smeared on the screen (I just cut my finger open)_

_2) I have used the term 'Acrosians' to refer to Frieza's race but I honestly can't remember if this is correct and cannot find it on the internet (because I'm technologically inept…or just generally inept, take your pick). If this is wrong, which I suspect it is, please let me know and I will endeavour to rectify._

_3) Spelling, grammar and the convoluted mess that is this chapter has been checked to the point of insanity. If I've missed something I'll be surprised but you know me by now so apologies for anything you find that makes your brow crease in painful grammatical sorrow._

_Enjoy guys!_

* * *

**30: Meticulous Planning**

_4 years later._

Sensou sat at the back of the library, a scattering of papers littered about him as he checked and then double checked the information he had accumulated over the last few years. Squinting at a page of miniscule text glaring up at him from a discouragingly large tome, he shifted, reaching forward to grab at his own notebook to cross-reference something. It took a moment to find what he was looking for but he grunted approvingly when he found the number correctly matching with the number presented in his thick tome.

Closing his own notes, he sighed, leaning back in his chair in an uncharacteristic display of exhaustion, his shoulders slumping where they would have normally been kept strictly tensed.

It was finally time.

He had gone over every element of his plan at least a dozen times, had mapped out every possible scenario that could arise and had created a fail safe for any negative variables. He had separate stratagems and sub-plots for all people that were to be involved one way or another and his super weapon was finally of age.

He let the grin playing on the corner of his mouth spread across his face until he was wearing quite an ominous expression.

It was finally time.

Suddenly filled with renewed vigour despite the late nights he had recently been working through, Sensou hopped up, skipping through the stacks with eager enthusiasm as he headed for the exit, intent on putting the first part of his plan into action.

* * *

It was late when Shorai had the vision.

Tonbo was sleeping in his usual spot, curled up behind his master and friend on the soft grass. Over the years, the boy had started to become somewhat gangly and no longer fit neatly behind his friend though he tried as hard as he could to make himself small in sleep. He had his back pressed to the seer which had always suited Shorai just fine, serving them both equally. For Tonbo it was comfort to have someone pressed to his back while he was vulnerable in sleep and for Shorai it was an anchor in case he had a vision go awry, as had happened more and more since they had interfered with the demi-Saiyan known as Gohan Son so many years ago now.

Tonight had been fairly peaceful as far as things went though Shorai was starting to get frustrated with his abilities, unable to see clearly through the thick fog that had fallen over Gohan's future. Though Shorai had foreseen the fog before they had removed the boy in the beginning, he had hoped that by the time the boy was due to destroy the universe, he would be able to see further.

Taking a deep breath, he let himself delve into the threads of fate, staring blankly at the wispy atmospheric smog to try and make out anything useful.

But then…

Something vivid burst across his eyes as the threads of fate shifted like the weaving patterns of the Northern lights. Shorai watched in horror as the familiar landscape of Earth resolved itself into place in his mind's eye, his attention being dragged to a particularly picturesque country home in the mountains where the familiar Z Fighters were making a stand, their eyes serious and turned to the sky.

Shorai could feel his own face turning until he was looking at something…something…

_It was elephantine, the largest cataclysm to ever befall anything anywhere._

The atmosphere parted before it, the clouds swirling out around it being buffeted back by the slipstream surrounding its monumental body. For a moment, it was just too big. Shorai was unable to discern shape from something so colossal but, as he allowed his eyes to un-focus, he could just see it taking the form of a dragon, noticing one insane, clawed foot and what he assumed was a snout on what he thought might be a gargantuan face.

The Z Fighters clamoured to find something to hold on to as the creature continued to descend so they didn't lose their footing and get blown away, with the exception of Vegeta and Goku who stood strong only because they'd managed to ascend to the next level of Super Saiyan. As the creature caught the light of the sun, the scales across its monumental body rippled and with the distinct blue colouring, it seemed like the very ocean itself had seen fit to grow sentient and rampage.

As it landed, crushing the forest that surrounded Goku's home and extending past the famous mountains, it fixed the Z Fighters with a cold, reptilian stare. It's teeth alone were the size of sky scrapers as it bared them, pearly white against the backdrop of destruction.

Goku and Vegeta wasted no time in springing forward, both of them readying powerful signature moves but it was no use. The beast opened its mouth and something flared deep within, something full of the promise of destruction.

"A…dragon…" Shorai muttered, watching as the vision before him skewed and in an instant he had slumped forward on the grass, breathing heavily and fighting the nausea that sometimes accompanied a particularly dramatic vision.

As his master moved, Tonbo stirred, peering up through bleary eyes to catch a glimpse of his friend crouched low on the hill top, his fingers threaded through longer blades of grass as he tried to calm himself.

He started, scrambling up to sit in a cross-legged position, fear distorting his features as he regarded his mentor.

He had only ever seen Shorai look like this once before.

"It's bad, isn't it?" Tonbo asked as Shorai shakily pushed himself up off of the floor, his eyes darker than usual and panicked through the half light of night.

"Yes," the seer confirmed bluntly. "It's a threat that was never meant to appear – I've never seen anything like it before."

"Like…how Cell was never supposed to emerge on Earth?" Tonbo asked, frowning slightly as his master stood on wobbling legs, starting to make his way down the hill towards the dimension door.

Shorai shook his head.

"No, Cell was always destined to be created. He was always a possibility for Earth's future but this…I've never seen this before."

'_Could it be to do with the fog obscuring my view of Gohan's future? Would I have seen this in advance otherwise?_' the seer thought uneasily, picking up speed as they moved across the meadow to the dimension window. He keyed in his destination frantically, cursing as he missed a digit and had to start again. Tonbo watched him with mounting apprehension.

"We're going to Council of the Four Winds aren't we," Tonbo guessed, alarmed as the communicator blared static.

"I've seen something," Shorai muttered, repeating the same words he had the day he'd informed the Four Winds of Gohan's destined disaster. The seer's apprentice balked as he realised that whatever the seer's vision had been about, it was obviously at least on par with the original vision of the end of the universe, something just as detrimentally destructive.

As before, the line of communication was cut and the dimension door changed, revealing the stark white of the empty dimension. Shorai stepped through with urgent confidence but Tonbo hesitated. He wasn't sure if he was prepared for this or not following what had occurred the first time around. The thought of the vision of his friend destroying the universe carried a painful weight. Gohan wasn't a bad person and being reminded of his meltdown so much was hard.

Together they walked through the void and this time, Tonbo knew to remain silent, his gait far more dignified than it had been when he'd originally set foot in this place 9 years prior. As before, they found the table and chairs, Shorai sinking down into the space he had occupied before while Tonbo took a chair on his right, carefully meditating, touching on the crucial nerves of fate so he could prepare himself for the blatant truth of Shorai's vision when it played on the backdrop of the empty void.

Gently, he sifted through the clouded path to the future, allowing himself to focus on Gohan specifically, narrowing his sight until-

_The blue dragon was opening its colossal mouth and something was igniting deep within its thro-_

Tonbo gasped, falling forward on the table until his forehead was resting against its cool surface. Sweat trickled down the side of his face and he felt a re-assuring hand on his back as Shorai patted him awkwardly.

"Sorry," he muttered. "I should have warned you to avoid trying to see for yourself."

Tonbo took a few deep, regulating breaths before staring up at his mentor with urgent eyes.

"Sir, I think I've seen this dra-

"What's going on?"

Sensou's booming voice cut through Tonbo's comment and the seer's apprentice wisely relinquished the attention he was receiving to the warrior god. Shorai's brother had never taken well to being ignored and ultimately, should Tonbo challenge Sensou for the right to speak, he would probably find himself with a number of broken bones. Instead, he tossed Shorai a pointed look before clamping his mouth tightly shut.

"Is this something to do with Gohan's Armageddon?" Sensou asked briskly, taking his preferred seat and ignoring Tonbo's respectful nod.

"Surprisingly not," Shorai admitted his expression suspicious as he regarded his brother. "You know, I really would prefer it if you stopped 'keeping tabs' on me brother. It makes trying to concentrate very difficult."

"In your dreams," Sensou snarled. "I'd never know anything if I didn't keep tabs on you. So what's this all about?"

Shorai sighed, massaging the space between his eyes then running a hand down his haggard face. If he was truly honest, he had been hoping for a good night's sleep tonight considering everything had been so quiet before this vision had kick-started. For the last few years, Shorai had been hard at work training both Tonbo and Gohan to hone their abilities within the realm of future sight, weathering the storms of the years to come and pouring all spare effort into un-fogging the shroud that hung over the future following Gohan's predicted end of the universe. As far as he was concerned, he deserved a break.

"You'll know when I tell the winds, I don't particularly feel like repeating myself," Shorai stated in a clipped tone, shuddering slightly as he caught a glimpse of the shadows resolving themselves on the void.

He still hadn't quite gotten over what had happened some years ago with Frieza, when he and Sensou had requested to once again interfere with the mortal realm outside of their initial agreement to snatch Gohan from his home. The result of that encounter was a healthy respect for the law of the winds and a collection of nightmares filled with the shadows he had seen growing ominously in the void overriding his regular dreams every so often.

"Why have you summoned us?" The Four Winds asked and Shorai tried to swallow the lump of fear in his throat.

"My lords, I…I've had a vision of a new threat that wasn't originally written into the line of fate," Shorai told them, bowing low in greeting.

There was a pause as the winds considered and then the void around them darkened. Vivid colours and dynamic shapes started to take form, replacing the endless white until eventually, Tonbo found himself looking at the familiar landscape of Earth, Gohan's home. He winced as he whirled round in his seat, catching sight of the gathered warriors standing outside a little, pod-like house each sporting a resolute and hopeless expression. With dread in his system, he turned to watch the descent of the end.

He frowned as it crashed down into the surrounding area, a creature so monstrously huge it seemed to stretch on for miles. One hostile eye was glued to Goku who was trying to stand strong against the buffet of power and then it opened its mouth.

The vision ended and Tonbo shifted in his seat, one of his legs bobbing up and down with frustration and unease as he let out a breath he didn't even know that he'd been holding. This vision wasn't quite as…_absolute _as the one regarding Gohan's Armageddon had been but the underlying promise of doom was still prominent. Nothing else would require an audience with the Four Winds.

"An unfortunate development," The winds commented after a while and Tonbo bit the inside of his cheek, desperate now to discuss this with his mentor but unable to say anything in the void, this council room. It just wasn't his place.

"It seems the creature is not limited to the confines of one atmosphere. It is adaptable, like the Acrosians, but it does not have the will to build an empire. This being is partial to moving from planet to planet, destroying as it goes until there's nothing left. While this isn't quite the crisis situation we had on our hands with the development of Gohan Son, vision circa 761, it is just as foreboding," Shorai told them, checking on the creature's newly woven destiny as far as he could through limited visibility.

Silence followed this while the winds conferred and both Shorai and Tonbo finally allowed themselves to consider what they had been purposefully avoiding.

Simply, Gohan was the only possible variable that could be introduced to change the creature's fate as the only one of them that was permitted to spend an extended amount of time in the mortal dimension. He was the only solution both the seer and the seer's apprentice could think of, the obvious answer.

Sensou's expression was unreadable as he stood; the chair scraping back over the void and echoing like a fired cannon.

"I suggest that we allow Gohan to deal with this problem," Sensou decreed readily, voicing the only apparent response to this crisis. "The boy has spent his time with me over the last 9 years and has learnt well. His control is excellent and his powers have manifested without complication, going far beyond anything he achieved previously when left to his own devices on Earth. I believe the boy has the potential to defeat this creature without unleashing Armageddon now."

There was another drawn out pause as the winds considered and Shorai frowned anxiously, uncomfortable with sending a 14 year old to deal with something as heinous as this. Gohan had become something of a friend to him over the years, even with his cold countenance and the blank look Shorai often received now. Despite Sensou's interference, the boy had never lost his respect for the seer and had become steadfast friends with Tonbo. The seer even suspected that Gohan's hardened look flaked somewhat around Tonbo when the two were allowed to forage for food during their sessions.

"Shorai, please confirm if this idea is destined to work," the winds asked suddenly and Shorai shook his head, feeling a hard knot of regret in his stomach.

"My apologies lords, but Gohan's fate has been fogged as I warned would happen when I originally presented the vision pertaining to the end of the universe. I am unable to see how this plan will turn out."

This time, the pause was arduous and Sensou shifted impatiently, wrapping his hands around his hard armour to rub at a few spots that needed polishing. Shorai watched his brother's behaviour intensely, annoyed with the man but unable to pinpoint why exactly.

"Forgive me for speaking out of turn," Sensou began when the winds failed to speak up again, "but I believe that Gohan is our best chance. Seriously thinking about it, I honestly don't believe we have much of a choice in the matter."

There was a sigh in the air and Tonbo nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a draft on his neck, like a solid figure had just sighed behind him though he knew that the Four Winds were just silhouettes on the air, their voice projected from every direction towards them.

"We feel that you may be right Sensou. Shorai, please confirm how long we have until this vision comes to pass."

Shorai concentrated, trying to see around the vision and give an estimate of the time it would take for this predicted disaster to befall the Earth, the first planet to be affected by the beast.

"I believe we only have a month. Again, I apologise for my ineptitude with regards to this matter. I will work on trying to clear the fog during the coming days so that we can weather the coming events."

"Agreed," The winds decided, confirming their answering course of action to the calamity that they had been shown. "Sensou, please prepare Gohan Son for deployment."

Sensou bowed sombrely…

…and smirked when he was low enough.

Right according to plan.

* * *

Gohan's eyes were closed, his breathing was even. Around him, he could hear the sounds of his current training dimension but with one brief flare of concentration, he was able to blot them out. In the silence, he listened to his own heart beat, counting the rhythm and changing his breathing to change the tempo of the convulsions in his chest.

When he was sure that he was calm, he let his energy build, opening his eyes and vaulting over the toothpick prongs jutting up from the pit that had been his floor for the last few months. He shot over them with ease, shadow boxing an imaginary opponent and landing with perfectly fine steps on the sharp edges of the prongs.

He took another deep breath.

"Impressive, I was expecting you to complain for a few more weeks about how your feet hurt," the familiar voice of his mentor commented from the shadows.

Gohan turned without smiling, fixing Sensou with a cold stare. Though Sensou knew he was hidden to the point of invisibility, he also knew that Gohan could see him without problem. The stint in the sensory deprivation dimension had done him a world of good. Taking a moment to analyse the boy, reading his stoic expression to try and detect any hint of the desire to attack, he stepped forward.

Gohan cocked his head to one side as he took in his mentor's expression. At first glance, it was strangely sombre but as Gohan let his analytical skills go, he realised that there was a flare of excited fire in his mentor's eyes and a slight elevation to his step as he moved closer. He was trying to keep a secret perhaps?

"I'm afraid that we have something to discuss," Sensou began seriously and Gohan allowed himself a moment of mild surprise. The warrior god's tone suggested that this something to discuss wasn't a good thing and it contradicted with the undertones of his expression.

"Oh?" Gohan asked apathetically, widening his stance and moving slowly, gracefully across the prongs to execute a series of practiced movements necessary to form a few complex Ki blasts.

"Yes, it seems that Shorai has had a vision pertaining to your home planet. An unforeseen cataclysm is due to befall it in just a month."

Gohan's glance sliced into Sensou. His lips were thin as he landed and pivoted round to face the warrior god, his Ki palpitating lightly whereas before it had been as steady as a flat-line. Sensou waited a few seconds for the boy to start moving again but he stood firm on the prongs, indicating that Sensou had his full attention.

"The Four Winds have requested that we send you to deal with this."

Gohan's expression didn't change and Sensou applauded himself on teaching the boy such fine control. Though his Ki had been an indicator of his emotional turmoil over the news, it hardly seemed to affect him beyond a superficial response.

He really was ready.

Now, it was all up to Sensou's acting ability.

He allowed the tiniest pained flicker to move across his facial features and concentrated on layering the tint of anxiety over his Ki. His fists balled loosely by his side but then he slid them smoothly behind him almost like he'd noticed his own tension and had tried to cover. He knew that, were he to overdo his deceit, the boy would become suspicious. To showcase engineered slip-ups like this meant that he was presenting something far more realistic; allowing the boy to draw his own conclusions and confirm to himself that his mentor was stressed.

When he saw the boy's eyebrow flinch, he decided to go for gold.

"Honestly, I don't feel that you are ready. This creature is a creature of the cosmos far beyond anything you have yet seen. It is notorious enough to have moved between dimensions, I myself have fought it and lost…"

It infuriated him that he had to lie about his perfectly unblemished record and he let some of that fury shine through the usual mask of hard callousness, hoping that Gohan would see it as regret for how he had lost.

"And now that it's made its way to Earth, Shorai and the winds believe that you are the only one that can possibly stop it."

Gohan regarded his mentor for the longest time, his eyes narrowed and then eventually, he strode across the prongs to stand before the older man, his eyes shining.

"Show me," he said bluntly, holding out his hand.

Sensou nodded sombrely and remembered the vision he had seen in the white void of the Four Winds' council, projecting it to Gohan as the boy cleared his mind. Gohan's eyes widened and his Ki engorged as he watched the vision, the dragon landing right outside the little house that he had once called home, his friends all standing ready to battle alongside his father. He wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting considering how unhinged his mentor had obviously been by the whole situation but this was beyond anything he could ever hope to comprehend.

As the vision faded, he pulled back, watching as Sensou ran a hand through his wild hair.

"This won't work," Sensou muttered, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "The only way I can think to beat that creature is by using…but if I teach you that particular technique…there's no guarantee that you'll be able to maintain control."

"What are you talking about?" Gohan asked, leaning forward and wincing as he mis-stepped so one of the prongs bit into the underside of his foot through his soft shoes.

Sensou sighed, irritation running through his features.

"I have a technique in mind that _could, _in theory, destroy this menace but…it's a risky technique that requires the utmost control and for you to perform it, even if I teach it to you and you manage to master it, it's a bad idea. You know that you are due, in the natural course of things, to destroy the universe this year. You are more likely to lose control if you perform this technique now."

Gohan frowned.

"Why would it make a difference when I perform the technique?"

Sensou gave the boy a grave look.

"The universe has a way of trying to push for what is supposed to happen. For all we know, the appearance of this behemoth is a result of the universe trying to fulfil the prophecy for Armageddon. If you were to use this technique, there is a much higher chance that you will lose control regardless of your usual ability as the universe's way of trying to fix what has changed."

Gohan's frown deepened.

"Shorai never told me anything like that."

Sensou shrugged.

"He probably didn't think it as important as what he has been teaching you."

Gohan copied his mentor, running a hand through his own black hair and adjusting the armour he was sporting. Some time in the last 6 months, the warrior god had seen fit to upgrade his clothes and Gohan now wore armour of similar design to Sensou. The armour itself was a dark polished black comprising of a chest plate and a single shoulder guard and, though Gohan had discovered it wasn't particularly effective as a reinforced piece of clothing, it had an element of magic to it that allowed his energy to maintain for longer and replenish faster. Beneath this he wore the standard short sleeved black gi though he had long ago lost the undershirt in favour of bandages that wrapped around knuckles that were easily damaged, winding up the length of his arm.

"What can I possible do?" Gohan asked, resisting the urge to plop down on the floor like he used to when he was younger. "If I lose control…then, everything's over."

Sensou smirked privately to himself, appreciating the fact that the boy still did not have the confidence to trust in himself. Oh yes, he had cultivated this one brilliantly.

"If only there was some way for me to fight this monster in your dimension…to take over that responsibility…" Sensou muttered, frowning as though in deep thought.

The boy's eyes flashed dangerously and the warrior god found himself holding his breath as his pupil considered the angles associated with such a listless comment. It was a gamble on his part, the boy had learnt to be suspicious of everything and he never made listless comments but he was counting on the fact that Gohan thought he was stressed to explain some of his stranger habits today.

Now for the riskiest part of the conversation, and of his plan in general. If this went wrong, he would have to admit that all of his meticulous planning over the last few years had been for nothing – everything he had worked for since Shorai had first predicted the end of the universe at Gohan's hand would amount to nothing.

He steeled himself.

Even the most brilliant stratagems nearly always included a gamble somewhere along the line.

Slowly, he let his expression light up until he was wearing a truly conniving face, like he'd just come up with something inspirational, which in sense, he had.

"The Earth has Dragonballs," Sensou said, frowning as he spoke more to himself than to his pupil. "If you could gather them…you could wish me to your dimension so that I could travel there without detrimental effects and fight that creature."

He shot a side long glance at Gohan whose eyes were vivid, piercing against the shadowed backdrop of this particular dimension. Sensou tried to calm his heart, focussing on maintaining a steadily excited Ki, knowing that this was where Gohan would seek the truth of his mentor's words. Unfortunately, the boy was not a fool and this was what made this particular part of the plan so perilous, he had to focus everything he had on making this façade realistic.

"The dragon only has limited power," Gohan said. "I don't know if we could pull off something like that."

Sensou pretended to think about this.

"Perhaps if we consider the wording of the wishes carefully…There's a library in one of the other dimensions that houses the collective knowledge of the universe. In the days remaining, I could try and learn the limitations of the dragon and work something out."

Gohan looked away thoughtfully, his eyes far-seeing.

"What exactly are the detrimental effects that occur when you travel to that dimension anyway?" Gohan asked in a level voice.

Sensou tried to keep the smirk from twisting into place on his face. He'd been prepared for this one. Some years ago just after the Cell Games, Gohan had interrogated Sensou on the whole thing, why the warrior god was never able to help, why Ma had to teleport them when the dimension door allowed Sensou to travel between dimensions freely…It had been a complicated conversation but eventually, Gohan had a brief understanding of how the whole thing worked. Sensou had managed to avoid saying anything particularly damaging about why he was never allowed to help with the battles Gohan fought because anything he did would have detrimental effects on the universe due to his particularly unique Ki signature and fate line.

Obviously, this no longer satiated the demi-Saiyan's appetite for knowledge.

Sensou sighed carefully.

"My interference would make the weave of fate unstable, causing cracks, drastically changing things and then eventually, if I interfered enough, the whole thing would crumble. Again, this is something that can potentially be countered with the Dragonballs."

Gohan's eyes were like daggers as he regarded his mentor and for perhaps the first time in Sensou's long life, he felt himself squirm under that gaze.

After a while, the demi-Saiyan huffed lightly, irritated by this bizarre twist of events. If what Sensou was saying was true, and he was at too much of a risk of fulfilling his prophecy of ending the universe with the correct technique required, then he had no choice but to follow Sensou's convoluted plan but he just couldn't shake the feeling that there was something weird about all this.

For one thing, it wasn't like Shorai to give them such limited warning about an enemy.

"Alright," Gohan conceded reluctantly. "If you confirm the wording of the wishes before I'm due to set out, I'll gather the Dragonballs so you can fight that…thing. Seriously though, I'm not even sure that clever wording will help you out here. The Dragonballs will be limited by their current guardian."

Sensou felt a sense of excitement flush through him and put all his effort into keeping his face resolutely determined as he responded.

"Trust me."

* * *

Shorai cursed bitterly and fought not to lose his temper. For days he had been trying non stop to see even a glimpse of what was to come but if anything, the fog limiting his vision had gotten thicker, the silhouettes he had seen before dulling into blotches of shadow. It was especially important to fix this conundrum considering what Tonbo had revealed after their meeting with the Four Winds, that he had seen this dragon before in his first vision; the one that he had deemed a dream so many years ago.

In all honesty, Shorai was astounded that the boy's first vision had been something related to events occurring so many years after his initial discovery, and something that was due to occur during a fog…well…that was beyond impressive.

With this in mind, Shorai had tentatively allowed the boy to delve into the fog despite his status as a novice, hoping that Tonbo might be able to see clearer than he could. So far they'd been able to find nothing useful and today was the day that Gohan was due to set off.

"Remember, contact with your friends and family should be limited. They will approach you because of your Ki signature but you are not to engage them. Concentrate on the Dragonballs," Sensou told Gohan hurriedly.

Gohan nodded, making sure that his armour was correctly placed and pulling at the unruly strand of black hair that fell into his eyes. He fixed his mentor with an indomitable gaze.

"The Dragonballs project a fractured Ki signature, right?" Gohan asked, frowning as he thought about it. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to sense something like that, he'd never come across anything else like that in the multitude of dimensions he had called home over the years and he had been unable to sense the Dragonballs on Earth, even as an ascended Super Saiyan during the Cell Games. But then, he hadn't known what he'd been looking for.

"If you can't sense them, you'll have to find a way to steal the Dragon radar from Bulma's Capsule Corp which could be something of a mission in itself," Sensou said thoughtfully, hoping that the boy could sense the fractured Ki to limit his exposure to his loved ones but intrigued by the possibility of testing out Gohan's agility and stealth in the complex net that Capsule Corp called their security system.

He took one last look at his pupil, the complex entity known as Gohan Son who would today become the super weapon he had been conditioning him for. He took in the dark gravity defying dark hair and the haunting teal eyes. Somewhere along the way, the boy had mastered an ascension that far surpassed anything listed in the Saiyan Compendium and his hair had fallen back to black though it had stayed elevated in the usual flame that had been the striking feature of his ascended Super Saiyan form. His eyes had remained their spectacular haunting turquoise.

"You're ready," Sensou decided, signalling Ma who had been lurking in his usual spot by the trees.

Ma stepped forward, hovering just out of Sensou's reach, his cat like eyes meeting Gohan's relentless gaze. As usual, Gohan bowed low to the teleporter though he no longer smiled when he saw the tall, thin specimen. It was a smile that Ma gravely missed. The boy that had come to them so long ago was finally turning into the hardened warrior that Sensou wanted him to be and Ma missed the carefree, chipper attitude of the boy that had first asked him permission to grab on to his arm that first day in the dimension made of liquid fire.

"Please, would you take me back to Earth?" Gohan asked in a soft voice contradicting his icy expression.

Ma was somewhat taken aback by the disarming tone, only able to nod and thrust his arm out for Gohan to take. He had been briefed by Shorai about what the Four Winds had decided and with no future sight to rely on, Ma had just had to obey what the Four Winds had ordered though he honestly wasn't sure about all this.

Something was niggling at him, tugging at the back of his mind telling him that he was missing something but Gohan was waiting for him to teleport and he did so on a reflex.

Gohan took a deep breath and mentally prepared himself as closed his eyes to face the hardest challenge of his life.

* * *

_What will happen now Gohan's been sent back home? Will collecting the Dragonballs really make a difference? Will Gohan lose control and destroy the universe?_

_Find out next time on…Death Note!_

_Therefore YOU ARE KIRA!_

_Reviews, like fine wine, make me giddy._


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