Good Morrow dear DBZ fans and welcome! A few things before we begin:
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
2) I am aiming for this to be quite epic so stick with me k?
3) Toriyama is the man and I own nothing...cept this awesome 4 star Dragonball hoodie! (shows screen)
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…
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.
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)
Reviews are good for not only the environment but for my actual physical and mental health. (nods seriously)
