The young man yelped, flailing to balance his coffee as he was roughly pushed back into the elevator he'd just exited. The forensics analyst already had a pretty good idea of who had pressed him up against the elevator wall with one arm and was rapidly tapping the close doors button with the other, but a quick glance down as he brushed the dripping coffee from the side of his Styrofoam cup confirmed it was in fact his fiery co-worker and ex classmate, Videl Satan. He grumbled under his breath, he barley made it to work on time as it was, but Videl had a habit of cornering him in hallways, and as evident, on elevators when he arrived giving him a particularly bad reputation for being tardy. As the elevator doors finally bent to the Detective's will, a faint but familiar shouting of her name drifted through, the face of a puffing police captain appeared as the doors finally drew to a complete close, Videl slumped into her caprice as she breathed her relief before swiping her hand up the floor buttons, each one lighting up in a soft yellow followed by an automated 'going down'. Gohan gently pushed the detective of him before she leaned any further into his body with her own, and let out a slight tut as he checked his watch.
"I'm really gonna get in trouble if you keep making me late like this Videl." The woman adjusted her gun holster before shooting the man a bored expression.
"You're 10 minutes late anyway, and besides it's not like Krillin will even do anything." Gohan shook his head, exasperated smile slipping across as he straightened his ruffled shirt and tie, taking a sip of his coffee.
"Why was he chasing you this time." The prodigy detective gave a very obviously fake innocent shrug, causing Gohan to roll his eyes. "You know he is the Captain, and therefore your superior. You shouldn't push him too hard, we both know the fallout if he loses his temper." Videl waved a dismissive hand.
"Oh please, he's harmless." Gohan felt his mouth twitch as he remembered the bald man chasing Gohan's own little brother with a fold up chair last weekend but kept silent. " Anyway I need you to give this-" She paused to slap a see-through bag onto Gohan's chest "priority. We picked it up last night at the Greenwalk scene, hopefully it belonged to our perp." She let the evidence bag fall into his hand as he lifted it to eye level. Videl smiled fondly as she saw the gears turning in her colleagues head. He was almost as good a detective as her, as much as it bruised her pride to admit, so she knew he'd see exactly what the importance of this was.
"Is this... a crushed retainer? I might be able to get a reliable imprint from the plastic if I can reconstruct it, there might be enough to get a dental record match..." The analyst trailed off and turned to see the detective looking at him with a strange smile adorning her face. "What happened to it anyway? Are these tire treads?" The woman seemed to snap out of whatever she was thinking about looking away for a moment a light blush dusting her pale cheeks.
"Think so but I was... busy with something so even I haven't got good look yet." Gohan felt a familiar anxious excitement creep up at her words.
"Wouldn't have had anything to do with Saiyamans latest appearance would it Detective Satan?" The woman had the decency to look sheepish as she nodded.
"Yeah.. CCTV caught him landing in an alley after the train incident. He never came out though... I went to investigation but there was absolutely nothing there." The girls cerulean eyes lit up as she slapped her fist into her palm. "I swear I'm close, he's got to slip sometime! I will figure him out!" Gohan felt his adrenaline spike and his stomach turn as the petite detective's fierce determination shone.
"I'm sure. I bet once you figure it out, it'll be like he's been right under your nose." Gohan managed to keep the implicating tone out if his voice as he spoke immediately feeling his anxious excitement rise as the sharp minded woman seemed to find the words fishy all the same. Her blue's clashed with his pitch black eyes for a moment of tense silence as Gohan gave his innocent blank expression that he'd perfected when he first met the Raven haired girl before him. He had pulled the expression out of retirement when he found the fierce girl in his workplace, barley slipping his most recent caped escapade by her. On this occasion the Detective detected nothing suspicious and turned her attention back to the evidence bag.
"Just try and get what you can from this, we really need a break on this one... you know where I'll be." Gohan gave a hum and a smile as the elevator doors opened once again, the Detective sauntering out with a short goodbye. Gohan let his weight fall against the wall as he relaxed, he couldn't understand why he always ended up giving her cryptic clues to his superhero identity, the woman's determination to discover the truth had given Gohan a rush since they first met and would run off during class to stop criminals. The elevator dinged again and the Analyst straightened up, exiting the elevator as it continued visiting every floor. The precinct Captain stumbled down the stairs a moment later almost colliding with Gohan, the shorter man looked up at his godson with an red face, huffing as he caught his breath, Gohan grinned and took the last sip of his coffee before dropping it in a nearby trash bin.
"V-Vid... Videl... Where?" Gohan patted the smaller man on the shoulder as he began up the stairs the shorter man had just descended.
"Already gone, probably chasing down the mysterious Saiyaman." Krillin chuckled and fell in step with the younger man, shaking his head at his cat and mouse game with the detective.
"She'll kill you when she finds out you know. I still don't get why you don't tell her, it's not like she'd arrest you anymore with the number of times you've worked together in and out of that costume." Gohan shrugged as they turned up to the next flight of stairs, taking a last look at the evidence bag she'd given him before tucking it into his jacket.
"Probably not, but that would ruin all the fun. She wouldn't want to be handed the answer either, she has to figure it out herself or she'll never leave it alone, I could probably say straight to her face who I am and she'd still spend days verifying it and cross referencing everything I've ever done with everything Saiyamans ever done." The two chuckled the words bringing up a recent memory of the Detective working on a drugs bust a week after the perp confessed the moment he was brought in. Krillin bushed his voice as the came out onto their floor, passing another officer.
"Still, I don't want you to jeopardise your position here, or your relationship with Detective Satan for that matter." Gohan groaned as his fathers best friend waggled his eyebrows. "You two would make a real pair, you know how much Chi-Chi wants grandchildren." Gohan shook his head but couldn't the smile off his face, the older man had teased him about Videl since he was 16. Krillin took a moment as he chuckled to himself, relishing in any opportunity to tease his godson. The younger man turned to his desk as they passed it dropping the evidence from Videl down on some files before taking out a small brown parcel from the top draw.
"Here, for Marron. Sorry I cant be there tomorrow, but you know how it is." The older man accepted the small box with a grateful smile. Krillin knew what Gohan was hinting at too, there had been major traffic from a suspected Red Ribbon base, and it all seemed to be coming to a head over the next few days. Gohan has been suiting up every night to watch over the area to try and pin point the actual location but as of yet to no avail.
"Hey it's alright, she gets it too. You wouldn't believe the number of times she's charged in and taken over the TV to watch her favourite hero catch the bad guys." Gohan chuckled at the image. "Now get back to work you degenerate." Krillin raised his voice in a mock impersonation of Gohan's mother, wagging figure for good measure.
"Ohh yes ma'am." Gohan chucked back with a mock salute. The 26 year old booted up his computer, slipping a casefile out from under the evidence bag as he did so. He rested the folder against a small paper holder and loaded up the corresponding folder in the system. He sighed as he began the mind-numbing task of updating the system file to match the paper copy, sparing a dread filled glance at the stack of six he was set to do.
Gohan raised his arms above his head as he finished off his last file, stretching out with a yawn. The spiky haired man glanced down at the evidence packet as he slouched back into his chair. In the elevator he had thought about attempting to reconstruct the retainer to it's original shape and attempt to find matching dental records, or see if it could be traced back to a dental office in the city. The man could think no further however as two small hands clapped down on his shoulders.
"How's my priority evidence coming along Mr. Analyst?" Gohan cringed, the Detective's falsely sweet voice a veritable death sentence to him by now. The hands slid away as he span around to face her, with a sheepish grin and a hand behind his head.
"You know I was just getting to it Videl, besides I do have a job to do besides being your personal assistant." The woman rolled her eyes finding herself giving up unwillingly as usual whenever met with the infamous Son grin.
"Whatever, I'm done with my... other investigation anyway so let's go." Gohan raised a brow at her.
"You want to come with me while I figure this out?" The woman's eyes sparkled in the light as she bobbed her head. "It's just gonna be a lot of tedious computer work." Her lips quirked in strange smile and Gohan had to force himself to look back at her eyes.
"What? I cant spend some time with my favourite Analyst?" She mocked a hurt expression placing a hand to her chest as she leant back slightly. Gohan wasn't buying it. The man crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at her. A moment passed before she sighed and rolled her eyes. "Alright fine, I kinda just need an excuse to get out of here before Chestnut finds me. Besides that you know how important this case is, I cant sit around doing nothing while you're running around solving everything." She finishes with a pout that almost had Gohan laugh out loud.
"Alright, you can tag along but you'll probably wish you took the scolding from Krillin after this." She shrugged a shoulder and gestured he lead the way with an overdramatic roll of her hand. The man stood slipping the evidence back into his jacket and found the elevator, the detective trailing behind.
The two arrived in the forensics pen, Gohan rolled a chair up to a free computer dropping the evidence bag in the desk before reaching for a small box of disposable gloves. Videl perched herself on the desk slipping her jacket off and laying it across the back of the chair as Gohan sat. She watched as the man pulled out the retainer and began bending the squashed plastic back into it's original shape as best he could holding each bit in place to try and keep the form before moving to the next. Videl could already feel boredom ebbing away at her, but managed to occupy herself in watching her old friend work. As he was now reminded her of their time in class together. The boy had always kept complete concentration in class writing notes word for word without ever getting lost in his own thoughts. He had grown slightly more relaxed in the first month or so, it turned out he was a few leagues ahead of the curriculum and after realising the previous lesson weren't revision but new content had eased off on the notes. Towards their exams she even caught him staring out the window. Her own wandering thoughts were waved away as the man in question suddenly rose carrying the evidence with him. She watched in curiosity as he placed the piece of plastic in a small box object before pressing a few buttons and returning to his seat, without a word. Videl raised an eyebrow at the action before asking what he was doing.
"Oh, just scanning it into the computer so it can be properly reconstructed. I'll probably get one of the technicians to do that, but we could start looking into dental records once it's loaded up." The detective nodded and slid off the desk to stretch her arms up over her head. Gohan glimpsed the girls toned stomach under her shirt as she stretched, and caught himself from staring as she relaxed.
"How long will it take?" Gohan was cut off from answering by the programming coming to life on the screen a 3D representation of the scanned retainer now displayed. "So now what?"
"Now we have a look for any obvious features that would help us identify the owner." Videl leaned down over her colleagues shoulder to view the screen. After a moment she raised her finger and tapped on the scan.
"Here, it looks like a missing tooth, or teeth." Gohan manoeuvred the scan to view the area more closely before humming and switching the view to the other side.
"I think it's just the one tooth missing, let's see... sixth from the back left. Ok I think I noticed another part here..." He trailed off once again spinning the scan around to show the other side. "You see this, it looks like this tooth was completely sideways..." The detective stood straight tilting her head as she regarded the screen.
"Maybe, but how much of this can we count on, if the thing was squashed..." Gohan nodded before marking something down on a piece of paper.
"I think that's the best we can do for now, I'll get a tech to run a proper reconstruction and in the meantime we can pull up the city dental records and try and find a match. We want anyone who was given a retainer and who is missing this tooth, and maybe the tooth to the right of it. Hopefully it will give us only a few suspects." Videl nodded and slipped back into her jacket before stepping over towards the door.
"I'll see you in the records then?" Gohan nodded with a small grin and gave a short wave before walking after a tech. Videl sighed as she watched his retreating form, letting herself calm down as she usually had to when the boy smiled at her, even back in school when she was so completely oblivious that she thought she had some sort of heart condition. Cringing internally at the memory of one particularly unlucky doctor Videl shook herself out of her thoughts and marched back to the elevator. The detective glanced back in the direction her co-worker left in as she pressed the button falling into a daydream as she pondered all the mysteries still surrounding Son Gohan. The nasally voice of her Captain; Krillin Chestnut, snapped her attention back to the now open elevator and the short man's smug face. Videl let out a loud exaggerated groan as she stomped into the steel box with him, throwing her head back like a petulant child.
Gohan glanced up as the unmistakable sound of Videl's 'Krillin found me groan' drifted through the forensics floor. He couldn't help but chuckle even as the technician in front of him rolled his eyes with a disapproving head shake. Most in the department thought Videl was exactly the spoiled brat everyone expected her to be, mostly due to her unshakable determination to get what she wants. The girl had begun playfully stomping her feat and pouting as a way to silently mock those who thought she was spoiled back in high school, to those who knew she was joking watching teachers react had been nothing short of hilarious, but to others it only seemed to confirm what they already thought. Gohan realised he was spacing out as the technician continued to whine about how he was being unfairly requested to do his job, almost causing the demi-saiyan to let his own exaggerated groan out. The Analyst subtly checked his watch before deciding it was time to pull rank on this guy.
"Look Steve I don't ha-"
"It's Stephan." Gohan blinked for a moment registering that he had thought this man's name was Steve for the past year and a half. Mentally noting to check his other co-workers names Gohan gave the back of his head a sheepish rub.
"Right, sorry Stephan. As I was saying I don't have time for this, I'm working on this case too and we need it solved by tonight or we're all in trouble. I have to go up to records and go through the cities dental records, if you'd prefer to spend your time reading file after file we can switch but I thought you'd be better of here." The Technician had visibly grimaced at the thought of going through records and Gohan gave the man a smile before giving him a pat on the shoulder. "Thanks Stephan." Little did Stephan know that Gohan would have the company of the lovely Videl Satan in records and wouldn't be bored at all, but Gohan figured that the young woman's fiery personality wouldn't be as appreciated by the technician.
Gohan felt his phone give a long buzz from his pocket as he approached the elevator, glancing around slightly the young Analyst changed direction and headed for the stairs. He took a flight up to the window that didn't lock and gave one final cursory glance around before changing into his suit. He was reminded of Bulma's genius every time he slipped the form fitting material on. He had gone to her when he realised the need for a disguise and she had gone truly above and beyond. She had created an extremely durable grey suit that was able withstand some of his strongest ki blasts, provided he didn't transform. She had also made a visor that came equipped with a radio tuned to the police station and a night and thermal vision setting. He didn't need those thanks to his knowledge of ki but it was cool feature all the same. His favourite aspect of the whole thing though was how it all folded down into a specially designed glasses case. The suit came with a small button that when pressed pulled the suit into a tightly packed roll. As the young man slipped on his visor he gave one last check of his surroundings, this time checking on the energies of his coffee workers as well before shooting out of the window a small gust rushing thought the department as he left.
Videl let out what felt like the hundredth sigh as her Captain droned on about misused resources, harassed co-workers and hogged department specialists. Really he was repeating himself every 5 minutes and he didn't even really have a point to make. Yes, she may have threatened the odd colleague, and yes she spent a possibly unhealthy amount of time trying to unmask Saiyaman, but these were all for a good cause. She put away more criminals and solved more cases than anyone else on the force. Ever. And she was only just beginning her career. After the sixth rephrasing of 'Stop doing this, and do that' Videl decided enough was enough. Gohan was probably already at the records floor and if she didn't get there soon he'd probably solve her damn case for her. She was pulled from her thoughts as Krillin suddenly silenced himself and reached for his radio. It took a moment to take on her surroundings after drifting off but Videl heard the hurried footfalls around the pen outside of Krillin office. She knew something big was going down and the young detective felt both dread and delightful anticipation creep up her spine when Krillin's radio crackled to life.
