It was a quiet evening in Satan City as Gohan, in the guise of the city's hero, The Great Saiyaman, flew about on a nightly patrol. Taking his eyes from the bustling city streets, Gohan looked up into the evening sky, the brightest stars cutting through the city's electric glow. The view was much better from his own home, far from civilization, where city lights didn't drown out the Galaxy's light show, but he still loved it, nonetheless.
Recent events had caused him to appreciate everything recently, actually. Having the planet annihilated before your eyes (just before you went up with it), and then having it restored gave one an appreciation for the present, and the things you loved. Thankfully, everything worked out in the end, though, and, once again, the Dragon balls had saved the day…
And they'll never know about it... How close they came to being completely wiped out… Tomorrow was the big day: When they would call the Earth's Dragon balls to help wipe the planet's memory of Majin Buu. Gohan wasn't entirely comfortable with the plan, but he also understood the burden of trying to deal with your own death and resurrection. It still gave him the willies thinking about it, and he'd been dealing with it in one form or another all his life. To imagine what it was doing to the (mostly) ignorant masses below was frightening…
Gohan, or rather Saiyaman, heard something, then. He didn't have super hearing (he wasn't Superman, after all), but the antenna in his helmet were tuned to all the citizen and police bands, so he could hear if the cops were dealing with an emergency. Right now, he was hearing about a bomb threat at Satan Plaza, the social center of the city.
Funny, I thought we only wished the good people back to life Gohan thought as he descended to the square, on top of an overlooking building, remaining inconspicuous in the shadows for the time being, checking out the situation. Funny, in the first days of his donning the Saiyaman suit, it had been his MO to simply barge in and let his natural strength and relative invulnerability take care of anything that came up. Now that his battle instincts were honed from the incidents of the last few weeks, he was approaching this seriously, assessing things before barging in. He could see Videl already there, talking to the guy. Straining his ears, he could hear her speaking in a soothing tone. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see police officers quietly shuffling people away from the square, a few at a time, so as not to get the bomber's attention. Aggravated by his inability to hear what was going on, and deciding not to reveal himself for fear of aggravating the situation, Gohan fiddled with the side of his helmet.
C'mon, I know Bulma put a directional microphone in here somewhere… he thought as he groped around the side of his helmet. He found the button, and a high pitched squeal caused him to nearly fall off the building. Calibrating it, he could hear Videl and the bomber clearly now, just over the amplified murmur of the crowd…
"…can't think like that."
Videl speaking, Gohan realized, a blush rising to his face. Not long after Buu was destroyed, at a private celebration at the Son home, Gohan had made his feelings clear in front of everyone, and she had reciprocated. They'd had little chance to do much since, though, as it seemed every day now boded some new insanity in the world.
"Why not? I know there's another existence beyond this, one that might be better than here. It's not like anyone's really going to die. We'll just be… different. Yeah, different, and everlasting. Who wouldn't want to live forever?"
"That's not the point, sir. We'll have all eternity to do that. What about this life?" Videl pleaded.
"What about it?" The man cried, on the verge of tears. "I remember that place, don't you? I remember feeling warm, protected, and with the feeling that everything would be OK, you know…" at this point, his voice began to break. "…I've had such a lonely life. I want out of it. And I know I'm not the only one. I'd be doing these people a favor…"
While they had not wished the truly evil back to life, there were many grades between good and evil. Not to mention evil and insanity. Many had pulled stunts in the last few months, some of which had endangered many lives. Saiyaman had managed to stop the worst of them, with Videl taking care of most of the smaller crises, but, in the end, they were only two people. Every day, there had been some act caused by someone who couldn't accept the fact that they were dead, or worse, that they were alive again. Mostly suicides by people who thought the Other World was better than this one, but sometimes, they went farther, like this guy. These were never easy. Thankfully, it would be over, tomorrow, Gohan thought, getting ready, in case this went bad. He slowly began to gather energy.
"Sir, it's not your place to judge what's best for these people." Videl said in her most compassionate voice. This was getting tiresome, she thought, as it seemed she'd been through this same scenario a dozen times in the last month alone. Only eight, actually, but it felt like a dozen. She could see now why Gohan and the others had never been public about what they knew: About ki, about aliens, about the afterlife. People in general just couldn't handle it.
When she'd first gotten the whole story from Gohan, in those first few days after her resurrection, she'd been angry. How dare this group keep from the world what they knew! Beans that could cure any injury, balls that could grant wishes, super powered aliens that have lived among us for decades. Think of the good that could be done with the things they had. She'd told him so, too, very loudly, angry with the injustice of it all…
Gohan had simply smiled. It wasn't his usual, innocent smile, but a haunted, knowing one. He'd done a lot of those since she'd met him again. He'd changed, somehow, and not just physically. His mind seemed as hardened and developed as his body now, not as innocent as it once was. His next words had haunted her…
"Great good can be done with this, Videl," he'd said, quietly. "But so can great evil. We have to be careful who knows the true secrets of the world we live in. There's no greater tool, or weapon, than knowledge."
And that was that. Gohan refused to speak anymore that night. She'd pondered on that the last few months, as time and again, she'd come to terms with the fact that, while evil seemed to have vanished for the time being, insanity was making a good attempt at filling in. People, by and large, just couldn't handle what they knew about life and the afterlife. She'd had a hard time accepting it herself, and she'd had Gohan to explain things for her. When the suggestion was made that people be made to forget what happened, she'd been quite vocal in her objection. People can't just have things like that decided for them. Give them time. Let them come to terms with it, she'd said.
She'd been wrong.
She'd dealt with twelve of these in the three or so months since Majin Buu. Not all of them involved bombs. One crazy had even tried to poison the city's water supply. Thankfully, she'd thwarted him before he'd succeeded. Gohan had had to stop a government official who'd tried to unload weapons of mass destruction on the world. 'To bring back harmony', he'd said. It had been more than three months now, and things still weren't getting better…
People couldn't cope.
"You just have to make it day by day, sir, just like we did before this happened. Just one more day, that's all I'm asking of you, sir. You don't want to do this…"
Just as she finished this, she felt a familiar feeling… inside her. She wasn't used to the concept of ki detection just yet, but she could tell Gohan was nearby, powering up in case he was needed. She smiled to herself, glad to see that he was letting her handle this instead of taking it himself. Of course, this was out of hers and Saiyaman's elements. Give her a bad guy, and she'd beat him up, but this? Diplomacy wasn't one of her strong suits, she felt, but the city looked to her as a hero, and heroes could do anything, couldn't they?
She sighed, hoping the bomber didn't catch her momentary lapse. He hadn't. He was simply staring down, completely off guard. She seriously thought about simply using her quick movements to disarm the guy, but that might have put the crowd in danger, in the off chance she didn't get to him in time. Instead, she began moving closer, slowly, so as not to alarm him. As she neared him, he raised his head. Reaching into his pocket, she tensed, feeling Gohan doing the same thing.
"Perhaps I don't have to do this to them," he said, gesturing to the crowd. "But I'm doing it to myself." Pulling his other hand out, he drew a gun, and began to raise it. Fearing the worst, Videl put all of her energy into speed. Suddenly, to her, the world seemed to slow, except for Gohan, who was moving in quickly from the corner of her eye. Ignoring the world, she lunged for her target, grabbing the gun, and pulling it from the man's hand, knocking it over. Saiyaman also arrived at that point, and took away the man's bomb trigger. Suddenly, the world sped up again for Videl. Looking behind her, she saw the bomber, standing in shock at the two heroes who'd disarmed him in less than a split second. Finally, after a moment, he fell to his knees and began to weep.
The police finally moved in, taking him into custody. Knowing police procedure, but just to be sure, Videl whispered to the commissioner, "Keep him under suicide watch tonight. If you can keep him until the morning, he should be OK, I think."
Gohan was suddenly by her side. In his normal voice, thankfully, not the fake Saiyaman one, he asked her, "Videl, are you ready to call it a night?"
"Sure. I think we've seen the worst of it today," and with that, they took off…