As the battle raged on the planet of Psiode, a lone warrior watched. One not contained by the flow of time or perception that the others were. They were shrouded by a dark cloak that flowed with black and dark green. A small smile could be seen from the shadowed veil that covered their entire face. Ever watching as the battle reached a climactic point. The body of Gohan shattered into billions of pieces. He only laughed a strange hideous laughter. It echoed and reverberated throughout all this quadrant of space. After a few moments they were calm and spoke once again simply as if they were stating fact, rather then questioning or mentioning something to themselves. "Just as I predicted, his power level has risen greater then ever before. The foolish amalgamation of that world that calls itself Saikikkusu has just unlocked his next level of evolution. It's birth was but moments ago, and following suit, so is it's death moments away.
A million perception, infinite depth, and lack thereof at the same time. Watching from an infinite amount of vantage points, all linked with a bond beyond the physical. He was almost caught up in the rapture of the change.. almost lost in it's infinite magnitude. But then he remembered his purpose. A dark surge of anger flew through him. That creature had assaulted him for no reason whatsoever. It had wanted to merge with him and become more powerful. It had taken no consideration to how powerful the creature it would be fighting could truly be. It had underestimated it's opposition. That would be it's undoing. For a moment in this form he tapped into their consciousness and learned of their weakness, and of them as well. They acted upon the brain impulses of those that they fought. They used the assaults and attacks that their opponents were about to use and magnified them. The solution to this problem was now within his grasp. As he reformed together, and billions of molecules wrapped themselves together in the semblance of a body he smiled. His body glowing with amazing power. He cleared his mind of all fighting techniques and skills. His mind a blank except for what he had to say. "Saikikkusu, now you will die. You will perish along with the rest of this world. I will destroy it with impunity, and watch as you shrivel away from existence, without a hope, without an heir, without a legacy. I will watch you dying world and know that I made your race extinct, and I will revel in my glory and in your defeat."
The creature visibly shuttered at these words, probably not understanding the exact language, but being a psychic being, able to tell the meaning and purpose of the words. The creature's power swirled around it, and it prepared for an assault, but when it went to make an attack it found that it could do nothing. Gohan laughed at the stupidity and ignorance of such a being. "And I thought I actually had something to fear a few moments ago. Apparently I was sadly mistaken. I almost.. pity you." The creatures ire rose at the indignity of such an insult. It pulled a psionic link from the planet that drained even more life-force, killing even more beings then when it had been first created. With this power it extracted past knowledge of all the other creatures it had consumed and made it permanent memory that resided within it. With this it had learned skills of it's own that were not required to access from the opponent it fought. The creature echoed a sound that perhaps could have been suspect of a laugh. Instantly it flew into mind speed and began to assault the now meditating Gohan.
Gohan felt the inflicted damage as the creature pummeled it. It moved at incredible rates, and though it's assaults were not strong, because the techniques it knew were not extremely powerful, it managed to land hundreds of hits with every passing second. But then Gohan's focusing meditation was over. Would he have been a natural being, he would not have been able to meditate so quickly, but now in his altered form that had begun to awaken, his power surpassed anything it had ever before. He shifted into reflex mode. His body became a literal machine that reacted and counter-reacted entirely on reflex and instinct. Instantly the tide of the battle turned. Not a single blow the creature assaulted him with could make it through his defenses. His hands and legs created energy fields everywhere the creature attempted to assault only a nanosecond before he reached it. Every now and then the creature's defense was open and Gohan was able to land a powerful blow into the creature. The creature screamed every time it felt the assault, never having felt the sensation of pain before. It cried in agony as it grew weaker, and it's power began to fade. Gohan continued to gain the advantage. He released cosmic burst of his aura directly into the creature's chest. Gohan focused with his aura and shoved the energy directly into the creature and then created a nova explosion inside of it. The creature screamed in eternal torture, but Gohan knew it was not yet dead. He focuses, his eyes growing narrowed and his hair glowing brighter then ever. His places out his hands and circled them around drawing them back together swiftly. As he did, his aura expanded energy funneled back into itself just as quickly as it had separated when it exploded. A great implosion followed as the energy ate itself like a singularity consuming itself.
Gohan dove off of the planet, flying high above the atmosphere into space. Even as he did, he shattered the already weakened shield that had blocked him in there. Busting directly through it with little or no effort. In these few moments it took him to reach the outer layer of the planet he had funneled power into his body from the surrounding cosmos and used himself as a conduit for power. He felt a solar flare leap from the nearby sun as he drew energy from it and directed it at the core of the planet. He screamed a curse of good riddance to this world, and he relished the psychic scream he could feel and hear in his mind as the blast radiated throughout the galaxy into a single destructive ball and fired into their planet. The explosion that followed shattered the nearest two planets as well as the one Gohan had attempted to destroy, just from the sheer magnitude of the shockwave released from the explosion. Nothing but particles was left of the planet that had once lived in that place. But Gohan was no fool, he sensed the presence of the creature yet left in residual strings of molecular DNA that had survived on the particle level. It was attempting to remain dormant to hide it's existence. But Gohan had already linked with them. He knew them better then they supposed. Gohan concentrated his power once again and spread out a blue web of energy that spiraled for nearly a hundred thousand miles in every direction, gathering all the possible debris of this world. His eyes glowed a strange dark blue and his mind began to send out a psychic wave of energy. It was not destructive, or even physically perceivable. As the web reached out, it caught the residual psionic life-force like flies and spiraled them to Gohan. He laughed within himself as he brought them into him. His body of nanites instantly assaulted them, and brought them under his command. They converted and destroyed the heart and soul of the creatures and made their power a slave to his own power, once again adding new skills to his deadly arsenal. Soon the world would see his power. Soon they would know the greatness that he was. He was immortal, and he was a god...
Even as he reveled in his power he sensed a presence appear before him. It was the same strange creature that had found him when he was nearly dead above the planet earth many years ago. He stared at it cautiously. As he leaped out with his power to scan it, he felt the scanning pushed away easily by this creature's power. He decided it wasn't worth forcing the issue and waited for the creature to speak. The creature simply stared at him for nearly a minute and he began to grow impatient. He yelled as his impulsive side took over. "What the hell do you want? I don't have all day to float around him and play a staring contest." The creature didn't speak, but Gohan saw a strange smile beneath the hood form. That only angered Gohan more. "Look here you prick. I'm going to leave if you don't have anything to say. I'm grateful that you saved my life many years ago. But if you are anything like me, you had your own damn selfish reasons, so I don't owe you anything." The creature laughed a strange and maniacal laughter after it heard this. After a few moments it calmed down and spoke with a deep and cosmic voice. "Foolish mortal. I am simply here to watch you grow. You have changed to much to simply be Gohan, the son of Kakkarot. You are now Gohan Zasshu. The ultimate hybrid of flesh and artificial intelligence. Yet still you lack experience and understanding the fullness of your powers. Continue your quest for knowledge, for it will be required for you to unlock your full potential." With that the creature disappeared leaving Gohan with many questions, and absolutely no answers. He didn't know whether or not to trust the creature, but it had told him to do nothing that he wasn't already doing. He would simply have to be careful and watchful in the years to come as he trained.
* * * * *
Goku stood there beside of his wife, holding her hands as he quietly but honestly recounted what had happened in the past few years. The absolute truth that he knew about Gohan. His eyes were blurry, and tears hung silently, waiting to drop. As he finished he began to lower his head and Chi-Chi forcefully pulled her arms out of his hands, she dropped out of her strange state of shock she had went into from the time he had begun to tell her about Gohan. She reached up her hand and slapped Goku hard in the face. "You lying bastard! That can't be our son.." Chi-Chi burst out in tears and began to run. "..It just can't be..." Goku moved with light speeds directly in front of Chi-Chi, and grabbed her arms as she went to slap him again. He pulled her close to him and held her tightly. She screamed curses at him, and tears rolled heavily down her cheeks. She attempted to fight him by futilely punching his chest with her enclosed arms. He only held her tightly with his head dropped lightly on the top of her head. He kept repeating the same thing over and over. "I'm sorry.. I'm so.. so sorry." After nearly a minute, Chi-Chi simply burst into a heap and cried more openly as she held onto Goku like he was her last lifeline.
Even as this occurred Trunks appeared upon the horizon. He watched from afar as he drew closer, and felt the pain that both of them were in. He contacted Goku telepathically. "I'll take care of gathering the warriors. Dente came to me as well. You just stay with Chi-Chi. She needs you now more then ever." Goku silently thanked him and continued to hold Chi-Chi close to him. Trunks shook his head in dismay as he thought, "Gohan, you sick little twisted shit. Do you see how much you hurt your mom and dad. Don't you have a heart? How can you be so cruel? I swear I'll find a way to defeat you. I will kill you not only for the universe, but for how you hurt those that loved you. You will pay. They'll hate me for it, but I do not care. I will not give you another chance to hurt them the way you just have today."
With those thoughts in his mind Trunks headed out through the planet to gather together the greatest warriors in a fight that would once again decide the fate of the entire universe. Within a three hours he had gather an entire list of warriors to his aid. But would they be enough? Together he had brought Tien, Krillin, Piccolo, Android 17, Yamcha, Chiaotzu, and reluctantly Vegeta. With his powers he had spotted Vegeta attempting to hide in the north. He was pretty sure the only reason he could detect him was because of their heritage to one another, because he was Vegeta's son. That would explain why he had been able to safely hide from Gohan these past three years. As he told them the truth and at the same time he surveyed their powers he realized how bleak the situation was. All of them had grown in immense power for the past three years they had done training, but it was nothing compared to the power Gohan would wield. After telling the truth to them all he had quite a few varied responses.
Krillin spoke up. "That's impossible! That boy has got a heart of gold. Haven't you ever seen him hangin' with his dad? I think you've lost your marbles Trunks." The then looked suspiciously at Trunks. "How do we even know you ARE Trunks? You're power level is far off the scale from what Trunks could have ever mastered in three years."
Trunks spoke up in retaliation. "Dammit Krillin. I done told you, I went into the hyperbolic time chamber for nearly three years!"
Krillin just sneered at him. "Yeah, right. You know that no one can go in there more then two times or they'll be sealed up in there forever! That's just a right out lie and you know it. Where did your power really come from?"
Trunks felt his temper rise but kept it down. He hated dealing with fools. As soon as he was about to speak up, instead, Piccolo did.
"Quiet Krillin. He's telling the truth. My scans show me that he has the signature of being in the time chamber. And if his theories are correct, the chamber would have locked him away forever, had he not surpassed the power of the chamber itself. He even talked about how he would have killed himself and attempted to destroy himself from the insanity. It was those years that he was locked in the chamber, unable to escape that drove him to madness. But eventually as time passed, his power still grew as he pummeled himself with power, and he surprisingly learned something that no one else ever suspected possible. Just as you can drop into insanity, given enough time, you can drop back out of it, into sanity once again, just from so much passage of time, and change within yourself. After he regained his sanity, his training excelled even more until he was so powerful he could escape the HyperBolic Time Chamber. But had his intensive training not already weakened the fabric of the chamber that linked it outside of time, even Trunks power would not have been enough to destroy it. In fact, because the chamber is nothing more then a gateway, it is likely that the true essence that makes the chamber is reforming itself. It might be only a few years, or centuries, or perhaps even millennia before it reappears back in our world, but one thing is certain, it is not gone forever, and it will be back."
Krillin fell silent after Piccolo finished his statement. He trusted the namek more then he cared to admit. Piccolo was a very wise individual. Then Vegeta spoke up with an extreme sarcastic note in his voice. "So almighty leader. If this Gohan has become so powerful, then how do we stand a chance against him. What shall we ever do to stop him?!" Vegeta said in mock voice of fear.
Trunks glared back at his father. "This is not a joking matter father. And yes, there is no way we can all directly confront him and win. We have to find the Dragon Balls, and quickly. We have to work together if we are going to save the planet, and this entire universe."
Vegeta just snorted. "Where is all powerful Kakkarot when we need him? Off hiding in some corner cowering from what his son has become? Let his son come to me. I will defeat him, and show that I am the greatest warrior in the universe."
Trunks looked at Vegeta like he was insane. "What the hell is wrong with you father? Have you lost your damn mind? I have spent a thousand years within a chamber of hell and still I will not be strong enough to defeat him. He will defeat you with little more then a minor effort."
Vegeta laughed, and then laughed some more, so hard that he fell to the ground retching in pain from the constant laughter. The entire group looked down at him with either mild amusement or complete disgust, some a little bit of both. Vegeta finally stood back up after a couple of minutes from his outburst. "Think what you will son, but when he comes around, I will teach him the true meaning of power, as will I show you the meaning of pure saiyan blood..."
A million perception, infinite depth, and lack thereof at the same time. Watching from an infinite amount of vantage points, all linked with a bond beyond the physical. He was almost caught up in the rapture of the change.. almost lost in it's infinite magnitude. But then he remembered his purpose. A dark surge of anger flew through him. That creature had assaulted him for no reason whatsoever. It had wanted to merge with him and become more powerful. It had taken no consideration to how powerful the creature it would be fighting could truly be. It had underestimated it's opposition. That would be it's undoing. For a moment in this form he tapped into their consciousness and learned of their weakness, and of them as well. They acted upon the brain impulses of those that they fought. They used the assaults and attacks that their opponents were about to use and magnified them. The solution to this problem was now within his grasp. As he reformed together, and billions of molecules wrapped themselves together in the semblance of a body he smiled. His body glowing with amazing power. He cleared his mind of all fighting techniques and skills. His mind a blank except for what he had to say. "Saikikkusu, now you will die. You will perish along with the rest of this world. I will destroy it with impunity, and watch as you shrivel away from existence, without a hope, without an heir, without a legacy. I will watch you dying world and know that I made your race extinct, and I will revel in my glory and in your defeat."
The creature visibly shuttered at these words, probably not understanding the exact language, but being a psychic being, able to tell the meaning and purpose of the words. The creature's power swirled around it, and it prepared for an assault, but when it went to make an attack it found that it could do nothing. Gohan laughed at the stupidity and ignorance of such a being. "And I thought I actually had something to fear a few moments ago. Apparently I was sadly mistaken. I almost.. pity you." The creatures ire rose at the indignity of such an insult. It pulled a psionic link from the planet that drained even more life-force, killing even more beings then when it had been first created. With this power it extracted past knowledge of all the other creatures it had consumed and made it permanent memory that resided within it. With this it had learned skills of it's own that were not required to access from the opponent it fought. The creature echoed a sound that perhaps could have been suspect of a laugh. Instantly it flew into mind speed and began to assault the now meditating Gohan.
Gohan felt the inflicted damage as the creature pummeled it. It moved at incredible rates, and though it's assaults were not strong, because the techniques it knew were not extremely powerful, it managed to land hundreds of hits with every passing second. But then Gohan's focusing meditation was over. Would he have been a natural being, he would not have been able to meditate so quickly, but now in his altered form that had begun to awaken, his power surpassed anything it had ever before. He shifted into reflex mode. His body became a literal machine that reacted and counter-reacted entirely on reflex and instinct. Instantly the tide of the battle turned. Not a single blow the creature assaulted him with could make it through his defenses. His hands and legs created energy fields everywhere the creature attempted to assault only a nanosecond before he reached it. Every now and then the creature's defense was open and Gohan was able to land a powerful blow into the creature. The creature screamed every time it felt the assault, never having felt the sensation of pain before. It cried in agony as it grew weaker, and it's power began to fade. Gohan continued to gain the advantage. He released cosmic burst of his aura directly into the creature's chest. Gohan focused with his aura and shoved the energy directly into the creature and then created a nova explosion inside of it. The creature screamed in eternal torture, but Gohan knew it was not yet dead. He focuses, his eyes growing narrowed and his hair glowing brighter then ever. His places out his hands and circled them around drawing them back together swiftly. As he did, his aura expanded energy funneled back into itself just as quickly as it had separated when it exploded. A great implosion followed as the energy ate itself like a singularity consuming itself.
Gohan dove off of the planet, flying high above the atmosphere into space. Even as he did, he shattered the already weakened shield that had blocked him in there. Busting directly through it with little or no effort. In these few moments it took him to reach the outer layer of the planet he had funneled power into his body from the surrounding cosmos and used himself as a conduit for power. He felt a solar flare leap from the nearby sun as he drew energy from it and directed it at the core of the planet. He screamed a curse of good riddance to this world, and he relished the psychic scream he could feel and hear in his mind as the blast radiated throughout the galaxy into a single destructive ball and fired into their planet. The explosion that followed shattered the nearest two planets as well as the one Gohan had attempted to destroy, just from the sheer magnitude of the shockwave released from the explosion. Nothing but particles was left of the planet that had once lived in that place. But Gohan was no fool, he sensed the presence of the creature yet left in residual strings of molecular DNA that had survived on the particle level. It was attempting to remain dormant to hide it's existence. But Gohan had already linked with them. He knew them better then they supposed. Gohan concentrated his power once again and spread out a blue web of energy that spiraled for nearly a hundred thousand miles in every direction, gathering all the possible debris of this world. His eyes glowed a strange dark blue and his mind began to send out a psychic wave of energy. It was not destructive, or even physically perceivable. As the web reached out, it caught the residual psionic life-force like flies and spiraled them to Gohan. He laughed within himself as he brought them into him. His body of nanites instantly assaulted them, and brought them under his command. They converted and destroyed the heart and soul of the creatures and made their power a slave to his own power, once again adding new skills to his deadly arsenal. Soon the world would see his power. Soon they would know the greatness that he was. He was immortal, and he was a god...
Even as he reveled in his power he sensed a presence appear before him. It was the same strange creature that had found him when he was nearly dead above the planet earth many years ago. He stared at it cautiously. As he leaped out with his power to scan it, he felt the scanning pushed away easily by this creature's power. He decided it wasn't worth forcing the issue and waited for the creature to speak. The creature simply stared at him for nearly a minute and he began to grow impatient. He yelled as his impulsive side took over. "What the hell do you want? I don't have all day to float around him and play a staring contest." The creature didn't speak, but Gohan saw a strange smile beneath the hood form. That only angered Gohan more. "Look here you prick. I'm going to leave if you don't have anything to say. I'm grateful that you saved my life many years ago. But if you are anything like me, you had your own damn selfish reasons, so I don't owe you anything." The creature laughed a strange and maniacal laughter after it heard this. After a few moments it calmed down and spoke with a deep and cosmic voice. "Foolish mortal. I am simply here to watch you grow. You have changed to much to simply be Gohan, the son of Kakkarot. You are now Gohan Zasshu. The ultimate hybrid of flesh and artificial intelligence. Yet still you lack experience and understanding the fullness of your powers. Continue your quest for knowledge, for it will be required for you to unlock your full potential." With that the creature disappeared leaving Gohan with many questions, and absolutely no answers. He didn't know whether or not to trust the creature, but it had told him to do nothing that he wasn't already doing. He would simply have to be careful and watchful in the years to come as he trained.
* * * * *
Goku stood there beside of his wife, holding her hands as he quietly but honestly recounted what had happened in the past few years. The absolute truth that he knew about Gohan. His eyes were blurry, and tears hung silently, waiting to drop. As he finished he began to lower his head and Chi-Chi forcefully pulled her arms out of his hands, she dropped out of her strange state of shock she had went into from the time he had begun to tell her about Gohan. She reached up her hand and slapped Goku hard in the face. "You lying bastard! That can't be our son.." Chi-Chi burst out in tears and began to run. "..It just can't be..." Goku moved with light speeds directly in front of Chi-Chi, and grabbed her arms as she went to slap him again. He pulled her close to him and held her tightly. She screamed curses at him, and tears rolled heavily down her cheeks. She attempted to fight him by futilely punching his chest with her enclosed arms. He only held her tightly with his head dropped lightly on the top of her head. He kept repeating the same thing over and over. "I'm sorry.. I'm so.. so sorry." After nearly a minute, Chi-Chi simply burst into a heap and cried more openly as she held onto Goku like he was her last lifeline.
Even as this occurred Trunks appeared upon the horizon. He watched from afar as he drew closer, and felt the pain that both of them were in. He contacted Goku telepathically. "I'll take care of gathering the warriors. Dente came to me as well. You just stay with Chi-Chi. She needs you now more then ever." Goku silently thanked him and continued to hold Chi-Chi close to him. Trunks shook his head in dismay as he thought, "Gohan, you sick little twisted shit. Do you see how much you hurt your mom and dad. Don't you have a heart? How can you be so cruel? I swear I'll find a way to defeat you. I will kill you not only for the universe, but for how you hurt those that loved you. You will pay. They'll hate me for it, but I do not care. I will not give you another chance to hurt them the way you just have today."
With those thoughts in his mind Trunks headed out through the planet to gather together the greatest warriors in a fight that would once again decide the fate of the entire universe. Within a three hours he had gather an entire list of warriors to his aid. But would they be enough? Together he had brought Tien, Krillin, Piccolo, Android 17, Yamcha, Chiaotzu, and reluctantly Vegeta. With his powers he had spotted Vegeta attempting to hide in the north. He was pretty sure the only reason he could detect him was because of their heritage to one another, because he was Vegeta's son. That would explain why he had been able to safely hide from Gohan these past three years. As he told them the truth and at the same time he surveyed their powers he realized how bleak the situation was. All of them had grown in immense power for the past three years they had done training, but it was nothing compared to the power Gohan would wield. After telling the truth to them all he had quite a few varied responses.
Krillin spoke up. "That's impossible! That boy has got a heart of gold. Haven't you ever seen him hangin' with his dad? I think you've lost your marbles Trunks." The then looked suspiciously at Trunks. "How do we even know you ARE Trunks? You're power level is far off the scale from what Trunks could have ever mastered in three years."
Trunks spoke up in retaliation. "Dammit Krillin. I done told you, I went into the hyperbolic time chamber for nearly three years!"
Krillin just sneered at him. "Yeah, right. You know that no one can go in there more then two times or they'll be sealed up in there forever! That's just a right out lie and you know it. Where did your power really come from?"
Trunks felt his temper rise but kept it down. He hated dealing with fools. As soon as he was about to speak up, instead, Piccolo did.
"Quiet Krillin. He's telling the truth. My scans show me that he has the signature of being in the time chamber. And if his theories are correct, the chamber would have locked him away forever, had he not surpassed the power of the chamber itself. He even talked about how he would have killed himself and attempted to destroy himself from the insanity. It was those years that he was locked in the chamber, unable to escape that drove him to madness. But eventually as time passed, his power still grew as he pummeled himself with power, and he surprisingly learned something that no one else ever suspected possible. Just as you can drop into insanity, given enough time, you can drop back out of it, into sanity once again, just from so much passage of time, and change within yourself. After he regained his sanity, his training excelled even more until he was so powerful he could escape the HyperBolic Time Chamber. But had his intensive training not already weakened the fabric of the chamber that linked it outside of time, even Trunks power would not have been enough to destroy it. In fact, because the chamber is nothing more then a gateway, it is likely that the true essence that makes the chamber is reforming itself. It might be only a few years, or centuries, or perhaps even millennia before it reappears back in our world, but one thing is certain, it is not gone forever, and it will be back."
Krillin fell silent after Piccolo finished his statement. He trusted the namek more then he cared to admit. Piccolo was a very wise individual. Then Vegeta spoke up with an extreme sarcastic note in his voice. "So almighty leader. If this Gohan has become so powerful, then how do we stand a chance against him. What shall we ever do to stop him?!" Vegeta said in mock voice of fear.
Trunks glared back at his father. "This is not a joking matter father. And yes, there is no way we can all directly confront him and win. We have to find the Dragon Balls, and quickly. We have to work together if we are going to save the planet, and this entire universe."
Vegeta just snorted. "Where is all powerful Kakkarot when we need him? Off hiding in some corner cowering from what his son has become? Let his son come to me. I will defeat him, and show that I am the greatest warrior in the universe."
Trunks looked at Vegeta like he was insane. "What the hell is wrong with you father? Have you lost your damn mind? I have spent a thousand years within a chamber of hell and still I will not be strong enough to defeat him. He will defeat you with little more then a minor effort."
Vegeta laughed, and then laughed some more, so hard that he fell to the ground retching in pain from the constant laughter. The entire group looked down at him with either mild amusement or complete disgust, some a little bit of both. Vegeta finally stood back up after a couple of minutes from his outburst. "Think what you will son, but when he comes around, I will teach him the true meaning of power, as will I show you the meaning of pure saiyan blood..."