Pacific Dragon
~ Lady Eldaelen ~
Previously:
"This software is dated twenty years from now."
Goku blinked. "Like, in the future?"
- Start -
Gohan took over the extra Hope's computer, diving into the code like a madman. Bulma put Goku to work and together they began setting up floodlights and stands around the Jaeger. "I want this thing opened up. Every storage space emptied, every manual and paper filed. Everything gets documented. Nothing leaves."
"Bulma, have you checked that whole thing out?" Goku asked warily as she started climbing a ladder to the right leg access.
"Just the Control Deck."
"No way, woman," Vegeta scoffed, pulling himself up from the couch as Goku made a similar protest.
"Don't get all prince charming on me now, you ass. You're still shocking yourself when you sneeze." Goku moved to speak, his expression unnervingly similar to Vegeta's, but Bulma cut him off. "This is how it's going to be, isn't it? When you two start drifting?" She threw up her hands and motioned for them to go ahead.
Chi Chi palmed the comm by the door. "Krillin, Goku's not going to be back for a while. Can you see if Nail will watch the boys?"
"Uh, the Level Zero lockdown was set. How are you even talking to me?"
"We're in the lab."
"Oh. Well, does Gohan still want the Level Zero?"
"Yes, I do." Gohan answered. He drew up alongside his mom. "We need Dende."
.
During the year leading up to the second encounter, Krillin quickly became a near-permanent fixture at Capsule Corporation, helping Bulma with most of the technical consulting on her Jaegers. He still trained but focused much more of his time and energy to the fighting machines. When Bulma needed input from the other warriors, Krillin was usually the one to tell her where to look and often set up and helped facilitate the meetings. He naturally fell into an admin role and had all the background to really understand and work towards the goals Bulma was looking for in her project.
"I don't think you've ever said so out loud, but you do have Goku in mind for this, right?" Krillin had asked one afternoon. He held up metal skins to cover the chest cavity of the first giant prototype while Bulma welded. She paused and clicked off the flame. She pushed up her hood and peered around the skin where Krillin was floating with the piece.
"Yeah, I guess I am building this for Goku. Do you think he might not-"
"No, I think he'll be onboard." Krillin shifted his grip on the metal to free up one hand and rub his chin in thought. "But you might be a bit too low with your power estimates. Scaling up from my levels will only go so far."
Bulma nodded, surprised he'd guessed what she'd been doing in the lab tests the past few weeks.
"It might be helpful to finish this prototype and have Gohan try it out. Or at least see if he'd do the materials testing. He can generate the power and it might give Goku and Piccolo a break to train on their own for a few days."
"Is something wrong with how they've been training now?"
"No, but they don't want Gohan going home so one of them has always been with him since the wilderness training. Trust me, they're shielding him from some stuff that'll have to be worked out eventually."
"What stuff?! We are quickly running out of our year's reprieve."
"Bulma, before the encounter with Radditz, the last time they really spent time together was the World Martial Arts Tournament where Goku kind of killed Piccolo's dad. That sort of thing has to be addressed or we run the risk of having Piccolo go off the deep end -and with our luck, it would be at the worst possible time, probably during some epic battle where the fate of the world hinges on everyone coming together."
"Do you really think that's a possibility?"
"No, well, not with Gohan around. He's got Piccolo wrapped around his finger. It'd almost be adorable if Piccolo wasn't, you know, an intimidating giant green alien who could kill us with his mind."
"I am not feeling very encouraged by this conversation, Krillin."
"They're doing the best they can. Talk to Goku, heck, talk to Chi Chi. Tell her you need Gohan's help. I'll bet you a thousand zenni she volunteers him just to get him out of training for a bit."
.
"You're back already?" Lord Enma boomed from his desk. Gohan shifted self-consciously at the Check-In Station, uncomfortably aware that he hadn't bathed nor had a proper meal since leaving King Kai's who knows how long ago.
"Yes, sir."
"Hmmm… Your paperwork isn't approved yet. Yes, I know they're waiting." Lord Enma muttered to an oni waving frantically off to the side. He rifled through a mess of files piled high on his desk, then snapped his fingers, bringing another oni into the room.
"Take this one here to the lunch room and the showers," he instructed the new oni. "Don't leave him alone."
To Gohan he addressed, "You won't give me any trouble, will you, son?"
"No, sir."
.
Krillin was the one from the Base who set up meetings with Dende. He went through Piccolo who relayed the request on up. It didn't happen often, and in fact the contact usually went the other way with Dende making requests through Piccolo to Krillin. The guardian respected their schedules and wanted to keep disruptions to a minimum.
And there was no getting around it, Dende's visits to the Base usually caused a commotion. The other three Nameks tended to act as an honor guard of sorts, never straying far from his side. Since Piccolo was the only one to regularly spend extra time at the Base outside of engagements and required training, seeing four Nameks walking the halls in formation was rare indeed.
Krillin contacted Piccolo, but Gohan and Bulma's agitation was enough to warrant Goku picking up Dende directly. They almost didn't wait until the other Nameks made their way to the lab before Gohan began explaining.
"I checked the software notes first. Obviously, this Jaeger is from a different time. Even though it's from a later time, a lot of the systems are less advanced than the ones we have currently on our Hope Four. The next thing I checked was my log. I started it when we first began work on the prototype Hope Four neural net. It's basically got all the background info into every development and upgrade to the system and any significant events that happened."
"Like a diary," Krillin interjected.
"A record."
"So what did this Jaeger's record say?"
"I'm not sure. I stopped reading at the first divergent entry."
.
They searched for the Dragonballs immediately after the encounter with Radditz. Goku had still been in the hospital so the task fell to Krillin and Bulma and Gohan (after much protesting on Chi Chi's part). The Sons already had three, the numbers three, four and six. They left those in Mt. Paozu and set out with Bulma's radar to find the rest. It only took a few days to track them all down; luckily all but one were in deserted areas and the last had been swallowed by an easily dispatched fish.
Goku left the hospital far too early, but he insisted on joining the others for the summoning and he didn't want them putting that off on his account. As soon as they all piled out of Bulma's airship, he called for Kinto'un, sitting heavily on the dutiful cloud while the others arranged the Dragonballs in a circle.
He wondered what Gohan was thinking about all of this. Goku had been telling him stories of his adventures, even of the times he'd been around for a summoning, since Gohan was a baby. He was pretty sure that Gohan didn't quite believe them, probably had been lumping his tales with the plots of the fantasy books that Ox brought over by the armload for the boy.
"We wish to close the Rift in the ocean where the one named Radditz emerged so it can't be used to send anything else through to this world again."
Bulma's voice, clear and precise, was nevertheless almost drowned out by the sheer magnitude of the being above them. Goku kept watch on his son as the dragon stared down at their little group, unblinking and quiet. Gohan couldn't tear his gaze away.
"That is beyond my power."
"What? How can it be out of your power? You're the Eternal Dragon!"
"Interfering with intergalactic business requires intergalactic power," the dragon replied to Bulma's question with what could only be a wry hint to its rumbling voice.
"What now?" Bulma hissed at Goku.
"Give me a sec," he shot back. They had spent so long with the wording of that wish. The dragon didn't blink.
"Would you like to make another request?" The dragon asked, its booming voice reverberating deep in Goku's chest. He eased off Kinto'un and took a few halting steps towards Bulma's side.
"Can you tell us when the next Saiyans that Radditz spoke of will arrive?"
The dragon's eyes glinted. "You have three hundred and fifty-seven days."
"Thank you, great Dragon."
The dragon shot into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, threading wildly around itself, higher and higher until it almost faded out of view completely. Then it reversed course, diving straight down, right towards them. It disappeared into the circle of Dragonballs, which then rose and, with a concussive boom, scattered in different directions. Only then did Gohan take a step back and look around, eyes wide and full of awe.
.
Hours later, clean and full, Gohan found his mind wandering. He'd taken up an innocuous corner of the Station that was out of the constant flow of foot traffic but still visible to Lord Enma. He'd stopped pacing, that had earned him a glare. So had going through some katas. Piccolo wouldn't have been pleased but Gohan didn't even try meditating. It just hadn't worked to still his mind since he'd left Earth.
"Son," Lord Enma boomed, knocking Gohan out of his malaise.
Gohan flew up to the top of the desk after Enma beckoned.
"You're bored," the ogre announced flatly.
"Sir?"
"There's few things I'll tolerate less in my check in station than a bored Saiyan," he scribbled a few things down on some papers, then took out a stamp that was taller than Gohan himself. Sealing the documents, he waved a hand, shrinking them into a more proportional size to the oni who'd escorted Gohan earlier and had appeared at Lord Enma's side once more.
"Don't come back until you're done being bored," Lord Enma said, shooing both of them away.
The oni led Gohan down a different hall than the one to the lunch room. They passed row after row of cubicles and desks that could have come straight from Capsule Corp's main office.
"Level Five clearance," the oni let out a low whistle as he studied the papers from Lord Enma. "Yep, I haven't seen that for a few decades."
"Sorry, what?"
"Lord Enma cleared you for travel. Level Five will get you into all the general areas of heaven and even a couple of the lighter security levels of hell, yes it will."
"Why?"
"Why? Why are you even here? At some point you shouldn't bother questioning. Man, my wife has been begging me for a pass like that, yes she has. They're hard to come by."
"Do you have a way of finding people?"
.
"The Ice-jin Rift system has been around long before they came in contact with Saiyans. I very rarely interacted with their Science Division, but when the sham of an alliance treaty was going through, there were some tours. The technology isn't Ice-jin, the original creators had been overtaken easily during some previous purge. From what I could gather, captives had been held long enough to transfer only the basic knowledge to Ice-jin scientists before they all committed suicide. Aside from boosting its efficiency as power sources have improved, there's been very little advancement with the basic tech since."
It had taken Vegeta over a month to open up about what he knew of the Rift. Over a month of daily brawls with Goku and nightly shouting matches with Bulma, the likes of both Krillin proclaimed to be the most vicious he'd ever born witness to.
"The system works like a tunnel, gated at both ends. There's bio-markers to prevent unwanted beings from entering."
They'd all stopped working when Vegeta had started talking, unprompted. Krillin and Goku had settled in among pieces of the second Jaeger they'd been prepping. Gohan surreptitiously took notes from the corner of the lab. Bulma sat at her desk chair, fingers tapping idly on her crossed arms as she absorbed Vegeta's words.
"They started using the Rift for planet purging. Even though the entire system requires obscene amounts of energy, it was still considered a benefit. If it took a decade to charge up the Rift or a decade to travel to a planet, they could spend that time creating better tech or training stronger warriors to send through, instead of sending ten year-old ammunition through space to reach a planet in the same amount of time.
"So what's on the other side of this Rift?"
"The Ice-jin home world. The Rifts are housed deep in the Central Purge Command among soldier barracks, tech warehouses, science divisions. It's a labyrinth of bunkers and very highly guarded. They call it the Central Command, but it's spread over a large portion of the planet. I saw it happen, once, when another planet managed to send a small bomb through a Rift. It took them a week to reroute another charged Rift to the planet, and a day to purge it. They had the damaged area rebuilt in a couple of months. Nothing short of a planet destroying device would slow them down."
.
"If two people were to pilot together," Gohan mused out loud, "there's got to be some pretty strong ground rules in place."
The lab had been quiet all morning as Bulma worked her way through cataloguing a mountain's worth of data from the last materials test. Gohan was supposedly studying for a history test, though Bulma doubted his focus; she hadn't heard a page turn in half an hour.
"Agreed. They both have to be willing," Bulma replied sardonically, thinking of her surly houseguest and his general disdain for everything and everyone this world had to offer.
"What about temperament? Personality? Power level?"
"Species?"
"Species?"
"Yes, Gohan, species. Out of the top five fighters, currently only one is human."
"But-"
"You don't count. Sorry, kiddo. And I mean that in the best possible way."
Gohan looked slightly crushed, but he'd had over a year to ponder his unusual heritage. It wasn't like he could change it. It wasn't like they could afford for him to wish it away, either.
"You're talking to me while floating near the ceiling reading a book," Bulma added, emphasizing the point.
"Oh, sorry."
"No, stay up there, it's fine. Just don't think for one moment that you are or should fit into some sort of mold. Own your bizarre bloodline, Son Gohan."
"Okay…" Gohan blushed and dropped his school stuff on the couch below him in favor of retrieving the data pad he used when he worked with her in the lab. "We should probably screen fighting techniques and training histories, too."
.
They picked up on the inconsistencies immediately. In the Command Center, Bulma and Krillin watched streams of data on the Rift activity while the Jaeger teams assembled. Both were prepping, a rarity those days, but Bulma didn't want to take any chances with the amount of activity the highest it'd been since Vegeta and Nappa had come through.
"Does Gohan have a scouter with him?"
Krillin checked the cabinet and found none missing. "No."
"Where is that kid?" Bulma ground out, flicking switches on the comm board. "Remind me to add personnel locators to the project board."
"Sure thing, boss."
"I'm going out there, something's different this time," Gohan breezed in, yanking open the cabinet Krillin had just closed up and nearly making Bulma spill her coffee. He threw on an armor vest and fixed a scouter over his ear and was halfway to the door again before Bulma stopped him.
"Wait! Explain more!"
"Power's too high. Higher than Dad's."
"How do you know that? The prelim reports haven't even come in yet!"
Gohan's expression clouded over with something dark and troubling and he was out the door without another word. Bulma huffed and turned back to the data stream. Krillin closed his eyes and focused on Gohan flying towards Zero Island, then on Goku and Vegeta in turn, both going through the preflight checks in their Jaegers. With those references fresh in his mind, he threw his awareness to the Rift, shifted aside the energy from the transporting activity, trying to filter it to whatever was rising through the plasma.
"Not you too!" Bulma cried as Krillin raided the cabinet, donned armor and a scouter and ran out the door. Bulma took over his seat and opened all the comm lines, just in time to broadcast a string of alien swearing from Vegeta across the Command Center.
"What do you know, Vegeta?" Goku's voice responded, already in battle mode. Bulma could easily place him, his stance, his expression, strapping into her machine, readying himself for the fight to come. She had a harder time picturing Vegeta, with his cold demeanor and unyielding scowl, doing the same.
"This much activity can only be for the Ginyu Force."
.
Gohan snuck the dragon radar out of Bulma's lab as soon as he thought it was safe to do so. They'd only all just gotten out of the hospital and settled back into a semblance of a routine. Vegeta, he'd discovered, wasn't used to reading ki regularly without his scouter so as long as he suppressed his power enough, the prickly prince tended to ignore him. His father and Bulma were easily placated with saying that he had to study or finish homework. Gohan was much more concerned that his mother might notice an extended absence. He had convinced her that Bulma's dad had needed his help for a special project and hoped that would be enough. He still had to be more evasive than he'd liked, but he managed to find three of the Dragonballs over as many days before he got caught.
Gohan snuck back into the depths of Capsule Corporation's living area. It was a bit before dinner, still another couple hours until his dad usually took him home. He steered clear of the lab where he felt Bulma and his father and Vegeta testing Jaeger controls, opting instead to head directly to the small room he usually used to study. Risking another glance down both ends of the hallway, he backed into the room and closed the door.
"And what have you been up to today?" Krillin asked from his waiting spot in the desk chair. Gohan barely stayed himself from yelling in surprise as he whirled around to face him. They eyed each other, Gohan too stunned to come up with a response, Krillin unwilling to let him off the hook too easily.
"Your mom came over for lunch and wanted to know how your special project was going," Krillin elaborated.
"Oh, no."
"Oh, yes. Bulma didn't know what she was talking about. Luckily her parents were at some benefit so she dismissed it as something her dad forgot to mention."
"And my mom bought that?"
"Not until I said the doc was very pleased with your work ethic and thought you had a good eye for research."
"Oh. Well. Okay, then... I should probably finish that report for him."
"You need to work on your poker face, kid. How many have you found?"
"What?"
"Dragonballs. How many have you found?"
"How did you know?"
"Bulma's radar is missing. Don't worry, she hasn't noticed yet."
"Three," he sighed, pulling the number five he'd found earlier that day out of his bag for Krillin to examine. "How did you know it was me who took the radar?"
"I was young once," Krillin deadpanned. "And I'm friends with your father and Bulma."
Gohan accepted the number five from Krillin, surprised that he'd actually handed it back but completely flabbergasted when Krillin then asked, "Do you know what you're going to wish for?"
After a moment to get over the shock, Gohan set his gaze firmly serious and nodded once.
"It wouldn't happen to be for a pet dinosaur or a library full of books or something similar?"
"No."
Krillin smiled, a little sadly. "I'll try to hold them off for as long as possible, but make the rest of the search quick, okay?"
Gohan eyed his suspiciously. "You're not going to tell me to stop?"
"Nope."
"Really?"
"You're not doing anything different than we've done before, albeit a little earlier in life. And you're not asking for the perfect boyfriend to bring you strawberries, so there's that, too."
.
The Jaegers were still spooling up when Bulma announced five energy signatures were rising to the surface.
"Damn, Bulma, we've still got at least ten minutes here," Goku responded, frustration creeping in his voice.
"And that's before they can get tethered and dropped," Gohan added. "Okay, I'm at the island. No signs yet -what- Krillin?"
"Hey kid," another voice added to the comm line.
"What are you doing here?"
"Buying Goku and Vegeta, what, five minutes? Ten minutes?"
"Maybe less," Vegeta snorted. "They might give us a couple minutes on their own. Idiots love to showboat if they think someone will be impressed."
"Even opponents?" Gohan asked incredulously.
"Yes, even opponents." Vegeta muttered.
"Okay, so what's the plan?" Krillin asked nervously as bubbles started breaking on the ocean's surface.
"What you said, we buy time," Gohan answered.
"Try to draw them to sector five. It's the least populated around here." Bulma added, "I've also heard from Yamcha and Tien. They're on their way in case the group decides to split up."
"They shouldn't if you take them out fast enough," Vegeta said.
.
Gohan brought all the Dragonballs to the most secluded area he could think of that was as far away from Capsule Corporation as he dared stray. He knew it wouldn't stop the adults from getting there eventually, but Krillin knew he'd found the last one the previous day, so he'd be able to run interference when someone noticed the darkening sky and Gohan's absence.
The dragon's appearance was just as breathtaking as before and Gohan nearly forgot what he'd intended until the dragon finally spoke.
"Do you have a wish, young one?"
"Oh, yes, sir." Gohan paused, carefully reviewing the wording he'd decided on one last time. "I'd like to know the dates of the next one hundred Rift activities. Please."
Gohan pulled out a notebook and a pen from his backpack and waited.
"What makes you think it will open one hundred times?" the dragon asked after a long pause.
"Does that mean it won't open one hundred times?"
"I am not an oracle, young one."
"So you're not going to grant my wish?" Gohan asked, keeping his expression in careful check to not show his building excitement.
The dragon stared at him with his fathomless gaze. He couldn't help but associate it to a particular expression Piccolo had when he was simultaneously exasperated and impressed with him.
"Fine, can I know the next ten dates of Rift activity?"
The dragon's eyes gleamed. Gohan scrambled to write down everything he said.
The deactivated balls scattered, leaving the sky to brighten back to the midday hour it was on this side of the world. Gohan copied his list three times, carefully ripping the copied pages out of his notebook and separating them, two into different pockets and one in his backpack along with the notebook. He felt two separate energies converging on him and spent the last of his solitude committing the ten numbers to memory.
"Mr. Piccolo," Gohan greeted as his sensei touched down in front of him.
"Did you just negotiate with the Eternal Dragon?"
"Is that not allowed?" Gohan asked in his most innocent voice. Yes, the dragon and Piccolo definitely shared similar expressions.
They waited in companionable silence until a Capsule Corporation airship sped into view. After landing, the hatch popped open and Bulma, Krillin, Vegeta, and his father spilled out.
"What did- how could you- the dragon-" Bulma fumed, not even able to form a full sentence.
"Don't be mad at him, Bulma," Krillin soothed, rather unsuccessfully, as she rounded on him with a glare worthy of a battleground.
"I'm not mad at Gohan. I'm mad at you, you indulgent cue-ball. Wishes need to be carefully decided on with the world situation the way it is."
"Life or death?" Krillin shot back. "Bulma, just because you made a device to find them easily doesn't mean you or even the collective 'we' should get to monopolize their use."
"Even though we sort of have for the past few years," Goku added helpfully.
"Even though we sort of have," Krillin agreed.
"So what did you wish for, son?" his father asked with a curious expression.
Gohan sighed and handed one of his papers to Bulma and another to his father. "The next ten times the Rift will be active."
The adults stared at the papers blankly.
"I was hoping maybe you, Bulma, could make some sort of program or formula to extrapolate more occurrences?" Gohan added. He glanced at Krillin when no one moved after an uncomfortably long pause. Krillin was grinning like a fool.
"This is…" Bulma began but never finished as she started brainstorming ideas.
"Excellent job, kid." Krillin enthused.
"We have to- I have to- we need to get back. Krillin, you drive," Bulma announced suddenly, her mind finally shifting into gear. She made a beeline back to the airship, never once looking up from the paper still clutched in her grip.
"You want to come, Piccolo?" his father asked.
"No."
He shrugged before following Krillin and Vegeta into the airship.
"Gohan," Piccolo spoke before he too could leave, "do you have another copy of those times?"
He nodded and pulled the last copy out of his backpack.
"That was great thinking, kid," he allowed before flying off the way he'd arrived.
.
"Took you long enough, yes indeed," the oni greeted the towering blue giant that approached the desk where he and Gohan had been waiting.
"I'm Goz," the visitor responded, holding out a hand with a smile as he waited for Gohan to finish the handshake. "Usually I don't play babysitter, but my cousin here said I didn't want to miss this opportunity."
"Uh, sure?"
"So… what is this opportunity?"
"Oh. I'd like to find my grandfather. In hell."
.
"I'm guessing these are countdowns in days, like when we asked when Vegeta would arrive."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking." Gohan replied. "I mean, if it's years, you guys might all be dead, anyway."
"Thanks for the optimism, kiddo," Bulma remarked.
"Hey!" Goku wondered, tapping a finger on Vegeta's shoulder. "Do Saiyans live a long time?"
Vegeta's glare alternated between Goku's finger and the idiot himself. He didn't answer the question.
"Well if it really is days," Bulma continued on, not even hearing Goku's question, "there's only two months and a week before that Rift pops open again. And assuming we survive whatever comes out that time, there's only another month before it opens yet again."
Bulma procured her own notepad and pen and began furiously writing lists and equations. "If I put a second crew on overtime, we should have your Jaeger ready, Vegeta, but it won't leave you much practical training time. You should double up on the sims."
.
Dende sealed the clean room and promised to look into the issue. By the end of the day they'd heard from Piccolo that Dende had left to consult the Kais. There'd be no telling when he would return. All they could do was continue on.
Gohan spent most of his time in the lab with Bulma. It felt odd having a Hope back in the corner, no matter its differences from the one housed in the staging area just outside. The clean room stayed sealed, Dende's symbol over the door's control pad. Bulma and Gohan did their best to ignore it- they barely looked at each other before or after glancing at it, because they knew that's what the other was thinking about. Instead they threw their attention to the Fusion Fighter. Neural nets were easy to build, but installing the parts in the Jaeger always posed challenges. It was best to to prime the raw net with enough sims beforehand to create a sort of muscle memory into the system. When Vegeta was finally cleared to start dual sims with Goku they scheduled their first session together for the next morning.
.
"Oh, you won't kill me. Not yet, anyway." Bulma replied smoothly to the alien looming over her even though they were fairly equal in height. He stepped away from the wall he'd been leaning against for most of the thinly veiled interrogation to move into a more threatening position once she started calling him out on the less-than-helpful retorts he kept interjecting with.
"And how can you be so sure?" he needled her. They were almost toe to toe, neither one backing down.
"Because if you kill me, Goku will kill you," Bulma responded brazenly. "You've already used your free pass."
"Free pass-" he spluttered, a soft glow forming around him as his ki started rising. Bulma's stomach churned wildly. Why, oh why had Goku given him a Senzu? Why couldn't she keep her loud mouth shut? They were all mad and she was going to die right here.
"Alright," Goku finally intervened, stepping easily in the sliver of space between them and forcing Bulma to take a step back. "Enough, Bulma. You offered him a place to stay, you're going to have to make that arrangement work," he said over his shoulder with his back to her, never taking his eyes off the seething alien. "And what she said is the truth, and then some. If you harm her, your life is forfeit."
They eyed each other for a while, long enough, Bulma guessed, for Goku to think his words had well and truly sunk in. Then he was plunking Gohan on his shoulders and pulling Chi Chi into an embrace more forward than Bulma had ever seen him initiate. "Let's talk more tomorrow, okay? And spar, maybe?"
.
"Would you mind watching Goten tonight?" His father asked, catching Gohan in the lab as he continued prepping the Fusion Fighter's neural net. "Your mom and I are going home for the evening."
"Of course."
"Great, thanks. We'll be back for the sim in the morning."
There was a forced cheerfulness to his father's words as he said goodbye. That was the first indicator something might be amiss.
The next came at dinner, which Gohan had eaten with both Goten and Trunks. This time it was Trunks who triggered the mental alarm. He'd spaced out for most of his meal, eating but not really paying attention to what was going on around him. Gohan was used to seeing it on both Bulma (when she was puzzling over a technical conundrum) and Vegeta (when he had reached a training plateau and was trying to push through it). He just wasn't used to seeing the expression on Trunks. After they finished eating, Gohan sent his brother to do some studying and pulled Trunks aside.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Your dad's reaction to my dad when they drift tomorrow."
"Why does that have you worried?"
"I'm not- okay, maybe I am worried. Just a little. But my dad was a bad guy, right? Before? Everyone says so. And your dad has always been good and I know what it's like to have someone see your inside thoughts and I just don't want your dad to think less of my dad after tomorrow."
Trunks joined them that night. They all piled into Gohan's room and watched a ridiculous action movie based on the Orange City local hero, Hercule. The boys laughed until they cried and stayed up later than they should have, but Gohan decided seeing the fear lessening on Trunks' face was more important. He felt his parents in the mountains, Vegeta in the the gravity room at Capsule Corp, Bulma in the lab downstairs, and fell asleep listening to the boys' breathing even out in their own slumber in the bunk above.
His internal danger alarm woke him up but it was already too late. He opened his eyes as he registered a high power, his surroundings already shifting from his bedroom to wilderness, and he caught himself before he could fall with his bed no longer underneath him. His father had him by the wrist, the other hand holding two fingers to his forehead.
"Dad? What's going on?"
His father began pacing a tight line.
"If anything happens tomorrow, I need you to promise me that you will stay out of it unless the kids, your mother, or Bulma are in danger."
"What are you talking about?"
"Just promise. No interfering."
"But-"
"This is between me and Vegeta."
Gohan eyed his father. He hadn't gotten such a strong warning since his dad had ordered him to stay out of the encounter with Frieza.
"Do you really think it might come to that?"
"I have never been so uncertain about anything in my life."
.
- End -
Notes: After posting the previous chapter I would have said I had about 80% of the story locked down. Ha! I am almost halfway through notebook four of writing this story down and still have a few transition scenes to nail down. Seriously though, now I think I'm just going to be slogging through editing. Get back with me in another year. PS, formatting these line breaks is killing me. PPS, this chapter was pieced together with the help of another Pac Rim rewatch. It's still awesome.
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