Pacific Dragon
~ Lady Eldaelen ~
Previously:
"Do you really think it might come to that?"
"I have never been so uncertain about anything in my life."
- Start -
Goku tried to stay as transparent as possible, willing his son to understand what he couldn't voice. Gohan eyed him for a long moment before letting out a sigh.
"I promise."
Goku relaxed. "Thank you, Gohan."
A breeze kicked up, sending a shiver through Gohan's frame as he finally registered his surroundings. Rocky formations half crumbled, craters and barren patches consistent with scattered ki blasts. The desolate air of abandonment left over from an old fight.
"Where are we?"
"Where Vegeta and I first met. Come on, I'll take you back to the Base."
Goku grabbed his son's arm and the old battleground faded into the metal walls of Gohan's Base bedroom. Both younger boys turned over in their sleep as they unconsciously felt their return.
Goku shooed Gohan back into bed but stayed for a few minutes longer. He cupped a hand under Goten's chin and the boy inclined towards the familiar warmth. It'd been years since he could do the same to Gohan, not without getting a reactive ki blast to the face for his efforts. Such was the childhood his oldest had lived through. Goku hesitated doing the same to Trunks. He wasn't sure if that was something Vegeta ever did. He wasn't sure he was ready to find out.
After another uncertain moment, he settled on running a hand over Trunks' hair. The boy mumbled incoherently and pulled away, a slight scowl on his slumbering face. It was enough.
Goku glanced over at Gohan, who had turned towards the wall, already sleeping again. He focused on his wife. A final shift of the boys as he left, then silence settled over the room.
.
Krillin watched the vid feed from the sim room feeling slightly voyeuristic. Gohan was helping Goku set up while Chi Chi looked on. Every moment he could, Goku reached out and grabbed Chi Chi's hand. At the other control set, Bulma handed Vegeta his own gear, double and triple checking connections, securing straps. Concern lined her face, the complete opposite of the disinterested expression Vegeta wore.
Gohan finished with Goku first and gave his dad an awkward goodbye before retreating to the lab and the haven around Krillin's desk. He studiously looked anywhere but the vid feed as Goku pulled Chi Chi in an all encompassing embrace. She whispered something in his ear and kissed the top of his forehead before retreating as well. Bulma finished Vegeta's connections and paused just briefly enough to bring attention to the fact that she was close to freaking out.
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't trust your work," Vegeta spoke. "Stop worrying."
Surprised, Bulma lost what she was going to say. Then Vegeta inclined his head just a bit to the side and arched one brow. Bulma caught the familiar expression and frowned.
"You're such an ass." Then she flounced out of the room.
Krillin looked over to see her smirk in an eerily similar fashion to Vegeta's expression captured on the vid at that exact same moment.
.
The planet wasn't big enough for them some days. Goku didn't mind, of course. If anything he enjoyed having Vegeta around to spar with on a regular basis. But for those few years before he finally settle down with Bulma, Vegeta routinely found himself restless and irritable and suffocated. Several times a year he'd go after Goku with intent to make good on his promise to defeat him. When he was in an exceptionally low mood, he even occasionally attacked Gohan, until Goku's intervening finally got more aggravating than the lack of fight Gohan usually put up.
Seasons passed. The years added up. Somehow they refrained from killing each other.
.
Bulma settled at her computer and flipped on the comm. "Okay, you two, this isn't going to be like piloting your own Jaegers. We're not even going to start the training sim until you establish a strong neural handshake. Try not to get lost in the drift. We only have so many spare neural nets."
"Stats look good," Krillin voiced as Bulma prepped the drift program. Gohan monitored their neural fields, trying to predict how the test would go and came up uncertain with every scenario he could think of.
Bulma queued up the drift execute command. No one breathed.
.
Goku and Vegeta both reeled back in their controls but stopped themselves from hitting the back stops with sharp upticks in power, like they had stopped mid-flight. Data flowed as the handshake software detected their individual minds and began reconciling them into one consciousness.
The first drift for the Nameks had beaten Bulma and Gohan's expectations, even with three of them to align. Their handshakes always looked, well, civilized. Piccolo was their de facto spokesman and did most of the comm running and they never really saw much degradation in drift strength unless the Jaeger or one of them was injured.
For Trunks and Goten, drifting had been unnervingly quick. It wasn't until much later that Gohan had confessed to catching them playing in the training sim long before he'd traveled to the Otherworld. The boys dropped into drifts fast, but they occasionally lost control, which the adults hadn't figured out if it was because they lacked the attention span or if they really did lose their grasp on themselves or if they still thought of the whole thing as a game.
Goku and Vegeta's drift was not following either path. Their individual neural streams chased each other around the handshake optimum. Their consciousnesses oscillated wildly, never quite settling into a normal -or at least expected- drift before taking off again, pulling at the boundaries of a defined connection of any kind.
Barely a minute had passed, though to Gohan the world had slowed like he was in a fight. He felt himself tense for one, trying to make sense of what was happening, and more importantly, whether it was going to end up dangerous.
Next to him Krillin summed up the entire situation neatly, "This could be very, very bad."
They watched -and felt- both of the test pilots' kis rise, their handshake still more a double helix of back and forth than true alignment. And then dual grunts and a sharp spike in power, almost to the forbidden level.
.
The tests had failed every single time. A jump to Super fried the neural net interface between pilot and Jaeger. It didn't injure the pilot, but it rendered the Jaeger unusable until the neural net could be replaced and recalibrated. The Science Pool couldn't build them fast enough as all three Saiyans tested every possible system configuration and workaround they thought of to try.
Krillin was the first one to suggest that maybe the advantages of jumping to Super alone outweighed trying to upgrade a Jaeger to handle the transformation. He dodged Bulma's death glare and the stream of spare parts she threw at him for daring to suggest she couldn't find a solution to their problem, but with the idea in the open they all thought about it.
Eventually even Bulma agreed that it needed to be considered. They ran the numbers, really dug into a level of battle evaluation Gohan had never experienced before. Krillin took the notes using some sort of unfamiliar grading system of pros and cons and subtle advantages for this attack and that dodge and those sequences of power ups. They recreated all the large engagements from Vegeta's arrival through Frieza's, replacing a Jaeger with a Super Saiyan. The results were close, too close to keep pressing on with an upgrade that might not actually add a noticeable advantage.
Bulma's Jaegers could amplify energy attacks and were ideal for the larger, but usually weaker and slower, creatures the Rift tended to spit at them. Supers were faster though, more agile than the Jaegers. The higher end of the Cat-3 scale was where the divergence became more apparent and a standing order was given to the Saiyan pilots that they could go hand-to-hand if they thought going Super would decide an encounter.
.
"If you go Super, neither one of you will step foot in a Jaeger again," Bulma warned as Goku and Vegeta's ki spiked.
Both of them dropped their building auras and glared at the camera capturing the vid feed.
"Get me out of this thing," they growled together.
Krillin activated the shutdown procedure and they all watched the danger levels drop. The moment the margins were in the safety range, Goku and Vegeta were unhooking themselves from the equipment. Freed, they bolted out of the sim room and then the lab.
They both kicked into Super once they made it to the roof.
Bewildered, Bulma shooed the others away to shut down the sim alone. Krillin, Gohan, and Chi Chi headed for the roof.
"He didn't look at me," Chi Chi murmured, staring out over the ocean.
"What?" Krillin asked.
"When they left the lab, Goku didn't look at me."
"Excuse me," the Kami interrupted, coming up behind them with Goten and Trunks in tow.
"Hey boys," Chi Chi welcomed them, giving them both a hug and smoothing concern off her face.
"Sir?" Gohan asked as the Kami inclined his head, beckoning him closer.
"Piccolo and Nail are keeping an eye on Goku and Vegeta. They headed to the mountains."
"Where they first met."
The Kami nodded. "Approach with caution, son."
"Sure."
"Oh, and Gohan? Better bring your sword, just in case."
.
The Kami remained on the Base, something he normally refrained from. He tried not to get in the way, knowing his presence wasn't always welcome. With Chi Chi assuming responsibility for the boys, the Kami followed Krillin down to the Command Center, where he began reviewing the Saiyans' attempted drift. For a while they both sat in silence, until Krillin pushed away from his desk and turned to face him.
"In your professional opinion, do you think we just opened ourselves up to being destroyed by those two," Krillin pointed to the drift data still flowing on the screen, "instead of the Kaiju and the Rift?"
"I'm retired, Krillin," the Kami answered after a small pause. Krillin sighed.
"But I wouldn't count them out yet," the Kami appended. "Never lose hope, my son."
.
Gohan took his time approaching. He could sense Piccolo and Nail on separate cliffs and his father and Vegeta fighting in the valley and crags below. They hadn't battled so viciously in years.
"The old man told you to bring that?" Piccolo asked when Gohan touched down on his outlook, adjusting for the weight of the sword strapped on his back. At his nod, Piccolo added, "I sure hope you don't need to use it."
"What's the situation?"
"They yell at each other, then someone throws a punch, they trade some blows for a while and start over."
"What are they saying?"
"I'm not sure. One only gets a couple of words out before the other cuts in."
.
"Mom, are Dad and Goku coming back soon?"
"I'm not sure, Trunks."
"Are they ever coming back?" Goten asked quietly.
Bulma glanced up from her computer. The boys had ghosted into the lab not long after she finished logging the results of the drift sim and had remained relatively silent up to that point while she continued working. They were currently perched on the back of the couch, nearly touching, holding themselves still in a way they only tended to when they were scared.
"What kind of a question is that?"
"One you're not answering," Trunks muttered. He didn't meet her gaze. Neither boy did.
"Come on, let's go." She shooed the boys in front of her and out of the lab.
"Gohan's not here," Goten said, as they filed down the narrow hallway.
"Not your brother," Bulma said resolutely. "Krillin."
"Command Center," both kids answered.
.
"Are you going to stay out here all day?" Piccolo asked Gohan after he felt the young man start to shift position restlessly, an unconscious habit he resorted to when anxiousness got the better of him.
"Do you think they'll go all day?" Gohan responded.
"Your father warned me this might happen. We're prepared to see it through." Piccolo replied, his eyes never straying far from the valley. He felt Gohan freeze as he considered his words and their full implication and Piccolo refrained from mentioning Goku's outright request to kill him and Vegeta both if need be to keep the rest of the planet safe.
"That is not encouraging," Gohan muttered.
"Take a break, kid. You look terrible and you shouldn't. This is not your fault."
Gohan settled into a light meditation, hovering just off Piccolo's right side. It was the most concession he'd allow for now, but Piccolo wondered how much difference it made to the two fighting below them.
.
"Okay, boys, ask your questions again." Bulma instructed when they reached the Command Center and found Krillin and the Kami.
They remained tight-lipped but to Krillin it wasn't like their normal (and thankfully rare) acts of defiance. This looked entirely unsure.
After a minute of increasingly uncomfortable silence, Goten finally risked a glance over at the Kami and slowly lost his composure.
"We just don't want our dads killing each other!" he exclaimed.
Shock washed over both him and Trunks, Goten's hands flew up to clap over his mouth, eyes wide and brimming with tears. Trunks could only stare at him with the same wild-eyed expression, scandalized.
Behind them Bulma covered her own mouth, bit back her own sob. With an about-face, she fled the room before the kids could see her break down.
The Kami cleared his throat and shared a helpless shrug with Krillin.
.
"Gohan."
He reacted instantly to his name, jolting awake and raising his ki, drawing power around him defensively. Twilight had fallen, the desert mountainside quickly darkening in deep pools of shadow.
"Oh, right," Gohan replied as he reoriented to his surroundings. Piccolo stood a few feet away, just out of striking range. Vegeta's arm was slung around his shoulders and he supported the battered prince.
"Nail and Goku are already heading back."
"They're done then?"
"For now."
They flew straight to the Med Center and were greeted by Vegeta's primary doctor and Bulma looking more relieved than angry. It wasn't the worst either one had been injured, not even at the other's hand, but it was more than the average spar.
Gohan could hear his mother reaming out his father in the room next door as Bulma turned to him, eyes wet.
"The boys, uh, they could use your company right now."
"Sure."
Gohan found them in his room, Krillin keeping watch as they halfheartedly studied on the bed. Both boys were pretty much just staring at the walls instead of their respective books. They didn't say anything at his arrival, though the books were pushed to the side as they made space for him between them.
He stayed with them, one arm around each boy's shoulders until they both fell asleep. He had just extricated himself long enough to grab pillows and blankets from the boys' room when his father and Vegeta appeared in the hall.
"Need your help, son."
"Uh, should you be out of the Med Cent-"
"No questions," they answered together.
.
"This is a terrible idea," Gohan said when they'd all but dragged him back to the lab and explained their plan.
"Look," Vegeta threatened, "we work this out in a drift or beat it out of each other outside."
"Either way, son, it's going to happen," his father followed up.
"I'm not even sure you two technically drifted this morning."
"They did," Krillin said sleepily from the lab door. He carried two cups of coffee and handed one to Gohan before sitting down at the sim computer.
"I reviewed the recordings with Dr. Briefs this afternoon. He ran the whole data stream through some filters his R&D group has been working on. It's a drift, just more dynamic than the others." Krillin pulled up some files and motioned for them all to take a look.
"You two never really settled into the standard handshake profile, but your deviations between each other, no matter how far off the handshake line, were consistently small. Basically you were drifting without drifting, as usual, defying all the normal standards."
Krillin downed half his coffee in one go before gesturing at Gohan to do the same, "Better drink that if we're going to do this without Bulma finding out."
"How did you know we were here?" Goku asked.
"I had the lab alarms routed to alert me if someone entered," Krillin replied, with a frank expression like he expected exactly what happened to happen. "It takes two to run a sim, minimum. Especially for a drift. We need the backup for safety."
"You'll help then?"
"I don't see any other way."
Gohan sighed, then keyed into the sim room to begin setting up. "Just don't go Super or Bulma might really kill us all."
.
"How long do you think they can keep this up?" Gohan asked behind a yawn.
"The Nameks lasted over eight hours that one time we tested their meditation baseline."
"We stopped that because…"
"The computers overheated. The Nameks could have gone on forever."
"Well, these two will probably call it off when they get hungry enough."
"Let's hope so."
.
"First Bell is in half an hour. Should we stop them yet?"
The two Saiyans' drift, or whatever it was, had remained as erratic as the first time, but Krillin felt a new shift in their energies. With enraged shouts, they jerked against the controls.
"Off. Now." They shouted together and Krillin initiated the shutdown procedure.
Their behavior paralleled the end of the sim the previous day. Both were tearing at their gear as soon as it was safe to do so, exiting the sim room and lab without another word.
"This is becoming routine, isn't it?" Krillin asked. "Maybe we should put it on the schedule."
As he began cleaning up, he just barely heard Gohan's whispered response, "I sure hope not."
.
Bulma was the only one around when Vegeta and Goku stumbled into the lab, filthy, bleeding, pissed off and still in Fight Mode. They made their way to the sim room, with barely an expected glance her way.
"Again?! Seriously? This is going on four days now of nonstop drifting and fighting."
"Bulma, not now," Goku ground out far harsher than he'd ever been towards her before.
"Please, woman," Vegeta added, pausing to run a hand down the side of her face in uncharacteristic tenderness. And it was the vulnerability in his gaze accompanying the gesture that made her comply.
"Go ahead and get set up, I'll start the computers," she said with a frown. Then she called Gohan. She could hear the weariness in his voice, but he was in the lab before they finished hooking up all the connections.
.
They lasted until well past the Dinner Call, once more departing for the mountains as soon as they they were able. Gohan mumbled an excuse to Bulma and retreated to the barracks, but he never made it to his room. The boys caught him in the hallway, dragging him back to their room. They didn't do that often anymore, not since they had started drifting. Apparently the events of the past few days were hitting them harder than he'd thought.
"Trunks, just because I was there doesn't mean I knew what was going on in your dad's head. I don't know that now."
"But you must know something!" Trunks insisted, desperation evident in his every expression.
"Look, before he came here, your dad was a different person. And if all this had happened back then, I'm not sure. But now he has you and your mom. He has people he can trust. He has a place he can call home."
"But is that enough? Do you think it's enough?"
"It doesn't matter what I think, Trunks. What you think and believe is the only important thing."
"Will you stay here tonight?" Goten asked. "We know you're tired, but we just don't want to be alone."
They ended up watching a couple of movies. Gohan couldn't even doze, not with feeling their fathers' fight in the mountains. By their occasional flinches, he could tell the boys could sense them too.
They finally fell asleep, fitfully, curled up on either side of him. After the third kick to the ribs as they both tossed and turned, Gohan gave in. He dropped Trunks in the top bunk and threw blankets over them both.
All he wanted to do was sleep.
Instead he did a few stretches and set off for the mountains.
.
They were both Super, blurring in and out of Gohan's sleep-deprived vision. The savagery was dialed way up, higher than all the previous post-drift fights combined. And even though they were running on less sleep than he, there was an underlying level of urgency, of reckless abandon. It wasn't all radiating off Vegeta either.
Gohan touched down beside Piccolo.
"They haven't said a word this time," Piccolo updated. "Hell, they were practically fighting on the way over here. They didn't even bother landing before the first punch was thrown."
"Why didn't you get me earlier?"
"The mothers and the kids aren't in danger."
"The hell they're not! I just sat with two kids who are doubting everything they know to be true in their reality. They might not be physically in danger but mentally they are ready to snap."
Gohan powered up, feeling the sluggish exhaustion melt away as his body readied for a fight. Then he blasted into the fray.
He came in from the side, taking a blow to the ribs in exchange for grabbing his father and using his momentum to sling him away. Whirling around to complete the circle, he faced Vegeta, who only paused in his attack to change course back along Goku's new trajectory.
Gohan sped up and put himself between them again. He wasn't sure who was more upset at his interference and almost second-guessed turning his back on his father to address Vegeta.
"This has to stop. Either kill us all now or knock it off. We can't keep this up for much longer."
"Gohan!" his father yelled from behind him, "You stay out of this."
"Why? You're not! You can't fight all his battles, especially not the ones in his head! What happens if you're gone again? What happens when something big -really big- comes crawling out of the Rift and he changes sides? We've got to let Vegeta make up his mind, and then we have to trust him. Or we've got to decide he hasn't changed and won't and take care of it. But really, he's already made his decision, he's been making it every single day he's stayed here. So what do you want, Vegeta? Recognition? Affirmation?"
.
Goku smiled as his son finished his speech and took off, fading quickly into a speck on the horizon. Beside him, Vegeta tensed and with one exasperated growl, took off in the other direction.
"Don't go after him," Goku warned before either Namek could move. He knew they heard him when Piccolo made the short flight to his side.
"You are a mess, Son," he answered succinctly.
"Eh, guess I am. Vegeta might have actually had the upper hand today if Gohan hadn't intervened." Goku wiped a hand over his brow. It came back slick with blood from a cut high in his hairline.
"That's it, then?"
"That's it. Now I have to apologize to Chi Chi and the boys."
And with that he focused on his wife's familiar energy signature. Already the stress of the past few days began fading away and he left the desolate craggy terrain without a second thought.
.
There were no set rules for building up the crews, though each Jaeger tended to attract different types. Most of Tornado's support staff were openly religious. Kami aside, there was no denying the spirituality of the crew. Bulma had hand picked Renegade's crew, acutely aware of her husband's standards and low regard to most humans. She top loaded that team with the most diligent, detail-oriented perfectionists on staff, led by her sharpest engineer and mechanic. They eventually got over the fear that Vegeta would kill them for looking at him wrong and had built up a rapport over the years where he'd actually listen to what they said about the goings on with the Renegade. Goku's crew unsurprisingly had the most awestruck members in their ranks. He was always so encouraging to even the lowliest grunt that he could get them to collectively perform better than they had anywhere else.
When Hope finally found a home out of the lab and on the staging floor, Bulma pulled Gohan into helping assemble its crew. Even though he would have been the best choice, they couldn't afford to have Gohan be the senior lead of Hope. They both had the same person in mind as their second choice, Bulma's longtime lab assistant from her early days in Capsule Corporation. He'd started under her father, and when Bulma had been old enough, the doctor had reassigned him as her number one. He'd seen both Trunks and Goten grow up and knew them as well as their families, which had only been a plus as they grew in the program.
"We need a new lead for the Fighter." Bulma acknowledged out loud to the mostly empty lab. Gohan, the only other one with her that morning, blearily dragged his gaze away from reviewing his father and Vegeta's final drift sim to peer at her.
"You're still trusting them to pilot the Fighter together?"
"Of course," she continued. "Don't give me that look, your mom already told me about your little entreaty last night. Besides, we could both use another assistant. You've been running yourself ragged this week. You look terrible and that's saying a lot."
Gohan frowned, slightly put out. Then Bulma held up one of her little cosmetic mirrors and he caught his reflection properly for the first time in days.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Maybe I should take the morning off."
"Maybe you should. I've heard sleep and a shower do wonders."
"Meet again after lunch?"
"After dinner."
"I'm not dying, Bulma."
"Could have fooled me."
.
Sleep really did do wonders. Clearheaded for the first time since the last encounter, Gohan emerged from his rest and took the back entrance to the mess, through the kitchen. His mother was there, prepping for dinner. She took one look at him and pulled off her apron. She grabbed some sandwiches from the cooler and they both sat down at one of the open tables.
"What a week, huh, sweetie?"
"How do you do it, Mom? How have you done this for so long?"
"Gohan, In another, perfect world, we would still be living in the woods. You boys would be brilliant scholars and the World Martial Arts champions in your age divisions. Your father and I would grow old together surrounded by a passel of grandchildren. In this world I worry that every alarm will take one of you away from me. We sometimes go days without sharing a meal, even just a sandwich between shifts. You boys had to grow up so fast -you especially missed out on so much that you don't even know what you've missed."
Chi Chi pushed aside her half-eaten sandwich and took his hand. "Things aren't the way they should be, Gohan, but we have to work with what is."
"You know, son, when you were a baby, your father and I used to argue over what you'd end up doing when you grew up. He wanted you to be a fighter. I wanted you to be a scholar. Some of our biggest arguments that year were over you."
One of the kitchen assistants waved helplessly for Chi Chi. Before she returned to her own battleground, she reached up and smoothed her hand through Gohan's short hair, gently tugging the errant lock that fell in his eyes.
"And now you're doing both, better than either of us ever expected."
.
Chronometric Diverger. The file name kept surfacing in his mind. It stuck out for its missing presence in his own Hope. It stuck out for its potential meaning. It stuck out because he really wanted to open the file and dig around the code. Gohan finished his meal and wandered the halls directionless, ruminating over the secrets of the extra Jaeger. He meandered through the engineering and science pools. He passed through the training hall and maintenance wings off the Staging Hangar. He quickly found himself outside, deep in the Camp. They had taken in refugees almost as soon as his mother had secured supply runs. Villagers who'd been affected by the various encounters, friends and extended family of Base workers, volunteers who just felt safer near the Jaeger headquarters. All the refugees had the option to take assessments to see if they could be placed to work in the Base. But if they failed, they weren't turned away. The numbers were easily triple the small footprint of the Base workers, but Gohan had never heard of any dissatisfaction. He'd heard they''d started a school for the youngest children, and older children apprenticed with adults in a useful trade to keep everyone fed, clothed, and happy. Many took part in Salvage ops after encounters and scouting out new battle sites.
Still, Gohan had hardly had the opportunity to visit, which was why he soon found himself disoriented amidst a maze of Capsule houses and handmade shelters and a press of decidedly ordinary civilians.
Gangly, awkward kids around Trunks and Goten's age ran by with surprisingly open and carefree expressions. They laughed and called to each other as they raced along the path. He shadowed them easily and no one seemed to pay him any mind, let alone care that he was wearing Base-issue gear. He'd seen other Base workers around. They weren't feared or hated, which he took as a good sign. The kids turned into an alley that dead ended against the backside of the Staging Hangar. Gohan stayed by the path and watched as the kids shed jackets and toed off their shoes and lined up in neat rows.
At the wall a long-haired blond guy, who couldn't be much older than Gohan himself, began leading the group through a series of warmups and stretches. Off to the side a short haired girl cheered enthusiastically from the side. She reminded Gohan a little of Bulma's mother, straightening the shoes into matching rows and hanging the mess of jackets with uncanny accuracy on corresponding hooks above the shoes. Gohan felt a shift in the surrounding energies, not enough to be concerned but higher than the Camp's soon-becoming-familiar average. He stepped back into the shadows just as a girl sped around the last corner of the path and turned into the alley. She greeted the other girl and toed off her own shoes, running through a quick set of stretches, though she already appeared ready for a fight.
The guy finished the warmups and left the platform, giving a friendly slap on the shoulders to the new girl as she took his place. The kids snapped to an even tighter attention as she led the group through the standard Jaeger kata, the basic combinations Krillin and Goku had devised to pilot. The pace was slow enough to build precision and the guy walked among the kids, reorienting stances, extending ranges of motion. The girl's form was near-flawless, easily the best non-warrior Gohan had ever seen. He stayed until they finished and the kids were split into pairs and began sparring drills.
Gohan retraced his steps just as deep in thought as he had earlier, but for the first time since the last encounter, his mind wasn't on the other Hope or his father's drifts. The Jaeger kata spun out in slow sweeps and twists from a girl he'd never seen before. She had worn a loose tank top over a tighter undershirt and a pair of Base-issue training bottoms. The Camp got old Base gear, so that didn't rule out her immediate employ somewhere in the Base. He would have noticed her at some point if she'd been working, presumably in the Training Hall, though. At least he'd like to think he would have noticed her.
She certainly had his attention now.
.
Krillin entered the Command Center to find Gohan pacing across the bank of windows, absently twirling his broadsword in tight circles with one hand.
"Do you still keep files on all the refugees in the Camp?" Gohan asked, not bothering to look up or slow his steps or give him a proper greeting or, for heaven's sake, put the sword down.
"Ah, no. Well, I could pull them up, but Puar and Yamcha are in charge of those records now."
"Oh," Gohan frowned but didn't say anything further.
"Was there something in particular that you were looking for?" Krillin asked.
"I saw someone in the Camp," Gohan responded slowly, pausing in his pacing to flip the sword a couple of times, its trajectory narrowly missing the ceiling between his grabs of the hilt. "They were performing the Jaeger kata."
"I think Yamcha started teaching some of the refugees, kind of a loose training class, just for something to do," Krillin offered.
Gohan returned the sword to the scabbard on his back and turned towards the windows. "No, not like that. This was pilot-level caliber. Warrior caliber. I mean, she was really, really good."
"She?"
.
- End -
Notes: Can we talk about Vegeta for a minute? One of the things I hate most about DBZ is all the episodes that consist mostly of screaming power ups. That is also one of the things that keep drawing me back to the series, because it leaves so many areas open for deep dives. I happened to be in Japan on business when Battle of Gods was released in theaters there. After reading what few reviews I could find at the time for the vaguest of plot summaries, I fumbled my way to the closest cinema on my day off. Watching a foreign film in the land of its origin was an experience in and of itself, as the only Japanese I know well is how to apologize for being a clueless American. Where was I going with this? Oh, right, Vegeta. Aside from generally scoffing at most of the Buu Saga, one of my biggest "they did not just go there" moments and one of the few development I genuinely cared for was Majin Vegeta. Of course with the whole gotta save the world thing, the Goku vs. Majin Vegeta showdown was far too brief, and the Vegito fusion even shorter. What would be different if they had more time to share headspace without an imminent threat to the end of the world to keep them allied? Would they stay allied? Vegeta intrigues me so much. He has this glacially slow Saul to Paul conversion, yet even with such tiny incremental changes he still manages to make it to a place where it is not beneath him to flail like an idiot in song and dance trying to pacify Beerus over dinner.
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