Chapter Six - Search for the Truth

Hercule High:

Gohan made it back with seven mintues to go before the end of gym. Which was fine by him, he needed to talk to Yamcha. As he walked over to the other man he noticed Videl coming back at last as well, still looking rather shocked by the events she'd witnessed. He then explained to him about what had happened. Yamcha had the same reaction as him, he didn't like it.

Gohan didn't have the chance to talk to Videl until later, during Astronomy class. "So, how'd things go earlier?" he asked as he took his seat beside her.

"Huh?"

"When you left gym class this morning."

"Oh... that..."

Erasa leaned forward in her seat and turned to look at Gohan. "Videl thinks maybe he was on drugs or something. The news crews got it all on camera, it's very weird."

"The news was there?"

Erasa nodded. "Yep. Caught the whole thing on film. When Spoppovitch started doing that glowy thing the school had us turn on the TVs and we got to watch. It was really freaky. He got so big so quick! And that guy in the helmet... he came from no where and just caught that car!"

Gohan sighed as Mrs. Solaria started class. He'd been thinking about showing Videl some Ki moves during the two weeks before the Budokai but now... well, he wasn't so sure. She was taking the fact that someone could catch a car bad enough. How would she handle the fact Gohan could blow up entire planets? Hell, entire solar systems! Life was complicated.

He turned his attention back to Mrs. Solaria who seemed quite excited about something. "... so I contacted my brother out at the observatory about it and he took a look. I was thinking it was most likely just some sort of comet or meteor that no one else had found yet." she was talking very fast now and it was making her a little hard to understand. "But when my brother looked... well, take a look at this video for yourself."

She turned and clicked on the large dome over them as the lights in the room went down. That was the thing about the Astronomy class. It wasn't a normal room, it was an actual planetarium. A moment later the main lights were out and the dome, basically a large TV, came to life. Most of the students in the room weren't really interested in the video playing on the screen but it caught Gohan's attention instantly. "Oh man... now what?!" he wondered as he stared at what was, unmistakably, a space pod. He raised his hand as he bit his lip.

"Oh, yes Gohan?" Mrs. Solaria asked.

"Um, where... where is this?" he asked.

"Well, when I first found it, it was just passing Mercury. By the time the video here ends it's passing Venus." she explained. "Which means it's moving very quickly. We think it'll be here tonight. My brother and I are going to go check it out. Should come down somewhere in the Mt. Paozu area."

"Near home then... well, that'll make it easier for me at least." Gohan thought.

"So what is it?" Erasa asked, having finally taken notice.

"Well..." the teacher began. "It's metal, and it's not natural."

"So... a space probe?" someone asked.

"Possibly." Mrs. Solaria said nodding. "It's certainly not enough to carry any space travelers, unless they're very tiny anyway. There's no room to move, and hardly any room for any systems."

"You'd be suprised what those can carry." Gohan thought remembering all the instances he'd dealt with Space Pods hurtling toward Earth before. Raditz, Nappa, Vegeta... not exactly the best memories there. "This day just keeps getting better and better." he thought sarcastically.

The rest of Astronomy class went by without anything really interesting happening. They'd just picked up where they'd left off on the previous day's lesson. Gohan had trouble focusing on the class though. He kept thinking about that pod and trying to sense it out. He couldn't find it though. Either it was empty, the power on board was extremely weak, or he just wasn't able to go far enough before Mrs. Solaria's voice broke into his thoughts again.

As he picked up his books at the end of class he was tempted to skip out on the rest of the day to look into that pod but decided against it. As he emerged into the hall he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to look. "You ok Gohan?" Videl asked. "You looked a little out of it, and you didn't seem to hear me calling you..."

"Oh, sorry. Just got lost in thought I guess." he said sheepishly.

Videl nodded slowly but didn't seem entirely convinced everything was okay. She pressed on to other matters anyway. "Anyway, I've been meaning to ask you how things went with your mom." As she talked the two began walking through the hall.

"Hmm?"

"About entering the tournament."

"Oh, yeah... Once she heard about the prize money she decided to let me enter." He smiled a little. "Even my little brother's going to be there."

"Oh? Your brother's going to enter?"

"Yeah, he's a little troublemaker at times, but a pretty good fighter. Once he heard that I was entering, along with dad and a friend of ours, he wanted to enter too. I already know that Krillin and his wife are entering..." Gohan shook his head. "At this rate everyone's going to be entering."

Videl was now seriously interested. "Oh? You have friends that are entering too?"

"Most likely. My dad used to compete years ago with a lot of his friends. Since he's entering again they'll probably enter for old time's sake. And of course, Vegeta's going to want to enter for sure, since it'll be his only chance to finally beat dad. I think Yamcha will probably be the only one not entering, he's pretty much given up fighting."

Videl had a few more questions she wanted to ask but they'd reached an intersection and they had to go different ways. Gohan waved and walked off down the other hall. "Oh, hey, Gohan!" she called after a moment. "You never did tell me your dad's name!"

"Huh? Oh, Goku!" he called back before disappearing into his class.

Videl stood there for a moment frowning. "Goku, Goku, Goku... Where do I know the name Goku?" she wondered. "Wait, he said he'd competed in the Budokais before... But there was no Goku at the last two tournaments. The one before the Cell Games or the one three years ago..." She shook her head and walked off to her next class, deciding she'd look into it there. After all, her journalism class had computers with net access, and she was done with her project already, so she basically had a free period.

A few moments later she was in her next class and seated at a computer. She logged onto the net and brought up a search engine. A quick search of the name 'Goku' didn't really give her anything to go on. So she tried a search for information on past Budokais. That got her a link to a site that listed all the previous Budokais, their participants, some deatils on them, and who won the matches. All the information was listed in descending order so she had to scroll down to get closer to the present.

She stopped scrolling after a moment and glanced at the ones on screen, the 20th and 21st Budokais. She was about to scroll on, not expecting either to have any of the information she wanted, but froze as she saw the name Son Goku. Clicking on it brought up the page that held his information. There were three photos, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd Budokais. Over each was his age, and under his placement. 12, 15, 18. Runner-up, Runner-up, Champion.

"Wait... he entered at 12 and got Runner-up? Plus, he's a former champion? Wow." she said softly. "Hmm, wasn't the 23rd tournament..." she paused as she hit back and looked at the other entrants. "Ma Junior... No way! That was the battle that took out the entire staduim and cancelled the Budokai for eleven years while they got the money up to rebuild..."

Videl was now seriously confused. There weren't any videos of those old tournaments, just old eye witness statements. Her neighbour, Kara T. Master, had told her the stories when she was just a kid, she'd been there. She had taken the stories of beams of energy, kids turning into giant apes, and all that as nothing but fantasy. She'd figured a bomb had blown up the ring or something. And then had come the Cell Games, but her dad said that the others had all used light shows and tricks...

She'd accepted that... but then there was the matter with Spoppovitch earlier. And that guy that caught that car. She stared at the photos of Goku for a moment and then opened an image program. She saved the picture of the 18 year old Goku and then went on an image hunt with the Cell Games as her search term. She got lots and lots of images. Some from the movie, others from the actual broadcast all those years ago.

She opened one that looked pretty good and found it was part of a gallery of images. After poking around the gallery for a bit, opening all the decent looking images, she minimized the page and then looked over the images she had. Saving a couple of them she brought the image program up again and opened all three images and began glancing between them. After a moment she went back and poked around the gallery again grabbing a few other images, namely of the blonde guy since he wore the same gi as Goku.

She easily recognized the likes of Tien, Krillin, Yamcha, and Piccolo from their on-file images at the Budokai website. She had a feeling that if the four of them were involved then there was more than just light shows and tricks involved in the Cell Games. And since the spikey haired blonde was the only other one in orange he had to be Goku... "Crap." she muttered as she gazed at the best image of the man.

He certainly and clearly bore a resemblance to Goku but the hair and eye colors were wrong. "Well, I guess he could have dyed his hair... and maybe color changing contacts?"

"What cha' up to?" a girl asked, her voice slighly higher than most girls.

Videl turned and saw one of her other classmates, Anna Lysa, at the computer behind her but turned around looking at Videl's screen. "Probably heard me talking to myself." she realized. "Trying to see if I can figure out who the people at the Cell Games were."

"Other than your dad?" Anna asked. "Why? Interested in starting a magic show?"

"Just curious." Videl replied looking back at her monitor. "Turns out at least four of them were former Budokai competitors, one's even a former Champion. And the one looks like King Piccolo. This guy here looks sort of like Goku. Don't know about the rest..."

"Goku?" Anna asked sliding over so that she was sitting beside Videl. "Oh, the guy with the lavender hair is kind of cute..."

Videl gave her a glance before speaking. " Goku's another former competitor, and the Champion of the 23rd Budokai." she explained. "But see the hair and eyes?"

Anna nodded. "Scooch over." she said motioning with her hands. Videl shrugged and moved aside letting the blonde use the computer. She quickly began going through the images and overlaying several of them. She then went into a part of the program Videl hadn't even known was there and typed out something she couldn't make sense of. Though, she knew that Anna had a lot of computer knowledge and took numerous computer classes, so she was pretty sure the girl knew what she was doing.

A moment later she closed what she'd written and then launched another program. Videl watched in wonder as Anna opened the image she'd compiled before, ran the script she'd written, and then both watched Goku turn into the blonde haired green eyed man, and then back again. "He doesn't just look like this Goku." Anna said at last. "You don't get that exact a resemblance without at least being twins. I'd say it's probably the same guy, just a disguise..."

Anna shook her head. "Man, that is weird. Why would former Budokai competitors, two of them Champions, resort to using light shows and tricks? Well, I guess my mom was probably right then... the whole Cell Games was just staged and they hadn't expected Hercule to show up..."

Videl didn't say anything as Anna moved back to her own computer. She looked again at the images from the Cell Games and at those present. "Wait a minute!" she cried in shock. Quickly she printed out a few of the images and then went over to the teacher's desk where the teacher, Mrs. R. E. Porter, sat. "Um, Mrs. Porter, can I be excused? I need to speak with my gym teacher."

She glanced up from the papers she was grading. "Oh, sure Videl." she said before scribbling out a note and handing it to her.

"Thanks." Videl said taking the pass. A minute later she was moving through the halls, the images clutched in her hands. Her eyes were glued to them, glancing up only occasionally to make sure she was going the right way and wasn't about to run into someone. Everytime she looked at the images, everytime she thought about her earlier conversation with Gohan, her pace increased. It only took her five minutes to reach the gym, a record time even for her.

As she walked in she saw the students doing laps with Yamcha standing in the middle of the gym. She moved quickly through a gap in the jogging students and over to him. "Oh, Videl." he said in suprise as she reached him. "What is it?"

She waved the pictures as she spoke. "I want answers."

"What? Answers?" he wondered, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"You, Krillin, Tien, and the Cell Games." Videl said. "And this blonde guy that looks considerably like the former Budokai Champion Goku, who just happens to be Gohan's father."

"I... er... I..." the man stammered. He looked around for a moment. "Er, class." he called, still a bit shaken. "You can stop your laps. I want you to head outside and split up into two even teams and begin getting a game of baseball going. I'll join you shortly." They all let out a short burst of cheers that their laps were over after only four instead of ten and quickly filed out of the gym.

Once everyone was gone Yamcha turned back to Videl. "Um, now... what was it you were..."

"This." she said shoving the pictures into his hands.

Yamcha glanced down at them and saw images from the Cell Games broadcast, the entrant photos from the Budokais, and one image that looked like normal and SSJ Goku overlayed on each other. He just stared at them and blinked a few times. "Man, what is it with this girl? She knows Gohan less than two days and she's already figuring everything out. She's either psychic or Gohan's really bad at hiding things. Though, with that gaze of hers..." he fidgeted a bit.

"I, um... well... that is... they, er, certainly do look like us." he said.

"Look like you?" she nearly cried as she put her hands on her hips. "I'm not blind, that's clearly you there, that one's Tien, and that's Krillin." she said pointing to one photo with one hand keeping the other on her hip. "And that green guy is Piccolo or Ma Junior or whatever he wants to be called."

Yamcha's brain finally caught up with what was going on and he began to think a bit more clearly. "I don't really know what you're getting at..."

She scowled at him. "You're almost as good as my dad, I witnessed that myself yesterday. And earlier Gohan said you'd stopped really fighting. That was probably after the Cell Games, so you've had 7 years to lose your edge, so you had to be at least as good as dad back then, and you didn't even fight. Not that I saw on TV. Just the blonde guy, and that I couldn't even watch they kept vanishing. What happened at the Cell Games?"

"Well... you know." he said shrugging and looking at the pictures. "Your dad saved the world."

Videl's scowl deepened as she gazed at him. "I want the exact truth."

"That is the exact truth." he replied. "And hell, in a way, it is." And with that, he turned away from her. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a class to teach." As he walked outside a moment later he sighed to himself. "Man, she's pushy. Maybe she's Chi-Chi's clone or something... Got to find a way to let Gohan know she's on the war path too. I'll stop by his house tonight. Hopefully she wont catch him before that..."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Son Home, 3:12 PM:

Gohan landed softly in the grass outside his house and took in a deep breath of the fresh air around him. He noticed it as soon as he left the bustle of Hercule City yesterday and again today. The city had a vastly different odor about it, one he didn't particularly care for. There was too much sweat, smog, and garbage and not enough flowers and trees. "Mom, Goten, I'm home!" he called as he walked up to the house.

As soon as he pulled the door open Goten burst out and pounced onto him knocking him onto his back in the grass, cheering 'Yay!' as he did. "Finally! I was hoping and hoping and hoping you'd get home quickly today. Mom said I couldn't play outside until you got home. Well, bye Gohan!" he called, and then in a streak of orange he ran off into the woods. Gohan just lay there blinking a moment longer before pulling himself to his feet.

"What was that about?" he asked as he walked inside and saw Chi-Chi laying out a few bowls of fruit for him to snack on while he did his homework.

"I needed a new grounding method to deal with him summoning Shenron like that." Chi-Chi replied. "Denying him food only causes more problems, so I figured I'd keep him inside for a while. So, how'd school go today?"

"Pretty well." he said pulling up a chair and dropping his bag onto the table. He pulled out his Advanced Biology and Astronomy books, the only homework he had, and sighed. "Well, school and classes went fine at least."

"Is something wrong dear?"

"Not sure." he replied finally laying the books down on the table. "Mrs. Solaria seems to have a brother with a really large telescope. And the two of them found... well, there's a space pod heading our way."

Chi-Chi paused in her digging through the fridge. "You mean... one of those things like your father and Vegeta came in?"

Gohan nodded. "She had a video of it, showed it in class. It was definitely a Space Pod. It'll be here tonight, landing in this area... somewhere. I'm going to head out as Saiyaman and check it out."

Chi-Chi didn't move, didn't say a word, for a full minute. "You should have someone else go with you." she said at last. "Just in case."

"Already thought of that. I'll have Piccolo come along, but keep back out of sight, just in case." Chi-Chi finally unfroze and pulled back from the fridge holding a gallon of milk. After pouring herself a glass to go with the sandwich she'd made earlier she sat the jug down on the table for Gohan and then sat down herself and began eating in silence. Neither said anything else as Gohan finished his homework, most of the fruit, and the gallon of milk. Homework finished at last he packed up his bag, grabbed one of the remaining pears, and went outside to find Goten.

His homework had taken a bit longer than expected this time, namely due to him having found an error in his earlier work for his Advanced Biology class and having to re-do the whole thing from the start. In fact, the sun was already begining to set as he stepped outside. "Hmm, maybe I should go find Goten later... that Space Pod could come any time tonight..."

With that in mind he raised his power slowly, in spurts. It was a signal to Piccolo so Gohan could get the Namek's attention. A moment later he stopped and relaxed. As he did he felt a power graze his senses and thought Piccolo was nearing already, but soon realized the power was far too low to be Piccolo. It only took a moment to realize it was Yamcha. "Hmm, wonder what he wants..."