About Time

by April CK


Part 9

There was time, the pulse of The Universe which was so constant that a person could - and yes, in fact, most people did - set their watch by it and then there was Time, the personification of. Thus the process and the person - the realm and the god - were just two different parts of the same thing.

Around planet Earth, Time was best known as Father Time but occasionally he was called a name like Adam or Tempus. Time didn't understand why he was called these things since time was something that applied to all genders or lack thereof. His sibling - and the Earthlings called her by a lot of different names: Space, Sky, Mother Nature, Life, Evolution, Destiny, Fate, Eve, Mary - had always tried to assure him that it was just a phase that humanoids went through because of their limited perception ranges.

In the beginning there had been One. One had created and become The Universe and also, One had created the Two. Time and Space were those Two.

Time had not always had a humanoid shape but lately humanoid shapes had been the trend and needless to say, Time had to keep up with the times. However taking on a certain shape usually meant thinking like the shape. So taking on a humanoid shape had the side effect of often causing humanoid behavior.

Anger is an incredibly humanoid behavior. Time wasn't merely out of tune, he was very upset. His heart rate was up and thus the pulse of The Universe was no longer a constant.

Nobody likes being run over.


Reflected in the helmets of three spacesuits was a scene that only Master Roshi had been halfway prepared to behold. As a younger man studying to be a wizard, Roshi had always had a mild fascination for the concept of time and the magics that could be applied to it. Of course Roshi had turned out to be infinitely more skilled at martial arts than at magic so he'd dropped out of one school and joined up with another. Not before he'd read most of the lore about time though.

Time, Master Roshi knew, was not something to mess around with. Sure. Time could be killed and wasted and zoned and limited and lost and found. People could even 'buy time' or 'make time' or 'spare time'. And yea, there were even a few things in existence that were timeless. Yet despite all that mortals and immortals alike had ever done to Time - time was, usually, still a constant. Which meant that almost everything anyone did to Time had very little affect on time itself. Time was just that... Strong wasn't even the word.

Saying that Time was strong would have been like saying that polar ice caps were cold. It was true but also an understatement of the highest degree.

Which was hard to believe when you were actually looking at the personification of Time. Because Time currently looked like an upset insurance salesman. He wore a dark business suit complete with starched shirt, decorative cuff links, neatly combed hair, polished shoes and an ugly tie.

A fresh set of tracks went up the front of the suit. Oolong, Puar and Master Roshi didn't have to wonder what had caused the tracks. Suspended in the darkness all around them were nuts and bolts and gears...

With a barbaric yell - a sound that could only be compared to a hundred angry alarm clocks blaring away off-key - Time brought the sword down again. It was a very large sword, very sharp and it was doing a wonderful job of hacking the time machine to bits.

Master Roshi didn't have to see the shapeshifters facial expressions to have a fair idea of what they were thinking because he was thinking it too. The time machine - that's what it had to be - was a modified one person submarine. An empty modified one person submarine. Master Roshi felt the knots of anxiety crawl through the pit of his stomach and begin to work their way up his spine. What happened to that one person?


"No hon, give those back. Those aren't toys." Mrs. Briefs gently tugged a shiny set of aircar keys away from her grandson. The one year old responded by sniffling, puffing out his chest and staring at her balefully. It was the sort of look that often preceded a temper tantrum.

Mrs. Briefs couldn't keep herself from smiling. Exactly like his mother.

She sighed and her smile faded, the thought had a somber side. While Mrs. Briefs cared a great deal for her daughter, anymore it felt like caring was a one way street. Her affection towards Bulma was rarely acknowledged - much less returned.

Bulma hadn't been raised right. Her parents had been multimillionaires by the time they'd gotten married. They been a liberal young couple and Bulma had been their first and only child. The Briefs hadn't really known anything about parenting back then. They hadn't realized that they'd been spoiling Bulma at the time, they'd just wanted the best for their precious daughter. Bulma had been born with genius potential and so her parents had done everything possible to encourage her development.

The overall end result was that Bulma had grown up viewing her parents - and most other people - as her own personal servants. Though Bulma had mellowed out a bit due to age and adventures, her skewed perception of others remained a large part of her personality. Especially around her parents, Bulma still acted like someone who believed she could get away with anything.

Mrs. Briefs wasn't going to make the same mistakes with Trunks. She pointed at his pouty expression and tried to sound stern. "Sorry hon. You can't always have everything you want."

She frowned at her own words. What an awful thing to tell a child whose father is dead. Mrs. Briefs had never been sure what to make of her unofficial son-in-law but it struck her as being very sad that Trunks would grow up feeling as if he hadn't met his own father.

And at this exact moment the very first inklings of an insanely complicated design took shape in Mrs. Briefs brain. She scribbled the vague notion down on a notepad without understanding what she'd just thought. She rarely understood her mechanical ideas, she just had them. Mrs. Briefs had designed most of Capsule Corporations products this way so the sensation wasn't strange to her anymore. When ideas came to her, she sketched them out or wrote them down. Then her husband would look at the design and, when it was practical, build it.

When she was done, Mrs. Briefs put the pencil down and left the notepad on the kitchen counter. She lifted Trunks out of his highchair, slung a babybag over her shoulder and went through a mental checklist. Once she was certain that she had everything, Mrs. Briefs stepped into the hallway and paused by the doorframe of the livingroom.

"Bulma! Be reasonable!" Dr. Briefs was saying, "We have to be cautious. Long-range deactivation would be - "

"I don't CARE what's safest." Bulma growled. She was by now, beginning to put some sort of remote together but for once her motions were rigid and full of uncertainty. How did you build a device to deactivate something that you'd never seen? "I've got to see these androids for myself." Bulma snapped. She was clearly in need of closure. She couldn't bring herself to believe that so many of her peers had died without her even noticing. Maybe seeing the androids would help things make sense somehow. "If we turn them off at long-range, we'll never find them."

It had, more than once, crossed Bulmas mind that the situation didn't have to be permanent. She could just find or build a spaceship, pack everyone onto it, leave for Planet Namek, borrow those dragonballs and... No. That would be silly. Bulma couldn't just go skipping off into space without any evidence of the disaster. She hadn't seen her friends die and while she didn't truly want to see the corpses, she felt like maybe she needed to. It would help her to get her emotional bearings. It was the only way things would start to sink in.

At the moment Bulma couldn't convince herself that the problem existed. So she didn't invest much energy into the concept of getting a wish granted in order to make things okay.

Besides the last time that Bulma had gone to Planet Namek, the trip had taken a month. If there really truly were a couple of superpowered evil androids running around killing things - then was leaving the Earth behind a good idea? Could the supposively endangered planet survive for a month without them?

"We don't even know what frequencies - "

"Then we'll just have to try all of them." Bulma said curtly.

Dr. Briefs was persistant. "They've got to be shielded though! Otherwise they'd pick up radio and television signals and..."

Mrs. Briefs inserted a comment into the debate. "I've got Trunks. We're going to take Gohan home."

Bulma, as usual, hardly seemed to hear her mother. Dr. Briefs nodded approval in a distracted manner. Without further ado, Mrs. Briefs stepped outside. Completely unaware that the notes she'd left on the kitchen counter contained the beginnings of a time machine.


When most humanoids hear the word 'furnance', they get the mental image of a big metal box which is responsible for heating their home in the winter. Some humanoids will even know where in their home the furnance is located.

Hell also had a furnance. It was not a big metal box but it did keep all the levels of hell that were meant to be uncomfortably warm at their assigned temperatures. Because there were more levels of hell than anyone had gotten around to counting and because the furnance had to be working year round, Hells Furnance could have only been designed by immortal engineers.

Take note. Engineers. Plural. One immortal engineer was usually enough to create all seven wonders on a world but Hells Furnance had warranted the attention of several immortal engineers. To date, the furnance was the second most complex and amazing project that had ever been built.

The most complex and amazing project that had ever been built was called The Universe and that project wasn't even finished yet.

If a mortal were to look upon Hells Furnance, they would instantly go blind. Not that there was any danger of that ever happening. The furnance generated immense amounts of heat. If any mortals got within two lightyears of the thing, they would melt. This was why Hells Furnance was not a big metal box - no known metal could function at such temperatures and attempts to use unknown metals had not yet met with success. The main problem with the rare unknown metals was keeping them unknown. It was hard to work with the materials without learning about them in the process.

Hells Furnance was cosmic powered. The 'furnance' itself consisted of a few gigantic suns that were held together by their own gravity. Thus the 'furnance room' was vast beyond most mortals ability to comprehend. A billion planet Earths could have fit in the 'room' without even being crowded.

It wasn't so much the mind-boggling amounts of energy that Freezia, King Kold, their allies and the entire Saiyan Army were putting out that was the problem. The problem was centered around the sheer speed at which the battle in hell was generating such massive doses of energy. Hells Furnance could have absorbed all the excess energy - if only it had been able to absorb the energy a little more quickly.

Legions of office demons scampered around indecisively, arguing loudly with each other. There wasn't a procedure for this. This wasn't supposed to happen. Hells Furnance wasn't supposed to even be capable of overloading. Not ever. But it was overloading anyway and the office demons didn't have the faintest idea what to do about it. And to make things worse, they had just gotten a call telling them to turn off all the elevators.

Hells Furnance powered the elevators. So would turning the elevators off help anything? Would the furnance be able to absorb more energy faster if it had less programs running? Or would turning more things on be a better idea, would that help use up all the extra energy?

"Anyone who turns those elevators off is a complete and utter moron and I will personally design their tombstone."

The effect of those few words was electric. The panicked office demons stopped everything they were doing. What they had just heard was the ultimate immortal engineer threat. Because if an immortal engineer designed your tombstone then, for better or worse, your reputation would never die.

Mister Popo stepped out of a patch of light, shading his eyes with a hand. He would have preferred to have stepped out of the shadows since that would have seemed more dramatic but in a place with multiple suns, there weren't any shadows. Nevertheless, he'd managed to make an impression. The office demons were standing around gaping at him as if he was... well... an immortal engineer.

It should be pointed out that if a complete pantheon featuring every god from every religion on every world was ever written down, immortal engineers would be in the first book. Office demons might make it into the twenty-fifth book. There was a noticable differential in rank since helpers of certain gods were ranked right below the gods they helped. Office demons worked for - and thus were ranked right under - Lord Enma.

Mister Popo was very aware of this. This was exactly why he didn't ever want to attract negative attention from higher ranking gods. Or rather, god. Immortal engineers worked directly for The Universe. Mister Popo had never cared about pulling rank. Politics weren't his style and it wasn't as if he had magical powers galore or anything. Being a god, even a high-ranking god, didn't automatically make you strong. Immortal and invincible were two separate things - if they hadn't been two separate things then there wouldn't have been two different words for them.

In his own view Mister Popo was just a simple immortal engineer - not even a god technically, just employed by one. And he built things. Artifacts, wonders, dimensional portals, an occasional planet. Mister Popo'd been building things for so long that he couldn't even explain the process anymore. It was instinctive. Creating bizarre new artifacts came as naturally to Mister Popo as breathing did to human beings. Typically anything that took him away from designing and building things was lucky to hold his attention for ten consecutive seconds.

Hells Furnance was going to be an interesting little job though. Just as soon as he got rid of the office demons.

While he didn't hate anyone, Mister Popo had never had much respect for the office demons. They were such paperwork fanatics - it was like they couldn't even think for themselves without filling out a request form first. No imagination whatsoever. Oh well, at least they'd be easy to get rid of.

"Blueprints." Mister Popo said firmly. "I'm going to need the blueprints. All of them. In triplicate. And the warranties. And the receipts. Bring me every single operation manual that has ever been written. And get every map in existence, even the outdated and predated ones." He fixed a moody stare on the nearest office demon. "You DO have all of that on file, correct?"

He knew that they did.


A patch of swirling fog swept through the ruins, moving at a slow pace with a terrible sense of purpose. Tenshinhan suppressed his energy as much as he dared and waited for the mobile fog to pass. He'd managed to make telepathic contact with a living human on the outskirts of the city but now that person was dead. Tenshin wasn't sure how or why the persons death had happened. He'd tried to make contact with the persons ghost to ask.

As a result the other ghosts now knew that he was there and they were looking for him. Tenshinhan had the distinct impression that being found would not be a good thing. Their minds, their energy... They had all become tainted somehow. The other ghosts were so hostile that they weren't even capable of coherant thought anymore.

Suppressing his energy had the effect of making him a less visible ghost. It was the best Tenshin could do for now. There wasn't much left in South Capital City that anyone could hide behind and he was still anchored down. He couldn't leave the place, not even if he wanted to.

It was puzzling. The other ghosts didn't seem to be anchored to anything. Nor did the giant creature surrounded by the orbs of light. Both sets of energy were prowling the area that Tenshin was trapped in, searching in ever-smaller concentric circles. They hadn't found him yet but they were going to eventually. Tenshinhan clenched his fists and waited, feeling cornered. It was becoming very tempting to attack.

Don't. You. Dare.

There wasn't a flash of light or any blurring - no transition at all really. Tenshinhan was just suddenly somewhere else. The first thing he caught sight of was Capsule Corp. Tenshin had been a well-informed assassin while alive, he knew the story about Capsule Corps monster and so he took a few respectful steps away from the place.

"What did you just do...?" Gohan had noticed the flux in his own energy. The ten year old felt as if he'd gained a very faint second ki but his brain wasn't letting him believe that such a thing was possible. Gohan was trying to rationalize it away by believing that perhaps Chaozu had just given him a power boost of some sort.

"If everything works out, I'll explain later." Chaozu promised, speaking to both his friends at once while gazing southward. "I have to be somewhere else."

Chaozu didn't give anyone a chance to argue. He simply vanished. At least, that's how it looked to anyone alive. Tenshinhan caught a glimpse of his friend ascending to the astral plane and if he hadn't been dead already, the shock might have killed him.


The creature in South Capital City paused in mid-step. Feng had felt the energy move. The creature turned, its immortal senses allowing it to see where the energy had gone. North... north... northwest. There. There it was. And it was with an even stronger energy signature now. Good. More power for Feng.

The orbs of pinkish light rotated around Feng with every shakey step the creature took. Orbiting the creature, possessing it. It wasn't hard for the prisoners of time to possess Feng because Feng already had unspeakable amounts of hatred towards mortals. Mortals had caused Feng nothing but pain and embarrassment. Feng had always been willing to forgive and forget before. Always willing to give a second chance or a third or even a twenty-seventh. But the mortals had never improved and Fengs once-infinite patience had finally evaporated.

It had happened nineteen years ago. A mortal had killed Feng. That in itself was no big deal since Feng had died before. But this mortal... This mortal had managed to kill Feng in the one way that would make it nearly impossible for Feng to fully reincarnate. And then, to add insult to injury, the stupid worthless mortal'd had the gall to claim that her death had been an accident. As if anyone could kill a goddess permenantly by accident.

Feng limped northward and shrieked in frustrated outrage. She was anxious to recover her monsterous physical body and bestow grisly revenge on mortals in general.

The wind howled and all across The Universe, the divorce rate tripled. Love was on the warpath.


BECAUSE SKELETONS HAVE A LIMITED RANGE OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS. Korin answered. He was standing beside a recently-deceased person that had wanted to know why Death smiled so much.

"Huh. Guess that makes sense." The spirit considered. "But do you ever feel like, you know, not smiling?"

Korin was currently on the other side of the globe but he heard Fengs vengeful shriek. Still smiling, Korin flattened his ears back in distress. THERE HAVE BEEN MOMENTS.

Death had no power over Love. If anyone was going stop Feng before she caused more mortals to destroy themselves, it was going to have to be one of Korins other three siblings. Korin didn't like their odds. Love had gained influence in most other realms so it wasn't going to be easy to bring Feng down.

A frazzled office demon finally materialized to collect the human spirit. "Sorry to make you wait." The demon said curtly, flipping through the stack of paperwork on his clipboard. "We're experiencing some minor technical difficulties with the afterlife. Now then..."

"Technical difficulties with the afterlife?" The dead person echoed incredulously. "How exactly do you experience 'technical difficulties' with the afterlife? Has hell frozen over or something?"

The office demon stiffened, coughed and cleared his throat before speaking in a tone of forced pleasantry. "Now, now - it's nothing for you to worry about mortal. I'm sure that even as we speak, repairs are - "

"Excuse me but I think it IS something to be worried about!" The human ghost interrupted. "I'm bloody well dead in case you haven't noticed and I don't want to be carted off to spend eternity in any place that's having technical difficulties, thank you very much."

"Don't be silly. Mortals always go to the afterlife." The office demon glanced towards Korin for some support but Korin didn't notice. His attention was directed elsewhere.

The astral plane tremored and the vibrations grew more violent as the source of the disturbance approached. In a sudden rush of air and flame, something thundered past them. The office demon and the human spirit were both blown over by the force of its passing. Korin alone remained standing. He turned to watch the colorful streak fade into the distance.

As always, the cat smiled. HMMMM.