Chapter Nine
Bulma sat up from her chair and started stretching. She had been looking up way to cut the collar around Gohan's neck without actually touching it since she woke up that morning. She hadn't come up with a definite method to do so, but she did have some ideas to try and then hope that they worked once Gohan finished school for the day.
Bulma decided to head into the kitchen for some food and found Mirai in the kitchen looking for lunch, though he wasn't so much looking for lunch as collecting bit of things and oiling a frying pan so as to cook lunch.
"What are you making there, Trunks?" Mirai turned around, a block of cheese still in his hands.
"Oh, hello, mother, I was actually just throwing some meat and vegetables in a pan and frying them up. I hadn't really planned anything specific. You can call me Mirai, by the way, it would get to confusing to have two people going around call 'Trunks', right" He smiled, put the cheese into the refrigerator and went back to the stove.
"Well alright if you're ok with it. That smells good, where did you learn to cook?" Bulma asked, pulling a pre-prepared meal out of the freezer to heat up.
"Oh, well, my mom thought it would be wise for me to at least know how to cook basic dishes, and the rest was just experimenting when I was hungry."
"I had some questions for you, Mirai, if you don't mind." He nodded so she continued. "Not that I mind seeing you again, but I am confused as to why you are here."
Mirai said plainly, "There wasn't any reason for me to stay, and I didn't think any of you would mind." Bulma looked at him quizzically while she started the microwave. Seeing the look on her face he continued, "Ah, well mom died, and people don't seem to care for me much. Well I guess I should say that they are afraid of me." He pulled down a plate.
"Why would they be afraid of you, Mirai?"
"Most people know that I am the person who managed to take down the androids, so they know I am powerful. They don't understand why I am so powerful, and that I won't ever do anything to harm anyone. So some of them think that there is a chance I could do what the androids did."
Bulma looked concerned. "That is a shame. You would never do such a thing. But I can see why that would bother you." Mirai grinned at her, and sat down at the table to eat his lunch.
"So since you are staying here, we are going to need to get you an identity, since you can't really use yours, and get records of your existence, along with some other things." Bulma and Mirai talked about how to get him settled in this world while they finished their lunches.
Gohan was sitting at school scratching his neck. Lunch was supposed to start in a few minutes and he was waiting anxiously. The teacher he was supposed to be listening to was trying to explain physics to a quite unfocused classroom of twelfth graders. Gohan was put into this class primarily because of his test scores a few years ago when he started classes at this school, having suffered for the last 2 years as the youngest in his class, and now as the youngest senior since most of his class had already turned eighteen, he was ready to get out of here. If his mom hadn't wanted him to get into a college so bad he might not have had to come and he could have just gotten a certificate saying that he was home schooled and had met all the requirements of graduation from high school, something he would have accomplished quite easily when he entered this high school. But instead he was stuck in a classroom scratching his neck and waiting for this class to finally finish.
The bell rang and Gohan grabbed his bag and left as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. He ran down to a small out of the way corner behind one of the lesser used buildings to eat. It was one of the few places he could go without being followed by the ducklings. He liked to eat in peace without the chattering and brown nosing the teenage girls tended to engage in when they were trying to win his favor. He didn't enjoy such things at all since it usually involved an interrogation to find out what his likes and dislikes were so that every girl around could proclaim that she and she alone out of all these other girls really shared those likes and dislikes. Gohan had once made the mistake when he was new at the school of admitting his favorite color, which resulted in a change of the color palette of the female population's wardrobe for a few months.
However he managed to avoid the ducklings which improved his mood quite a bit. He hoped his luck would continue. He wolfed down his lunch and cracked open a book on saws and drills he had found in the school library. He was hoping for one he could use on his collar that wouldn't result in electrifying him. There were a few that looked promising which he would propose as an option to Bulma. His biggest concern was finding one that could cut the collar without cutting him. Since he didn't have access to his ki it was going to be much more difficult a feat, his skin was stronger and thicker than a humans but not quite to the point Vegeta or Goku enjoyed, and since he couldn't use his ki he wasn't going to be able to withstand as much pressure on his skin as he would normally.
The bell rang again signaling that there was only 5 minutes till the next period started. He thought; I hate living according to the schedule of a loud and obnoxious bell. Gohan stood up irked and cleaned up the detritus from his lunch, leaving to his next class once his corner was clean.
Bulma went back to her work on collar mechanism. She had determined two problems with the collar, one there was no way to cut it without having something touch it meaning that she would have to find a way to prevent Gohan from getting electrocuted while it was being cut and two she had to find a way to cut it that wouldn't decapitate the boy.
She went to find Vegeta and hopefully pick his brain of everything he knew about the collar and how they are opened. She had to hunt him down in the house since he wasn't training. She finally found him in the bathroom he used. Fortunately he didn't like being covered in sweat and always showered after he trained. Bulma was quite glad to find that he was finished with his shower and able to talk to her while he dressed and dried his hair. "Do you know how they are usually removed?"
"Usually they have a panel that can be opened by someone whose ki isn't being blocked, this panel allows for a code to be input that will open it. The one around Gohan's neck doesn't have a panel, if it did we could open it and use a computer to determine the right code, but this one isn't meant to come off so easily." Vegeta looked at her grimly while he pulled on his pants. "The ones without the panel are usually cut off."
"But if they were placed on children wouldn't they need to be changed as the child got older?" Bulma asked while writing down what he said and whishing she had never had to think about what these collars were used for.
"These collars grow with the cub. They tend to be extremely expensive because of that, and because they are so hard to remove. If they aren't cut cleanly when they are removed they seal themselves up again. I have also heard that when someone tries to cut them and doesn't complete it the partial cut seals itself back up within a few hours and the collar itself gets tighter, so as to prohibit future attempts." Vegeta finished buttoning up his shirt and walked out of the room. Bulma followed him and then asked him to follow to her workroom so that they could continue. Once there she asked;
"What about ki? Could you cut the collar using ki so that it wouldn't hurt Gohan?"
"Don't you think I would have tried that if I could?" He growled. "The amount of ki it would take to pierce it completely would also cut him since he can't protect himself." He sat down in one of the cushioned chairs she kept around her workroom.
They spent two hours running through ideas and possibilities, Vegeta discounting some of them right away. By the end of their brainstorm they had come up with a couple of ideas that they would try when Gohan arrived.
Gohan was now waiting for his last class to finish. He didn't enjoy this class either. It was a pre-calculus class, the highest level of math they offered at this school. Gohan was bored in it since he had already studied calculus and had no difficulty with it. Not that his teacher seemed to care, he just continued to teach Gohan with the rest of the class and never commented when he completed all the homework without missing any problem or when he aced an exam. He occasionally asked Gohan to do a difficult problem on the board to show the rest of the class but otherwise Gohan sat in this class doing essentially whatever he wanted, some days he read, others he slept, usually however he just sat at his desk and stared out the window. The teacher never asked him to pay attention because he was acing the class anyway.
The other students weren't nearly as happy with it. Gohan had taken to sitting in the very back row whenever he could because frequently when others sat behind him they liked to throw spitballs and gum into his hair, which Gohan would either have to catch quickly enough they couldn't see him catch it or he would have to suffer through it and wash his hair very well when he got home. As it was he couldn't use his ki to move fast enough to catch it today so anything thrown into his hair would have to stay there until he got back to Capsule Corp.
Unfortunately today was a day in which he had arrived after the back two rows were filled. Usually when this happened he would sit in the very front, so that anything the students behind him were doing were visible to the teacher in front, but all the front row seats had been taken as well. So Gohan was stuck sitting in the middle that day. He didn't even have a window to stare out of as he waited for the class to end. He didn't predict this going very well. He was right.
Ten minutes before this pre-calculus class was to finish one of the students behind him grabbed the collar around his neck right through his hair. The boy doing it whispered to him "So you like being collared, I've got a leash we can use in my car." Gohan screeched and reached behind him to grab the kid's wrist. As soon as the boys hand was off the collar it stopped shocking him but Gohan was now very upset.
All that the teacher saw was Gohan vice gripping another student's wrist, and he immediately screamed for both of them to go to the office, where Gohan spent an hour trying to explain that the other person had grabbed at him and that he was just defending himself. "Sir, Dennis was grabbing me. I didn't want to grab his wrist at all but I had to get him to let go of me." Eventually he was allowed to go but not until after Bulma went into the office since she was waiting for Gohan and he hadn't come out yet, and not before the principal gave him a week of detention.
Gohan explained what had happened to Bulma on the way back to Capsule Corp, and she explained her plans to try and disable the collar's shocking devices. "You see I want to try using a strong magnet because they wipe out electronic equipment. Even if we can't get it completely off; disabling the shocking mechanism will allow you to function, it might also have the added bonus of disabling whatever it is that is blocking your ki, which will make it much easier to remove the collar."
Gohan sat in the vehicle for moment thinking. "That sounds like a great idea Bulma. If magnets disable the shocking mechanism it won't be hard to saw off the collar or otherwise pull it off. I do have an alternative plan if that doesn't disable the electricity. A water drill might work, since it won't touch exactly, but it could be difficult to hold the collar in place if it is still going to shock me."
They arrived at Capsule Corporation and went straight to Bulma's workroom to try out the idea of magnets. Bulma dug around for a capsule in her drawer and threw it into the center of the room. A gigantic machine appeared.
"It looks like a bed with a tunnel over it." Gohan commented dryly.
Bulma laughed, "It's an MRI machine. Since it is basically a titanic sized magnet, I am hoping that turning it on while you lay on the bed will help us deactivate some of that collar's functionality."
"I know what it is Bulma, that doesn't change what it looks like. Let's get this over with shall we?" Bulma started setting up the machine while Gohan sat down on the table, when they were both ready, Gohan scooted himself into the machine and Bulma turned it on. A loud rotating knock started when Bulma flipped the switch. It didn't stay on for very long. As soon as the MRI machine was turned on, the collar around Gohan's neck twisted around to the side and pulled him up to the top of the MRI machine, attaching itself firmly, fortunately Gohan moved his head quickly enough to avoid smashing his face in.
Gohan quickly yelled for Bulma to turn it off. Gohan jumped out of the machine as quickly as he could. "This stupid thing," He pointed at the collar "decided it wanted to be a part of the MRI machine. Maybe we should try a smaller magnet…" Gohan lifted his hair so that Bulma could see his neck. Gohan's neck was turning a bit red where the collar had hit his skin in the process of attaching itself to the magnet in the MRI machine.
Bulma looked at his neck for a moment, frowning. "That looks like it might bruise. But we will still have to see if the MRI had any effect at all." She went over to hit the button that collapsed the MRI into a capsule again. She picked it up of the floor and placed it back in the drawer. "Let me know when you are ready to try picking it up to see if it will still electrify you." She sat down in a chair, Gohan sitting down just a few feet from her in the same chair Vegeta had occupied earlier. He motioned that he was ready and proceed to put his right hand to the collar on his neck.
"AAGH!" He moved his had off. "Maybe we can try a smaller but more powerful magnet, that way we can control where the magnetic force is applied. I find it interesting that this thing twisted around to hit the MRI in a specific spot."
All right that is all for this update. This chapter is well, very, very late. My muses really aren't focused on DBZ at all. I do apologize. I don't mean to be so unreliable about my updates. Fortunately I recently bought the 4th, 5th and 6th seasons of DBZ so I should be more inspired in the future, hopefully. ^.^ I will get back to this as soon as my other fics have been updated as well.
Angel no Yami