Once again, Videl and Goten did their training in the basement gym after school. Videl was getting rather good for a beginner. She could now make energy balls appear in her hands whenever she wanted to, thanks to Goten's advice to only use a little bit of energy; Videl's instinct had been to use all of her energy while fighting.
Goten's training was going well, too. His form was much more unified now, and Videl was pretty sure that Goten could make it to the semi-finals in the adult division, especially if he used the Gold Fighter transformation which Videl still couldn't do.
Trouble came during their break time. At least, it was a break for Videl. Goten didn't seem to need a break; in fact, he never seemed to run out of energy. So for Goten, it was snack time, not break time.
...But whether it was snack time or break time doesn't matter. What matters is that they met Hercule in the kitchen there.
"Hey, what is he doing here?" Hercule asked, pointing an accusing finger at Goten.
"Hi, Mr. Hercules!" Goten said, smiling. Goten liked Videl's Daddy. He was silly. Goten hoped his own dad would be silly, too.
"I'm baby-sitting him this week," Videl said. "Don't tell me you didn't figure that out yet. He's been with me after school for the past few days."
"Yeah, but he's one of those alien monsters!" Hercule said. "I told you to stay away from them before you get hurt!"
"Goten's just a little kid," Videl said. "He's can't hurt anyone." She knew that wasn't exactly true, but it was true enough.
"He won't be so harmless when he grows up and tries to take over the world!" Hercule said. "Then he'll threaten to crush your skull and break your heart into a million tiny pieces! Ohhh, the pain! You've gotta stay away!"
Videl was unfazed by this sudden outburst. "Dad, you're acting weirder than normal," she said.
"I'm just saying that we shouldn't have anything to do with these guys in the future," Hercule said. "If it'll protect you from the Vegeta monster, I say we do it. Plus, it'd make our lives a whole lot easier."
"I appreciate your concern, but Goten is six," Videl said. "What harm can he do?"
Needless to say, Goten wasn't listening to their conversation about him, or else he would have said something. Instead, Goten was busy trying to get some apple juice from the large fridge. It was tough because the doors were so much bigger than he was. Even when he pulled, it wouldn't open.
"It's stuck!" he said.
Goten pulled his hardest, and accidentally ripped the door off its hinges.
"Oops," he said. Then he threw the door aside and got his juice.
"AAAAA!" Hercule screamed at seeing his fridge get destroyed. "He just—he broke—"
"On second thought, you have a point," Videl said. "I'll take him back home to his mother."
"That's my girl!" Hercule said.
And so Videl's adventures in baby-sitting Goten ended earlier than she expected.
Gohan was bored. His homeroom teacher was in charge of detention that day, and his detention policy was absolute silence for an entire hour. This was supposed to teach the troublemaking students how to behave.
Okay, really, Mr. Brown made the kids be quiet for an hour so he could easily read his newest book (Owning a Talking Cat) and update his Facebook status (Mr. Brown – is reading Owning a Talking Cat) whenever he wanted to. But it also taught the kids how to behave.
Gohan knew how to behave perfectly fine, so he was bored. He had already finished all his homework, and there was still forty minutes of sitting in silence to go.
To pass the time, Gohan tried drawing a picture on one of his pieces of paper. It was a picture of him as the Gold Fighter saving the town from a dinosaur attack. Everyone was cheering for him, including Videl.
To be honest, it looked more like Frieza than Videl. Gohan wasn't a very good artist.
Gohan had no idea why Vegeta had it out for Videl, but he knew he could figure it out. Or at least, Bulma could. As soon as he got free time, he was going to go to Capsule Corp. and talk to Bulma. And do training for the World Martial Arts Tournament. And give Videl some flying lessons.
...Stupid detention, ruining Gohan's schedule. Good thing tomorrow was the last day of detention.
Gohan was semi-determined to train as hard as he could. He didn't like fighting, but his dad always said that fighting was necessary to protect the people you care about.
And Gohan cared about Videl. She was his best friend, probably the first friend he had ever had who was the same age as him (if you don't count Dende). She was a very nice person—kind of—and no matter what Chi-Chi said, Gohan was sure Videl was trustworthy.
Actually, the only real problem he had with Videl was the fact that she refused to let him do the Gold Fighter dance in public. It was a very cool dance, and the "go-go-go-Gold Fighter" chant was really, really original! But for some reason, Videl said "no". She had even gone so far as to tell him that the Gold Fighter was not really a superhero, can you imagine?
Clearly, he was going to have to show her the dance again. She must not have been paying attention when he was dancing, because no one could see that dance and not want to see it performed over and over and over again.
Disclaimer: Gohan's views and opinions about his dance moves do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the author, fanfiction dot net , or Akira Toriyama.
But besides from Videl's crazy ideas about dancing, she was a pretty good friend, in Gohan's opinion.
::Ding dong::
"I'll get it!" Hercule said.
Hercule went to the front door, muttering about how he needed a butler. One with a spiffy bow tie and a top hat. Perhaps a purple bow tie and a dark blue top hat. That would look really fancy.
Alas, waiting for Hercule on the doorstep was not a smartly-dressed butler. It was our hero Gohan, come by to pick up his little brother.
"Hello, Mr. Hercule," Gohan said. "How are you today?
"YOU!" Hercule said, instantly jumping up and down and screaming like a seizure victim. "How dare you show your face here? I thought I told you never to come by our house again!"
"What?" Gohan asked.
"No no no no no! Leave here forever! You're not welcome in our house!" Hercule said firmly.
"Why not?" Gohan asked.
"Why not? Why not? BECAUSE! You break all three rules on the list!"
Hercule whipped out a piece of paper, containing a list of rules he had made up years ago when Videl first became a teenager.
Rule #1: No boys are allowed to see Videl.
Rule #2: Especially not any pervert, creeper boys.
Rule #3: And no muscle-headed jerks either!
"As you can see, you break all three rules, and it's three strikes, you're out!" Hercule said.
"Do you always carry this list around in your pocket?" Gohan wondered.
"Out! Out! Out!" Hercule said, stamping his foot. "You can't see my precious, innocent daughter, you big galoot!"
"But I'm not even here to see Videl," Gohan said. "I just came by to pick up my little brother."
"Oh," Hercule said. "I sent Goten home an hour ago. He was breaking Rule #1, the little sneak!"
"Goten's not a sneak," Gohan said, defending his brother. Hercule wasn't listening, however.
"Besides, the Satan Family isn't talking to the Son Family anymore," Hercule said, crossing his arms in a haughty manner. "Not until Chi-Chi apologizes for yelling at me and admits that I was right."
Hercule's demands were rather unlikely. As a matter of fact, Chi-Chi had never apologized for yelling at anyone in her entire life. And she yelled at people approximately ten times a day.
"You got in a fight with my mom?" Gohan asked. "What about?"
"None of your business, that's what it was about," Hercule said—which was his way of saying he couldn't be bothered to remember at that moment. "Now get out of here before I call security!"
"Dad, is that Gohan?" Videl called from the other room.
"Yes, I mean, NO!" Hercule shouted. "Gohan's not allowed to—"
"It is Gohan," Videl said, walking into the area where the front door was. "I thought I heard your voice. What are you doing here?"
"I came to show you my Gold Fighter Dance Moves!" Gohan said.
"Dance moves?" Hercule said.
"Ugh, not again," Videl said. "I told you, the Gold Fighter isn't a real superhero. You can't—"
"Rock and roll!" Gohan cried, pointing his index finger up to the sky. He then started doing his own personsl version of the moonwalk, which included a lot of twirling. Of course, Gohan was dancing while humming his favorite tune, Yankee Doodle.
A stunned silence met Gohan's dance routine.
"...If you don't leave my house right now, I'm calling the police," Hercule said.
"Yeah, you should never dance again," Videl said. "It's horrible."
"Oh, come on!" Gohan said. "It's really cool and—"
"Sorry, Gohan," Videl said. "But it's true."
"That was the worst thing I've ever seen," Hercule said. "Thank God we're never going to deal with your family again."
Gohan went back home, depressed. Nobody seemed to like his dance moves at all, not even his friends. At this rate, he'd never get the lead in the Winter Musical! Thoughts like these filled Gohan's head and weighed him down so that he didn't even realize something was Wrong with a capital W.
What was Wrong? Chi-Chi answered the door with Goten. In other words, the jig was up.
"Hello, Gohan," she said, coldly. "Why didn't you take your brother home from school today?"
"I—I—" Gohan said.
"You're supposed to take your brother home from school every day!" Chi-Chi snapped. "And Goten says that evil demon witch girl has been watching him all week!"
Goten was upset at this unprovoked attack against his newest idol. "Videl is cool!" he said. "She's a real superhero! Not like Gohan."
Gohan almost cried. Even Goten didn't think the Gold Fighter was a real superhero?
"That evil girl and her crazy father are both banned from this house!" Chi-Chi said. "From now on, none of us are ever going to have anything to do with them! Not until that idiot apologizes for yelling at me and admits that I'm right!"
"Right about what?" Gohan asked.
"EVERYTHING!" Chi-Chi yelled. "Now, you'd better tell me where you've been all week right now, or I'll pull you out of school again!"
Gohan hung his head low. "I had detention," he said.
"DETENTION! DETENTION! DETENTION!"
Chi-Chi ran around the house for several minutes after that, alternating between threats to kill Gohan and tears over how her son was now a delinquent. If the director of Vegeta's favorite soap opera had been there, he would have immediately signed Chi-Chi for a lifetime contract.
It took Chi-Chi a while to come up with a suitable punishment. She couldn't move back to the woods—she didn't want to do that. She couldn't ban Gohan from seeing Videl, because she already did that. There was only one other punishment she could think of.
"You're banned from entering the World Martial Arts Tournament now," Chi-Chi said.
"B-b-b-banned? You can't do that!"
"I sure can," Chi-Chi said. "You're underage, so you need your parent's permission to enter."
"I'm not underage! I'm eighteen!" Gohan protested. "A legal adult!"
"Too bad that the year you spent in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber doesn't count," Chi-Chi said. "As far as the law is concerned, you're still seventeen, which means you need me to sign this permission form."
Chi-Chi made a big show of ripping the permission form into little pieces.
"You're getting off easy, considering that you got detention for a week and then lied to me in order to hide it," Chi-Chi said. "If you ever do anything like that again, I'll send you straight to military school."
"Banned?" Videl asked. "What do you mean, banned from entering the tournament?"
"Just what it sounds like," Gohan said. "Mom ripped up the permission form."
"That's really harsh," Videl said, because she was a very sensitive and sympathetic person who cared dearly about what happened to her soulmate, Gohan.
Okay, not really. Videl was two seconds away from jumping onto her desk and doing cartwheels while singing. Gohan banned from the tournament? That was great! Her chances of becoming the new world champ just tripled! It was too bad that Gohan had to suffer, but who cared? Videl was going to win! Win win win win WIN!
Finally, her dad would be forced to stop those constant "I am the World Champ!" speeches that annoyed her so much.
"Yeah," Gohan said. "I should have told her the truth from the beginning. I'm a horrible son."
Gohan looked so bummed that Videl felt guilty. Her friend was suffering, and she was enjoying it. Surely, there was something she could do to help Gohan...
It took her six seconds to come up with a feasible plan. She knew she would regret it, but she couldn't stand seeing Gohan so sad.
"Look," Videl sighed. "Gohan Son might be banned from the tournament, but...the Gold Fighter isn't."
"The Gold Fighter?" Gohan asked. "What do—?"
"You could easily enter the tournament as the Gold Fighter," Videl said. "Your mom won't be able to stop you if you do that."
"Are you saying the Gold Fighter is a legitimate superhero?" Gohan asked.
"Definitely," Videl lied. "The only reason I said otherwise is because I was jealous of your cool dance moves."
Gohan hugged her. "You're the best friend ever, Videl," he said.
I'm such an idiot, Videl thought.