Goten got to his feet, slowly stretching out his arms and back. It had been hours of discussion, but they had at least a halfway formed plan. "Hey Dende," he asked, "do you mind if I go home for a few hours?"
His shorter green friend smiled and offered a reassuring pat. "Of course. There is nothing you could be doing up here anyway. Go home, get some rest, and do something you enjoy."
"Thanks." It was true, there was nothing Goten could get accomplished by staying there. Piccolo had just taken Gohan through the mystic doors to the Room of Time and Space to work with him until either Gohan was getting better or they ran out of time, whichever came first. Goten had offered to be the one to go in with his brother, but Piccolo had insisted on being the one. It was just as well. Goten really had no idea what he would do once inside.
Dende continued to smile. "Anything for you and your brother, Goten. Now go rest. I'll let you know if anything happens." To emphasize his point, the young guardian waved a cell phone in his hand. "You gave me this for a reason."
Goten smirked. "I have got to remember to thank Trunks for making sure all of us had phones that can be used anywhere in the solar system."
"I believe Miss Bulma had something to do with that," Dende pointed out, remembering his brief stint living at Capsule Corp in the aftermath of the Namek incident. After the brilliant inventor had found herself stranded on Namek, that woman had seemed borderline obsessed with making sure that no matter where she was among the stars, she could call for help.
"Bulma might have invented it," Goten laughed, "but Trunks was the one to make sure we had them. Bulma's brilliant with technology, but with follow through, well, not so much."
Dende did not argue that point.
The two bid each other farewell and Goten flew back to the upscale home he shared with his two best friends.
/
Marron handed each person in her living room a cup of coffee. "Okay, so just so I'm clear on what I have missed," she said, trying to sort the pieces of story she had recently been bombarded with, "Gohan got super obsessive with work and emotionally distant, Videl took Pan and left for a while, Gohan wasn't coping, you" she pointed at Goten, "got worried about him, so you," it was Bra's turn, "went over to goad him in to an emotional response. That mission was successful and Gohan slugged you, then shut down completely, so he got taken to the Lookout by Goten as you," aiming for her lover, "chewed out your sister for putting herself in harm's way and have been borderline pouting ever sense."
The other three exchanged a quick glance. "Yep," Goten confirmed, "that just about sums it up."
"Okay." The blonde took a seat and sipped at her own latte. "Well, I wish I had been informed earlier, but at least I'm caught up now. So where do we go from here?"
Goten stretched out again, still sore from sitting still for too long. "Gohan and Piccolo are going to be out of communication," he grunted. He tilted and looked at his oldest friend. "You get confirmation from your mom about the call yet?"
"She did it," Trunks assured. It had been decided that Videl needed to know what was going on, but Goten was not up for that phone call and Bulma had offered to take it on. The heiress never elaborated on how it had gone, only that it had been done, and the others had already been too emotionally drained to bother pushing for details.
"Cool."
Bra pulled her hair to the side, slowly braiding it over her shoulder. "I don't know about the rest of you people," she huffed, "but I, for one, want to eat junk food and have a fun night. Or rest of the night. What time is it?"
Trunks checked his watch. "4:38 a.m."
"Okay, have a fun super early morning," the teenager amended, rolling her eyes. "Either way, tired as I am, I don't want to sleep."
That was one thing that the others could agree on. Trunks wasted no time picking up the phone and calling every place he knew that had twenty-four hour delivery, making sure they would have enough food to satiate three Saiyans and a human who could hold her own surprisingly well against them. Goten pulled out four controllers, and all four of them settled in, determined to relieve the stresses they had been under.
/
Vegeta heard the console change tone and knew that the program was about to turn the gravity up on him. He had jumped into his training room as soon as his offspring had left. Gohan's mental state disturbed all of them, even the Saiyan Prince. There had been more than one occasion in his own life where he himself had felt as though he had been standing on the precipice of that state. In spite of that, though, he had no sage advice to offer on how to help the broken former fighter.
The pressure increased on him, and Vegeta reveled in the sensation. He loved the intensity of that room, the extreme conditions fueling his inner warrior. It was almost a sense of comfort, knowing that such harsh things could weigh on him and that he could stand under them with ease. He fell into his training, maintaining his routine of pushing himself to his limits.
An hour into it, though, something happened. Something changed. The air shifted, both thickening and thinning out at the same time. Time seemed to slow down as Vegeta instantly picked up on the change. His eyes widened as he instantly realized that something was wrong. He was not alone. The distortion suddenly seemed to hold an enormous amount of energy, and the prince prepared for the attack. It had been under a second since the shift had started, but Vegeta did not require any more time than that. The millisecond the energy began to take solid form, he swung as hard as he could.
He connected with something solid, and the resounding grunt let him know that it was, in fact, a person he had connected with. Relying solely on his ability to sense energy he launched a second attack, bringing the intruder to the floor and readying a ki blast to execute the enemy.
"Holy crap, you hit harder than I remember."
Time froze as Vegeta's eyes fully locked on to his target and he realized what had just happened. His intruder was a teleporter with the power to take a full on hit from the prince and still be able to grunt out a greeting.
Slowly Vegeta stood, lowering his hand and staring in shock. "Kakarot…"
A pained huff left the younger warrior as he rolled over and got on his feet. "No, that's fine, don't help me up," he grunted. "Seriously, you have the best reflexes I've ever seen, Vegeta."
"Kakarot," Vegeta started again, settling in after his initial shock, "what the hell are you doing here?"
Still wincing, Goku sighed. "Well I finally finished up what the Kais wanted me to take care of, which trust me, is a crazy story, and after I wrapped it up I made the jump back to Earth. You had the highest energy, so you were the easiest one to find and teleport to." He shook his head, finally shaking off the hit. "Listen, I'd love to hang out, but I've been gone for, like, two years and Chi-Chi's going to kill me if I don't get home as fast as I can." Even Goku did not miss how suddenly rigid Vegeta went. "What?"
The senior warrior hesitated before saying, "You think you've been gone for two years." It was clearly not a question.
"Yeah, because I was…wasn't I?" Goku asked. "I mean, I know that there was a lot of weird stuff about dimensions and portals and there was something about the time stream that happened, but I never really understood it. I didn't need to. I wasn't trapped for that long."
"Trapped where?" Vegeta asked. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Goku shrugged. "When the Kais summoned me, it was to stop this warlord guy who had found a way to jump dimensions. They told me that he hadn't gotten that far yet, but that they were going to use some magical thing to make a portal to get me in there so I could stop him."
"Could you not teleport?"
"Apparently not," Goku casually replied. "I can jump into some dimensions but not others. Anyway I got in and I got the guy and everything seemed fine, but the portal closed and I couldn't get back or contact the Kais. I stayed in a couple different villages as I waited for it to open again, but it didn't happen for a couple years." Looking at the concern on Vegeta's face, Goku slowly added, "It wasn't a couple years here, was it?"
Vegeta shook his head. "No, Kakarot, it was not."
"How long have I been gone?" he asked. When there was no immediate answer, he demanded again, "Vegeta, how long have I been gone?"
With uncharacteristic softness, the prince answered, "Over sixteen years."
Goku stared in shock for a moment, but then began to laugh. "Okay, you really had me going there for a minute, Vegeta. Seriously, you had me worried for a second. Sixteen years? That's a good one."
Clearly talking was not being as effective as hoped, so Vegeta did the only thing he could think of to get the point across. Marching over to the main console of his training room, he pressed the call button. Seconds later, the vid screen popped up and Bulma asked what was wrong.
Then she saw who else was in there.
"Power down," she commanded. "I'll be right there."
Goku stood still, his brain at war over what to believe. It was not possible that he could have been gone for that long. There was no way. There must have been a problem with the video screen. Bulma used to complain about bad lighting and getting her good side in pictures. Those things must have been out of place. Bulma had not looked like she had for any reason other than bad lighting. That had to be it.
Shortly after, there was a knock on the door. As it opened, Goku felt his heart jump to his throat as he said the only thing he could come up with.
"You're old!"
The light in Bulma's eyes changed to fire in an instant. "You disappear for a decade and a half, and that's how you say hi?" But her anger left almost as quickly as it came when she noticed the look of horror on his face. "Goku?"
"He thinks he's only been gone for two years," her husband supplied.
Bulma warily glanced at her oldest friend. "You're not serious," she said. Slowly she shifted her line of sight to her husband. "Does he know about…" She did not dare finish the sentence. She did not have to. Her husband shook his head in response, and Bulma felt her heart drop. The chamber remained disturbingly silent, none of its inhabitants quite sure where to go next.
/
"I am not opening the door for him." Trunks left no words for negotiation or argument.
"I agree," Bra chimed in.
Marron and Goten exchanged a glance. All four of them had been instantly aware of the enormous power that had suddenly manifested in West City, and it only took a moment to identify who it was. Questions formed immediately, the most pressing of which was how to handle that sudden arrival.
"You know," Marron counseled, "it may not be a terrible idea to at least have one of us find out where he's been."
Trunks shot her a dirty glare. "It doesn't matter where the hell he's been," he bit out. "It matters that he walked out in the first place and was gone for all these years!"
At this point Goten cleared his throat. "Just wondering, but don't I get any say in the matter?"
"No," the Briefs siblings said in unison.
Goten blinked his eyes. "Wow, surround sound…"
"And he's got a point," Marron sided. "Since this is his relative we're talking about, I say that at bare minimum we get Goten's input."
"Or at least I get treated like I'm in the room."
Neither Trunks nor Bra seemed happy, but they did not argue the point. It was only fair. "Alright, Goten," Bra sighed through grit teeth, "what do you want to do?"
The Son boy shrugged. "Honestly, I figure I'll say hi to him and ask him what's up."
All three of the others seemed gobsmacked. "Seriously?" Trunks asked. "After all this time, you're just going to say 'sup?"
"What do you want me to say?" Goten returned, taking a seat on the couch. "I know you guys think I should be emotionally scarred by him or something, but seriously, I barely know the guy. He seems pretty decent when he's around, but I have known him for a grand total of thirty days, all of which were a long ass time ago. I'm sorry, but I'm finding it hard to get worked up over a guy who's had minimal influence in my life."
With a huff, Trunks sat beside him. "I don't get it. He abandoned you and your brother when you needed him the most…"
"Yeah, but he didn't know it," Goten interrupted. "Look, I'm not saying that what he did was a good thing for our family, but none of us knew what was going to happen to Mom. There was no way. So yeah, things might have gone better if he'd been there, but frankly I doubt it. A guy who's going to up and leave without a hell of a lot of notice is probably not a guy ready to raise two kids, one of whom he just met. The way I figure it, I was probably way better off staying with you guys."
"But he left!"
"Yeah, I noticed."
The two women watched on as the best friends debated. Marron had no idea what to think. She had honestly never considered Goku's return as a possibility. She found herself conflicted, not knowing if she should hate the man who left or be happy that he came back. Bra stood firmly against the idea of giving Goku so much as the time of day. Any person who would abandon their family for years on end did not deserve a second chance, regardless of the reason. However, no matter how strongly she felt, she would respect Goten's wishes…probably.
"Where do you think he was?" Marron softly asked.
"Who cares?" Trunks and Bra both shot back.
Goten quirked an eyebrow at them. "Okay, either you two need to stop doing that, or you need to get used to the idea of me teasing you about it until the end of time. Not the end of our lives, the end of time."
Leaning against the counters, Marron reached for a drink. "I've got to admit, Goten, you are taking this remarkably well."
The Son boy offered another shrug. "I really don't know what to tell you. I think maybe everything else that's been going on lately has been so big and stressful that something like Goku showing up out of the blue just doesn't pull rank."
It escaped no one how Goten chose to address his father. "Look," Trunks tried again, "I really don't think he has any right to…"
"Trunks," his best friend interrupted once more, "he hasn't tried to do anything yet. Really, it feels like he's sticking around your parents for a while."
"Something I'm sure Dad is thrilled with," Bra muttered under her breath.
Goten chuckled. "Right. And I don't even know if he's going to do anything now. Or ever, for that matter." His eyes went to his lap, a solemn look crossing his face. "I don't think he even knows about Mom yet. I do know that I don't want to be the guy to tell him."
"Oh lord," Marron realized, "he doesn't know about Chi-Chi…or Gohan…"
"Yeah," Goten agreed. "As far as I know, he's just popped up from god only knows where to find out that his wife is dead and his son's had a total breakdown. Unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to be taking things pretty easy on him."
"But…" Trunks was ready to start up again, but he stayed his tongue. He did not agree with Goten's stance at all. If Goku did not want to get slammed with news, then he should not have left in the first place. Goten might have somehow gotten over the past, or at least be pretending to, but Trunks had not. Since the day Chi-Chi died, Trunks had never let it get too far from his mind. He remembered hearing his best friend sobbing. He remembered the fights with Gohan over who was going to live where. He remembered every awkward conversation they had been through meeting new people, trying to explain how they were and were not brothers at the same time. He remembered all the times Goten asked where his father was. He remembered every life shifting, soul wrenching thing that Goten had been put through because when his mother died, his father was not there. And at the age of eight, Trunks had stepped out of childhood so he could be there for his best friend.
It made his blood boil to even think about it. How dare Goku do that? How dare he feel he have any right to return at all? Ever? How dare he abandon Gohan and Goten and reserve any right at all to come back to them after sixteen years?
It was wrong. Goku should never have come back. He should have stayed wherever the hell he had been and died there.
No one hurt his best friend and got away with it.
No one.
