Gohan had seen his fair share of incapacitated fighters, more than enough for a lifetime but still, he froze for a moment in shock, not knowing what to do when he saw the blue-haired girl slumped over and unconscious. What would dad have done? He asked himself. The Lookout was his first thought but Gohan dismissed the idea as no doubt the thin air might be the worst thing for the unconscious Saiyan girl who looked like Bulma. Making up his mind, he scooped up the mysterious girl in his arms and flew as fast as he could to the isolated mountain where he lived. She wasn't exactly still, she was twitching and making the occasional sound. That was good, right?
Looking at the girl in his arms, Gohan was growing increasingly worried about her state, practically dismissing his concerns over her motives. He knew she had been masking her ki before but now it felt her dip in energy was unintentional and Gohan worried whether or not she would survive if he didn't get help quickly enough.
Other thoughts were invading his mind, however, just as unpleasant as her potential demise. The girl looked like Bulma but she was Saiyan. More to the point, she looked around his age, a teenager. Vegeta hadn't made landfall until about ten years ago. Gohan bit his lip knowing the only other Saiyan around Earth—and Bulma—was his father...
Gohan shook his head from those thoughts, he had to focus on getting the girl help. Knowing he had to fly low to make the trip easier on the girl in his arms, he transformed into who the denizens of Satan City had taken to calling him: the Golden Fighter. Flying as himself would likely out his abilities and he had no desire to become more of a sensation than he already was.
As fast as he was flying, he made it to his home in mere minutes. Right as he was about to descend, he saw his mother barge through the front door with a red angry aura around her.
"Son Gohan! Just what do you think you were doing?! I just got a call from the school that you ran out of the classroom and now you're here ditching school like some sort of delinquent?!" she screamed at him once he touched his feet to the ground.
"Not now, mom!" he yelled back at her. Gohan perhaps only lost his temper with his mother once and she had been taken aback then, she looked more shocked even now and ready to slap him. "It was an emergency," he explained more calmly giving Chi Chi the opportunity to see what he had in his arms.
Her shock turned to concern and she took in a sharp breath and covered her mouth with her hands. "Don't you think a hospital should have been your destination? We don't even have a doctor in the nearest village," Chi Chi said, her voice now fretful and filled with concern. His mother scrutinized the girl and gasped once again, "She looks just like Bulma."
"I know," Gohan said. And she's at least part Saiyan. He kept that thought to himself not wanting his mother to come to any conclusions that might hurt her.
"Goten!" Chi Chi barked into the house and taking charge of the situation. "Get some blankets and lay them on the table!" she said jumping into action. "C'mon, hurry, bring her inside, she looks in bad shape," she ordered. Chi Chi put delicate hands on the mysterious girl's face and her expression turned grave. "Can you feel that? She's burning up."
No, Gohan hadn't noticed. He had been too busy wondering if she was his sister to worry about her vitals, he thought guiltily.
Goten made quick work of setting up their kitchen table as a makeshift operating table and Gohan was able to lay her down and really get a good look at her.
"Wow, she's really pretty, Gohan," Goten said taking in the looks of the girl, his eyes alight and face full of wonder but it was far from an enchanting moment. Indeed, she was beautiful, she had Bulma's features though they were a bit harsher and her hair was long unlike Bulma who, in recent memory, kept it incredibly short. Upon a closer look, Gohan could see the dark circles under her eyes, her dry cracked lips and how her cheeks had sunk in. He probably spent more time than he should have to look for his father's features in her face instead of running to fetch Dende. Maybe it was wishful thinking on his part but he didn't think he saw his father there.
"Don't just stand there, get out of my way!" Chi Chi yelled at Gohan who had spent his time studying her features than doing anything helpful. The familiar looking jacket she was wearing—that was at least three sizes too big, Gohan noted—had been buttoned up and when Chi Chi exposed the shirt underneath Gohan immediately knew why. Her faded and threadbare black shirt was in ribbons and the only thing that was holding it together was the blood making the fabric stick to her skin. Gohan wondered why he hadn't smelled how wounded she was earlier.
"Good Lord!" his mother couldn't help but exclaim horrified. "Goten!" she called to Gohan's younger brother again. "Go get me some cold water and a soft cloth." Goten sprung into action, the previous wonder on his face gone, replaced with fear.
"I'm going to bring Dende and Piccolo, they might be able to do something." If he couldn't bring her to Dende he could at least bring Dende to her. Chi Chi nodded to him in acknowledgment and worked to tending to the girl.
Gohan was so determined to reach the Lookout as fast as possible that he arrived in seconds. It seemed that Piccolo and Dende knew he was coming because they were standing outside the temple seemingly waiting for him.
"Gohan," Piccolo addressed him first. "What's going on? We've been feeling that power since yesterday."
"Then you know she has good intentions," Gohan stated plainly. He didn't have proof of that but her actions seemed to indicate she wasn't there to do harm.
"She?" Piccolo asked looking surprised and less stern than when Gohan arrived.
Gohan nodded, "You can interrogate me later. We can find out more as long as she doesn't die." Gohan saw no point in being indirect. "Right now she's at my house in real bad shape, can you two come with me?"
The Namekians nodded and Gohan grabbed Dende knowing the younger Namekian was not as strong of a flyer as he and Piccolo were. And just as quickly as Gohan made it to the Lookout did they arrive back to the house on Mount Paozu in record time.
The guardian of Earth looked a little woozy from the ride but Gohan couldn't focus on that, his concern was for the girl on the table whom his mother was attending to. She was still twitching and moaning in pain.
Gohan saw Chi Chi release some of the visible tension in her visage when he had returned with reinforcements. "Thank god—well, you, Dende," she said. "Come here and look at this," she had them approach the injured girl while she lifted the girl's shirt to show her abdomen. Gohan stumbled back in alarm. He looked around, glad to see his mother had banished Goten from the room. He didn't need to see this. I didn't need to see this.
She had two deep gashes that formed a swollen and red X over her stomach. The lines were jagged like the wounds had been made by some otherworldly weapon. What could have done this? How did she manage to fight for so long? Worse still, it looked like someone had tried to cauterize the wound but didn't clean it, giving off a horrible infectious smell.
After Dende had regained his bearings, the small Namekian went forward to heal the girl but Piccolo stopped the guardian of Earth and gripped his wrist.
"What are you doing?" Gohan rushed to his greatest friend with impatience. "Can't you see what a state she's in? Why are you wasting time?"
"You have a soft heart but we don't know anything about this girl or where she came from," Piccolo pointed out.
"The world has been at peace for seven years, Mr. Piccolo," Chi Chi weighed in on the argument. "Hang up your warrior hat and have some compassion for the girl!"
"What if whatever did this to her is on its way here?" Piccolo countered. "What if she had this coming for certain misdeeds?"
"I can't believe you—" Chi Chi started to argue but Gohan cut her off.
"No, she's not evil, I can tell. I can feel it," Gohan insisted. "She wouldn't have stopped those bank robbers or saved a child from a reckless driver if she was. And—" he paused. "I'm pretty sure she hurled a Masenko at me." An idea came to Gohan's head, "Go ahead Piccolo, read her mind, you can probably find out for yourself."
"That was my idea all along," he said. The large Namekian approached the table where the girl was writhing in pain but still unconscious or at least too weak to vocalize anything other than whimpers. Piccolo placed his hand on her forehead but recoiled after a few seconds gasping and looking horrified like Gohan had seen many times before when they were faced with a seemingly unbeatable enemy.
"Dende," Piccolo said after regaining his composure. "Do it," he ordered.
The little Namekian rushed to the mystery girl's side waving his hands over her and using his energy to heal her wounds. Soon, the girl stopped her labored breathing and sounds of pain and fell into a deep even sleep.
Dende looked absolutely winded. "I was able to heal the wounds but she'll need plenty of rest to clear the infection coursing through her body. With the way you Saiyans heal it shouldn't be a problem," he said with a small smile but it soon fell and he frowned. "I'm sure you can tell she's had it rough but she's also dehydrated and malnourished. Make sure she has food and water when she wakes up."
"Of course," Chi Chi said with atypical kindness. "We'll take care of her." Immediately, Chi Chi went to start cleaning the girl where the dried blood had been over the newly healed skin and shooed everyone else out of the room, completely ignoring what Dende had revealed about the girl being half Saiyan.
"Piccolo, can you fix her clothes for her? Get rid of the holes, tears, and stains?" Gohan suggested as the Namekians started leaving. Piccolo nodded and used his power to reform the material of her clothes.
"You've done that, now go until I clean her up!" Chi Chi ordered. The three didn't need telling twice and exited the house. Gohan was more curious now than ever about the girl. Piccolo's reaction to reading her mind did not bode well for their world.
"What did you see, Piccolo?" Gohan turned to his mentor not bothering with any thanks or pleasantries.
"She looks like Bulma and she's half-Saiyan…" he trailed off. "Your father?" he said uneasily.
"I don't know," Gohan said, bile and stress overtaking him at the possibility. It was one problem after another. "But how could she have been hidden so long? I don't think Bulma is the type to hide her child away as a shameful secret."
"I wasn't able to get a good read on her but she's definitely related to Bulma somehow, from the flashes of her memories, I know that's her true form."
"What else was there?" Gohan asked.
"Chaos. Barrenness. Pain. Too much pain. Then finally, everything fading away," Piccolo answered. Gohan didn't know what to make of what Piccolo just said. Everything fading away? What was that supposed to mean?
Piccolo nor Dende offered no more clarity and prepared to leave. "Come see me when she wakes up. I think her being here means grave complications for Earth's future," Piccolo warned before turning swiftly and taking off.
"Thank you, Dende!" Gohan made sure to call out to the guardian of Earth who smiled and waved at Gohan before flying back to the Lookout.
Gohan had found the girl the people of Satan City had been calling the second Golden Fighter but Gohan felt he had more questions than he started out with.
"Gohan!" he heard his mom yell when he tried to enter the front door of their home. "Go back to school! We don't need you here!"
"School?" That's right! Is history class over? So preoccupied was he that Gohan hadn't even remembered it was still a school day. Gohan didn't even consider challenging his mother and flew up high enough not to be seen by anyone from below. The shorter his absence, the better. He had no established routine for coming and going from school but this time he opted to land on the school roof and use the stairwell down and jogged back to the classroom where, by his calculation, there were ten or so minutes left of history class.
"Just where did you go, young man!?" his history teacher demanded as soon as he walked through the door.
What were you thinking Gohan? You should have just waited to return until the next class! No questions except from the other students. In private! He scolded himself. He looked down at his watch noting the class was almost over.
"Um...I...uh…" Gohan tried to think of an excuse, regretting he had not had the opportunity to learn deceit from Trunks. "I needed to go to the bathroom," he said settling on that reason. People often had to go to the bathroom, it wasn't that unusual.
"For forty-five minutes?" his teacher looked appalled. Stupid! It's normal to go to the bathroom for that long unless you have a medical condition!
"Uh, yeah, digestive issues," he said turning beet red. Of course, I end up picking the most humiliating excuse.
"You need to eat more fiber!" a random voice spoke from the student seating causing the whole class to erupt in uproarious laughter.
Gohan scrambled to his seat next to Erasa and put his head down hoping no one would pay attention to him for the rest of the lesson but he was still feeling antsy thinking about the girl at home. Who is she? Is she my sister? It was niggling at the back of his mind for the rest of the day at school and though he tried, he couldn't escape his anxious thoughts. When the final bell rang, Gohan shot out of his seat like a cannon eager to get home to see if she was awake but, regrettably, first he needed to go to his locker to gather the books he needed for his schoolwork.
Where is that damn vocabulary workbook? Gohan thought, looking through his tidy stack of books.
"Ahem," a voice clearing her throat, grabbing his attention from behind his open locker door.
"Yes?" he asked trying not to sound impatient. What if she already woke up? Would she do anything to mom or Goten? He kept his head in his locker under the guise of looking busy.
"Since you're so interested in the female Golden Fighter, you might want to know there was another sighting today," Videl informed him.
"Oh really?" he said disinterested and ready for Videl to move along. He already knew, he even had the female Golden Fighter at his house but he wasn't going to let Videl know that.
"Yup!" she said. "Heard she can fly too, isn't that interesting? My dad says it's all a trick of course but I saw both of them flying with my own eyes," she said without her trademark aggressiveness. Gohan went cold. Both of them? As in me too? Uh oh. He was glad he had kept his face from her view as he knew his expression was betraying him at the moment.
"That's crazy," he said hoping to sound interested and surprised instead of fearful. What a day this was turning out to be.
"Yeah, it is. Funny though, I heard you weren't in history class when the whole thing went down," her voice so subtly changed tone that Gohan almost missed the accusatory lilt.
"Um yeah, stomach issues," he said gathering the rest of books and shutting his locker finally revealing the diminutive but powerful girl. He tried to make his face neutral. From what he was discerning about Hercule Satan's daughter was that she was sharp and prone to jump on details. He was no exception, Videl was staring at him intently scrutinizing his features most likely looking for a lie.
"I didn't get a good look at the guy but one thing was unmistakable," she said leaning up closer to his face, giving him a close up look of her periwinkle eyes. They were quite lovely he thought. "He had on our school badge."
"Woah," he said with genuine shock on his face. He just hoped his acting was good enough to pull off his next line, "You think the Golden Fighter goes to this school?" He tried to say it in a conspiratorial whisper as if Videl was genuinely letting him in on her hypothesis instead of fishing for a reaction from him.
It seemed to work because her looks turned puzzled for a second but she quickly went back to cool mode. "Just thought you might like to know," she said before walking away. Gohan made sure she was completely gone from sight before he started to dart around town to find a good spot to call the nimbus cloud; however, he could still feel her stationary energy not far away from him.
As he winded down the city streets, Gohan tried not to show he knew he was being followed. It seemed Videl had not entirely bought his fake intrigue. He had to give her credit, if his senses weren't so sharp and superhuman, he would have had no idea that she was following him, she stayed out of sight and made almost no noise. She crept quietly behind him while also keeping pace with him. When he sped up, so did she. When he turned around, she was already out of sight. He finally lost her when he turned in front of a tall building and ascended to the top before she made it around the corner. He particularly enjoyed the sight below of Videl looking around wildly for where he went and then giving up. He couldn't stay and watch forever, however. He needed to get home and see if their patient was awake yet.
Gohan jumped on the nimbus cloud and rode it all the way home despite knowing flying himself would be a lot quicker but Videl was already onto him. All she might need was a witness giving his description and she would have it figured all out.
While the cloud was slower than him, it was still faster than anything a human could make and it wasn't long before he was back home. It had been hours since he had been sent back to school by his mother and he figured it was safe to come in now, as no doubt, his mom had finished cleaning off the blood from their "guest."
He couldn't resist and barged in running. "Has she woken up yet, mom?" he asked.
"Shhh!" Chi Chi admonished. "Be quiet," she harshly whispered from her place near where the girl still laid peacefully on their table. "She's still asleep and burning up. Dende might have fixed her wounds but she still needs plenty of rest to beat the infection."
"Sorry," Gohan said quietly, feeling guilty about the ruckus he had made. "How long do you think until she wakes up?" he had to ask.
Chi Chi sighed sadly, "I don't know. It could be days." Gohan was a little put out by that but also worried.
"Mom?" he had to get an honest answer from her. She seemed on board but what if he did wrong? Had she questioned how there could be a Saiyan girl who looked like Bulma? Did she draw the simplest conclusion as he had? "Are you worried about what came after her coming for us because I brought her here?" Gohan hadn't thought about the consequences when he was just focused on keeping the part Saiyan girl alive but like always, his mentor had taught him something new. Gohan left his other worries unsaid.
Chi-Chi turned to him harshly looking livid for a moment but resigned her features to exhaustion, "Truth be told, I'm more than a little concerned, but I could never turn her away if she was in danger and needed a safe place to stay," she said softly and looking at the disheveled girl in pity. "She's so young," Chi-Chi said, moving a strand of hair away from the girl's face.
"When your father got that heart virus, his friends didn't turn us away even though we were bringing danger to them," Chi Chi said, still staring at the girl and not at her son. "I was never so thankful that your father had such great friends. Who knew what would have happened if they had found us here when he was in the midst of the virus?" Gohan saw tears forming in the corner of his mother's eyes as well as feeling the lump forming in his throat from his own pain at his father's untimely death.
His mother wiped her eyes with her long yellow sleeve and changed her demeanor immediately to that of a drill sergeant. "So first thing you're going to do is help Goten clean your room. And, by the way, it's not your room anymore. We're going to put the girl there. Goten can bunk with me but you get the couch. Understand?" she said and turned away without waiting for a response.
Gohan did as he was told and he and Goten made quick of the room. Once it was ready, Gohan lifted the girl bridal style and carried her to his bed. With his strength, he wasn't the best gauge of what or wasn't heavy but even he could tell the girl was lighter than she looked. He definitely noticed the way her ribs had stuck out when his mom had revealed the girl's worst wound. Not even the girl's muscles could conceal she was on her way to becoming emaciated. It was odd, while food on Earth wasn't necessarily free, a Saiyan could easily hunt around for wild game or forage. Was she not from Earth?
After Gohan put her down, Goten kneeled by her bedside with his head propped up on his elbows, holding a vigil for the peacefully sleeping girl. "She's so pretty. Do you think she's a princess?" the little boy asked Gohan, his eyes wide, showing his curiosity to his older brother.
Suddenly, that made something click in Gohan's head. He couldn't see a resemblance to Goku in her face because there was none. He saw it now, the sharp cheekbones...the prominent brow… Bulma didn't have those features but Vegeta did. She wasn't Gohan's sister but maybe she was someone else's. Gohan took a closer inspection of the jacket Piccolo had repaired. Gohan had seen it before, he knew he had. It was cropped, indigo, with a Capsule Corp logo on the upper sleeve. It was too big for her as if it wasn't actually hers in the first place. Who had he seen this on before? She looks like Bulma—but with mistakes—she can transform into a Super Saiyan...she used a Masenko...it's not like time machines are unheard of…Could she be from Future Trunks' timeline? Was she Trunks' sister? Trunks had never mentioned a sister….
Thank you to you awesome people that reviewed. To those I couldn't send a PM to, rest assured, I am just as grateful receiving your reviews. Thank you so much. It's because of you guys I opted to get this chapter through this week instead of next week. Never underestimate your power! Just to let you know, I accept critical feedback so if you don't like something you can tell me and we can fight about it, lol.