Hi there!

First of all, it's the 14th of March, so happy birthday to our beloved crime fighter Videl (and my mom's too, but that aside :P )

Secondly, I've been assigned to a big project, so I'll have less time to write. I was planning to finish this story at the end of this week, but now I'll do one chapter a week instead.
And this time it's no joke, sorry. - But hey, now you'll enjoy the thrill of not knowing what comes next for longer ;)

Thirdly, thank you for your reviews so far. They are appreciated.

And lastly, enjoy reading!

Chapter 7: Stabilized

"No..."

With trembling feet, Videl took a few echoing steps forward, but stopped halfway. Saiyaman's body hadn't moved at all since she opened the door, and she now expected the worst. His head was turned to the other side of where she was standing. She couldn't see his face, and she didn't know if she even wanted to. His body just lay there, motionless on the floor. What if he was indeed dead? Could she face that truth?

Her body was stiff. She couldn't bare herself to do it. Tears filled her eyes and she dropped to her knees. Feeling so helpless and not knowing what else to do, she took her phone out of her pocket and entered the phone number on the Capsule Corps.'s business card. As the tones came through, a tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek.

"This is Bulma Brief, who am I speaking with?" a familiar voice came from the other end of the line.

"I found him..." her voice was weak and quivering as she said it.

"What?"

"I found Saiyaman," Videl said a bit more audible, followed by a soft sniff.

"Is he alive?" Bulma's voice sounded concerned yet determined.

"I... I don't know," now the tears really came pushing through and she began to sob. "I'm scared, I don't know what to do!"

"Listen - Videl was it? -" Bulma had put her emotions aside and sounded resolute. "The only way to help him is to go over to him and check if he's still alive or not. I know it's harsh on you, but please, this has to be done." She paused, then added to encourage her, "I know you can do it."

On the other end of the line, Bulma heard a few muffled sounds, followed by a deep breath. Videl had pulled herself together and stood up. "Please stay on the line with me," the trembling teenager asked.

"That's a promise, you're not alone. Now go and check on him," the scientist encouraged.

Videl followed Bulma's instructions and cautiously made her way to the body in front of her. She knelt beside it and reached for his neck to make sure he still had a pulse. She expected to meet an icy surface when she touched him, but while it wasn't as warm as it should be, his skin wasn't ice cold either. Full of hope, she searched with her middle and index fingers for his carotid artery just below his jawline. And there it was! A heartbeat. Although it was very faint, it was certainly there.

"He's alive!" Her whole body felt like a huge weight was lifted of her shoulders.

"That's a relief," Bulma sighed deeply, unaware that she was holding her breath up until now. However, she knew they weren't yet out of danger. "Videl, listen, and listen to me carefully. The reason we hadn't found him yet is because he's probably in very bad shape. I got your coordinates retrieved from your phone and help is already on its way. But in the meantime, I need you to take him out of his Saiyaman uniform. It is unwise for people to see an unconscious Saiyaman if we do have to airlift him out of here."

"You... you mean I have to undress him?" Videl asked in surprise, turning a deep red when she thought of it.

"No, no, not like that," even in these bitter circumstances Bulma couldn't suppress a giggle, "You have to press the red button on his watch."

Her eyes slid to Saiyaman's gloved hands, and he did indeed had a watch on his left wrist. She put the phone on speaker and placed it next to her so she was able to use both hands. She looked at the body in front of her. His current position wouldn't do him any good, she thought, and carefully, without doing any additional damage, she turned him onto his back. To support his head, she laid it down on her lap.

She looked at him and was met with her own reflection in his visor. A week ago she would've done anything to rib this stupid 'bucket' off his head. But now – now she knew what she would find – she didn't want to. At this point, this unconscious body was still Saiyaman to her – she was not yet ready to get confronted by the truth. With a lump in her stomach the young crime fighter reached for his arm. She kept her thumb on the red button on his watch – 'well, here goes nothing,' she thought – then pressed it.

A flash of light appeared and within seconds Saiyaman had given way to a teenager, wearing a loosely fitting white shirt with a black waistcoat over it, paired with red slacks and black dress shoes. His hair was spikey and a lone lock dangled from his forehead.

"Gohan..."

Tears filled her eyes again. This wasn't the face Videl came to mind when she thought of the sweet country boy. Instead of his usual carefree happy face, she saw an expressionless pale one, covered in blue veins. For a moment she could only stare in shock as her silent tears dripped on his forehead.

Suddenly a gust of wind appeared and small parts of the ceiling clattered to the floor. Videl covered both her head and that of Gohan in order to protect them from the falling debris. When she looked up, she saw a large demon-like creature. It had green skin and was dressed in a dark purplish-blue gi with a sky-blue obi around his waist and a white cape with sharp shoulders. Two pointy ears pointed out on eighter side of his matching turban. Shortly after, he was accompanied by a short man wearing regular clothes with black hair and was seemingly noseless. Videl realized that those men were definitely the flying guys from the witness statements earlier this week.

"No worries, we're here to help. Bulma have send us," the shorter one said, responding to the slight mistrust that Videl's eyes featured.

The green demon knelt in front of Gohan and pulled a pouch from under his obi. He reached into the small bag and pulled out what looked like a green bean. He placed it in between Gohan's jaws and pressed them together until it audible snapped in two. Though, nothing happened.

"Tsk, he doesn't swallow it," the green man growled irritably, flashing his fangs in the process.

These man had been sent by Bulma, and although Videl didn't understand what this bean would do, she trusted Bulma's judgement. "Maybe some water will work?" Videl said hesitantly, reaching for her backpack beside her. She pulled the bottle out and took off its cap. As she placed it on Gohan's lips, some water seeped in and with her other hand she gently stimulated his throat to swallow. And she succeeded.

A loud gasp sounded through the room, amplified by the echo coming from the empty walls. Gohan had risen from her lap and was now sitting up and was clearly awake. He looked to his hands and tested if they still work. His pale face had changed back to his normal healthy color. He looked up at the green man. "Hi Piccolo, hey Krillin, I appreciate the Senzu."

"Hey kid, how are you doing?" said the big green man addressed as Piccolo. He offered a hand to Gohan to help get up. "Glad to see you alive."

"Yeah, me two. I'm really grateful," Gohan replied, accepting Piccolo's hand.

"You have to thank your friend, she's the one who found you," Piccolo replied, pointing to Videl.

Gohan turned his head and was met with a bewildered Videl. She couldn't comprehend what she'd just witnessed. First, he was lying almost dead on her lap, the next he was standing in front of her as if nothing had ever happened.

"Videl...?"

Gohan looked surprised to see her. A moment a silence filled the room. He took in her tense body, her shocked face, and finally his gaze lingered on her light-blue opal but teary eyes. He blinked his own eyes as he tried to stop his staring, then smiled his characteristic friendly smile to her. Videl felt that her body started to glow and a tremendous weight was lifted from her shoulders. She didn't knew how, but Gohan was somehow okay and she was so relieved!

In order to greet her, Gohan took a step towards her. But to her horror, Videl saw his eyes roll back in his sockets and his body fell forward. Before he would hit the ground, his limb body was caught just in time by Piccolo's quick reaction, who had grabbed the back of his shirt.

"What the -, Gohan, what the hell happened to you?" said Piccolo in frustration. "Something is seriously wrong here. We need to go!" Then the green man picked Gohan's unconscious body under his arm and took off with a blast.

The noseless man followed suit, but when his feet were barely off the ground, he turned his attention to Videl. "You'll find him at Capsule Corp., there he'll have the best chance of recovery," and then he too shot into the air, leaving Videl all alone in the abandoned storage building in the middle of nowhere.

###

"What just happened? He was fine when we gave him the Senzu bean, why did he suddenly collapse?" Krillin caught up with Piccolo.

"I don't understand it myself," Piccolo growled, "but we have got a lot of ground to cover, so let's hurry. We need to get him to Bulma as soon as possible. She knows what to do." Krillin nodded and they both increased their speed.

After a short while, a large spherical building appeared with 'Capsule Corp.' written on it. Both Piccolo and Krillin landed on the balcony of one of the rooms and rushed through the open door and went through another door on the left. The room they found themselves in now was one of Bulma's test labs. It was equipped with all kind of laboratory and medical machines that had previously served her work on Saiyan biology. On one of the walls was a huge computer system and in the center of the room the massive light table was converted into a temporary surgery table.

"Videl? ...Videl? I'm not sure if you can still hear me, but I'm sorry, I have to go. They are here. I'll keep you posted," Bulma couldn't afford to wait for an answer, so she immediately hung up the phone when she saw the trio arrive. She ran to the table on which Piccolo had laid Gohan's body. She checked his pulse and tested the reflexes of his pupils with a small flashlight.

"So the Senzu bean didn't work?" the scientist asked as she performed some more basic tests on the unconscious boy.

"It worked fine at first, we even spoke to him for a brief moment," Krillin looked uneasy at the scene in front of him, "but then all the lights went out again and now here we are."

"I see," Bulma answered understandably. "The Senzu bean restores the physical state of the person who consumes it in an instant. The fact that he got up tells me that his body has indeed suffered physical trauma. But a Senzu will not be our salvation for him."

"So what you're implying is that whatever happened to Gohan is still causing him physical harm as we speak?" Piccolo frowned.

"Yes, exactly" Bulma consented and walked to a nearby cabinet. "I need to do some blood tests to understand what's going on, but I've my suspicions. That girl who found him had hinted to me earlier today that he might have been poisoned"

When she opened a drawer in the cabinet, she saw a messy content of surgical instruments. 'That's strange,' the scientist thought to herself, 'normally it was always so neatly organized.' She shrugged it off and tried to find what she was looking for. What she had in stock was apparently scarce, but she still found a Saiyan-proof needle with which she could draw some blood.

To her surprise, Gohan's blood was abnormally thin and she quickly filled the required amount of vacutainer tubes. When she pulled the needle out, Bulma placed a piece of gauze to staunch the small puncture wound. Though, his blood kept flowing. "Krillin, could you please put some pressure on it while I go analyze his blood?" Bulma asked. The former monk nodded and switched places with the blue-haired scientist.

The door to the room flew open. There stood a very well-built man with perked up, spikey black hair that formed a prominent widow's peak on his forehead. He walked into the room and scowled at the boy lying in the center of the room. "So you found the half-bred," he said coolly.

"Vegeta, please close the door," Bulma sighed, "I'm trying to keep this room as germ-free as possible."

"Bulma?" Krillin's voice had an uncertain tone, "He's still bleeding."

"It'll stop soon, don't worry," the scientist replied, preforming several steps of a CBC blood test. She inserted a sample into the analyzer and while it was evaluating its parameters, she made a smear in order to look for abnormalities under the microscope.

"Bulma, he's losing blood," Krillin remarked yet again. Bulma looked up from her microscope. To her surprise, blood did indeed drip onto the floor and had formed a small puddle. She got up to check on the boy on the table, who now began to look quite pale.

"Shit, he's losing a lot of blood. Never seen such thin blood." The scientist turned her attention to Piccolo, "Can you get Dende for us? We could really use his help." Piccolo nodded and without a word, he left the room through the still open door. As he passed Vegeta, he gave him a disapprovingly look and slammed the door behind him.

"What should I do?" Krillin asked.

"Just keep pressure on his wound," the scientist replied, returning her attention to her analysis work. "I don't think it will take Piccolo long to bring Dende here."

And within minutes her predictions were answered. Piccolo came through the door and let a child-like version of himself into the room, albeit with different attire. Dende walked over to the table and had a worried look on his face.

"Dende! Glad you're here," Krillin said with relief. He made room for the Namekian. "Can you please stop the bleeding?'

Dende raised his hands and a glow radiated from it. The small puncture hole the needle had created suddenly stopped bleeding, and shortly after the color in Gohan's cheeks returned to normal. A soft moan escaped the teen's lips.

"Stop! Please don't wake him up," Bulma warned, "His body is unstable, it's best to keep him in an artificial coma."

"I agree," Dende replied and stopped what he was doing. "I healed him, but there is a substance in his body I don't recognize. He was in bad shape, though, his organs were partially shut down."

"Hmf," a sound came from near the entrance of the door. Vegeta, who was leaning against the wall, had enough of the situation. "What kind of Guardian of the Earth are you, shouldn't you be able to remove whatever it is from his body? After all, you are his 'God'...," Vegeta's piercing eyes crossed Dende's. "Or are you just as worthless at healing as you are at finding people."

"Vegeta!" Bulma warned him, but was silenced by a calming gesture from the Namekian.

"My powers are limited to the healing of the body itself, I'm unable to remove foreign substances from it, sorry." Dende apologized. "And as you've probably noticed for yourself, Gohan's power level – and thus his life force – has dropped dramatically, even now that I've healed him." He looked back at Gohan. "His Ki levels are almost as low as a regular human being, so I didn't recognize him."

"Then again," Vegeta interrupted, "Shouldn't you have been watching the boy at all times?"

"My job is to keep a watchful eye on all the Earth's inhabitants, not solely to one individual. And for your information, there was a tsunami threat near the Southern Islands at the time Gohan disappeared, so I was occupied."

Vegeta wanted to snap back at Dende, but was intermittent by Piccolo. "Have some respect, Vegeta," he growled. Vegeta rolled his eyes in response, but remained quiet.

"I've got some blood test results," Bulma tried to ease the tension. "As we have already experienced, his blood is very thin. So thin it could leak from his veins. This can lead to internal bleeding and oxygen deficiency in his organs," she sighed. "To be honest, he should've been dead within an hour, so I'm kinda confused that he survived this long."

"The boy is half Saiyan, of course he survives longer than pathetic earthlings." Vegeta got off the wall and walked over to Bulma. "A Saiyan is a superior being built to survive the harshest conditions." He looked at Gohan, who was still unconscious. "But even though I don't want to admit it, even a Saiyan's body has its limits. If the body detects that damage has been done to the extent that it definitely dies, it shuts down as a defense mechanism. This means that the body will go into this vegetative state as a last resort for survival, in the hope that another Saiyan can help. It's pathetic if you ask me," he added, expressing his displeasure. "We found no honor in it, so even though it happened in exceptional cases, we let them die anyway."

"So the reason Gohan is unconscious is because of this protective mechanism and not because of the poison?" asked Krillin.

"You heard the woman," Vegeta snapped at the former monk. "Otherwise, he'd probably already be dead. The reason he's alive is because his body doesn't allow the poison - or whatever it is - to spread. The only problem is that the body can't get rid of it either."

"I see," Piccolo said and looked back at Bulma, "Is there anything else?"

"Yes, I also did a quick drug test and found very small traces of 5-MeO-DMT, a psychoactive substance. But those concentrations are so low that it should no longer have any effect."

"So what now?"

Bulma looked at Piccolo, "I noticed he didn't have an eye reflex, so I'm afraid there's more to it. I need to run some tests on his nervous system and get a puncture of lymphatic fluid. Dende, could you stay until that's done so we don't have to worry about wounds that won't clot?" Dende nodded in agreement. "And am I correct to say that the poison wouldn't spread if Gohan is in this vegetative state?" she asked to her husband.

"The only reason someone would die in that state is if it runs out of resources," Vegeta answered.

"Well, that's positive," Bulma said and looked empathetically over to her godson. "As he has already eaten a Senzu, he only needs to be kept hydrated for the next ten days to stabilize him. Krillin, can you call Chichi? She still doesn't know we found her son."

The scientist spent the entire afternoon and most of the evening doing tests and analyses. After Gohan's condition was kept stable in a controlled coma and she took all the samples she needed, Dende had left the premises with the others. Only Chichi and Goten – Gohan's little brother – spent the night. Bulma looked at the clock, it was almost 11 PM. She sighed and decided to call it a day. Her tests had made her wiser as to what was happening to Gohan's body, but how or why it all happened was still a great mystery to her.

Her phone rang.

'Who would call her at this hour of the day?,' She thought and picked up the phone. "You speaking to Bulma," her voice sounded tired.

A female's voice came through the other end of the phone, one she recognized as Videl: "I figured it out!" she sounded excited yet tired at the same time, "I know what poisoned Gohan."

Added comment:

Let's play a little game: Can you guess what poisoned Gohan? I've written a Haiku which (partially) can lead you to that answer. So, Spoiler Alert if you don't want to know. You'll get the answer in the next chapter

Unbound by Ryūjin

China's small-scute tycoon

One devouring kiss