Just to remind you that in my storyline Dragonball GT never
happened, and that since it's my story I can do anything I damn well
please. Mwahahahahahahahahahah
(gomen)
Please be aware that although I have great ideas, putting
them down on paper in a way that makes sense to someone other than me often
proves to be an elusive task. Just in
case you weren't tuned in last week tehe, I borrowed all of my
characters from Dragonball except for Agent Pendergast, whom I got from a
book. I did make up the
Bio-mechanoid by myself, but he was just detonated into oblivion. (sigh)
Oh well.
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone or anything so please
don't sue me.
Ryan Pendergast was the first to get to his feet after the
explosion, followed quickly by Pan, who than preceded to help her weakened
father to his feet. All three stared
wordlessly at the crater that had once been the Son family's front yard. And Pan was the first to speak. "Mom is gonna have a cow when she sees
this!" Her father dolefully nodded as Ryan walked out through the front
door to get a closer look.
With gun was still drawn.
Pan tensed suddenly.
Was it really destroyed? After
all it had survived a fall from a nine story building, so why not the explosion
too?
Then she felt her body relax as she watched the man in a now
crumpled and dirty black suit put his gun back into its holster under his
coat. Her father also seemed to relax
as he slumped against her arm more heavily.
She looked up at his face with concern, but he simply nodded and said
"boy, I'm gonna feel that tomorrow."
She sighed and started walking out to the yard, er… hole with her
father.
The hole was at least 10 feet deep, and 40 feet across. There were a few large chunks of singed
metal sitting in the center of the crater, but the rest of the thing that had
attacked them was gone. Agent
Pendergast took out a small phone, pressed a few buttons, and ordered a
"clean-up crew". And less than two
minutes after he had hung up a white van pulled up to the house.
"Gohan, we will get the hole filled in and replanted before
Videl gets home." Pan without missing a
beat said "well, we could just turn it into a swimming pool." Gohan belly
laughed and then winced in pain, but kept laughing more softly. Ryan looked concerned, but Pan just started
walking him back into the house, and he followed closely behind her, watching
the men in hazard suits exiting the van.
Once Pan had her father seated on the couch in the den,
something occurred to her. Somehow Ryan
had known about the weak spot on the boy-things shoulder, but her father had
tossed it out of the house just before it had blown up. "Father, how did you know about that things
detonator? You couldn't have seen it,
but it looked like you knew it was going to blow up."
Pendergast walked silently up behind her. "He knew because he helped us to design it."
"NANI!!?"
She twisted around to look at the man in black standing
behind her. He was holding out a bottle
of water to her. She looked down at it
and then back up at his face. Who
the hell was this guy?
Her father took her hand and sat her down on the couch next
to him. Her glare never left the eyes
of the man in the black suit.
Her father sighed and started to speak. "I helped to interpret the original
schematics that had been found in the remnants of the lab of Dr. Gero." Pan was speechless. "They were apparently plans for a
biological-mechanical hybrid weapon that had been designed before he started to
create Cell and the other androids. And
apparently several of these Bio-mechanoids had already been built… and
released."
Pan sat back, a look of shock on her delicate features. "Oh Dende, there are more of these things!?"
Ryan now spoke to her, trying to calm her with his quiet
voice and gentle southern accent. "We
think so, but we haven't been able to find them yet. And we don't know how to stop them. They were designed to evolve, improving themselves over
time. And they've had 30 years in which
to do it. We don't even know what their
primary objective was then, let alone what it might be now. And we don't know how to stop them if they
suddenly surface and start randomly killing innocent people."
Pan cocked an eyebrow,
"like that thing tried to do to me last night? I thought you said that it had been made by you!"
"Not me personally, but by scientists in our agency."
"Which agency is that?
And why? And who… how?"
"My my, aren't we
just brimming with questions?" he said in an irritatingly calm tone of voice.
But before pan could even contemplate losing her temper,
Gohan spoke.
"No one knew about Saiyans or Bio-mechanoids being on earth
when certain "groups" started looking
into research done by Dr. Gero after the Cell games. An international agency was established to track down and destroy
his stolen research before it fell into the wrong hands. They even enlisted the help of the Great
Saiyaman when a terrorist group tried to use a quasi-atomic bomb he had
designed to blow up downtown Tokyo about 15 years ago."
Realization dawned.
"So that's where you two know each other from." Both men nodded.
"Your father was a great help to us, and a genius to
boot. He helped us to figure out that
the 'good doctor' had left us a few surprises. Namely, the Bio-mechanoids.
And after explaining to me and a few others about his very unique family
heritage, we decided to keep the existence of Saiyans, Namecks, and the like a
closely guarded secret. After all,
there was no telling what some of the groups we were combating, or even some of
the ones we were working with might do if they knew about you." He paused and looked at her with a very
paternal smile on his face. "He was
especially worried about you. You may
have one the Tenkaichi Budoukai when you were four, but he didn't want you or
any of his family and friends put in danger.
And there was really nothing they could do to help. So we started to build our own Bio-mechanoid
to find and eventually combat Gero's creations."
That would explain why Gohan hadn't told the other Z-Senshi
about the bio-mechanoids, but she had one burning question left to go.
"So what went wrong with the one that attacked me
yesterday?"
"Our own research is at least two decades behind the
originals, and we were trying a new targeting device in our G6 model. It malfunctioned and locked onto you. The fall most probably shut down its
remaining failsafe systems and it continued to track you. Which brings me an interesting
question. How did you know that it was
going to attack again?"
"Kuso, I didn't!"
"You seemed to know when it…"
"We'll I didn't know. I thought it was just an innocent boy I had accidentally
pushed off the top of a building! How
was I to know it was some sort of Frankenstein-esque tinker toy that was gonna
try to kill me and my family!" She
realized she was yelling, and she forced herself to calm down before she
continued. "I could just sense
something was wrong, like a buzzing in my skull. I didn't know what was causing it until it was too late. It had a weird energy to it, but not like ki
at all."
Pan stood up and walked over to one of the busted windows
facing the front door. Somehow an
earthmover had suddenly appeared and was quickly filling in the hole.
Pendergast picked up an overturned chair and sat down. He had a painfully pensive look on his face,
like he had something to say- but would rather not say it. "We know they are going to make a move
soon. But we still don't know who they are
or that they are after. Maybe you can help
us find them."
Gohan sat up ramrod straight and stared at the man with the
pale blonde hair, icy blue eyes, and a dirty black suit. "I'm willing to help out anyway I can, but I
don't want my daughter dragged into all of this…"
Pan stared out the window, at the now level yard that was
being covered over with sod. These guys
were fast. And it seemed like they new
what they were doing. She looked back
at the two men talking, and pulled a strand of long dark hair back from her
face. It they needed her help that
badly, maybe she should help. After
all, everyone else in her family had gotten the chance to save the world
already, so why not her? And besides it
appealed to her nature. She loved a
good chase almost as much as a good fight.
"I'll do it."
Gohan shifted his gaze to her. He had always said that she was more stubborn than Vegeta and
Goku put together. And there was no way
to talk her out of anything once her mind was made up. Then the image of his adult daughter sobbing
herself to sleep in his arms a few hours before hit again, point blank. "Are you sure you want to go do this Panny?"
Pan smiled lightly at her very protective father and said in
a very matter-of-fact tone of voice "well, as long as these things remain sight
unseen, no one is safe. If I can seek
out these things, I can stop them before innocent people start dying. Besides, It's my turn to save the world."
Gohan stood up silently and thought for a few minutes, while
the other two watched his face skim through half a dozen emotions. Fear, pride, sadness… And then out of the blue, he flashed the Son
trademark let's go kick some ass smile.
"Not by yourself your not, young lady".
An amused smirk tugged at the corners of Ryan's mouth. "So I guess the great Saiyaman now has a new sidekick?"
Father and daughter just looked at each other. Something akin to understanding passed
between them. "Yup, I guess so. I hope mom doesn't mind me filling her spot."
She gestured to the newspaper article that was framed and
hanging (at an odd angle) above the couch.
She looked at the photo of her father in his red cape and green shirt,
holding his hands to the side like someone directing traffic. "We'll dad, just
don't expect me to learn those baka Ginyu-esque poses of yours". She looked again at the photo that had once
graced the cover of the Satin City Times.
"And I think I'll design my own costume."
I am eventually going to add onto this story, but I'm not
sure just how MIB this is gonna get if I do.
Owari for now.
