Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball Z.

Response to Reviews:

To Lord-RawnBlade:
Glad you liked it, you got the first review, hope the bomb didn't explode at an inconvenient time. ;)

To Jer:
Gohan is pretty different than he is in the series and I am putting rather a lot of pressure on him, even for a Saiyan. But we don't even get to the full extend of it yet in this chapter.

To Ice Angel:
For someone who didn't know anything else to say other than you were hooked you managed a reasonable amount. In all honesty this fic was sort of designed to hook you, by keeping the audience in the dark about a lot of things, you don't even find out what Z-squad actually does until the end of this chapter.
I hope I'm doing a good job on the OCs they often don't work for me either because their either insignificant flat characters or their Mary Sues/Gary Stues, very good and powerful characters based on the author, not all of them are bad but I've seen a lot that were in the various fanfics I've read. I'm trying to stay clear of that and keep all of my OCs well written. As for where the next chapter is, here, now you can go wait for number three.
I agree with you on Gohan, he's better when he's like this, more like his younger self also I think. Too many fanfics, at least for my tastes, have a weak Gohan who cowers in a corner as soon as Videl so much as glares at him, I try to keep the two of them on a more even footing where it comes to strength of character.
Anyway I'll end this now and let you read the real story.

To Godrin:
Glad you like it, thanks for the review, hope you enjoy this chapter as well.

To Loki Drauga:
Glad you like it. I don't think I can update more often though, chapter 1 was over six thousand words, and this one is just a shade under 5000, not counting the responses to reviews. It takes a while to write that much, this one in fact is coming out unusually fast. Hope you'll enjoy it non-the-less.

Dawn Of The Third Era

Chapter Two: Stories

Videl had arrived at school early this Monday morning and was now staring at the classroom door from her seat. There were three faces she was waiting to see, but one more so than the others. To the best of her knowledge nobody had seen Gohan for the past nine days, and the seat on her left had been depressingly empty for the five schooldays he'd been gone.
She knew there was no real use in what she was doing, coming early to sit here like this. Gohan was never late, but he was also never early, he was just on time, usually arriving about two or three minutes before the bell would sound. But still she at least felt like she was doing something when she was here.
As she'd expected Twister and Thaw showed up around the same time, people were so predictable, those two always arrived about five minutes before the lessons started. The three of them exchanged greetings and then resumed the observation of the doorway in triplicate.
All three of them felt strangely surprised when Gohan appeared. They'd been expecting him to show up everyday for the last week, and yet now that he did show it had become unexpected. Even within the space of a week the unfulfilled wait had become the expected pattern for the start of the day.
"Where were you last week?" Videl asked as he slid into his seat, not bothering with any formalities.

"Officially I was sick." Gohan replied.
"Officially?" Videl questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"Sometimes you have to tell people you don't want to tell the truth something." He replied.
"Okay, but then where were you really?"
"I'm afraid this is neither the time nor the place for me to answer that question." Gohan said softly. "For one its answer is only for you three to know and for another thing it's entirely to long to fit inside two minutes, because that answer also means I have to explain why I was there and that, believe it or not, will include almost my entire life's story."
Videl just nodded, if it was a long story this certainly wasn't the time for it, and his privacy was important, after all she too had her little secrets.

The day passed quickly and soon it was time for PE, the last class today because mister Phillips, the history teacher, was sick and no substitute had been found.
Gohan, Thaw and Twister were just about to walk out of the locker room next to each other when Gohan suddenly stopped and jerked upright. Twister was about to ask why when his body relaxed again and a smile touched his lips.
'I wonder why they're here.' He thought, while preparing himself for what was about to happen.
Sure enough a scream of "Nii-chan" erupted the instant he stepped out into the hallway. Immediately followed by a "Hi Gohan" as Goten and Trunks saw him.
He couldn't help but smile a little wider as the chibis came running towards him.
"Hey squirts, what are you doing here?"
"Well mom is kind of mad at us..." Goten started.
"And my mom." Trunks added.
"So we thought we'd wait here for a while." Goten finished.
"What did you guys do this time?" Gohan asked, knowing their talent for getting into trouble.
"We were sparring in the gravity room with my dad..." Trunks started.
"and it blew up." Goten finished.
For a moment Gohan was thankful that nobody was within human hearing range, he'd have a lot of explaining to do if anyone had overheard the terms 'gravity room' and 'blew up' coming from two chibis.
"Well I'll have to ask the coach, but maybe you can stay here for PE, that's the last thing I have anyway."
"Thank you nii-chan."
"Don't worry about it squirt. A couple of hours should give mom and Bulma a chance to settle down a little."
"Thanks Gohan." Trunks added.
"Don't mention it." Gohan said, as Twister and Thaw walked up with Videl, who they'd gone to get when the chibis showed up.
"Now." Gohan said. "Going up." He held out his hands on either side and Goten and Trunks each grabbed hold of one. In a routine gesture Gohan raised his arms lifting up both chibis and then turned and lowered again slightly. Depositing a chibi on each shoulder after they'd swung from his hands for a while.

"Hey Gohan." Videl said just as his hands were released again. "Who are the chibis?"
"Oh, this is my little brother Goten." Gohan stated, pointing to his right shoulder where he'd deposited the black-haired boy. "And this," he continued, "is his best friend Trunks Brief."
"Brief, as in Bulma Brief?" Twister asked in shock.
"She's my mom." Trunks replied from his seat on Gohan's shoulder.
Gohan couldn't help but smirk as his three friends almost fainted in surprise.
'I guess I can't blame them for being surprised.' He thought. 'After all very few people can actually claim to really know Bulma, too many people just want to get to know her for her wealth. And the Vegeta factor doesn't exactly help to expand her circle of friends either, but then we've always been a rather small group.'
"You know Bulma Brief?" Videl asked, turning to Gohan.
"Have since I was about five." Gohan answered, with a slight hint of a 'what's the big deal' feeling in spite of his knowledge of Bulma's fame. "She's a friend of the family."
"Wow!" Videl exclaimed. "She's even richer than my dad."
To her surprise Gohan just shrugged, making the chibis, who were actually shrugging as well themselves, bounce a little on his shoulders.
"I'd better go, I'll have to talk to the coach before the lesson starts." Gohan said, turning and continuing on his way.


"Coach, can I have a minute?" Gohan asked.
"Sure what is it Gohan." The coach turned around and promptly blinked when he saw Gohan with Goten and Trunks still on his shoulders. "What's with the chibis?"
"Oh, this is my little brother, Goten and this is his friend Trunks." Gohan said, raising his shoulders in turn to lightly bounce the chibis by way of indication. "They're here as refugees."
"Refugees?" The coach questioned.
"Yeah, their moms are kind of angry at them right now, and I was wondering if we could grant them temporary asylum here for the next couple of hours, then I can take them home afterwards and their moms will have had a chance to calm down a bit."
"Okay, they can stay if they behave themselves."
"They will, they're usually pretty well behaved, they just anger their moms sometimes, but at their age, who can blame them." Gohan said.
"Like I said, they can stay if they behave."
"Thanks, and I'll see you in couple of minutes when class starts."
// A/N Gohan is right, I'm not turning Trunks and Goten into unholy terrors in this fic. Also Goten isn't really stupid, a little too innocent perhaps, like Goku, but not completely clueless.

Just before entering the gym where the rest of the students were Gohan paused to talk to Goten and Trunks. He didn't want to raise to many eyebrows before his talk with his three friends later, at least not by too much. After all trying to explain something to people who'd already formed a different theory themselves was difficult and poor information was more dangerous than complete information, it lead to too many assumptions and theories.

"You guys." He whispered. "When we go in there I want you to drop your Ki to this level," he lowered his own Ki a great deal though it was still well above any of his classmates', "and be careful, most of these humans are pretty fragile."
'Fragile.' He thought to himself. 'I'm making my classmates sound like their made of glass, but by our standards they might as well be and I don't want to use the word weak, weakness is a state of mind, nothing more. Even the powerless can be strong.'
He was vaguely aware that both kids had agreed as he was thinking and had now indeed lowered their Ki, so he opened the door and stepped in.
"Oh," he quickly whispered, "before I forget, no flying or Ki-blasts."
He could sense the two of them nodding and smiled in relief as they joined the rest of the group.


As Gohan had half expected and even feared a little the two chibis immediately drew everyone's attention to him.
"Going down guys." He said, raising his hands again so they could grab hold and repeating the process he'd used to put them up there in reverse.
"What are we going to do here nii-chan?" Goten asked.
"Well this is PE Goten, and right now we're doing martial arts, so the first hour we'll spar and after that a tournament."
"Cool, can we be in the tournament?" Trunks asked.
"I'm not sure, but you can certainly spar with me. We'll have a two on one sparring match okay?"
"Yay!" The chibis shouted in chorus.
They didn't get to spar with Gohan as much as they'd like. He tried to spar with them as much as he could, but with school, his own training and Z-squad all taking up time it wasn't nearly as much as they'd like.
"Okay, let me go talk to a couple of people for a few moments and then we can get started." Gohan told them, before walking over to his three friends with the two chibis in his wake.
"Hey Gohan." Twister greeted his friend as he walked up. "I take it they're allowed to stay."
"Yeah, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. If you don't mind I'll skip our usual spar, I promised Goten and Trunks I'd go two on one with them."
"No, I don't mind. How good are those two anyway?"
"Good, they've been training since they could walk. I think you'll be surprised."
"Come on." Trunks said, tugging on Gohan's hand. "Let's just show him."
"You're on Trunks." Gohan replied smiling, heading over to the marked out ring. "Tenkaichi rules, so ring out or knock out wins. You guys are fighting as a team, if I get one of you out he stays out but the other keeps fighting."
The chibis both nodded and Gohan took position in the centre of the ring as they positioned themselves in two of the corners opposite each other.
"Twister," Gohan called to his friend, "can you give us a countdown to start?"
"Sure Gohan." Twister replied. "5... 4... 3... 2... 1... and Go."
Videl, Twister and Thaw were watching as the fight started and felt their jaws drop.

Gohan jumped backwards as the kids rushed towards him. He knew he couldn't make any mistakes, with the Ki limit the chibis had a slight advantage in that department, as there were two of them, but he could make up for it with physical strength and experience.
The class watched on in amazement as Goten and Trunks attacked. Gohan's initial backward dodge bought him some time but soon he was blocking various incoming punches and kicks.

The strange part was that not even Videl or Twister could usually get this many attacks in when fighting Gohan. And while he still seemed to be able to block against both kids, some people were starting to wonder if Videl or Twister would be able to handle one of these chibis.
The spar went on, virtually level for about fifteen minutes before Gohan managed to get the upper hand. He'd been right when he'd expected a challenge and had fought flawlessly for a quarter of an hour but so had Goten and Trunks, which had left them almost exactly equal. But now they were both starting to show signs of tiring, not so much physically as mentally. Gohan couldn't blame them, he was starting to feel the strain of concentrating on every little detail himself. Not too mention the strain caused by the use of original solutions they always had to think up in mid-battle, such as Gohan standing on one hand and using the other to block Trunks while he used both his legs as pincers to grab Goten and throw him a little.
Gohan however was more or less used to this, his spars with Vegeta could last for several hours and real battles often lasted longer. Though in most battles he could fight at his full power and had a decisive advantage that way.
Now he had good use for that greater mental stamina as both chibis started making small mistakes every now and then, not quite keeping up their guard or attacking in ways that had no hope of success at all.
With a series of kicks and punches Gohan managed to create an opening that allowed him to push Trunks out of the ring. Leaving only his little brother. Goten however was clearly intend on fighting to the bitter end and used a momentary lapse in Gohan's guard that occurred as he pushed Trunks out to his advantage, kicking Gohan hard in the stomach.
Gohan doubled over slightly in pain. With his Ki this low he couldn't use it for his protection and his physical strength, while sufficient to make even Videl and Twister's blows feel like mere pinpricks, wasn't enough to protect him from Goten at this even level.
Gohan reacted on instinct, using the opening Goten's attack had left to punch his brother, slightly harder than he would have liked, and then pushing him out of the ring as well.
There was some applause before the group that had gathered to watch dispersed and Gohan walked over to the two chibis who were still panting and attempting to catch their breath.
He too had to put a little effort into catching his breath and then rubbed his side, which still stung a little from Goten's attack.
Goten looked over to his big brother with concern.
"Are you okay nii-chan?" He asked quietly. "I'm sorry if I hurt you."
"I'm fine Goten." Gohan said, seeing his brother was worried. "It stings a little right now, but I doubt there'll be a bruise. Don't worry about it, I've been hurt a hundred times worse and I've always come out fine."
"Are you sure nii-chan?" Goten insisted.
Gohan smiled and lifted his little brother, seating him on one arm. "I'm fine squirt. I hope I didn't hit you too hard though."
"I'm fine nii-chan, it just stung a little at first, but I don't even feel it anymore." Goten said, pressing against his brother in a quick hug.
"It's just the same for me Goten, it just stung a little."
Goten nodded and Gohan put him back down, smiling at his little brother's back as Goten ran off to join Trunks.

The rest of PE was rather uneventful. Goten and Trunks didn't participate in the tournament so they had to make do with cheering for Gohan from the sidelines, urging him on even though they knew he could easily win.
After the lesson was over Gohan took the two kids home, telling his three friends to wait for him near school so they could talk as soon as he got back.

When Gohan returned about thirty minutes after leaving to drop off Goten and Trunks the others were waiting for him in front of the school building.
"Hey guys." He greeted.
"Hi Gohan." Twister responded on behalf of the group.
"Let's get going, fortunately this place is on the edge of town so we can be in the forest in a couple of minutes, there's a clearing where we can talk in private not far from here."
"But why all this secrecy Gohan?" Videl asked.
"Videl, what I'm about to tell you three will be my life's story and more, my most intimate secrets as well as several secrets that aren't fully my own. All in all most of what you're about to hear is known to only a handful of people, in some cases a few dozen. And most of it is kept from outsiders for good reason."
"You make it sound like you have some kind of big secret." Thaw said.
"You have no idea how big, but then I suppose we all have our secrets."
"What do you mean?" Videl asked.
"What I said, we all have our secrets, in my case it's what you've been guessing at and what I'm about to tell you."
Videl nodded, it made sense.
When they'd arrived at the clearing Gohan sat down in the grass and the other three sat down as well, facing him as they sat beside each other opposite him.
Videl took the opportunity to study Gohan as he sat down, apparently trying to gather his thoughts before speaking.
'There's something strange about him.' She thought. 'I can't quite put my finger on it but he looks... I don't know, tired and almost old in a strange way.'
She watched as Gohan ran both hands down his face and then let out a sigh.
"Let's get started." He said quietly, sounding tired. "I suppose it's time you knew everything. But before I could tell you anything about my life's story there are things you should know before hand. Most importantly that Ki is not a trick, but very real indeed."
"Ki?" Videl questioned.
"Energy, life force." Gohan explained. "I've heard what your dad had to say about it over the years and he's sadly mistaken, so sadly that I doubt he believes himself. It's not light shows and tricks, it's not using wires to fly it's a simple matter of energy, concentration and control." To illustrate his point he hovered up until he was about a foot of the ground and did a short Ki-flare around his body, but that only lasted for a few seconds.
"How did you do that?" Videl asked.
"It's just using Ki, to me, flying is as natural as walking for longer distances, I've been doing it since I was six anyway."
"But," Videl said slowly as he brain processed this new information, "if that isn't a trick how did my dad beat Cell?"
Gohan sighed, he'd feared she might ask that but he'd accepted that risk when he'd started down this path.
"He didn't." He answered still speaking softly. "No offence Videl but your dad couldn't even beat you, much less Cell."
"And how would you know?" Videl asked, a bit defensive even though she'd always had her doubts about her father's 'victory'.
"I was there." Gohan's voice actually dropped further almost to a whisper. "The camera's never saw me in my normal form, only while I was powered up, but I was there, I believe I'm still known to the world only as 'the delivery boy'. Not that I mind, I never wanted fame anyway."
"So if you were there, do you know who really killed Cell?"
"I did."
The other three almost fainted as Gohan said this, he looked so calm, and sounded so sincere from his position a foot above the ground that they found themselves quite easily believing him, but the statement still shook their worlds.
Finally Videl broke the silence. "You said something about powered up, does that have something to do with the delivery boy being blond, and if so why do you turn blond when 'powered up'?"
Gohan nodded. "I was blond back then, still am whenever I power up. But why it turns me blond I can only partly explain."
"So could you teach me, uhm, us, to do that?" Videl said, referring to Twister and herself.
Gohan shook his head. "No, you couldn't learn how to do that, at this point in time there are only 4 people alive that can do it, and no others that could learn, you see the ability is genetic and doesn't exist in the Human race."
"Are you telling me you're not Human!?" Videl yelled.
"In a way, I'm only half Human, my mom's Human, my dad was Saiyan."
"What's a Saiyan?"
"The Saiyans were a race of warriors from planet Vegeta. Were because the planet was destroyed, along with all Saiyans safe 4, one of them was my dad.
I'm afraid the Saiyans weren't very nice, to put it politely, they worked for the evil lord Frieza as part of his gang of planet pirates. Purging planets of all life and then selling them to the highest bidder. My dad was sent to earth on such a mission, as there was a potential buyer for the planet, but he forgot his mission and became one of Earth's greatest warriors. I'll spare you the details but from the time I was about five and half on we learned of his true origin. One of the three other remaining Saiyans came to Earth then to try to get my dad to join them but he was killed. That wasn't the end of our troubles however, the two others were on their way to earth to destroy it, or rather its people, leaving us just a year to get ready."
Gohan realised he was in danger of just rambling on but he didn't care he barely breathed and just went on.
"My dad had died along with the other Saiyan but we knew we could wish him back with the Dragon Balls, he chose to remain in other world for a year though so he could train there under King Kai, one of other world's greatest masters of the martial arts.
In the mean time we started to get ready on Earth, and Piccolo, then one of my dad's worst enemies took it upon himself to train me. He didn't particularly care about Earth, but wanted to rule it himself and couldn't do so if the Saiyans destroyed it.
For six months he just abandoned me in the wild, with nothing but my clothes and a sword, and only one order: 'Live', just live that was all I had to do. I succeeded and in the end escaped from him. I actually made it to just a few hundred feet from my house when I realised that if I didn't train we might not have a chance, so in sight of home I turned and ran to start training with Piccolo in earnest.
I was six and a half when the Saiyans came and the battle started. We'd made a small mistake on the timing of wishing back my dad so it would take a while for him to get to Earth, meaning that we had to hold of the Saiyans until then. But I'm afraid I didn't really play my part in the battle, if I had it might have gone a lot different."
He needed to breath again but continued before any of his friends could even start to form a sentence, his talk still hurried.
"The battle scared me and I couldn't move. In the end when I was attacked my sensei Piccolo sacrificed his life to save me. That's when I grew angry, I released all of my strength in a single attack but it wasn't enough, it was three times as strong as any of the others' attacks had been but it still wasn't enough. Just then, when things looked very grim indeed my dad made it back. He in the end managed to beat the two other Saiyans though his friend Krillin and I helped as well. And even Yajirobi helped some.
At the end of the battle my dad was severely wounded and Krillin and I were slightly hurt. But most importantly Piccolo was dead and so the Dragon Balls were gone."
He continued to explain about his adventures in the same fashion, talking quickly all through the trip to Namek, about Garlic Jr. about his dad's return and Frieza's attempted revenge, about Mirai Trunks and the warning from the future and about the androids and Cell finally stopping his non stop talking after he'd finished his account of the Cell-games.
There, after the Cell-games a long silence fell. Gohan was trying to deal with all the memories coming back while the others tried to deal with what they'd just heard.

It took almost fifteen minutes for Twister to recover enough to break the silence.
"Why didn't you ever say something?" He asked. "I mean after Hercule to credit for beating Cell."
"Believe it or not I didn't find out what happened until a few months after. My dad asked not to be wished back to life for the next ten years and while I knew he'd be back eventually I still felt it was my fault, if I'd finished Cell the first chance I had he wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself and there would have been no need to wish him back. I guess you could say I was depressed for a few weeks, and then we found out my mom was pregnant so I was spending most of my time helping her. All in all it was only after Goten was born that I took the time to sit down and piece together what had happened. And since then I've been too busy to do anything about it. Between trying to be both a big brother and surrogate father to Goten, trying to keep up my studies and my training and the formation of Z-squad I had very little time for the next year or so, and then when I planned to do something about it at the 24th Tenkaichi Budoukai as luck would have it I was needed elsewhere for Z-squad."
"One question," Videl said, "what is Z-squad?"
"The fighters on this world that can use Ki are referred to and refer to themselves as Z-fighters, Z-warriors or Z-senshi. And that is exactly what Z-squad is, that group of friends. More importantly we are the single strongest fighting unit in the galaxy and since our formation six years ago we've been trying to maintain some level of status quo and peace in the universe."
"Why?" Videl asked, feeling as if she'd lost the capacity to be surprised.
"Two reasons really, there are races out there that seek to dominate others and that might in time threaten Earth. And even today they threaten many innocent races, most of which don't have the power to defend themselves, we do have the power so we help them.
More importantly the second era of the universe is passing and the trial to start the third era is coming. The third era should span into eternity as an era of everlasting peace. But whether it will come about is still uncertain, and though I don't feel like explaining the entire Prophecy to you I can say that if the Lord of Darkness were to find many strong allies there is a chance that no force will be able to stop him and if that should happen and I quote:
'If the Lord of Darkness should find strong allies upon his return to the universe all will be lost. For such an alliance would ensure the downfall of the Lord of Light and the eventual fall of the universe, when it will be sucked into the never ending blackness of the third dimension.'
So you see we have good reason to fight those who seek to conquer for their own evil purposes."
"I see." Videl said. "But what is this prophecy, and to get back to your original story, what exactly are Dragon Balls?"
"To answer the first question, the prophecy is a text written at the beginning of the first Era of the universe that tells of the conditions for the start of the third Era, the Era of peace.
As for the Dragon Balls, that's a bit harder for me to explain, as I don't fully understand it myself. In short however any member of the Namek race has the power to create Dragon Balls. They first need seven stone balls and a Dragon model and then through some unique power they can fuse the two and an eternal Dragon is born. The eternal Dragon then has the power to grand many wishes, though its power is limited by that of its creator. But it can bring back the dead or grand immortality, at this point in time 2 sets of Dragon Balls exist, 1 set of seven here on Earth, and the other seven on New Namek, the world the Nameks settled on after Frieza had destroyed the original planet Namek."
The others nodded and Twister was about to speak when a streak of fire could be seen across the sky and an impact crater was formed with a loud 'boom'.

End Of Chapter Two