Videl and Trunks swooped down in front of a simple rural village home that looked little how either of them would've imagined the home of a grand inventor to look. The house had a white board fence and was put together from wooden boards dyed plain white. The structure had a primitive straw roof as well. The only thing about this house yelling exceptional was the fact that it was just about the only house in the entire exuberant art piece that was Penguin Village that looked even remotely normal.

"Wow! I still can't believe you two can just fly like that!" Akane scratched her head, looking up at Videl who still hovered in mid-air after placing the passenger down on the ground by the entryway to Norimaki Residence. "Are you sure you're not aliens or Androids or something weird like that?"

"I told you already, we're not Androids!" Trunks yelled back with audible irritation in his voice. This made Akane take a step back and Tsukutsun take a step forward, letting his girlfriend slip behind him while he placed himself in between the superhuman boy and his frightened girlfriend.

"Don't mind him," Videl shook her hand in dismissal. "It's just that the entire world was under the control of Puri & Co and its Artificial Human army. It's a sensitive subject to Trunks-kun because of how much work had to go into restoring peace."

"Huh? Androids taking over the world?" Tsukutsun scratched his head. "Sorry, I think we would have noticed something like that. I mean… Sure… Dr. Mashirito and his Caramel Men caused us some trouble in the past, but nowadays Arale and Obotchaman are the only Androids around. Then again, Arale is the mayor now and Obotchaman serves as her assistant, so many people in Penguin Village have no clue that either of them is an Android."

"Huh? You mean you've never had to fight Artificial Humans!?" Videl gasped in shock.

"No way, Arale's pretty tough, she'd have smacked their butts if one ever tried something funny here in Penguin Village…" Akane laughed out full of false courage. She certainly looked happy and safe enough.

"I guess it's possible that someone strong enough to slap the Androids around would have been here all this time," Trunks scratched his chin after planting his feet firmly on the ground. "After all, if this Arale and Obotchaman are both Androids, there'd have been no way for anyone to sense their Ki all the way here. It's possible that nobody ever met them that way."

"I think that this is merely the case of us appearing in a different dimension," Videl pointed out. "The Artificial Humans may not have known about this place or had any data about it."

"That's true!" Trunks smacked his open hand with his left. "Dr. Puri stole a lot of mom's data to put her plan together. Since mom never knew about this place, neither did Dr. Puri!"

"Oh, hey, you two. What's this whole thing going on about different dimensions? Has the Reality Machine gone haywire again?" a short and chubby man past his prime with black, messy hair and a fickle mustache appeared from the residence yard and opened the fence gate.

"Dr. Norimaki!" Tsukutsun greeted the scientist with a respectful bow. Videl and Trunks joined in out of courtesy while Akane just tipped her chin in a very rash and delinquent type of greeting.

"Yo, old perv," she croaked. "These two are pretty weird. They've met Aoi earlier and, apparently, they can fling cars around and bully Sourman. Apparently, both of them can fly too. They're here to ask you to check a gizmo of theirs or something…"

"Calling me an old perv is so mean, Akane-chan!" Norimaki shook his fist over his head. "You used to be a whole lot more polite before."

"You get what you deserve, don't cha, old perv? You've been married to teech Midori for ages, yet you still got grabby with me that one time…" Akane crossed her arms with a pouty sneer directed at the short inventor.

"I've told you I needed your measurements for the Reality Machine Type-2!" Senbei threw his hands up over his head. "It was a perfectly reasonable feel-up. Arale said she sometimes gets bored and lonely sitting in the administration building the whole day being mayor and that she'd like her old friend Akane to play with her sometimes! I told her you're busy starting your own stuntman company and all but I thought I could help her by creating a fake version of you with the Reality Machine… It wasn't pervy at all, I was being a responsible adult and a good older brother when you think about it."

"Older brother?" Trunks scratched his head. "Didn't you say that Arale was your friend or something? How can she be a sister of this old geezer's?"

Senbei twitched, nearly losing his balance out of the rudeness of the question. Akane laughed it up while Tsukutsun struggled to keep his composure. Videl just shifted her stare, clearly as confused about the relationship between this man and this Arale everyone spoke of just as much as Trunks was though she was glad not to have been the one to ask this out loud given the amount of attention it received.

"Oh, what's going on here?" a middle-aged tall, and attractive woman peeked from the other side of the door before noticing a handful of familiar faces and stepping out in the open. She was a curly-haired blonde with a fit and attractive build. The sight of this woman inside of the Norimaki Residence made Videl raise an eyebrow, given Akane's description of Senbei as being "pervy".

"Oh, hey, teech Midori!" Akane waved her hand in a smiling and enthusiastic greeting. Tsukutsun bowed respectfully to the matriarch of the Norimaki Residence.

"Akane-chan, what's going on here? Why are you talking outside, please do come in! Oh, my… Who are these two youngsters? Are they friends of yours, Senbei? You should invite the inside," Midori paced up to the gathered party with a warm smile while her long pink skirt ruffled in the chilly breeze. "Oh, my… What's with these clouds today? It's almost as if like a terrible storm is coming."

"They're not my friends!" Senbei lashed out with the body language of an immature brat. "These two are horrible alien invaders from another dimension and they've been nothing but rude to me all this time! For all we know, the dark clouds over our heads are because of these two. And, frankly, I don't think that Akane-chan deserves tea and cookies either. She's been rude to me too and now I'm just too hurt, and offended, and hurt…"

The brilliant scientist topped off his bratty speech by sticking out his tongue and a turning press to his wife's chest, acting as if he was crying his heart out while he was, in truth, just rubbing his face up to his heart's content while Midori was nuzzling his back in support with a slightly baffled look on her face.

"That's not true!" Akane barked back. "These two came here from a different dimension, I think… But they may need help to go back home. Besides, they've been saying some pretty important-sounding stuff about some Balls of the Dragon or something and they said that might be why the sky's all dark and scary right now!"

"Balls of the Dragon?" Senbei gasped, pulling his face out of the soft and cuddly comfort of his wife's chest. "No way, you couldn't by any chance mean the Dragon Balls?"

"Hah!" Trunks exclaimed in surprise. "That's right! How do you know about them!?"

"Well, a bunch of muscle heads called the Red Ribbon Army came a long time ago. Just like you, they came from another dimension and sought these Dragon Ball things. Arale and Obotchaman had to give them a good pounding all the way back where they came from!" Senbei clenched his fist before crossing his arms with a cocky look.

"Wow! The Red Ribbon Army!?" Videl gasped in surprise. "You're right, they're from our version of the Earth! I wonder how they could've ended up here…"

"Maybe a Dragon Ball ended up here at some point back in the day?" Trunks scratched his head. "Anyway, the Red Ribbon Army are a bunch of losers and my mom and her friends dealt with them a long time ago, so you're not impressing anyone, old geezer. Could you please look at our Dragon Radar?" he stuck his hand clasping the hi-tech radar to Senbei.

"No way!" Senbei stuck his tongue out at the preschooler. "Come and ask me again when you're feeling a little nicer and when you don't make ridiculous accusations about me being too old to be Arale's older brother!"

"But dear, you made Arale-chan in your laboratory. If anything, she's more like your daughter…" Midori cackled in slight discomfort, knowing that she'll cause a moderate amount of outrage in her husband but realizing that he was wrong and petty for lashing out at a preschooler and his teenage babysitter from another dimension.

"Hmm… Fine," Trunks pulled the radar back, trying to fiddle with it himself again. "I guess we should take it to your old man, Tsukutsun-san. Didn't you say he was an inventor too?"

"Tsuruten? It's true that he is a talented inventor but… Just between you guys and me… I'm way, way better than him!" Senbei leaned to Trunks and Videl. His foul mood vanished in a snap when he felt the need to brag about it to the two interdimensional visitors.

"Is that true?" Videl wondered.

"It is!" Senbei stomped his foot down. "Tsuruten even retired from being an inventor and moved back to China with his wife, just because I'm a way better inventor than him. Nowadays, he just tinkers for fun. We're not even rivals anymore, so give me that thing! If anyone in Penguin Village can fix it, that'll be me, the greatest inventor in the world–Senbei Norimaki!"

"The world? My mother is likely the greatest inventor in the universe…" Trunks squinted. "Are you sure you're up to it and you won't break it?"

"This is an outrage!" Senbei threw a fit. "I'm telling you, I'm the best there is and, from the sounds of it, it's already broken, so it can't possibly get any worse."

"I guess…" Trunks shrugged and handed the plain-looking scientist, dressed just in a simple T-shirt, shorts, and a cap, his Dragon Radar. "But don't take too long. If someone's collected the Dragon Balls and has summoned the Divine Dragon, we don't have much time at all."

"We'd be awfully grateful, Norimaki-san!" Videl bowed with a polite smile.

"Well… At least one of you guys has some manners," Senbei squinted at the two youngsters while strutting to his basement lab with the Dragon Radar in hand.

"Come in, you two!" Midori smiled and guided the two indoors with a motherly touch. "And you guys, will you be joining us?"

"Heck, yeah!" Akane pumped her fist. "Sounds like a real Penguin Village adventure, just like the old days!"


"I wonder about what Trunks-kun said," Videl wondered while sipping on some hot cocoa. "About the Dragon Balls and the Divine Dragon. These clouds may have been this way for a long time now. If someone truly called forth the Divine Dragon, wouldn't they just need to utter their wish for the Dragon Balls to work?"

"Who knows?" Trunks shrugged. "Didn't you hear the old timer talking about some "Cheena" place? Maybe this place has a bunch of different towns, villages, and cities with people talking different languages or something, and maybe the Divine Dragon can't understand them?"

"Sorry to burst your bubble, boy," Senbei rolled up the escalator, rolling down to his basement lab. "But there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this thing. It took me a little while to figure out how this thingamajig works, but, essentially, it's a tracker for a type of energy I've never encountered before. Since one element of the equation was missing, solving the formula of how this works was like a fancy algebra problem. I've concluded that everything just works. There's just nothing that seems to be wrong with it."

"Wait, what? Then why isn't it showing the Dragon Ball?" Trunks jumped up and hurried to the scientist, snagging the Dragon Radar away and pressing the button on the top of it. Just like earlier, no signal came in, no matter how much Trunks fiddled with the zoom function. Even when he zoomed out all the way to a planetary scale, the radar wasn't picking up any Dragon Ball signals.

A flash to the side of Senbei Norimaki and Trunks startled the two. It was a brilliant burst of light with a popping sound that made a short humanoid form just a bit taller than Trunks. As the flash faded out and the ethereal form of a human solidified, it became apparent that it belonged to a young teen around Videl's age with a tidy bowl cut for hair and a pristine school uniform.

"Greetings, father. I sense I am needed," the young man greeted his family and their guests. Midori shrieked out in joy and dashed to the young man, hugging him. Though it wasn't the excited mother who lifted her son in the air, it was in fact the son who elevated his mother without touching her with his hands. Videl's eyes expanded to the size of tractor lamps in confusion, as it seemed like this young man just lifted his mother off the ground and spun her around with his mind alone.

"Ah, Turbo. That's odd. This Dragon Radar do-hickey has got to be something important. You never interrupt your studies and visit us even when your father needs help with the Reality Machine Type-2…" Senbei stuffed his hands in his pockets. Turbo approached his father and tilted his cap off his head, only to place it down with his own hand while the left one rested in his pocket. The father and son shared a smile.

"Toriyama-san and I have decided that it'd be just about time to end this storyline. Without my involvement, that wouldn't be possible," Turbo turned to Trunks and Videl. "Besides, it is that Reality Machine Mark-2 that will earn you the World Invention Award one day, and when that day comes–you'll want to have accomplished it on your own. You're World Inventor material, dad. I just know it."

"You're so kind to me!" Senbei began rubbing his wet eyes with his hairy forearm, bawling his heart out. "You know as well as I do I would be fine with you doing all the hard work for me, with me just getting the reward!"

"Let me take a gander…" Turbo extended his hand to Trunks. Looking a bit befuddled by the appearance of this mysterious teen, Trunks handed the Dragon Radar to Turbo, but it just slipped off his hand. Trunks exclaimed in horror, afraid that he'd drop it and break it, but the Dragon Radar stayed suspended in the air. In a blink, Turbo disassembled it into pieces with his telekinetic powers and scanned them with his eyes. Another blink and they all went back together seamlessly. "Not bad. It'll take my father around a decade to catch up to an invention Dr. Bulma made during her summer vacation when she was sixteen…"

"Huh? Then you fixed it!?" Trunks gasped with awestricken eyes that shined like diamonds.

"Sorry, it's not that I can't fix it. It's that it can't be fixed. The problem isn't a malfunction of the radar. As my father correctly surmised–it's working just fine. The problem isn't that it's busted, it's that something… Or someone… Is jamming it," Turbo snapped his fingers.

"Jamming it? That doesn't make much sense. A jammer powerful enough to jam the Dragon Radar would need a tower to serve as a signal amplifier. It can't be in Penguin Village, because I distinctly remember it still working when we entered…" Trunks muttered to himself, playfully hopping on one leg like he was playing hopscotch while rolling the gadget around in his hands.

"That's Dr. Bulma's son for you. Even if you're not as focused as your mother, you've still got a brilliant analytic mind. You are, of course, correct. That means you need to look into what changed since the time you entered Penguin Village," Turbo pointed out.

"Ah!" Videl gasped and leaned through the open window, pointing at the sky. "Could it be… These dark clouds?"

"Ah, yes… The Destron Gas surge. I've been meaning to talk to you guys about that. It's an incredibly rare type of gas that's only found in one place in the entire universe - the Dark Planet. You should probably look into getting that fixed. I can cook up a solution for you because I'd rather the Earth didn't get destroyed," Turbo vanished in a flash. A light lit up in the basement where Senbei was working just a moment before. This was as clear an indication as any that the teen had taken up using his father's lab to make an appliance that can clean out the Destron Gas in the atmosphere.

"Destron Gas?" Videl blinked a couple of times, perplexed after pulling her head back in. Instinctively, she grabbed and pinched her nose. "Is it dangerous?"

"No. At least… I don't think it is…" Senbei scratched his chin. "I'm only vaguely familiar with the concept because Turbo-kun recommended me to look into it for my Reality Machine Type-2, which is what I'm calling the prototype, by the way. Mark-2 just makes me sound pretentious…"

"Dear…" Midori hugged her husband's sizeable arm and let him know he had strayed off the rational path of discourse.

"Right… Well… It's a type of gas that affects reality itself. It adapts to the ethereal. Feelings, thoughts, dreams, imagination, and the sort that makes it come to life. It's a sort of creation gas that reacts and interacts only with the ephemeral. The irony of its function compared to its name doesn't escape my notice though…" Senbei pointed out. A dynamic blast resonated through the entire Gengoro Island, erecting a vivid red pillar of energy out into the sky.

"What the heck!?" Trunks cried out, struggling to stay on both feet.

"How is someone supposed to be working under these conditions?" Turbo teleported back into the room with his hands inside his pockets. "Toriyama-san told me you two were characters from a horrible ripoff of his martial arts manga. This light show and explosions feel like your area of expertise. If you could keep the Destron Gas from destroying Penguin Village, I will come and assist you with the Destron Gan cleaner when I put it together."

"If it's some sort of Destron Gas monster, we can deal with it," Videl clenched her fist and nodded in excitement, just feeling glad to be useful in a home inhabited by geniuses. Being the son of one of the greatest scientific minds in the universe, Trunks somehow just fit right in despite being a preschooler.

"Right!" Trunks smirked and pulled his shorts up. The two burst with a crystal-clear white aura and flew through the open window with enough of a draft to slam the shutters closed behind them.

A musclebound giant of dark blue skin floated above the Penguin Village with a shriveled, vertical ellipse-shaped head and pointy ears. The demon's wide, white eyes left plenty of space for the tiny dot black pupils to move in. The massive titan of physical power in a demonic body laughed with pointy teeth topped off with sharp fangs. Veins littered the entire musculature of the Destron Gas incarnation of Garlic Jr. reborn in a reconstructed body and wreaking havoc over Penguin Village.

With the speedy flight of Trunks and Videl toward the monstrous shape full of vengeful thoughts, ambition, and scorn that the Destron Gas used to make a form out of, the two were bound to clash with the demon sooner rather than later.