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The Kakarotte Factor
by Echelon

Chapter One:
Enigma

"...so we allowed him to lie dormant. If our actions had caused him to be released, we would have been powerless to stop him."

Shin paused, allowing the weighty revelation sink into his companions' heads, and the four of them flew on in somber silence. For some moments the only sound was the whooshing of air currents and the rustling of their wind-whipped clothes.

The quiet dragged on interminably, and Krillin glanced around at the rest of the troop. Piccolo appeared more severe than usual and there was an additional tic to Vegeta's perpetually pissed-off countenance. No doubt what Shin had said had affected them somewhat, but it became clear that there was also something else on their minds, judging from the way Piccolo cast a surreptitious glimpse over his shoulder—a movement that was quickly mimicked by the Saiyan prince.

Krillin didn't have to follow their line-of-sight to know just who they were looking at.

Bringing up the rear of the group was Goku—not Goku! Goku doesn't look like that! Krillin's hyperventilating subconscious protested—seemingly oblivious to the furtive looks she—she!—was being pelted with. She was being rather subdued, a far cry from the Goku who took the lead during the direst of scenarios, who never failed to offer his needed input on upcoming conflicts, and didn't hesitate to ask the questions that needed to be asked.

Instead, this version of Goku had said very little throughout the whole trip, leaving the last task to Krillin. It was understandable, of course; the tall Saiyan was probably still stunned from what had happened to her, and hadn't had any time to fully digest its consequences. According to Shin, there was an unknown evil lurking at the end of Yamu's and Spopovich's trail, and there was no time for anyone to diddle around trying to figure out the 'who' and the 'why' behind the sudden gender switch. And Goku, being the kind of person he—she—was, saw no problem in putting the needs of the world before her own.

From thereon no further reference had been made to Goku's current unnatural condition throughout the entire flight. But it was painfully apparent that the subject wasn't far from everyone else's minds.

Including Shin's.

"Goku, do you have any idea who could've done this to you?" the Supreme Kai asked, shattering the relative quiet with his non sequitur.

Four pairs of eyes swung toward the Saiyan in question. Goku was blinking rapidly, as though surprised at the question. "Well...not really, no."

Piccolo snorted. "You mean aside from all those maniacs you've defeated over the years who've been waiting quite a while to get back at you?"

"Um...why would they get back at me by turning me into a woman?" Goku questioned.

Vegeta twitched, but kept his gaze firmly fixed ahead of him.

"Goku's got a point, though," ventured Krillin. "I mean, turning your worst male enemy into a girl's not exactly the ultimate revenge." Goku shot him a look, and Krillin added quickly, "Okay, that's pretty bad, but c'mon, there're worse things. Besides, who'd be capable of doing something like this?"

"Babidi could," Shin piped up abruptly. "This is the kind of thing he'd be able to do in his sleep."

"Wait a minute! Are you saying that what happened to me might be connected to Babidi?" Goku asked, genuinely astounded.

"Well, I wouldn't rule it out. It's certainly a possibility," replied the Supreme Kai, his tone taking on an even grimmer cadence. "Doesn't it seem too much of a coincidence that this occurred during this tournament just before you decided to assist Kibito and I?"

"That doesn't make any sense," scoffed Piccolo. "What reason could this wizard have for turning Goku female?" Inwardly, he agreed with Krillin: if this was supposed to be some kind of punishment, it seemed like a pretty ineffectual one. He couldn't see what the big deal was with having two opposing genders. Then again, perhaps that was just his own asexuality speaking.

"Maybe he wanted to rattle Goku, throw us off maybe?" suggested Krillin.

"But why me?" Goku argued. She had forgotten to be subdued, and was drifting closer to the front of the group. "How would Babidi even know who I was?"

"That's a good point," Shin allowed. "I don't recall Babidi ever having been anywhere near this quadrant of the universe for millennia. He couldn't have known of you."

"Then perhaps this had nothing to do with Kakarott in the first place," Vegeta spoke up, sounding tetchy. He didn't want to think about what it could mean if his rival's sex change did turn out to be someone's twisted idea of revenge. "Perhaps it had nothing to do with Babidi at all. Did any of you think of that?"

Shin looked pensive. "Perhaps you're right."

"Then who?" Krillin wanted to know.

"The dragonballs," Goku offered. "Do you think it's possible someone made a wish with the dragonballs?"

Piccolo shook his head. "If someone had summoned the Eternal Dragon, we all would've been able to tell."

Krillin glanced over at the more taciturn of the Saiyans. "Hey, Vegeta. You were the only one who saw Goku back at the tournament just before he, uh...turned into a girl. Did you see how it happened?"

Vegeta emitted an annoyed sound. He had been running the incident through his mind over and over ever since the lot of them had blasted off from the tournament, and he knew no more about it now than he did back then. "There was nothing to see! Kakarrot and I were having a conversation, then the fool fell on me, and when he stood back up, he was a she. That was it. No one else was nearby. No fireworks, no clap of thunder, no puff of smoke, nothing, nada, zilch."

"Nothing?" Krillin shifted his gaze toward the party in question. "So...can you tell us how it happened, Goku?"

"Actually, it's just as Vegeta said." Goku pulled up slightly to the left behind Shin, who was in the lead. "I was talking, then all of a sudden it was as if I couldn't balance myself on my own two feet. I didn't feel anything weird, like I was morphing or anything like that. I didn't even notice when my voice changed. It was just that subtle."

Krillin stared at the back of his best friend's head. He didn't think subtle was the word to describe the change.

"That's it, then," Piccolo murmured with some dissatisfaction. "Obviously, we're not going to figure this out right now. Perhaps we should revisit this mystery later."

"Agreed," Goku said. She looked down, noting that they were now passing over a canyon. "Let's concentrate first on Babidi and this Majin Buu, and then—"

She was interrupted by a familiar male voice calling from an approaching distance.

"Hey, Dad, we're here!"

Krillin twisted to look over his shoulder. "Look! It's Gohan!"

Goku broke into a wide grin. "It's about time you caught up!"

Behind them, Gohan's smile faltered. For a second he could've sworn that his father sounded like a...he pushed the errant thought away and maneuvered himself between his father's familiar orange-clad form and Piccolo's mantle-clad figure. Kibito flew up to Shin's right side, and the two exchanged nods.

"We've been waiting for you," Piccolo told the teenager sternly.

Gohan grinned at his former mentor's usual low-key brand of affection. "Thank you."

"Glad you're here," his father said—only it didn't sound like his father at all. In fact, it sounded more like Videl than his father...

Puzzled, Gohan took a long good look at the figure to his immediate right—and nearly fell out of the sky when he saw the familiar—and at the same time alien—face grinning at him.

"Duh-dah-d-d-d-d—"

"Will someone finish what the brat's saying before he forgets the word?" Vegeta yelled out irritably.

"Gohan." Piccolo grabbed at the flabbergasted teenager's sleeve as he began to wobble.

"Yo, Gohan, are you okay?" Krillin demanded.

But the young man barely heard them; he was too busy gawking at whoever that was with his father's clothes and his father's features. "Dad..." His voice had somehow acquired a pitch it hadn't been able to reach since pre-adolescence. "Dad, is that you?"

"Yeah." His father—dear Dende above, his father!—shrugged, her grin turning sheepish. "It's me."

Gohan ran the confirmation through his adroit mind, replayed it forwards and backwards and in all its possible permutations, but it was no use; it simply refused to process. "Oh, I get it. This's gotta be a dream. I'm still in the ring with Spopovich and Yamu and Kibito and I'm dreaming up all this..."

"Sorry, kid." Krillin threw him a tight smile. "You ain't dreaming. 'Sides, I don't think any one of us'd be able to dream up something this creative. Or this warped."

Gohan slowly turned back toward the stranger to his right, trying to ignore the sensation of several optic recognition sensors in his brain fizzling out in frustration as they as strove to make a connection between his father and the (very obviously female) individual who was presently flying at his side.

For all intents and purposes, Son Goku as a female was essentially the same in appearance as her male counterpart, save for the expected differences of body physiology and facial bone structure. This stranger's hair had the same distinctive arrangement of spikes, and she also had his father's large expressive eyes and his even-featured face, but they were all distinctly feminized. The orange gi, a comfortable fit on his tall, strapping father, sagged on her considerably smaller frame (except where they were stretched tautly over certain newly voluptuous areas—something Gohan queasily opted not to dwell on). Her armbands were loose, and her shoes looked like she'd pilfered them from her big brother.

"D-dad...what happened to you?"

"Well, son..." Goku adopted an exaggerated thinker's pose, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "I seem to have been turned into a woman."

"That's not funny, Dad." Gohan stared at his 'father's' arm: the now near-elbow-length sleeve of the orange gi had fallen back, exposing a slender, tapering limb that could not in any sane universe be connected to Son Goku. "I mean, why're you—who—did Spopovich and Yamu—"

"No, Gohan, I don't think those two were involved in this," Shin reassured him. "At least, not directly. We're all still in the dark as to how and why this came about."

"But..."

"Take it easy, kid. As soon as we resolve this Majin Buu business, we'll find out who did this to your dad," intoned Piccolo.

Gohan, still not convinced, glanced around earnestly at the others before finally zeroing in on Vegeta, who immediately barked, "Don't look at me, brat! What reason could I have for turning Kakarrot female?"

"What reason indeed," Piccolo muttered.

Vegeta shot him a 'would-you-care-to-repeat-that-so-I-can-kick-your-ass' glare, which the Namek returned coolly. Instinct told him that the Saiyan prince was being less than forthcoming regarding Goku's condition, though exactly what the prince was not being forthcoming about was something Piccolo could not put his finger on. Their glaring standoff was interrupted by Goku, who was addressing her firstborn.

"Listen, don't worry about it, son," she was saying. "I'm not."

Gohan observed his 'father' incredulously. "Uh...yeah. Okay. You're taking this really well, Dad."

Goku laughed, a sound that might have lightened the company's spirits had it not been so dulcet and lilting and downright...feminine. "It's just a temporary thing, Gohan. I can live with being a girl for a couple of hours."

Yeah, but can everyone else? Krillin almost quipped, but he quashed it before it became verbal. Still, judging from the expressions of most of the people around him, the former monk could tell that a similar thought was circulating through their heads.

All was quiet again until a minute later, when Shin announced, "Look! They're landing."

Sure enough, Spopovich's and Yamu's ki-trails ended at a grassy knoll in the midst of the valley, a spot nearly obscured by the surrounding rocky cliffs.

"But there's nothing out there!" Krillin objected. In all honesty, he wasn't even sure what he had been expecting of their destination, but he hadn't considered that the big, bad Majin Buu would be hiding out in a place so...ordinary.

Kibito seemed perplexed. "That is odd. We have searched this entire area before."

They all dropped down behind a huge outcrop of rock overlooking the dell. It was close enough for them to observe the goings-on below, and far enough for them to move about and converse among themselves without being spotted from the ground.

"Everyone, suppress your energy," Shin instructed—rather unnecessarily, Gohan thought; the tactic had become reflex for the Earth team after years of battling ki-sensitive super-powered beings. "We don't want them to know we're here. Not just yet."

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the valley floor wasn't deserted—far from it. In the midst of the green was a colossal circle of upturned earth, and in the midst of that, a dome-like structure the color of bone.

Piccolo, having the keenest eyesight of the lot, was the first to spot something amiss with the tableau before them. "Are you sure Yamu and Spopovich're supposed to be meeting this Babidi person here?"

"Yes. That structure you see over there's the top part of his spaceship. No wonder we couldn't find it when we were flying over! He must've buried the whole thing here!" Shin regarded him curiously. "Why do you ask?"

The Namek nodded placidly toward the clearing. "Because their welcoming party seems to be quite...dead."

"What?" Shin craned his neck forward, and the others swiftly followed his lead.

There, in front of the structure's presumed entrance, stood Yamu and Spopovich. Hanging from the smaller man's slack grip was the lamp-like instrument they had used to siphon Gohan's Super Saiyan energy. They were peering at something on the ground that was partially blocked from the group's view by their grotesquely muscled legs.

"Is that...a person?" gasped Krillin.

As though on cue, the two thugs stepped back, verifying Krillin's observation: it was a person, though a decidedly odd-looking person at that. He was lying motionless on his stomach, his head twisted to one side. His skull was grossly elongated at the back, and he wore some sort of bone-like armor with spikes jutting out from his backside. Dark-hued blood streaked the violet skin of his noseless face and dripped from between his thick lips, validating Piccolo's earlier remark.

"That's...one of Babidi's minions," Kibito answered, sounding acutely astonished. "The recruit he got from planet Voon."

"Pui Pui," Shin supplied for him, sounding equally dumbfounded. "One of the most powerful fighters in the Eastern Galaxy."

Vegeta harrumphed. "Sure doesn't look like it right now, does he?"

They continued to watch as Spopovich and Yamu disappeared into the ship's entrance, only to exit a few minutes later, looking almost as confused as their onlookers.

"But I don't understand!" Shin gripped at the rock in front of him. "Babidi should have been waiting for them here at his spaceship, but there seems to be no one there save for the corpse of one of his strongest recruits! What could have happened?"

"I say we go down there and find out!" growled Vegeta. He didn't like having to hide in such close quarters with a gender-bent Kakarrot, and he was getting tired of the whole cloak-and-dagger routine. Not that he didn't see the merits of covertly evaluating an adversary before mounting an attack, but the only ones he could sense down there were Yamu and Spopovich, who, despite their Babidi-enhanced strength, hardly ranked worthy of his notice.

Shin spun toward him. "Vegeta, we can't! This could be a trap!"

"Babidi could just be keeping out of sight," Kibito joined in.

Vegeta raised a disdainful eyebrow. "If he is down there, how come his own henchmen don't even seem to know where he is?"

"I don't sense anyone else down there aside from those two," Gohan volunteered. "Can you, Piccolo?"

"No."

"Me, neither," Krillin seconded.

Goku frowned down at the edifice, a tiny crease adorning the skin between her brows. Down below, Spopovich and Yamu were now wandering the site, presumably searching for their boss—or any other signs of life around the ship.

"Hold on," Kibito warned. "Babidi's ship isn't any ordinary spacecraft. He could have modified it with special materials that could hide an individual's ki signature so that it can't be sensed from someone on the outside."

"If that's true, then we should be able to get in the first strike, won't we?" shot back Vegeta, just before he vacated his hiding place and made a beeline for the clearing.

"Vegeta, wait—!" Shin reached out a deterring arm toward the over-eager Saiyan, but it was fruitless; Vegeta was already halfway to the site.

"Oh, well." Goku rose into the air and gave the Supreme Kai an apologetic smile. "We were gonna go down there sooner or later, right? Might as well be sooner."

And with that, she rocketed down after Vegeta.

"Dad!" Gohan went next, close at his 'father's' heels.

Piccolo glanced around at the remnants of the group, then offered them a diffident shrug and went after the Saiyans.

Krillin cracked his knuckles. "Aw, what the hell," he sighed, and followed suit.

Kibito and Shin exchanged resigned looks, an action that belied their anxiousness, and swiftly moved to catch up with their impetuous new allies.

End of Chapter One

Closing Notes: Er, okay, so that was an unnecessarily long wait for a rather short chapter. The original Chapter One was much longer than this—fourteen pages and counting—so I cut it in two. Thus the first half's now Chapter One, and the second half becomes Chapter Two (which should be up by next week). I'm starting to see the merits of short chapters...

Oh, and before I forget, thanks to S. Kyle for letting me borrow the 'Kakarotte' name from one of his doujinshis. I really appreciate it! Oh, and if anyone's got a suggestion, comment, or whatever, could you, um, like, gimme a review? Feedback makes the chapters come faster, y'know! =)