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Author's Notes: Well, this took a while. You know that thing I said in the first chapter about snail pacing? This is it in action. Then again, I suppose that comes with the territory when one writes chapters around nine to fifteen pages long.

Okay, I decided to stick the notes up here. If you wanna skip this, then just scroll down till you see the chapter title. Otherwise, this's where I start posting replies to some reviews I missed replying to the first time around:

To all those reviewers asking about the questionable state of Goku's strength: You all now know the answer, unfortunately. ^^;;

Kookie: I think about 90% of all existing DBZ doujinshi never gets featured online. The one I mentioned I borrowed from a friend who got it from a penpal in Japan. As for the promised sample of Nosuke's work, I managed to get my hands on one image that hadn't been sanctioned. The URL is at:

http://www002.upp.so-net.ne.jp/vc-crash/vc/treasure/img/n_fft1.jpg

Of course, she's got bigger and more colorful pieces of fan art, but ever since her website's become password-protected, there are precious few of her works that remain available to the public. Which is a shame, obviously; I can no longer find the URL for the Girl-Goku-with-an-unusually-relaxed-Vegeta-and-a-Piccolo-Snail (yes, you read right) pic she did.

DBZSerenity: The reason the development of the relationships between certain characters seems slow is because I don't believe people change their perspectives of other people overnight. Even if this is a fanfic, I wanted the cast to react they way they might have had in the anime, or in the original manga. But don't worry: if it's changes in character dynamics that you're looking forward to, expect a lot of 'em—albeit gradually—in future chapters.

Nene: Er...I think I rather suck at lemons. (insert groan here) Besides, who would be in it? :P Okay, just kidding. Nevertheless, some of the upcoming chapters may have some material that, I think, may warrant an R-rating. Hope that tides you over...for now. ;)

Chuquita: Well, Son's not a human girl—just a Saiyan one. ^_^ I guess that bit about her not looking like the average Saiyan female was a bit misleading. I based the female Goku's description on the male Goku's looks: even with the patented spiky Saiyan hair and the cast-iron build, his features don't fit with the average Saiyan (even his father, who happens to be a veritable clone of him, has a slightly different eye shape). With that in mind, it's not hard to imagine that a female Goku should bear little resemblance to the archetypical Saiyan female.

Okay, I better stop now. ^^ As always, thanks to everyone who reviewed. Keep 'em coming—I thrive on feedback. Did I mention I've gotten more than a few ideas from them?

The Kakarotte Factor
by Echelon

Chapter Four:
And Then There Were Three

"What the hell did you do that for?" thundered Piccolo. He stood over Goku's curled-up form, his dark eyes snapping fire. Gohan and Krillin crouched anxiously on the opposite sides of the ailing Saiyan, attempting to help her up. Shin and Kibito lingered at the fringes of the group, still bemused by what they had just witnessed.

Vegeta met the irate Namek's gaze, his visage set like cement. "I did exactly what Kakarrot asked for," he stated frostily. "She"—he grimaced at the new pronoun—"wanted to gauge her altered strength, and I obliged her."

"By nearly punching a hole through her?" fumed Krillin.

"Would you rather I explain it to her using charts and graphs and a pointer?" Vegeta shot back, totally unrepentant.

Shin watched as the downed Goku dragged the back of her hand over the ruby blots at the corner of her mouth. Her wrists were tiny, her fingers slender and candle-like. For a moment the Supreme Kai was struck by how incredibly delicate she looked, not at all like someone who regularly participated in earth-shaking, bare-knuckle brawls. It seemed downright immoral that someone should cause her harm, much less deliberately drive a blow into her stomach.

"Still," Krillin persisted hotly, "you shouldn't have caught her off-guard like that!"

"No," Goku managed. She waved off Krillin's and Gohan's proffered arms and hauled herself to her feet. "Vegeta didn't catch me off-guard. He warned me."

Gohan was not convinced. "But if that's true, Dad, then you should've been able to absorb that punch. He didn't even go Super-Saiyan!"

To his and others' amazement, Goku let out a hearty chuckle. "That's all right, Gohan. You can stop pretending that you didn't notice the change in my power level."

Her son stared at her, aghast. While it was true that he had picked up on the variation in his 'father's' ki, he had, perhaps too optimistically, attributed this to the gender switch. But with the truly staggering heights their power levels were reaching, it was no longer customary for the Saiyans to sustain levels that were two thousand and over—save for Vegeta, who maintained almost half his maximum level as if it were a badge of honor—when they weren't tussling with super-powered beings. Which basically meant that the only surefire way to measure their actual fighting strength was during mortal combat.

"You could still be adjusting to the change," Piccolo was reassuring his 'father'. "That could be the reason why your energy level's fluctuated."

"Fluctuated?" Vegeta snorted derisively. "That's a polite way of putting it. She would be fortunate to have a fraction of the strength she had as a male."

The others regarded him in varying degrees of disbelief. Goku digested this newest revelation in silence, absently running a hand over the still sore spot on her stomach.

"That's—that's impossible," Krillin gasped. "Goku's power level couldn't have possibly have slipped that much just because he's now a girl!"

"Oh? And I suppose you know some other Saiyan female on which to base that little theory of yours on?"

Krillin opened his mouth to retort, found that there was no legitimate comeback he could make, and shut it again with a snap.

"I thought not." Vegeta turned toward the rest of the similarly speechless assemblage. "Now, if you're all finished with your hysterical babbling, let me tell you something about Saiyan females. Back when we Saiyans still had a planet, the females were outnumbered by the males six to one. Do you know why? Because we prized strength above all else, and there was no room for the weak. In our culture, strength is the yardstick upon which we measure every individual's usefulness. Saiyan females had less to offer to our society because they were much weaker than the males. And third-class females were the weakest of the weak."

Goku continued to take this all in with unnerving calmness, which irked Vegeta somewhat. Here he was telling the fool that her awesome power had dwindled down to almost nothing, and she did not even seem to care. He wanted her to squirm; he wanted her to be upset; he wanted her to call him a liar in a fit of denial. But she did nothing of the sort.

Then again, the younger Saiyan rarely reacted to things the way the Saiyan prince would have preferred—it was just another one of the many things about Kakarrot that adversely affected Vegeta's blood pressure.

"Don't you get it, Kakarrot? You are a third-class female! You are the weakest of the weak! If this was someone's idea of getting you at a disadvantage, then he could not have picked a better way."

"Of course!"

The outburst, courtesy of the Supreme Kai, caused five sets of heads to veer simultaneously in his direction. Seeing the questioning looks the others were peppering him with, Shin went on hastily, "Goku, what you said earlier...you said Babidi broke into Hell and opened a portal from there to the Living World, right?"

Goku nodded. "That's right."

"And you're sure someone passed through it, right? Maybe it was someone you knew, maybe one of those people you named earlier—Frieza, Cell?"

"Well, they were seen close to where the portal was when it opened. There's a chance it could've been one of them, maybe more than one."

"I think there's more than a chance, Goku." Shin leveled his grim gaze with hers. "Whoever it was that wizard brought back from there knows more about you than either Kibito or me. And what he knew about you, he told Babidi."

"And whoever told Babidi about Goku also had considerable knowledge of Saiyan physiology," Piccolo realized.

"Precisely. That is why Babidi turned you female. Because someone told him that doing that would keep you from getting in their way." Shin began to pace back and forth, the cogs in his brain working overtime. "This's all beginning to make more sense now! That's why Babidi isn't making all the predictable moves. He's recruited someone from Hell who's been acting as an adviser, giving him all the information he needs on everyone his new minion knew of on planet Earth who could pose a threat to Babidi's plans—namely you, Goku. Babidi hasn't been interrupted in his quest to resurrect Majin Buu—he's just altered them. He's been one step ahead of us all along."

"But why this?" Kibito demanded, sweeping an arm toward the nearby spaceship and the numerous dead inside. "Why would Babidi allow his new recruit to dispose of the rest of his lackeys? Wouldn't he need them to collect energy for Majin Buu? And why did he not stay with his ship?"

Shin stopped his pacing, frowning thoughtfully as he considered the abandoned craft. "On those matters, Kibito, I'm afraid I am still in the dark. But I refuse to let Babidi play us for fools any longer." He shifted his attention back to the others. "Well, my friends, it appears our task has gotten a bit more complicated. Kibito and I are going to have to do some investigating if we are to find out exactly what Babidi's new strategy will be. There can be nothing more gained if we continue to stay here and wait for him to come back to his craft for whatever reason."

"But what if he does return to the ship?" asked Gohan.

"I will request the Kai in charge of this quadrant to post a sentry for this area. If Babidi chooses to show his face anywhere near his ship, then we will be there to greet him." He faced Goku, his voice infused with earnest regret. "Goku...I am afraid that until we know for certain who did this to you, you are going to have to stay female."

Goku acknowledged the fact of his statement with a nebulous gesture, while around her, her companions snuck each other portentous glances. Vegeta wore an expression of absolute chagrin.

Shin motioned to his assistant. "Come, Kibito. We are going to pay the Otherworld a visit." He inclined his head toward his newfound allies. "As for all of you, I want to thank you for choosing to accompany Kibito and I to confront Babidi. We truly appreciate your help, and regret that we dragged you all out here for nothing."

Goku graciously returned his subtle not-quite-bow. "Don't sweat it, Supreme Kai. We were glad to have helped as much as we could."

"Speak for yourself," Vegeta muttered, but the others took their cue from Goku and pretended he hadn't spoken.

"We had better be going. The sooner we solve this dilemma, the better." Shin took to the air, Kibito at his heels. "Until then, my friends, I ask that you be careful, and keep your eyes peeled for anything suspicious. Kibito and I shall be back as soon as we can."

Those on the ground watched their shrinking forms until they were swallowed up by the humid cerulean of the early afternoon sky.

It was Goku who finally broke the brooding stillness. "Well," she said, "that's it, I guess. All we can do for the time being is keep an eye out and wait."

"Yeah." Krillin scuffed the toe of his shoe into the dirt, carefully avoiding the darkened smudge of ground where Yamu had succumbed to his internal time bomb. "You think we oughta go back to the tournament?"

Vegeta scoffed sourly. "What for? I'm sure we've already been disqualified. Furthermore, it's probably over."

Krillin shot him a half-lidded look. "Oh, gee. I was thinking that maybe we could go back 'cause—oh, I dunno—that's where our families're waiting for us?"

Vegeta made an indistinct, noncommittal noise and turned away.

"You heard the Supreme Kai." Piccolo conducted a brief, final scrutiny of Babidi's buried craft. His vaunted Namekian hearing had not picked up anything inside, even when he'd attuned them to the bowels of the ravaged vessel. If there was, it had to be someone completely devoid of any sort of life force. "There is nothing more we can do here."

"Apparently." Vegeta floated off the ground, cursing copiously under his breath about third-class idiots, their inclination to worm out of long-overdue rematches, and his own accursed decision to allow said third-class idiot to worm himself—herself—out of said rematch.

Goku levitated herself up and squinted. The sun was still high in the sky, a haughty white-golden nimbus segregating itself from the low-lying ribbons of wispy clouds. It might have been two or three in the afternoon, which meant that the tournament was almost certainly over.

Gohan flew beside her. His thoughts had drifted toward Videl, which reminded him of Spopovich and his grisly demise, which then brought him back to the whole Babidi-and-Buu riddle. "You know, maybe we should've gone with them. With Shin and Kibito, I mean."

"Hey, yeah." As eager as Krillin was to return to his wife's cool smile and his daughter's warm embrace, he felt distantly guilty, as though it had been his fault that Babidi been a no-show. "Seven heads're better than two, I always say."

But Goku was shaking her head. "No...you wouldn't be able to go with them even if they wanted you to. They're going to the Otherworld. And the only way mortals get access to that dimension..."

She left the sentence dangling. Gohan dutifully finished it for her within the safety of his mind.

...is when they die.

His head wrenched toward his 'father', but Krillin, Piccolo, and Vegeta beat him to it. Their gazes were locked on the space above Goku's scalp, where the halo that denoted her Otherwordly status had once hovered.

If Goku was aware of their shock, she opted not to notice. Her mind was on other, more important things.

"I wonder," she said plaintively, and she didn't know whether she was addressing herself or the others. "How am I gonna explain this to Chi-Chi?"

Chi-Chi bawled piteously when her husband returned to her a woman.

Goku reached out toward her wife, a tentative attempt at a husbandly sort of comfort. "Aw, c'mon, Chi-Chi, don't be upset. It's just a temporary thing, I promise!"

But Chi-Chi was inconsolable. "Ohhh...is there someone up there who enjoys littering the pathways of my life with these kinds of obstacles?"

Gohan regarded his mother in abject sympathy. He was fairly sure that Dende didn't have a sadistic bone in his body, but he highly doubted that telling her that would be enough to stem her distress.

"First my husband dies and I'm left to raise our two children, and then he comes back for just one day, and then he skips out on this tournament—which, by the way, was our only chance at living out the rest of our lives in relative comfort—to follow this Extreme Karl..."

"Supreme Kai," Piccolo corrected, blanching at her slipshod mispronunciation of the name of one who was basically the overseer of the universe.

His interjection went unnoticed. "...to chase down some alien magician, and then he comes back undead and a woman!" Chi-Chi froze, the ludicrousness of the situation hitting her with all the force of a kick administered by a pint-size Super Saiyan. "Ohhhh!" she wailed. "I'm married to an undead woman!"

Several nosy passers-by swiveled their heads in their direction, drawn by the sound of scandal in the manner in which condors were drawn to the smell of carrion. Goku redoubled her efforts at soothing her wife.

"No, no, not undead—alive. I don't have to go back after twenty-four hours. I—I can go home with you and Gohan and Goten. We can all be together again, Chi-Chi!"

"R-really? You'll be with us, Goku?" Chi-Chi sniffled, her distraught state temporarily quelled by the unexpected revelation. Unfortunately for all, 'temporarily' was the key word: in her happiness, she grabbed Goku in a hug, which alerted her to the fact that her spouse's warm, solid pecs had been replaced with soft twin pressures that were larger than her own. The realization promptly triggered a fresh bout of tears. "But you're a woman!"

Goku cast a helpless look toward the rest of the crew, the less combat-inclined of which were still grappling with the concept of an all-powerful diabolical wizard named Babidi, a faceless universe-threatening monster named Buu, and a young woman named Son Goku.

Yamcha was the first of them to regain control of his oratory faculties. Alas, what came out from his mouth was neither useful nor original. "G-guh-guh-guh-Goku...you're—you're a girl."

"I think we've already established that," snarled Vegeta. It was preposterous how long these Earthlings took to wrap their minds around something as simple as Kakarrot changing sex. Surely he hadn't been that pathetic.

"But...but...Goku's a girl," insisted Yamcha. Somehow his entire vocabulary had dwindled down to five words.

"A girl," Bulma echoed hollowly; even her substantial IQ didn't render her immune to the same vocabulary-seeping ailment that befell Yamcha.

Roshi and Oolong remained mute; their vocabularies were, for the time being, nonexistent. Their naturally perverted brains, which had never once included Goku—nice, decent, decidedly male Goku—among their centerfold fantasies, were undergoing some heavy-duty re-wiring.

Eighteen also said nothing, though her own thoughts ran more in the vein of: I wonder if a gender change would've been able to put off Sixteen's tracking radar.

Little Goten stared up at the figure standing beside his mother. Less than an hour before, he and Trunks had been zooming in the direction of Babidi and the Buu monster, hoping to catch a glimpse of some real-life super-villains, but their grand adventure was brought to an end when they had run into their fathers. At least, that had been true in Trunks's case; Goten had spent the flight back being towed by a lady whom, just this morning, he had learned to call "Daddy." And therein lay his conundrum: the lady had assured him that she was the same Daddy he had met earlier, and even though she smelled the same and kind of acted the same, she couldn't really be Daddy because she looked and sounded more like Mommy or Gohan's funny girl friend Videl and what was he supposed to call Daddy now?

Even the hard-to-impress Trunks was gaping unabashedly at Goten's alleged 'father', his first-place trophy and the envelope with his winner's check dangling loosely in his hands.

"I have a daughter-in-law," the Ox King was murmuring to no one and everyone in particular. "Whaddaya know. A daughter and a daughter-in-law."

Krillin decided that he had had enough of this unnatural behavior. "Aw, loosen up, you guys, it's just temporary," he piped up, his voice overly loud and cheery. "Shin and Kibito said they would find out first who did it, and then she'll get changed back. Right, Goku?"

"That's right," Goku said with more certainty than she felt. "I'll just be like this for a couple of days, at the very least. And then, Dende willing, this'll all be resolved and everything'll be back to normal."

Piccolo shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. That had to be the most understated and optimistic summation of the situation he had heard yet. "Goku, Babidi and his new recruit are on the loose somewhere on Earth. Even the Supreme Kai can't locate them. We don't know why they've been biding their time, or even where and when they're going to strike when they do. In any case, I don't think everything is going to go as simply as you make it sound."

The aforementioned female met his gaze over her wife's head, and Piccolo remembered that, prone to understatement as Goku occasionally was, the Saiyan had yet to underestimate a crisis. "Of course it isn't," she said levelly. "But aside from what he might've done with me, Babidi and whoever he's with hasn't made any big moves so far. And until they do, all we can do is keep our guard up and wait."

Piccolo was not about to let the subject drop, not by a long shot, but he changed his mind as Goku's wife let out another wracking sob. He stepped aside, allowing the Saiyan to lead her wife past him, and privately resolved to himself that this would not be the end of the discussion.

Goku led Chi-Chi toward the group, who had watched the exchange unfold in staggered silence. It was Roshi who first spoke, his voice soaked with the sort of awe usually reserved for religious visions.

"Wouldja look at that!" he crowed, his eyes latching onto a section of Goku's form he had never bothered to be interested in before. "I could eat a whole platter off that che—"

The rest of his sentence was left mercifully unspoken as Chi-Chi roused herself out of her crying spell and dealt him a hard whack on the skull.

"You pervert!" she shrieked. "Stop ogling my husband!"

Bulma added her own two cents with a second just-as-painful whack for the venerable Turtle Hermit. "What she said! And with Goku, too, for shame!" And then, as an afterthought, she turned and bonked Oolong.

The pig squeaked. "Ouch! What was that for?"

"That's for thinking the same thing! And don't try to deny it—I can see the drool on your mouth!"

Puar gasped, then bonked Oolong as well. It was different from Bulma's blow, because she was essentially his size. Furthermore she enjoyed it, and that made it all the more degrading.

Nevertheless, Oolong frantically wiped away the saliva gathering at the corners of his mouth while Roshi nursed the two lumps on his head. Goku stared at her old mentor and old friend for a moment, looking deeply disturbed, then let her gaze wander over the others. The Ox King deigned to meet her eyes, and Yamcha gulped and shuffled backwards under the weight of her stare.

Goku let out a heavy sigh and decided that perhaps they needed a bit more time to come to terms with her new appearance. "So..." She pulled up her yet-again sagging collar. "Everyone ready to go?"

"Go where...?" Bulma shook her head to jump-start her cerebral functions. "Oh, right! Right. Home. I guess since the tournament's over and all..." She clapped her hands together suddenly, which served more to startle the others out of their collective daze than grab their attention. "O-kay! Everyone got their stuff together? Eighteen, Trunks, Goten—you have your prize money, right? What about your trophies—all right, I see them. Okay, then! Well...uh, right this way, everyone!"

The tournament grounds were choked with thongs of spectators, attendees, vendors, and other individuals engrossed in various states of cleaning up and departure, but heads turned nonetheless as the contingent made their way through. It might have been that they had been identified as the ones who had displayed superhuman abilities prior to their forfeit of the tournament. It also might have been that the passers-by vaguely recognized them from the coverage of the Cell Games. Then again, the reason might simply be the fact that they made quite a unique-looking band of individuals.

Goku was back in her usual spot at the center of the front ranks, escorting the faint-looking Chi-Chi by the arm and flanked on the other side by her two sons. Gohan was craning his neck over the mass of people, simultaneously keeping an eye out for his schoolmates and searching for Videl, and seemed faintly disappointed when he saw no sign of the latter. Bulma launched into overly animated chattering, Eighteen wore a look of sly self-satisfaction (which became more apparent when the group passed a ridiculously oversized poster of the still-reigning World Champion), Master Roshi mentally calculated his favorite pupil's new measurements, Puar and Oolong bickered over the principles of eyeing up friends, and Goten and Trunks debated with each other in furious whispers on what to call Goten's new mom-dad. Piccolo lagged behind them, fairly radiating exasperation.

Of all those in the assemblage, it was only Krillin who bothered to notice. He passed Marron's hand over to his wife's and slowed his pace until he was walking next to the Namek. "What's on your mind, Piccolo?" he queried, speaking in an appropriately low volume.

Piccolo barely spared the former monk a glance; his gaze was fixated on Goku. "I don't like this. He's too relaxed."

"She," Krillin corrected him before he could stop himself, and he ducked his head under the Namek's scowl. He hurried on with: "I know it might look like she isn't treating the whole thing seriously, but I think Goku knows exactly how things stand. She just doesn't want her family to realize how bad they might really be, you know?"

"I know that! That's always been Goku's way." Piccolo re-directed his scowl toward the aforementioned Saiyan, who was at present fending off a particularly pesky newspaper reporter. "Look at her! Her power level's nowhere near what it was before. If we were to be attacked at this very moment by Majin Buu or Babidi and whoever it was responsible for that massacre back at that ship, we are going to be at a considerable disadvantage."

Krillin contemplated the idea of taking on an amped-up Cell, Frieza, Cooler, King Cold, King Slug, and Dende knew who else, with the unknown but undeniably potent factors of Babidi and Buu tossed into the mix, and shuddered.

"So what d'you suggest we do?" he asked.

"We re-train Goku."

Krillin couldn't have been any more astounded had Piccolo announced that he and Dende were intending to elope. "Re-train...Goku?"

"If that is what it takes, then yes," the Namek rumbled. "We are going to do whatever it takes to bring her power levels back to what they were this morning, or close to them."

"Wait a minute! How weak do you think Goku is now, anyway?"

"Weak enough to be unable to transform into a Super Saiyan."

Krillin finally lost his futile struggle to keep his jaw hinged. "Wh-wha...are you sure?"

Piccolo favored him with his trademark disdain-from-on-high glare. It was almost identical to the one Vegeta would bestow indiscriminately on all those around him, except Piccolo's version had a truly deity-like quality to it, hailing from a considerably loftier height as it was. "We'll know that for certain," he said, "when we ask her tomorrow."

To this the former monk put up no more opposition.

Vegeta almost turned on them to rebuke them for their absurdity, but he restrained himself; there was no need for those two to know that he had been eavesdropping. So he settled instead for tightening his grip on the drawstrings of the bag he'd slung over his shoulder.

Fools, he thought, and felt equal levels of contempt and self-gratification. Of course Kakarrot can no longer become Super Saiyan. In the entire history of the Saiyan race, no female has ever ascended. It's biologically impossible.

His gaze inevitably landed on the newly minted female at the head of the pack, and something plucked at his spine. It was foreign and unwelcome and utterly repugnant, sensations he had not felt since the days he had served under Frieza.

In spite of himself, he wondered if that was an augury of things to come.

Not far from him, the Ox King was still murmuring to himself. "A daughter-in-law. Whaddaya know."

"We finally found that Pikkon fella," Mez said, taking off his glasses. He exhaled into the lenses, fogging them up, and polished them carefully on his shirt. "Deep inside the center of where the pandemonium was taking place. He was beat up pretty bad. Looked like he'd been absolutely fried, too—guy's covered in burn marks."

Shin scanned the ruined sector. This part of Hell had been reserved for the more infamous of its populace, the ones whose evil was so entwined with their souls that not even King Yema's cleansing machine could separate them. There were no rides, pink blood pools, or verdant scenery in this neighborhood, just a vast, gloomy, near-monochrome landscape that contained no indication of having a ground, ceiling, or even a horizon. Now even the featurelessness of the area had been disrupted; the place was littered with craters, dark telltale stains, and other testimonials of chaos stretching out as far as the eye could see.

Kibito had already seen his fill of the place; he stared instead at the two ogres' uniforms: informative white T-shirts emblazoned with big block lettering that spelled out the word HELL. "Can we see him?"

Goz hummed. "He's been out a while. Probably still is. Don't know why you'd want to see him." Mez dealt him a rebuking elbow to his side, and he added, "Your Supremeness."

But Kibito was not about to take no for an answer. "Pikkon may very well be the only one can tell us beyond a shadow of a doubt what happened here. If we are to get to the bottom of this, we are going to need his report."

Mez scratched pensively at the underside of his chin. "What about those others you sent from Heaven? The ones who came here to investigate before Pikkon?"

"We've already consulted with them. None of them were able to give us a definitive description of what they saw upon their arrival; they weren't even able to get close to the source of the commotion."

"Aw, well. That's too bad." Goz brightened. "Hey, you any good at running? Tell you what: I'll take you to this Pikkon fella if you beat me at running. I—yow!" He doubled over as Mez plucked his elbow out from where it had been wedged somewhere between his ribcage.

"Bite your tongue, Goz! This's the Supreme Kai and his assistant you're talking to! Of course he'd beat you in running!"

Shin had long abandoned any attempt at keeping track of the conversation; he was squinting into the gloom, which seemed to be rife with bobbing silhouettes—evacuees returning to their segment of Hell.

Goz tracked the Supreme Kai's gaze and correctly interpreted what was on the latter's mind. "Uh, Supreme Kai? There're other witnesses you could speak to..."

"What's wrong with asking them?" The silhouettes were closer now; Shin could see a line of eye whites about twenty meters or so away, all of them narrowed into unfriendly slivers.

Mez swallowed nervously. "You don't wanna talk to them, Supreme Kai. They're nasty ones, they are. Refused to go through the cleaning machine. Tried to take over Hell the moment they all got here."

Shin's ears perked up at that bit of information. "The Saiyans."

The two ogres regarded him in surprise before they remembered just whom it was they were talking to.

"Well, yeah," admitted Goz. "They ain't that strong—I mean, the only reason they still look like they got their bodies is 'cause they're too stubborn to accept that they ain't got any no more. Then again, that's mostly how it is in here, 'specially with the really troubled ones. But those Saiyans're vicious, no doubt there. There's nothing they love more than getting into brawls—don't matter if it's with the sector supervisors or with each other."

"The last supervisor they got they turned into their plaything," Mez confided. "Made a sport out of pummeling him whenever he turned his back, demolished his office, rioted every other week, generally made his life into a living...well, you know. We haven't had anyone in charge around this place since."

"That would be incorrect."

The ogres fairly jumped at the new voice. Kibito inched unobtrusively closer to the Supreme Kai, who calmly watched as the speaker emerged from the umbra.

It was then his turn to start: the face of the approaching figure, though wreathed in shadows, was one he had seen before—back in the Living World, not more than three hours before. Granted, this face had a more weathered attribute to it, as well as a thick mustache and beard, but it the same. The entrenched scowl, the dramatic widow's peak, and the hairstyle—a mass of spikes finger-licked into a single pointed apex (though there was an auburn tint mixed in with the black)—all belonged to the Saiyan he had met on Earth, the one the others had called Vegeta.

Before Shin could utter a word, the man went on. "Regardless of what the ogres and the demons here tell you, we do acknowledge authority in here. Namely, mine."

Kibito flickered his gaze guardedly over the Saiyan. He was garbed in traditional battle armor, complete with flaring shoulder pads and thick white gloves and boots. The only discrepancy was the near-floor length cape that cascaded from his back and the rounded badge-like object affixed to one side of his chest plate. "And who might you be?"

"I am King Vegeta." The stranger swept his cape out behind him, causing it to flutter impressively in the otherwise windless locale. "I rule here."

That seemed to serve as the go-signal for the shadows behind him to skulk out of the shade: the slew of eye whites suddenly grew faces and bodies. They were dressed in similar uniforms in assorted styles, though none had the king's cape and crest (for that was what the badge with the pattern was, Kibito deduced), and all possessed characteristics that belied their shared ethnicity: spiky hair painted in varying degrees and shades of black, naturally hostile pitchblende eyes, and superbly-toned physiques. Even the more corpulent ones had evident musculature underneath the fat.

Goz and Mez shuffled their feet, trying their best not to appear ill at ease at the approaching horde. Shin and Kibito involuntarily stiffened their postures; this was not a group around whom one let one's guard down.

"King Vegeta." Shin let his neck tilt back to meet the Saiyan leader's eyes. It was odd; he had thought the king would be significantly shorter somehow. "I've come here to ask a few questions."

The Saiyan king crossed his arms and let his left eyebrow climb, thereby demolishing any lingering doubts Shin or Kibito might have had about him being related to the Vegeta they had met on Earth. "I was wondering when you people were going to start sniffing around here."

"Yeah, what took you so long?" yelled one of the Saiyans. The voice seemed to have issued from the back, preventing Shin and Kibito from identifying whomever it was that was speaking.

The man standing next to the king was a bald-headed monolith with limbs the size of tree trunks. A sneer curled his mustachioed upper lip. "Isn't it obvious? They were scared of us."

At this, the line of narrowed eye whites sprouted a corresponding line of teeth bared in matching smirks, making for a rather unsettling scene in the weak light. A few of them chuckled contemptuously.

Goz and Mez were vastly offended at the implication, but Shin remained unfazed. "I apologize then, for our delay," he said equably. "I presume that you already know what I'm about to ask you, then."

"You want to know what happened here," the king intoned flatly.

"Actually...yes. I've been told that your subjects had something to do with it."

"I see. Well, as flattering as your insinuation is, I'm afraid, as usual, that the information those prejudiced overseers have given you is not entirely accurate. We were not the instigators. Rather, we were the targets."

"Targets?" repeated Kibito. For the first time, he became aware that the disheveled conditions of the Saiyans could not all be completely attributed to the collapse of their surroundings. The majority of them were mottled with bruises, scratches, and wounds, some of them still seeping blood, and cracks and perforations riddled their uniforms. Even the king bore bloodstains on his right side, rendered almost invisible underneath his dark crimson cloak.

Shin took this all in with utmost gravity. "Who were the people responsible for this, then, if not you?" Even as he asked it, his mind was already scrolling through the possibilities: Cell had been seen near the epicenter, as well as Frieza and King Slug, Cooler and King Cold...all of them hailing from the top stratums of Hell. They had to be, if they had come gunning for the Saiyans.

King Vegeta grinned. There was blood flecking the molars at the corners of his mouth. "People? No, my friend, it is simpler than that."

"Are you saying that this was caused by only one person?" boomed Kibito, unable to stifle the skepticism in his tone.

The grin evaporated from the king's face, and his expression grew shuttered. "If you are looking for your troublemaker, then I must disappoint you. He was the first."

"What are you talking about, the first—"

Shin's question died on his lips as a faint humming reached his ears. He let his head snap instinctively toward the sound.

It was coming from the massive form of the Saiyan standing beside the king. His entire body was bleeding light.

The multitude stirred restlessly, giving him a wide berth.

The Saiyan in question seemed to be genuinely nonplussed at what was happening to him. He stared down at his illuminated hands, his countenance almost stupidly disbelieving.

The glow intensified, lending a bluish white shade to the colorlessness of their surroundings and temporarily blinding those nearest to it, until it engulfed the Saiyan completely.

An eye-blink later, the light faded. There was no longer a body underneath it.

Goz was the first to react once his panic finally overrode his stupefaction. "H-hey! How did he—where—wh-where'd he go?"

Mez whirled on the stone-faced Saiyans, his fists clenched and rigid at his sides. "What'd you do with him?"

King Vegeta surveyed him apathetically. "I did nothing," he answered. There was something almost like smugness interwoven between his words. "He is the third."

"The third?" Goz was fairly pulling out what little hair he had left on his scalp. He, Mez, and the rest of Hell's overseers had barely dodged the bullet with the Babidi debacle earlier, and now this. "What is that supposta mean? Listen, buddy, this is Hell we are talking about. Ain't no one can just up and leave his sector!"

"He didn't leave the sector," Shin said.

His quiet statement easily pierced through the smattering of murmurs; it was certainly enough to snare the flustered ogres' attention. Even the Saiyans, who were struggling to hold on to their façade of general indifference regarding the current goings-on, turned their heads cautiously in his direction.

"Whaddaya mean?" demanded Mez. He was more composed than his companion. Which really wasn't saying much. "Where is he?"

"I'm not sure," replied Shin; his mind was roiling with the implications of what had just occurred. "But I know one thing. You won't find him anywhere in Hell." He stole a glimpse up at his companion, and saw confirmation in Kibito's stolid features: he had felt the dimensional rift as well.

"But that's impossible!" yelled Goz. He was fast crossing the line from moderately panicked to out-and-out hysterical. "No one can leave Hell! No one!" His wild eyes alighted on the Saiyan king, and he forgot to be intimidated. "Now look here, your Majesty—you better tell us where that guy went, or King Yema'll make the rest of your time here a living—well, worse than it already is! And we're talkin' eternity here, pal!"

A vein twitched on the king's ample forehead, and for a single nerve-wracking moment Mez was afraid that his friend had gone too far. But it was gone before the ogre could point it out, and a sinister smile played tug-of-war with the mouth lying underneath the regal mustache and beard.

"An eternity?" The king shook his head, the movement slow and profound. "On the contrary, my friend—I doubt that we will be here for much longer."

He was roused from his near-trance by something that might or might not have been a clap of thunder.

But the dusky sky outside was clear and bereft of storm clouds. The moonlight pooled, unobstructed, across the canyon floor and made art out of myriad rock formations. The wind had ceased to blow, and even the crickets had given up on their threnody. Any promise of motion within a fifty-mile radius seemed to have been put on hold.

"And then there were three," he muttered into the crisp night air.

For some minutes he meditated on his next move. Could he risk a retrieval, or was it more prudent to stay where he was and wait? What if the poor fool stumbled into them before he could even comprehend what had happened to him?

So absorbed was he in his ruminations that he almost imbedded the toe of his boot into the inert body sprawled on the ground.

He glowered down at it as if holding it responsible for his dilemma. Which it was, in a way.

"I will admit one thing," he informed the cadaver, his tone dripping with derision. "Your skills certainly outlast you."

The corpse, of course, did not reply, and he realized with a snort that it was beginning to smell. He toyed briefly with the idea of planting his boot on the overgrown flea's ridged round head and crushing it into a pulp. The idea lost its allure as let his gaze wander across the rock grotto, alighting on the figure of his son.

He trudged over to the other side and stood over the young man, grimly observing the shallow, regular breathing and the rare look of tranquility on the handsome features.

"You are going to have to wake up soon," he told him.

He gathered his robes to him and shuffled off. With his father's shadow in retreat, the moonlight spilled again over the young man's brow, illuminating the stylized 'M' that had been engraved across it.

End of Chapter Four

Next: Goku resigns herself to having ovaries for the time being, Bulma and Chi-Chi offer their own unique brands of assistance, "Kakarotte" goes one-on-one with Vegeta, Piccolo and company plan the re-training, and the ghosts start emerging from the woodwork.