Mailing List: http://www.geocities.com/echelon002/

Author's Notes: Er...I can't think of anything to announce right now (other than the fact that characters therein belong to the great and incomparable Akira Toriyama and Toei), so I'll just get to the reviews:

Hyberbole: Thanks for your reviews! ^_^ Glad you decided to give the story a chance. Thanks for the link to B-chan's male/female Goku fanart—I haven't seen that one yet. To answer your queries, yes, the Supreme Kai recognizes the connection between King Vegeta and the Vegeta he met on Earth. The resemblance is rather striking. =P

Cathowl: Good to know you're enjoying the story! Yeah, somehow I think Master Roshi and Oolong wouldn't really care even if that was their old student or friend that they were ogling; for some reason, I just could see them reacting that way. X_X

Chuquita: I just wanted to say thanks for submitting reviews for practically every chapter. Oh, and by the way, I checked out some of your stories (a rarity for me, since I get to spend only about five minutes a week on the Net), and I think they're just hysterical! I liked "I Do?" in particular; if you squint real hard at the anime and read into every potential double entendre (particularly during the Buu saga), you can almost see the beginnings of "Kakay"-like obsession on Vegeta's part. *lol* Keep it up!

Otakufan: I'm glad that you've stuck with the story so far and posted reviews on a regular basis. Thanks for the encouragement!

Christina G: Good eye—yup, it's Paragus and son. I loved writing their part, short as it was. Movie 8, where the two first show up, is one of my absolute favorite DBZ movies. Expect to see more of the Legendary and his dad...and a lot more "ghosts"...

Lady BlackDragonFire: Thanks for your kind words! As for the Goku/Vegeta question, well, it's rather difficult to have Goku undergo an alteration as drastic as this and not have Vegeta get dragged into the madness, right? ^_^ Although I already have a vague idea of how the tale might end (even wrote some potential snippets for it), I like your idea of an alternate version/ending. Hmm...

The Kakarotte Factor
by Echelon

Chapter Five:
Playing Woman

For the first time in years, Chi-Chi woke up that morning with a warm body beside her in bed.

Her first reaction was alarm: Oh, God! Someone snuck into bed with me while I was asleep!

She was groping for something suitably bulky with which to clout the intruder behind her when she felt the familiar stiff spike of hair tickle her bare shoulder.

Even through the cobwebs of sleep still clouding her mind, she felt a smile bloom on her early-morning-dry lips. Her throat closed with emotion; she had been a widow for far too long, going about her daily routine with all the passion of an automaton, then retiring at the end of the day to a cold bed. It might have been unbearable had it not been for Gohan and Goten, her dual pride and joy. There were those nights that stretched on like a ghostly epoch, nights when she was unsure whether she was awake or dreaming and when her sons were the only things that reminded her that she had once shared a life with the most wonderful man on Earth.

While she had understood the rationale behind his decision to remain up in Heaven, there had been times—particularly those first terrible months following his death—when she had resented him for it.

But all that didn't matter now; Goku was back now and he was with her, and that was all that mattered—

Behind her, Goku sighed, rolled over, and spooned up intimately against her back.

Chi-Chi's responding sigh of contentment died halfway out of her mouth.

Her husband's sigh wasn't masculine. There were two alien weights pressing against her shoulder blades. The arms wrapped her waist were slim and unmistakably feminine.

It was only then that the full events of the past twenty-four hours fast-forwarded through her brain like a patchy, drunkenly edited slide show.

Goku cuddled closer, her cool lips brushing the back of Chi-Chi's neck.

And with that, every last pretense at restfulness was effectively eradicated.

Why did they decide to hold the tournament on a Sunday, anyway?

Gohan splashed cold water onto his face and regarded his splintered reflection in the cracked mirror (his fault—he had accidentally broken it when he'd closed his medicine cabinet door too hard; it had been during his birthday in the days of Cell, back when he had been a juvenile Super Saiyan teeming with awkward, terrifying power). He looked like any teenager hailing from a high school habitat, like any young man standing reluctantly on the cusp of adulthood, fresh-faced and gawkily earnest. Certainly not like one who could catch machine gun bullets and lift tour buses with one hand.

Unfortunately, what with the happenings of the day before, people would know better.

The groan that had been threatening to escape from his throat for the past few minutes finally did. He conducted the rest of his early morning routine in a daze; his brain was otherwise preoccupied with the task of fabricating an explanation for the denizens of Orange Star High School.

Maybe I could say that Saiyaman stole my identity and pretended to be me to protect his own identity and I was really back at home chained to my desk studying! They'd buy that, right? I bet Sharpener would buy that. Oh, wait—didn't I wave at them when they started cheering my name? Crap—I don't believe I did that! Gohan, you dummy! Scratch that one, then. Hey, maybe I could say that I was under hypnosis and someone blackmailed me into fighting in the tournament and...

He ended the notion before it could be completed. That excuse had shades of Videl all over it.

Which brought him back to the fact that he hadn't seen her or talked to her since he'd bid her goodbye to follow Kibito. It bugged at him more than it should have.

Aw, man...Videl...I wonder how she handled learning about my little secret. Well, she seemed pretty understanding when I last saw her, but...gah, I don't know! She's had more time to think it all over and now she's probably realized that I am some kinda freak. Maybe that's why I didn't see her around after the tournament—maybe she was hiding from me. Maybe she doesn't wanna talk to me anymore. Maybe she's afraid of me now and she doesn't want to see me ever again and—

"Arrghhh!" He almost banged his head on the wall, but stopped himself when he remembered that the house's foundation was no match for his skull.

Okay, Gohan. Cool down. You're overreacting. Why're you overreacting? You know Videl better than that! What's the matter with you?

Gohan shook his head vehemently, deciding to chalk up his uncharacteristic melodramatics to any one of the usual teenage maladies. He trudged over to his bureau and pulled out a comfortable short-sleeved black T-shirt. He had it pulled halfway down his torso when he yanked it off again and exchanged it for a long-sleeved crimson crewneck. It wouldn't do to make apparent his fighter's build—the last thing he needed was something to remind the scholastic population that he was different from the average sixteen-year-old boy.

Once he finished dressing, he quickly ran his fingers through his hair—the one indispensable hair care technique adopted solely by teenage males—and exited his room with only the most perfunctory of glances at his bureau mirror.

The kitchen was deserted, which was a bit unusual since his mother was almost always up before him, getting a head start on the day's chores. Nonetheless, the dining table fairly groaned with a robust number of bowls and plates of steaming-warm food. Two large pots simmered contentedly on the stove.

Whoa. Looks like Mom really went all out this morning. Gohan hung his book bag behind his usual seat at the table, sat down, and began to dig in. With the advent of his academic schedule, he did not have to wait for the rest of the family to sit down to start in on his meals. Even as he wolfed down his breakfast, he mentally rehearsed his excuses.

It was all a trick. With...lights and stuff. Yeah. A PR thing. Got paid to pull it off. Oh, you don't believe me, huh? Well, okay. Um, the real deal is I...have a condition. It's really, really rare. It makes my eyes turn green and my hair golden and makes me start screaming every time it happens and I can't control it and it's not my fault, really, I swear—

At the corner of his peripheral field of vision, he saw his father enter the kitchen, yawning widely and stretching. "Morning, Gohan."

Gohan smiled into his bowl. It finally occurred to him why his mother had loaded up on the victuals. He put down his chopsticks and turned toward his father. "Morning, Da—aaaaahhhh!"

It didn't take long before Chi-Chi came barreling in from the back yard door. "Gohan? What is it? What's wrong—"

She broke off as she surveyed the room. Gohan was sitting at the table, his eyes squeezed tightly shut and the patch of skin between his eyes and nose stained an overly bright cherry red. To add to the peculiarity of it all, he had wedged his palm vertically next to his cheek and temple, forming an improvised blinder, and he was twisting his head as far away as he could from the kitchen entryway.

Standing in the kitchen entryway was Goku, her arms frozen over her head in mid-stretch and an utterly mystified expression stamped on her face. She was decked out in her favorite boxers—a banana-yellow pair with blue piping—and a white undershirt that had been made with a considerably more masculine frame in mind. On her new female form the shirt had morphed from ordinary piece of house wear into something absolutely lurid: the collar and armhole bottoms ended past her chest, effectively showcasing a distressingly ample décolletage. Fortunately for all, however, the shirt's straps fell strategically over the middle of her assets, preventing what might have otherwise been full frontal exposure.

Chi-Chi barely heard herself over all the internal screaming she was doing. "Goku! I thought I told you to put something decent on!"

Goku let her arms drop, her fingers flying protectively to the neckline of her undershirt. If her bleariness had not been completely eliminated by Gohan's scream, it was most certainly gone now. "I...I thought I did..."

"You thought?" Chi-Chi was feeling light-headed; she suspected that it was because the majority of her blood was relocating to the skin on her face. That morning she'd woken up in bed with her topless and extremely female spouse curled up against her back and nuzzling her neck. If that wasn't a wake-up call, she didn't know what was. "Well, I—I won't have you running around this house dressed in those—those indecent hussy-clothes!"

"B-b-but Chi-Chi..." Goku stammered. "These're my clothes..."

"Not now they aren't!" fumed the Son matriarch. "You are going to go find yourself some decent clothing if you're going to sit down at our table for breakfast!"

Goku hung her head contritely. "Okay, okay. I'll go put on something else."

"As long as they're not from your closet. It's obvious that none of your clothes are going to fit you properly now. Maybe you could get something from Gohan's closet."

Gohan glanced up incredulously at his mother—or, at least, that was what he would have done had the effect not been ruined by his closed eyes. "What? Why?"

"Because your clothes're smaller than your father's," his mother informed him firmly.

"No, they aren't! We're almost the same size now—I mean...before Dad...before he..." Gohan floundered; visualizing whether or not his father could fit into his clothes meant visualizing her in that overly loose undershirt, which made him want to wash his brain out with industrial-strength anti-bacterial soap.

It was then that little Goten, displaying an extraordinary sense of timing, skidded in from the back yard, barefoot and still dressed in his teddy bear pajamas. "Mama, Mama! I heard Gohan yelling! What happened to Gohan? Oh, hi, Daddy! What're you doing standing there?" He stared up innocently at his Daddy-Mommy in the kitchen doorway, suddenly feeling an odd craving for his baby bottle.

"Hey, little guy." Goku tugged up her shirtfront and affected a sheepish wave.

Chi-Chi clamped a censoring hand over Goten's eyes and regarded her husband in exasperation. "Okay, fine. Gohan's probably right about his clothes anyway. You can go find something from my closet."

"Your closet? But—but I don't wanna wear my wife's clothes!"

"And why not? Are you implying that you don't like my clothes?"

"No!" Goku blurted out, waving her hands in a placating manner. "No, no, that's not it! It's just that...well, they're women's clothes!"

"Which is precisely why they'll fit you better! Now go on. Go, before you traumatize your children any further!"

Goku fled obediently, and Chi-Chi released a sigh she didn't know she was holding. She released Goten back into the land of the seeing and turned toward her firstborn, who continued to sit rigidly at the table with his eyes welded shut.

"Gohan," she said wryly, "it's okay. You can open your eyes now."

"I don't think so," came the muffled reply. "I think I'm officially blind."

"Why?" queried Goten as he clambered up onto the adjoining chair. "Mama, why's Gohan blind?"

"He's not blind. He's just being overdramatic." Nevertheless, Chi-Chi surveyed her older boy, full of concern for his emotional and psychological well being.

"...learned more than I ever did in Sex Ed," Gohan was mumbling to himself, stabbing blindly at the abandoned chow in his bowl. "Didn't think I was gonna see that much until my wedding night...not that I'm thinking about getting married, of course—well, not now, at least. Besides, what would Videl think if...wait a minute, why did I just think about Videl...?"

Goten piped up gleefully, "What's Sex Ed?"

Chi-Chi made a choking noise in the back of her throat and thumped her firstborn's shoulder. "Now you cut that out right now, mister. Your father's already left the room. It's safe to open your eyes, I promise. Now get a move on—you're going to be late for school if you don't hurry!"

Gohan relinquished his chopsticks and fairly flew out of his seat, grabbing his book bag from the back of his chair. His mother was right, and besides, the longer he stayed here, the higher his risk of being treated to even more traumatizing sights—like, say, his father decked out in bra and panties...

Maybe he could collect the dragonballs later and ask Shenron for a mind-wipe.

"ThanksMombyeGotentellDadbyeformeandsorryforscreaminglikethatwellIgottagotoschoolnowbye!"

And with that outstanding exhibition of respiratory control, Gohan bounded out of the back door with a speed he usually reserved for battles with grape-mint lizard tyrants and mottled bug-like androids. Everything in the kitchen that wasn't nailed down rattled from the whoosh of displaced air.

Chi-Chi lifted a hand to her forehead. "It'll just be for a couple of days," she reminded herself feebly. "Just a couple more days. Goten, you take that thumb out of your mouth! I thought you stopped that habit already!"

Goten withdrew his thumb with a loud, wet pop and looked up at his mother. "I want milk," he said, plaintively.

An hour later, Goku still did not come down to breakfast.

Goten had already finished his (and washed it down with about six glasses of milk, much to his mother's befuddlement), and was currently outside entertaining himself by scaling rocky peaks and chasing carnivorous dinosaurs and the like.

On the table, Goku's own plate remained untouched. Slats of mellow sunlight striped the spotless ceramic, the tablecloth, and the still considerable amount of foodstuffs as the sun slowly began its westward journey across the sky. Chi-Chi finished stacking the pile of used dishes and placed them in the sink.

"Chi-Chiii..." Goku whined from inside their bedroom.

She turned on the faucet. "Don't worry, Goku, the boys saved you some breakfast. Come in here and eat." Her husband didn't answer right away, which she found somewhat disquieting. "Goku? Did you find something to wear?"

It took another minute before Goku responded with a meek, "Um...no."

"Oh, for..." Chi-Chi turned off the water, dried her hands on a dishtowel, and made her way to the master bedroom, untying her apron as she went.

The room looked as though her entire wardrobe had exploded in the middle of it. Blouses, T-shirts, sleeveless tops, and every conceivable bit of women's apparel adorned the corners and edges of the bureau, the dresser, the bed, the bedside table, and every other piece of furniture in the room. The closet was open and her side gapingly empty.

The infuriation that bubbled up inside her all but dispersed as she caught sight of her husband. Goku was sitting in the middle of the clothing-strewn bed, her arms tucked into the cradle of her crossed legs. She was wearing the yellow boxers, a forlorn expression, and nothing else.

Chi-Chi made sure the door was thoroughly closed—just in case Goten chose to demonstrate again his impeccable sense of timing—and whirled toward her husband. Goku had come a long way from the shameless country bumpkin he had been as a boy, but now and then he would find ways to remind Chi-Chi that he was still a child of the wild—the man had thought nothing of stripping down to go fishing, or removing his clothes while still on his way to the bathroom. Somehow, her husband's occasional bouts of exhibitionism seemed much easier to overlook back when he had been male.

"Goku, what are you doing?" she cried.

Goku looked up at her, her eyes huge and dark and mournful. "I can't fit your clothes."

Chi-Chi nearly tripped on a bunched-up pair of Chinese trousers, which she yanked up irritably from the floor. "What do you mean, you can't fit my..." She stopped as she examined the trousers. Funny, they looked wider than they did back in the store. A distressing thought crossed her mind. "Ohhh, no! It's because...it's because my clothes are too big, isn't it? Because I'm fat now, is that it?"

"No!" Goku exclaimed. "No, no, Chi-Chi, it's not that! Your pants fit okay, but your shirts and tops're too small. I can't even pull them all the way down my front!"

Against her better instincts, Chi-Chi lowered her gaze to her spouse's upper body, and realized why. "Um...okay. What about the loose tops? Have you tried any of my larger size clothes?"

"Yeah. I can pull them all the way down, but it feels like my front's being squeezed flat and every time I breathe I'm afraid I'm gonna rip something!"

Chi-Chi perched on one corner of the bed and sorted through the piles, finally snatching up a voluminous gray-and-yellow pullover. "What about this? This looks loose enough."

"Yeah, but..." Goku hesitated. "That one doesn't cover my stomach."

"What? Of course it does! This isn't supposed to be a cut-off! I've worn this old thing a million times, and I've never had to worry about it riding up over my stomach."

"Well, it will on me."

"No, it won't."

"It will."

"Goku...!"

Her husband took the article of clothing from her and wriggled into it. True to her word, the front of the pullover draped over her substantial front and ended a quarter-inch above her bellybutton.

Chi-Chi sat back heavily on her haunches. "Okay, so it will."

Goku shrugged off the pullover and handed it back to her wife, a light flush tingeing her cheeks.

They sifted through the garments together, but even the baggiest of Chi-Chi's possessions closely adhered to her measurements, which were decidedly dissimilar from her spouse's. Finally they found an old plaid polo-style shirt that fit Goku as long as the top three buttons were left unfastened. Chi-Chi passed a critical eye over her husband and decided that she looked like a refugee from a special redneck edition of Penthouse.

Goku studied her wife's countenance and saw the deep-set V-shape of her slender eyebrows. "No, huh?"

"Nope."

Goku held her breath and unbuttoned her shirt, adding it to the pile Chi-Chi had folded. Then she braced her hands on the mattress behind her and vaulted out of the bed. Her legs felt like pins and needles, and she proceeded to walk it off, folding her arms behind her head in a gesture reminiscent of her male counterpart.

For a moment, Chi-Chi was struck by the bizarreness of the situation: her bedroom floor was carpeted to nearly calf level with her own discarded clothing, and padding around the room was a half-naked woman who just happened to be her gender-bent, newly resurrected husband. A gender-bent, newly resurrected husband who, she noted with an irrational stab of annoyance, had a pair of breasts that even the silicone advocates would have killed for.

"Goku, we're going to have to get you a bra."

Goku halted. "A bra? Aw, Chi-Chi, I don't need a bra," she replied, and bounced lightly on the balls of her feet, completely refuting her own argument. For someone whose sex had been switched just the day before, she seemed remarkably at ease with her new body.

"Yes, you do. Don't argue with me about this, Goku. I know more about female bodies than you do." Chi-Chi lifted a pile of neatly re-folded clothes and placed them back in her dresser drawers. With that done, she re-checked her underwear drawer—the only one that had escaped unscathed from her husband's earlier clothes-seeking frenzy. "Well, I don't think I'd be able to lend you any of mine. Guess that means we're going to have to pay a visit to Capsule Corp., then."

Goku looked incredulous. "Just to borrow a bra?"

"Bras," corrected Chi-Chi. "Buh-ras. Plural. And anyway, I feel like some girl talk. Not with you, because, obviously, you're not really a girl, and because it'll be all about you, and...never mind. Now come on. If we hurry, we'll be able to arrive there in time to eat lunch out."

Predictably enough, Goku perked up at the mention of vittles. "Okay!" she said happily. "Can I wear my own clothes?"

"What, and have them fall right off you in front of everyone there? Nope, we are going to find you something that actually fits."

"Where are we gonna find that?"

Chi-Chi mulled this over with great solemnity.

"Let's go raid Gohan's closet," she suggested.

On the blackboard, the teacher's drawing of the infinity symbol was a pair of circles placed side-by-side with their sides touching. To anyone else it looked like the infinity symbol as rendered by an overly pedantic geometry enthusiast, but for some reason every time Gohan's eyes wandered over it, he could not stop blushing.

"Go-haaan," Erasa said, in a singsong stage whisper. "What're you looking at?"

"Gwuh...nothing. Nothing!" He was immensely relieved when his voice didn't crack, and he buried his heated face in his textbook.

The perfect weird ending to a perfectly weird day, he thought wearily.

In front of the class, the teacher was extrapolating, feverishly scribbling mathematical glyphs on the board, but Gohan was finding it hard to concentrate on what the man was saying when he felt like a bacteria sample under his classmates' collective microscope. Even now, the hairs prickling at the back of his neck informed him that he was still being watched. He tried to recall which explanation he had decided to give them, but the morning had gone by in a raucous blur. He vaguely remembered some of the academic staff interrogating him about the Cell Games, his companions at the tournament, and his body dimensions—all in that order. There had been females shooting him looks that were troublingly reminiscent of the ones prepubescent girls reserved for their favorite boy band member; the boys had alternately eyed him with distrust or fell over themselves trying to punch him on the arm or clap him on the back as forcefully as they could. He had also gained a persistent coterie of stalkers who followed him like a floating mass of babbling arms and legs.

Gohan glanced dolefully at the empty seat beside him. So far, the only one he had counted on to be his island of constancy had not bothered to show up.

Erasa had told him, between giggles, that Videl was more likely than not out on an early morning crime-cleaning spree. Sharpener had muttered something about the possibility of Videl hiding out from freaky-powered, fashion-deficient geeks who flew around spouting bad superhero lines. Gohan had been properly disheartened by the latter.

He was frantically erasing the rows of infinity symbols he'd unconsciously scribbled all over the borders of his notebooks when the object of his ruminations swept into the room with all the vigor of a pleasantly anticipated tornado.

"Morning, Mr. Tome! Sorry I'm late—had to fill out some paperwork after this one."

"No problem, Videl—"

Gohan leapt to his feet behind his desk; he couldn't have stopped himself if he'd tried. "Videl! You're here!"

She looked at him. The entire class looked at him, but their faces swam together like a waterlogged pointillist painting. Standing out starkly from the indistinct splotches was Videl's face, luminous and miraculously in focus.

"Well, of course I'm here, Gohan," she answered matter-of-factly, but the ends of her mouth quirked uncontrollably upwards. "I still have to go to school, you know."

He bounded down the aisle and was in front of her a second later, nervous and babbly and utterly overjoyed. "I—I thought you were...I was afraid you...you're not avoiding me?"

"Avoiding you?" She tilted her head, honestly perplexed by this. "Why would I do that?"

"Well, I tried to find you before I left the tournament, but you weren't around, and I thought that maybe..."

"I was hiding from the reporters. Actually, I tried to find you, too..."

Their conversation was rapidly taking on an odd continuousness; no sooner would Gohan stammer out what he had to say would Videl then speak her side, giving the onlookers the illusion that they were constructing one very long multiple-compound sentence.

"...you didn't want to see me or something, ever again, and I was kind of late coming back to the island and I really couldn't search around for you as much as I wanted..." Gohan blathered.

"...but my dad was getting really ridiculous and there were all these reporters hounding me asking about my alleged affair with Saiyaman and of course that's absurd because that would mean that it would be between you and me, and..."

"A-hem."

Their environs suddenly lost its detached hazy quality, and the classroom came rushing back in a burst of primary colors and tittering noises. The duo blinked at each other, at the leering sea of faces, and then down at their mysteriously linked hands. As decreed by the laws of unresolved romantic tension, they untwined their fingers and pretended that they had not been given a second chance by the love of their lives.

"If you two are quite finished with your version of The Young and the Feckless, perhaps we could go on with our regularly scheduled class," the teacher went on dryly.

They murmured incomprehensible apologetic noises and scuttled back to their desks amidst the knowing smiles of their fellow students. Erasa waggled her eyebrows at Videl, and Gohan's Saiyan hearing picked up the gnashing of Sharpener's teeth.

The teacher sniffed as only single middle-aged math teachers were wont to do when confronted with the blossoming romances of the young and good-looking, and turned back to the comfortable realm of hyperbolas and asymptotes. "Well, then. Can any of you tell me where you might be able to find a horizontal asymptote? Anyone? In a population growth graph. What about a vertical asymptote? Here's a hint: you can find it in Figure 8.5 on page 105 of your textbook. Anyone? Anybody? It's x=0..."

Gohan flipped frantically through his text to the appropriate page, but stopped as he saw Videl's coral-tinted fingernail tapping at the upper left corner of his desk. He lifted his head and found himself staring into a pair of warm cobalt eyes.

For some reason—maybe it was panic—he blurted out, "I beat up Spopovich for you."

Videl's response was a smile like the sun, and Gohan promptly forgot about prying classmates, abrasive math teachers, and lewd arithmetical symbols.

Even at twelve years of age, Son Gohan had been so well built that Bulma had thought it humorous to present him with a scarlet shirt that had the words "CAN I GET SOME BEEF?" splashed over its front in ostentatiously chunky caps-locked letters. Though Gohan had been too shy to wear it in public, he'd become rather fond of it as a house shirt. Over the years, and after countless washings, the top and bottom lines had faded, and now the curved front of Goku's chest proclaimed suggestively, "GET SOME."

Bulma couldn't tear her eyes off it.

"It was the best fitting one we could find," Chi-Chi snapped defensively, catching sight of the expression on the other woman's countenance. "Everything else was either too tight, too loose, or absolutely inappropriate."

"Uh...sure, Chi-Chi." Bulma shook her head and took a hasty sip of her iced tea, her gaze straying back toward the living room. Goku was talking to Goten and Trunks, crouched down so that she was at their eye level. Topping off her ensemble was a pair of worn canary-colored women's sweatpants and soft white canvas sneakers. "All of this must be really strange for you. I mean, I still can't believe that that's Goku in there."

"Oh, it's him, all right—her—whatever." Chi-Chi took a steadying swallow from her own glass of tea. "She sleeps, walks, talks, and eats like my Goku. And she's been so good with Goten. He's gotten really attached to her, though of course he's kind of confused about the whole 'Daddy-is-a-woman' thing."

"What about Gohan? Is he taking this well?"

Chi-Chi colored as the memory of the morning came stampeding through her mind like a bull in a china shop. "Er, yes. He's been...very understanding. He knows his father didn't mean to—Bulma," she said suddenly, a beseeching glint in her eye, "is there anything you can do to fix her?"

Bulma coughed into her tea. " 'Fix' her?"

"I mean, bring her back to the way she was—him back to the way he was. Back to being, you know, male?"

Just then Dr. Briefs stepped into the kitchen from the opposite hallway, managing to catch the tail end of their conversation. "Whoops. I distinctly heard the word 'male' being bandied about, which probably means that this is girl talk of the highest order, which probably means I have to vamoose." He did a quick 180-degree spin. "Well, good to see you again, Chi-Chi—"

"Wait!" Chi-Chi sprung up from her chair and snatched at the sleeve of the inventor's lab coat. "I was just asking Bulma about...Dr. Briefs, you're a genius, right?"

"W-ell..." He assumed a modest pose. "I admit there have been more than a few acquaintances who have referred to me as such—"

"Wonderful. Now tell me this. Is there any way you can make a machine or something that can change a person's gender?"

Dr. Briefs paused, considered her from head to toe, and said very delicately, "Now, now, Chi-Chi, you're still a fine-looking woman. There are less drastic ways to—"

"Not for me, you genius idiot!" yelped Chi-Chi. "It's for Goku!"

"Goku?" A trickle of sweat wound its way down the poor man's temple. "Does he want to be female, now?"

"He is already female!" Chi-Chi raged, waving her arms empathically over her head and stomping about the kitchen. "Unmistakably female! Disturbingly female! A stupendously anatomically correct female! A female with—"

"I think my dad gets the point, Chi-Chi," said Bulma between sips of her tea.

"—all the proper body parts!" Chi-Chi ranted on. "In fact, all her body parts're better than mine or even Bulma's!"

"Chi-Chi, that's—hey!" the blue-haired woman objected huffily.

Mr. Briefs' eyes were beginning to resemble little whirlpools.

Chi-Chi finally calmed down a bit. "Perhaps you'll better understand the magnitude of the situation once you see my husband," she intoned gravely, and called out toward the living room, "Goku! Could you come here a moment, please?"

Goku walked in, moving with her usual easygoing young-boy's lope. "Yeah, Chi-Chi?"

"Goku, I was just talking to Dr. Briefs here about the possibility of changing you back to normal," her wife said carefully.

"Really?" Goku beamed at the esteemed founder of Capsule Corp. "You know a way, Dr. Briefs?"

"My goodness..." Dr. Briefs scratched the back of his bowl cut and peered intently at the Son Goku look-a-like standing in his kitchen. The black cat dangling on his shoulder appeared duly curious, cocking its head to one side as though to take in the full abnormality of it. "This is quite unexpected indeed. Well, Goku, you do seem remarkably female."

Bulma drained the last of her tea and wiped her hand across her mouth. "And now that you've come to that astute conclusion, Dad, what do you think about our chances of coming up with something to help Goku turn back?"

"Hmm." Her father mused on this for some seconds, then did a secondary inspection of the Saiyan. "Ah, what did you say was responsible for this?"

"The best guess we have is that it might be a spell cast by a magician called Babidi," Goku offered.

"Magic, eh? That's not very encouraging."

"What do you mean?" queried Chi-Chi with a smidgen of worry.

"I'm saying that there's a marked difference, obviously, between science and magic. You might say that they're two opposing ends of a spectrum. You usually don't mix the two if you can help it. If Goku's condition was caused by magic or something similar thereof, then the safer option would be to use magic to undo it."

"But there's got to be something you can do!" persisted Chi-Chi.

Dr. Briefs finally wilted before her entreating stare. "Well...I suppose I could research the matter further. I could...I could run some tests first, see what I can do..."

Chi-Chi brightened immeasurably. "That sounds great! Thanks, Dr. Briefs. If you could just give it a shot...that's all I ask."

Once inside his laboratory, the scientist had Goku stick out her tongue and scraped off some cells, then set about subjecting the sample to a procession of tests. After twenty minutes of fiddling around with the controls of something that looked like a cross between a stereo system and a giant coffeemaker and listening to Dr. Briefs' semi-coherent, multi-syllabic mumbling, Goku was sufficiently bored, and excused herself. Dr. Briefs, completely immersed in his analysis of her DNA, let her go with an absentminded wave.

As befitting one of the most successful companies on Earth, Capsule Corp.'s "work" area was a labyrinthine collection of anodyne corridors that contained only potted palms for location markers. It was only through years of familiarity with the place that Goku was able to navigate the maze of hallways with ease; she intended to head toward the kitchen where Chi-Chi and Bulma had opted to wait.

Instead she somehow ended up staring at a reinforced steel-carbon alloy door with the words "Gravity Room" painted solemnly on its front. According to the conveniently located door panel, the gravity inside was normal, but the light that denoted the room's occupancy was on.

Goku grinned to herself and went in.

The interior was brightly lit and shiny-new—either Bulma or her father had recently fixed up the place or Vegeta had taken heed of Bulma's requirement to refrain from unleashing high-level energy blasts. Goku suspected that it was the former.

Speak of the devil, Goku thought as she spotted the Saiyan prince. He was standing with his back to her, preoccupied with the room's center console. Although the gravity apparatus was off, it was evident that he had just been working out; his bared upper torso glistened like tanned silk under the room's lighting, and the waistband area of his royal blue spandex pants was darker than the rest, saturated with sweat. A small sepia towel hung around his neck.

She inhaled deeply. Odd, she thought: the entire room was drenched with Vegeta.

"Hey, Vegeta!"

He actually recoiled, as violently as though she had pinched his behind. Ordinarily, the prince's reaction to any of the third-class Saiyan's cheerful greetings was a blend of indifference, aggravation, and surprise, as if he were perpetually taken aback at the latter's attempts to engage him in conversation. The look he gave her this time pretty much ran the usual gamut, but for some reason there was an additional nuance to it that eluded Goku at the moment.

Before she could ponder on that any further, he said, sharply, "What are you doing here, Kakarrot?"

"Me and Chi-Chi and Goten're here for a visit. See, Chi-Chi thought it'd be good for me to borrow a—"

"That's not what I meant," Vegeta interrupted, balling a fist over one end of the towel. His eyes flickered toward the gaping door behind her, half-expecting the Namek and the rest of Kakarrot's idiot groupies to come rushing in. "What are you doing here, in my gravity room?"

Goku tucked her arms behind her back, meeting his harsh gaze with her own innocuous one. "I was wandering around the place, then I saw this room and decided to check on how you were doing, that's all."

"I...see," Vegeta answered tightly. He was strangely dismayed when the other Saiyan's friends did not show—it meant that there would be no one acting as a buffer between him and Kakarrot. Then he scowled at his own ludicrousness and snapped, "Well, now you know. Now get lost so I can get back to my training!"

He didn't quite expect the other Saiyan to agree.

"Sure, Vegeta," she replied nonchalantly. "Just thought I'd say hi. I guess I'll see you around, then."

With that, she spun on her heel and made her way back toward the door, feeling the prince's eyes drill into her back like perforating lasers. The atmosphere of the room felt latent and invasive, and charged with something that Goku found vaguely suffocating. Idly she wondered if this was a side effect of her change, and if Dr. Briefs would have a cure for it.

The door slid shut in her face, the clicking of the automatic locks exceedingly loud in the closed space of the room.

"You know what, Kakarrot—I changed my mind."

Goku turned around in time to see Vegeta languidly withdraw his hand from where he had laid it on top of the door control panel. He began to walk toward her in measured steps, his mouth set in a narrow, horizontal line.

"I have a better idea," he said.

"Yeah?" She dropped her gaze to the sweaty towel around his neck, and had a flash of herself grabbing both ends of the towel and pulling. She blinked the odd notion away. "What is it, Vegeta?"

"I've been training nonstop for the past few months in preparation for when I would finally face you at the tournament, but since you blew that off to hobnob with those pointy-eared fools and waste your time poking around an empty ship, I think I'm entitled to a spar, at least."

She touched the nape of her neck, summoning up a serene smile. "A spar? Naw, I wouldn't be any challenge for you like this, Vegeta."

He regarded her then, taking in the comfortable blood-red shirt and its nonsensical slogan (get some what, exactly?), the willowy frame and the distinctive hair, the earnest-apprehensive demeanor and the familiar-alien features. He remembered a man with her face pummeling him above a canyon, reminding him what physical pain was; he remembered this Saiyan's doppelganger claiming a prince's birthright when he had achieved the level of Super Saiyan before him; he remembered the same Saiyan matching Perfect Cell blow for blow when he himself could barely get in a decent punch. Humiliation piled upon disgrace piled upon failure—and it was all because of this female who now stood here in front of him telling him that she could not fight him.

"I mean," Goku went on, oblivious, "I'm not exactly myself, you know?"

The left corner of Vegeta's lips edged upward, and he reached out an arm past her, slapping at the secondary gravity controls on the plate next to the doorframe. He was immensely, terribly aware that it was just the two of them alone in the gravity room, and that she had no viable exit.

"I know, Kakarotte."

End of Chapter Five

Closing Notes: Um...I had to cut it off there; this chapter was getting way too long, so expect to see Shin, Kibito, Piccolo, Krillin, and company—and yes, the "ghosts"—in the next installment instead.

Before I forget: I've been thinking about setting up a webpage for this fic, complete with a title picture done by me (blech—I wish I could just beg Nosuke to do it ^^;;). The day might come when I won't have the time to go through the usual Fanfiction.net logging in and uploading processes with my dial-up connection...well, just thought I'd throw that one out. As usual, feedback is ambrosia to my muse, if you all have a critique or an idea or a question or whatever, feel free to send it in a review, okay?

Next: Vegeta tests "Kakarotte's" limits, Bulma and Chi-Chi employ Goku as their new dress-up doll, Krillin and Piccolo talk, Shin and Kibito learn the effects of Babidi's tampering in Hell, and someone goes searching for his prince...