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

Author's Notes: Okay, my PC's CPU conked out last week and now the only things my monitor can display are squiggly Technicolor lines. So I had to rely on my (modem-deficient) laptop for the majority of this chapter and all of my website work. Does that sound like a veritable excuse? Thought so. ^_^

Anyway, I'm starting a full-time job come November 1; I'm not sure how that'll affect the fic's progress, but I suspect that upcoming chapters might be significantly shorter. Also, I wanted to say thank so much for the reviews! I wish I could respond to every one, but I need to keep these notes short, so I'm just posting those containing questions or other things that I have to address.

Kia: The opening line for your e-mail had me rolling in stitches! Thanks for allowing me to post it here, and I quote: "Yay, Goku's a girl and Vegeta's freaking out...now WHEN IN THE NAME OF PICCOLO'S PINK PECS DO WE GET SOME HOT MONKEY LOVE???" ^^;; Er, I've been asked that question before, but this's the first time it'd been worded in such an, um, interesting manner. *lol* Well, if it's, uh, Hot Monkey Love you want, then you're gonna have to wait for a while (of course, the Hot Monkey Love might not be between the parties in question—uh, no, wait! I'm kidding! Er...). What I'm trying to say is that one just doesn't just go from Point A—wanting to bash someone's head through concrete—to Point B—wanting to jump said someone's bones. The moving-between-points that tends to take a while, unfortunately, but it's just as fun—in my opinion, anyways. ^_^

DarkSerapha: Thanks for expressing your views; as for the whole lemony question (I think I addressed something similar in a previous chapter), I've never written a straight-up lemon, but I do guarantee that there's going to be a decidedly limey scent lingering about in some parts much later into the story. I mentioned in an earlier chapter that the rating's probably gonna go up to R, and so far no one's complained. ;) In fact, there're some scenes in the upcoming installments that might warrant a bit more than that, but there's that whole Fanfiction.net NC-17 ban...anyways, I hope you stick around to see how the Kakarotte/Vegeta relationship evolves...

Haley Yungst: Whoa, I almost forgot about the dragonballs—I knew I was overlooking something! ^^;; When I was brainstorming the story outline I had the dragonball solution thrown in somewhere, but I kept cutting sections out of chapters to keep them from getting too long until it slipped my mind completely (or maybe I intended for them to wait until Shin could find out the reason behind Goku's sex switch). Next chapter, though, the dragonball quest begins in earnest—thanks so much for reminding me!

Hmm...two-thirds out of this chapter's review replies revolve around Kakarott/e and Vegeta. Should I be sensing a trend here...? ;) To all those asking for action of a different degree, you'll have to content yourselves for now with The Lick. ^_^

The Kakarotte Factor
by Echelon

Chapter Six:
Tilt

Time was a commodity Hell both had a lot and nothing of, but at this point even the Supreme Kai, whose divine standing had granted him near-ignorance of the very concept, was beginning to feel its grind.

He and Kibito had continued to grill the Saiyans long after the mysterious departure of one of their own, but they merely regaled him with a collective stare that Shin was learning to despise: it was a specialized blend of blankness, enmity, and ennui, perfectly modulated to give the object of their scrutiny an inferiority complex. Fortunately for Shin, being the sort-of ultimate deity of the universe exempted him from such things.

Nevertheless, their inquiries were bringing up a whole lot of nothing. It was frustrating enough that the Saiyans were not cooperating, but the king, whom the Supreme Kai suspected knew more than any of his subjects, had become emphatically reticent after the departure of the other Saiyan. Coaxing more information out of him was like trying to wring blood out of a rock.

Eventually even Shin's patience was taxed out, and he and Kibito turned their attentions to the rest of Hell's populace—specifically, the ones who had been spotted in the hub of where the chaos had begun.

A bit further from the Saiyans' territory was a district of the Underworld that had suffered more devastation than the others. Where there had once been a tundra-like area with reddish sandstone formations clawing their way out from under ground that looked like hardened lava, there was now a flattened wasteland riddled with ki-wounds: craters, trenches, contusions in the form of blackened rings—the same disarray and detritus that had become familiar to the Supreme Kai and his assistant as their as-yet unknown quarry's calling card.

Goz and Mez had long departed to report their preliminary findings to King Yema, which was just as well; the two ogres had been too overcome by their disbelief and hysteria to be of any real assistance. Kibito might have spared some sympathy for them had he not been preoccupied with being appalled with the insolent way the inhabitants of this doomed place conducted themselves before the Supreme Kai.

Case in point: the android named Cell, who did not even believe there was such a thing as a Supreme Kai, or that Shin was a Supreme anything, and did not hesitate to tell the both of them so. Kibito had been sorely tempted to manhandle him for his audacity, but Shin was too interested in the android's account of the earlier attack on the Saiyans.

"It was one of them, you know," drawled Cell. He was slumped against an alcove; he looked worse than the time he had been at the receiving end of Pikkon's Heaven-sanctioned brand of reprisal.

"One of whom?" Kibito asked, curbing in his dislike of the man as best as he could. The higher the inhabitant was in Hell's food chain, the less tolerant Kibito became. And the android was situated somewhere comfortably close to the top.

"The Saiyans, of course." There was synthetic purple blood trickling down from Cell's forehead, dripping inconveniently into his right eye, but it did not stop him from leveling a condescending stare at Kibito, who in turn derided himself for providing the android with such an easy shot.

"Are you telling me that the one who attacked the Saiyans, the one who did this"—here the Supreme Kai indicated the surrounding devastation with a broad sweep of his arm—"was a Saiyan himself?"

"I think that is what I am telling you, yes." Cell made a movement with his mouth that was almost an approximation of a smile. "I suppose the ogres told you that Frieza and I were behind this."

"They might have mentioned something about seeing the two of you around here when it started," Shin acquiesced.

"But of course," commented the android. Unlike the Saiyans and the rest of Hell's denizens, he did not seem to mind Shin's cross-examination; indeed, he was relaxed and loquacious, almost amiable. "You attempt to take over Hell just once, and those ogres hold it against you for all time."

Kibito might have uttered a highly sardonic comeback had it not been for the disapproving shake of his master's head.

"Funny creatures, those Saiyans," Cell was saying thoughtfully. One of the horn-like protrusions on his head been snapped off. It might have been incredibly crippling had the android not possessed the powers of regeneration. "They're fiercely defensive of their heritage, but once they're backed into a corner, they won't hesitate to turn on each other to save their own necks. When you look at it that way, they ought to have been the most successful species in the universe."

"Of course they ought to be, what with their self-seeking barbarian ways," fumed Kibito, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

"You would think that, being an infant to the true workings of the universe," Cell remarked mildly, channeling King Cold. He ignored Kibito's outraged sputtering and went on: "Now, this Saiyan...he wasn't really after the others—not at first. He was being very indiscriminate about what he was doing. Didn't give a damn who was in the area." He smirked. "Hence my present appearance."

"You got caught," Shin realized suddenly. "In the destruction. There were witnesses who said...that you were close to where it started."

"And so were Frieza, and King Cold, King Slug, the Ginyu Force...we were all too close, unfortunately. The Saiyan was out of control. I'm certain he would've blown this entire place into oblivion if it hadn't been for his father."

Creases gathered in the space of skin between the Supreme Kai's eyebrows. "His father?"

Cell sat up a little straighter. "If you're going to ask me for a name, don't waste your breath. I haven't a clue. Those Saiyans—they're all the same to me. With the exception of this Earth Saiyan I was created to kill, of course. But that's neither there nor here."

Kibito made the connection and almost said the name. He got as far as shaping his mouth to sound the letter 'G' when Shin deterred him with a look.

"Rather cunning bastard, the father," reflected Cell, oblivious to Kibito's near-gaffe. "Well, cunning for a Saiyan, anyway. He hated his race, you know, almost as much as Frieza. No doubt he told his son to go after them, their king in particular. I think he might've had a bit of a history with His Majesty there. Might've killed the king, too, if the magician hadn't shown up when he did. The two of them even had a little talk together."

It was only at the mention of the word 'magician' that Shin forgot to be careful. "About what, exactly?"

Even as the question left his mouth he knew he'd voiced it too urgently; something in the android's eyes changed, and his tone shifted from garrulous to guarded. "Why don't you ask the Saiyan responsible for this yourself?" he asked slyly. "If you really are this Supreme universal being or whatever you claim to be, you should be able to find him wherever he is, whether it be in Hell or the Living World or some other extra dimensional plane, is that correct?"

"He is," Kibito snarled through gritted teeth. "But it is not as simple as you make it seem—"

"I see." Cell now had that haughty expression allocated exclusively to Hell's elite. It was almost as annoying as the Saiyans' version. "Well, then, I think I had best leave you two to your continuing pursuit of the truth. And good luck locating that backstabber."

"Why, you—" Kibito swallowed down his anger as Shin raised a dissuading arm and inspected the android's countenance, recognizing the now familiar signs of a terminated discussion.

"Very well," the Supreme Kai intoned briskly. "And thank you for your information." As insufficient as it was, he almost added out loud.

He left Cell to his alcove with Kibito following close behind him, but not after the latter had shot the android a final lingering glare.

"Oh, and by the way," Cell called out casually after them, "if you ever run into Goku in Heaven or the Living World or anywhere else, do tell him that some of his old friends down here would like it very much if he came by for a visit, hmm?"

The old gravity room on board Goku's Namek-bound spaceship had its only controls built into the center console, so it didn't occur to Goku right away that the panel Vegeta had activated held the secondary controls for the gravity apparatus. By the time she became aware of her oversight, she was feeling a definite downward pull, and could no longer raise her arm.

"What's the matter, clown?"

Vegeta pulled off the towel around his neck and began to orbit her paralyzed form, a triumphant hunter prowling about his expiring prey. Without breaking his stride, he ascended into his Super Saiyan state, momentarily infusing the room with its signature golden hue. He walked the same way he talked: casual and methodical, with an underlying portentous intent.

"Can't move?"

Goku gritted her teeth as her extremities slowly gained a couple more tons. Turning her head was no longer an option—she could barely even keep it above her shoulders—so she let her irises do the moving as she snuck a glimpse at the lime-green digital numbers on the door panel.

240, and still climbing.

"It's getting unbearable, isn't it?"

She barely heard him; she was concentrating all her physical and mental faculties on trying to keep herself from becoming a smear on the gleaming gravity room floor. Her lungs burned as her chest refused to expand, her tendons ached with the effort of trying to stay upright, and she could practically hear the groan of her own bones slowly being bent.

"You didn't...say anything about...using the gravity," she gasped out. Her jaw was getting harder and harder to manipulate; she wouldn't have been surprised if it suddenly detached from the rest of her mandible and clanked to the floor. "This...this isn't fair, Vegeta."

Vegeta stopped his skulking. She could no longer track his position with her eyes, so she felt rather than saw him lean in closer to her to snarl into her ear. "You think this is unfair? Let me tell you what is unfair—having to watch you take everything that should have been mine! You took away my revenge against Frieza; you humiliated my royal ancestry when you became Super Saiyan before me; you command the deference of these miserable Earthlings with your lowborn ways when I, a prince, am left in the sidelines to be dragged along with everyone else to wherever you lead them!" His voice had grown progressively louder with each word, and now he was shouting. "Well, it ends now, Kakarotte! Now you will know how you should have been all along!"

Goku watched her perspiration make dark spots on the floor as she struggled to hold her nerves and sinews steady. Her eyes flickered again toward the door panel: 387 times gravity.

"Weak."

419.

"Helpless."

In the back of her mind she was aware that this battle was one she could not possibly win on brawn alone; she felt like her muscles had been sucked out and replaced with iron fillings, and the floor was one enormous magnet.

"Inferior."

The gravity level hit 450.

"Now, Kakarotte, you are just like any other third-class soldier."

Goku closed her eyes and tried to ignore the fact that her ligaments, blood vessels, and various internal organs were on the verge of imploding. Her compressed brain—which she half-expected to start spilling out of her ears any second now—cast about for something, anything, with which to alleviate the direness of her situation.

"What...did you...call me...?"

"What are you—" Vegeta was caught off-guard by the abrupt tangent, but he got over it swiftly as he remembered with extreme irritation that the third-class Saiyan rarely conformed to any kind of projected script. "I didn't call you anything!"

"...no. Called me...something different..." He had made a modification to her Saiyan name, of that she was certain. It had sounded like 'Kakarrot', but he'd pronounced it differently, as though he had tacked on a silent vowel at the end of the name. The last syllable, instead of a brusque "rot", came out sounding more like "wrote".

But Vegeta was not about to be sidestepped again. "That'll be enough of that! I did not ask you to—"

Just then the center console discharged a strident beeping noise, signaling that the maximum gravity setting had just been reached. A second later the florescent lights above were extinguished, leaving the low-watt bulbs to bathe the room in a spectrum of blood reds.

It was more than a non-Super Saiyan could bear: Goku lurched downward, her left knee folding like a lawn chair. It was only through her innate fighter's reflexes that she managed to wedge her rigid arm between her torso and the ground, thus preventing a full-scale up-close-and-personal encounter with the floor. Even as she tried to stabilize herself in her new position, she knew that getting back upright was no longer possible.

Vegeta looked down at her, appraising her crouched form, and felt a sort of quicksilver thrill. His arm lashed out, his fingers burying themselves in her thick ebony mane.

The sight of his hand on Kakarotte's drooping head was unexpectedly pleasing to the prince, and for a second he admired the juxtaposition of his strong knuckles next to her delicately bowed neck. Then he shoved his palm back, forcing the downtrodden Saiyan's gaze upwards.

"Look at you," he jeered. "If only your friends could see you now! How does it feel, Kakarotte, to no longer be the strongest of us?"

He wanted to see the fear and defenselessness he was certain was in her eyes, but once again, Kakarotte did not cooperate: her eyes were squeezed tightly closed. He could feel the flickering of her ki; though her power level was a ghost now of its former mind-boggling vitality, it was still stronger than he had expected. He had barely sensed her ki when she'd first walked in—which was probably why she'd been able to startle him—but it had grown significantly, no doubt to combat the room's escalating gravity. It was a useless exercise, of course; she was all but incapacitated now, slowly and inexorably being pushed to her knees.

The thought stirred up something inside him: anticipation and exhilaration and more than a bit of madness. It was something he had not felt since that fateful day on Namek as he had stared up at the dragon Porunga and waited to cross the boundary into immortality. Back then eternal life had been his utmost ambition, though he saw it mostly as a means to an end in his insurrection against Frieza. The idea had long ceased to mean anything to him after the death of the tyrant—which, incongruously enough, had happened around the time his life's goal had shifted from killing Frieza to defeating a certain third-class Saiyan.

It had taken him years, decades, but now that Saiyan hunched down before him, helpless, completely at bay, her deferential position proof of his sovereignty—which was exactly how it should have been so long ago.

Granted, Kakarotte was a weak Saiyan female now, and her genuflection was mostly due to the excruciating gravity levels, but Vegeta loftily decided not to dwell on those piddling details.

He let go of her hair and pressed the flat of his palm to the curve of her cranium, unwittingly heeding that malevolent little voice in the back of his brain that cackled how sweet it would be, oh so much sweeter, if Kakarotte would fully prostrate before him.

As if on cue, she slumped down further, her right leg surrendering to the terrible crushing weight. She was down on both knees now, and Vegeta pulled his hand from her head before she could feel the trembling in his fingers.

"Fall down, Kakarotte," he advised. "Fall down. It'll be much, much easier for you." He felt his cheek muscle throb with the onslaught of his protracted sneer. "Facedown on the floor before me like the lowborn you are."

Kakarotte responded by flipping over.

Vegeta gaped down at her upside-down face between the toes of his boots. She was now well and truly down, but not in the way he had wanted her: instead of her on her belly in front of him groveling for her health, she'd elected to lie on her back, neatly saving herself from an ignominious position and consequently depriving the prince of the gratification of seeing her prostrate before him.

His ire flared briefly at the other Saiyan's feint—once, just once, couldn't Kakarotte ever do what was expected of her?—but it was extinguished as he realized that she was pinned to the floor under an invisible hundred-ton blanket, utterly immobilized.

For some seconds the only sounds that carried in the static air of the gravity room were Kakarotte's labored breathing and the clicking of the soles of Vegeta's boots on the floor as he began to walk.

"That was good, Kakarotte. Clever, almost." He leisurely circled her supine figure, the words flowing out of his mouth with barely restrained glee. "But now you seem to have placed yourself in another quandary. You can't seem to move. This room's practically soundproof. It's just you and I in here. Face it, Kakarotte: you are at my mercy."

She didn't answer, which for some reason offended him deeply. Her head was also turned in the opposite direction, away from him, which irked him even more. He wanted her to react, wanted her to be exceedingly aware of him and his proximity, wanted her to acknowledge him, damn it.

Snarling, he maneuvered over her sprawled form and plunked himself down squarely on her stomach like a schoolyard bully, his legs propped on either side of her.

This earned a protesting moan from Kakarotte, and he leaned further into her, determined to provoke more similar sounds. She was still facing away from him. He decided to rectify this particular detail by grabbing her chin with his left hand and wrenching her face up. Gallingly enough, her eyes were still shut tight.

"Look at me, Kakarotte!"

She did, and he was transfixed when he saw his own face, reflected in startling detail within the huge obsidian mirrors of her eyes. It took a moment for him to remember what he was going to say.

"It hurts, doesn't it? The pressure on your body...it must be agonizing."

Kakarotte opened her mouth, the movement barely perceptible, but Vegeta felt it in his fingers. His iron grip on her chin had compacted her lips into a puckered cupid's-bow, and he withdrew his hand, unconsciously sliding it down the slippery curve of her sweat-streaked throat. He had the sensation of a man standing on the edge of an ocean, caught in the grip of a powerful undertow, his equilibrium tilting treacherously.

"Well? Aren't you going to do something about it?"

Her brow dipped further. She looked incredibly out of context lying there underneath him, with her arms spread flat on the floor and elbows crooked in ninety-degree angles, her glossy-damp skin and her bangs sticking wetly to her forehead, her teeth clenched and the fine bones of her arched neck starkly apparent underneath the red, red light of the room.

She did not look like any Kakarrot he had known.

"Why don't you turn Super Saiyan?" he breathed, knowing very well that she could not. She was almost there now, almost at the verge of total capitulation; all he needed her to do now was to try and turn Super Saiyan, try until she was blue in the face. And he would be there to watch her pitiful, futile attempts from his front-row seat and bask in her failure.

But Kakarotte wasn't even trying. She was being meticulously and deliberately crushed to death—and she wasn't even trying. Her power level was all but stagnant, refusing to ascend to heights she knew she could not reach.

"Turn Super Saiyan." His fingers twitched around her neck, at his side, all primed and ready to take some kind of ad hoc action.

Her head had all the mobility of an ocean liner, and her eyes cast about recklessly for something to latch onto. But Vegeta kept getting in the way—he was all hard planes and sharp angles, slick, bronzed skin and smoothly collaborating muscles, and she could not see anything else.

He bellowed down at her, the tip of his nose banging into hers. "Turn Super Saiyan, Kakarotte!"

"Vegeta?"

He stared down at her, almost mindlessly, until it finally pierced his brain that the intervening voice had issued from the gravity room's intercom.

"Vegeta, the gravity—it's all the way up...didn't Dad and I tell you not to do that? Just because there's a maximum level doesn't mean that you have to test it out, you know!"

Vegeta felt the beginnings of a Richter-scale-worthy growl build up in his throat, and suppressed it with difficulty. "Go away, Woman."

The Woman heard him; she had obviously installed the two-way the last time she had been tinkering with the room. "Oh, pardon me, your Highness. Forgive my untimely interruption of your very important business, but Chi-Chi and I are looking for Goku and we can't seem to find her. Have you seen her?"

He looked down at his living couch, noticed that Kakarotte's eyes were shut again, and grimaced through the testosterone haze in his head. "What makes you think I have any idea where that fool is?"

She 'hmm'ed, the sound tinny in the closed circuit of the intercom.  "I guess...it's not like you're done with your requisite eighteen hours of training, anyway..." She trailed off, then said charily, "Seriously, Vegeta...are you sure Goku's not in there? What are you doing?"

"Nothing of importance. Now leave me be so I can get back to my...my training!"

"I don't believe you! Goku? Oh, crap, Goku, are you in there? Vegeta, you open this door right now—"

"Woman, would you mind your own business—"

Goku only registered their exchange as a series of mumbles that was no match for the ringing in her ears. Every muscle and nerve ending screamed at her as they neared the end of their tethers, and her lungs contracted laboriously, fighting to suck in air that could not be extracted with Vegeta's weight on her. She had to breathe, had to get him off of her somehow—

She cracked open an eye, and in the center of her blurry vision was something round and dark. Belatedly she realized that somewhere in the middle of his conversation with Bulma through the intercom, Vegeta had shifted forward, his body tilting diagonally toward the speaker on the door panel and consequently bringing his upper torso an inch or so from her face. But even that wasn't near enough.

So she used her tongue to close the distance to his nipple.

Vegeta emitted a sound that could not by any stretch of the imagination be classified solely to a single category; it was as though a growl, a gasp, a whimper, and a roar had been contending for an exit from his vocal chords, and had somehow been squeezed out all at the same time. His eyes were bigger than she ever remembered seeing them, threatening to pop out of their sockets if his lids retracted any further. His entire body snapped back as though he'd just been struck by an unseen Perfect Cell-caliber haymaker.

This was exactly what Goku had been counting on. Harnessing every last scrap of defiant strength her numb body could possibly spare, she bucked as hard as she could.

Vegeta went flying.

On cue, the red lights winked out and were supplanted by the standard fluorescent lighting. The room whined mournfully as the gravity inducers ceased their functioning.

The collision of wall and his left shoulder was enough to jar Vegeta out of whatever state of shock he'd allowed himself to slip into, and it didn't take long for his mortification to evolve into a more comfortable emotion like rage. His Super Saiyan aura blazed like a lit inferno, green eyes sparking as he veered toward the object of his wrath.

Kakarotte lay across the room, on her side, her back to him, her body curling delicately inward like a wounded gazelle. Vegeta was upon her in an eye-blink, a compact, lethal Super Saiyan package of gold and flesh and navy blue bristling with righteous electric fury.

He hauled her up by the front of her ridiculously worded shirt, ready to mete out some much-needed retribution. "You—you—how dare you—I'm going to—"

"Oh, pleasthe!"

Vegeta stopped, his rage temporarily thawing into irked confusion as he saw that Kakarotte had pulled her collar up past her chin, and was frenetically blotting her tongue on it.

"Ptuh! Pwah." She gazed at him accusingly with one eye, her tongue peeking out from between her petulant lips like a curious pink candy. "You think you got the bad end of that deal? You're not the one who got to taste yourself."

The right side of Vegeta's eye acquired a dangerous tic. His left nipple began to tingle madly in sadistic reminder.

"I mean, have you ever licked yourself after a workout? You're sweaty and salty and dirty and—"

Before she had the chance to expand any further—or before Vegeta had the chance to shut her up in a violently creative manner—the gravity room door suddenly slid open, and in marched Chi-Chi and Bulma.

"Always knew one day I'd need to override the controls for this room," Bulma was muttering to Chi-Chi. The two of them stopped in their tracks as they caught sight of their spouses: the male one was bending over the female one, the former clutching the latter's shirtfront in his fist and the both of them wearing expressions reminiscent of underground dwellers who had just stumbled into sunlight.

Chi-Chi swept across the room like a minor hurricane, displacing a sizable amount of air particles—and, consequently, Vegeta—in her rush to get to her ailing husband. "Goku! Oh, Goku, are you all right?" She took in the faintly incarnadine tinge on her husband's complexion, the perspiration-soaked shirt, and the deeper-than-necessary breathing pattern. "Goku, you're burning up!"

"I'm all right, Chi-Chi. Really." Her husband pulled herself to an upright sitting position, letting her overworked muscles acclimate themselves to the restored gravity level. "I'm just a little sore."

Chi-Chi's face immediately took on the quality of a storm cloud, and Bulma's eyebrows shot up and concealed themselves beneath the blunt cut of her powder-blue bangs. They turned en masse toward the only physiologically correct male in the room.

It didn't take very long for their combined stares to get on Vegeta's nerves. "What?" he snapped, and powered down to his normal state.

Bulma shook her head at him. "Really, Vegeta," she sighed. "Goku's only been a girl for just one day. Couldn't you at least behave yourself around her?"

For some seconds the only response the prince could produce was an unintelligible succession of horrified, disbelieving sounds. Finally he managed to salvage enough of his oral abilities to yell, "And just what the hell do you think you are implying, Woman?"

"I'm implying that you should know better than to force Goku into another silly fight with you while she's like this. I should've known that your macho ego wouldn't be able to resist challenging her while she's female."

"Yeah, Vegeta," chimed in Chi-Chi as she helped Goku to her feet. "Shame on you, taking advantage of my Goku like that!"

"I am not taking advantage of Kakarotte," Vegeta denied heatedly. He couldn't believe it; he'd been the one who'd been wronged and they were banding around Kakarotte in that estrogenic, cultish way women did when one of their own was being persecuted by the opposite sex. And Kakarotte wasn't even a real woman.

Bulma's ears pricked up at the subtle change in his articulation of the other Saiyan's moniker. " 'Kakarotte'?" she echoed.

Vegeta fastened his gaze on a hairline crack on the nearest wall; he really did not feel like providing an explanation.

" 'Kakarotte'. Is that like the feminized version?" pressed Bulma, sounding incongruously amused. Goku blinked up between the two of them, while Chi-Chi seemed revolted by the very idea.

"What?" she exclaimed. "It's bad enough that you don't call my husband by his—her—real name, but now you're going to call him—her—a girl's name, too?"

Vegeta was beginning to regret his knowledge of Saiyan onomastics. "It'd be absurd for me to keep calling her a male name when she is obviously not one! Furthermore, Kakarotte is my subject, and I will call her whatever I want!"

Chi-Chi drew herself to her full height, preparing to do verbal battle, but Bulma stopped her with a dismissive gesture.

"Aw, let him," she said. "At least he isn't calling her a noun, the way he does with everyone else. And hey—" She tossed a smirk at her cantankerous-looking hubby. "—at least we finally know that he's noticed."

"Notice what?" Vegeta demanded in spite of his better judgment.

"That Goku's female," said Bulma, very matter-of-factly.

Vegeta's face was perilously close to attaining a scarlet hue; the tingling in his nipple was escalating to a near-unbearable degree. "Woman, what kind of fool do you take me for? Of course I know Kakarotte's female! Why the hell wouldn't I notice something like—"

"All right, all right. Relax. I was just saying. Geez." Bulma surveyed him in concern. "Honestly, Vegeta—you're really paranoid today."

"And touchy," Goku piped in helpfully. "Don't forget touchy." Vegeta noted darkly that she was discreetly wiping her tongue on the rim of her collar, no doubt part of her continuing quest to exterminate the flavor of him from her taste buds.

"And touchy," agreed Bulma. "Vegeta, is there something wrong with your chest? You look like you want to scratch it or something."

Vegeta jerked his hand away from his left pectoral. "Nothing," he ground out. "Is there a reason you've barged into my gravity room, or did you just come in here to pester me with all these useless questions?" he grated on, eager for a change in topic.

"Oh, that's right. I almost forgot." The blue-haired woman aimed an ominously benevolent smile in her childhood friend's direction. "Chi-Chi and I were talking and she told me about your...problems, Goku. So I said, sure, I'd be glad to lend you some of my bras."

Vegeta hacked like a malfunctioning car engine. "Couldn't you have just told me that it was none of my business and left it at that?"

"And then," Bulma went on, pointedly ignoring her better half, "I thought that we could all go shopping."

"What for?" Goku asked, acknowledging the shrill of warning klaxons going off in her head.

"For clothes, of course! You honestly don't think you're going to wear that...interesting shirt everyday, don't you? Besides..." Bulma inspected the attire in question and wrinkled her nose. "You've gone and made that shirt all sweaty. What you're going to need is a whole new wardrobe." She said it as though she were offering the taller woman a four-course buffet on a snack tray.

"A new wardrobe?" Goku's arms were crossed over her waist, clutching protectively at the sides of her tee. "Bulma, I'm not going to be a girl forever, you know!"

Bulma made a flippant flicking motion with her wrist. "Psshh, I know that! But I've been wanting to pick up some new outfits myself, and if we happen to do so while we're picking up clothes for you, then that's all the better, isn't it?" She patted a finger against her cheek, constructing a mental shopping list as she sized Goku up. "Hmm...if you're going to get some bras, you might as well get your own panties..."

"Woman!" exploded Vegeta, the tic in his eye developing into a minor seizure. "Do you absolutely have to discuss this in my gravity room?"

Bulma rolled her eyes at the prince's theatrics. "Oh, ex-cuse me if I've offended your delicate royal sensibilities. C'mon, Goku, Chi-Chi. Let's leave his Highness to his all-important training." She walked out of the room in a huff, murmuring to herself. "The man doesn't blink an eye when it comes to blood and gore, but talk about women's underwear and he goes all to pieces..."

Chi-Chi and Goku went to follow her out. Goku was the last to exit, her movements ginger and unhurried, but halfway out the door she pivoted and regarded the other Saiyan. Vegeta was half-standing, half-leaning against the console, scowling down at one of the panels as if trying to set it on fire through sheer force of will.

His nipple felt like it was about to spontaneously self-combust, and he wondered, fleetingly and irrationally, if she'd poisoned him with her saliva, if fluids from female Saiyans were somehow toxic to him. He shook the absurd thought away and met her gaze balefully. Under the insipid fluorescence, the Kakarotte standing at the door bore little resemblance to the Kakarotte he had pinned down under the lurid red lights.

She held up her index finger.

"Round one to you, Vegeta," she said solemnly, and walked out, taking the chafing, oppressive ambiance of the room with her.

Vegeta turned his back on the console and braced his palms against its circumference, listening to his internal systems slowly resume their normal speed of function.

He felt a sudden geyser of anger, and barely restrained himself from driving his arm elbow-deep into wires and circuitry.

Kakarrot—the male version—had been someone the Saiyan prince had learned, over and over again in spite of himself, not to underestimate. Kakarrot would push back when pushed, and would not hesitate to use what means he had at his disposal, no matter how unsavory, to extricate himself from any critical combat situation.

Why then, thought the prince, had he ever assumed that Kakarotte—the female—would be any different?

Vegeta pushed himself away from the console and swiped an involuntary hand over his burning left nipple. The one she'd touched. With her tongue. To get him off.

He was going to kill that impudent third-class gender-bent freak of nature.

"Round one to you, Kakarotte," he growled at the empty room.

The forwarding address on the envelope was the P.O. box Master Roshi used for any incoming mail to Kame House, and the name "Krillin" was scrawled on the back in a compulsorily neat script.

Krillin handled it as though it were a bomb.

"Krillin, what is that?" his wife queried abruptly from Kame House's entryway, her hands fisted against her Capri-clad hips.

He lowered his arm, letting the envelope tap a restless staccato against his thigh. "Nothing, hon. Just a letter."

Eighteen surveyed him skeptically, but she did not press the issue. "Hmph. At any rate, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to go blow off some of my prize money at the biggest mall this side of the continent."

Krillin was about to remind her that that particular mall was one thousand six hundred miles away, but then realized that she probably knew that. "You, uh, want me to come with you?"

The blonde flipped her hair and let out a chuff. "Why? So you can carry my packages for me? Thanks, but no thanks. Besides, I know how much you enjoy sitting outside the dressing room waiting for me while I try on clothes."

"Hey, I enjoy watching you come out of that dressing room," he cracked. And it was true, even though every time he saw her dressed up he would wonder what a woman like her was doing with a guy like him.

"I'm sure you do. I'm taking Marron with me; she's outgrowing her wardrobe." She turned her back on him and began to walk back into the house, then halted just before she closed the door. Without glancing back at him she muttered, almost grudgingly, "If there's...anything you want me to get you..."

The former monk felt a smile touch his lips at his wife's concession of affection. "No, thanks, Eighteen. You and Marron have a good time."

She nodded curtly and disappeared inside, presumably to fetch their daughter. A few minutes later he heard her step out the back door and blast off from the opposite side of the island.

He shielded his eyes from the lambent chill of the early-morning sun as he watched her figure—and the tiny child she held in her arms—grow smaller and smaller until his limited human vision could no longer distinguish her from the rest of the sky. It was only until then that he slowly trudged to the back of the island, where Master Roshi was lounging around on his hastily set up hammock and perusing the newest issue of his favorite lingerie catalogue.

"I wish you'd stop ordering those things with my name," Krillin complained once his sensei was within earshot. "I mean, I didn't mind back when I was single, but I got a wife and kid now; you should see the looks I get when I stop at the post office."

"Believe me, Krillin, they're just green with envy." The old man didn't even bother to spare him a look; the majority of his attention was reserved for the celluloid beauties cavorting about in the latest and laciest in barely-there fashion. "They probably think you're getting it for your wife."

Krillin blinked. "Oh, yeah. I...hadn't thought of that."

"That, or they're probably lookin' at you like that because they're wondering just what you're wearing under your clothes."

"Fun-ee." Krillin fervently hoped that that wasn't the case.

"Just telling you like it is." Roshi buried his nose deeper in his precious glossies and flicked his wrist toward his student in an impatient shooing motion. "Now buzz off, will ya? I never get to read any of my magazines when your wife and kid're around, so this happens to be my happy time."

"But, Master Roshi...I got a letter."

In some miniscule part of his brain that wasn't completely overrun by nubile young girls and their lacy undergarments, Roshi wondered why he had ever agreed to give up the hermit life and the unchecked privacy that went with it. "You did? Well, that's great, Krillin! Good for you! I knew one day you'd become popular. Now get lost!"

"Oh, Master." Turtle extracted his head from his carapace and regarded the former hermit with exasperation. He was situated next to the hammock, having been appointed a makeshift table for a glass of lemonade and a stack of titillating reading material. "At least hear Krillin out."

"Fine, fine!" Roshi closed his catalogue, using his finger to mark his place. He peered at Krillin, only slightly irritated. "What's up?"

"I got a letter."

"You already told me that."

Krillin shoved the envelope into his former teacher's hand. "Read the mailing address."

Roshi squinted down at the smudged ink, his shades slipping halfway down his nose. "It's from Orin Temple. What the heck is Orin..."

"Isn't that where you used to live?" Turtle interrupted, addressing the younger man. "Before you came here to train under the Master?"

Krillin nodded.

"Well, what do they want?" demanded Roshi. "Don't tell me those monks want you back in the flock or something."

"Actually, this isn't from the head monks." Krillin took back the envelope. "It's from my old...friends. Akoru and Walna."

"Akoru and Walna, eh?" The Turtle Hermit stroked his beard. "Say, would they be any chance happen to be those two monks dressed in saffron robes you were talking to when you were qualifying for your very first World Tournament?"

Krillin gaped at him, amazed at the extent of his ex-sensei's memories. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. They used to pick on me everyday, pulling jokes, tripping me, making me mess up my monastery duties..."

"They don't seem much like friends to me," observed Turtle.

"Well, for Heaven's sake," said Roshi, "what do those bullies want with you now? A reunion?"

"Sort of," Krillin admitted. "They want to stop by, see how their 'old friend' "—he made lagomorphic quotation marks with his fingers—"is doing."

"What's the problem, then? You worried whether I'd mind some visitors? For a hermit, I think I've been pretty accommodating about having people overrunning my house and using the faculties and generally causing pandemonium..."

"You think I should see them again?" The former monk frowned. "I mean, we're talking about guys who used to call me 'runt' and 'midget'..."

"So what if you're still a runt and a midget?" quipped Roshi, blissfully disregarding Krillin's glower. "You've moved past that a long time ago. Heck, you helped save the Earth a couple of times. I think that means you've outgrown their image of you, right?"

Krillin nodded, though there was still reluctance in his manner.

"Then hey, why not tell 'em you'd be glad to have 'em over? Maybe they want to make up for all those years they mistreated you. Maybe it'd be good for you, too—give you some closure."

"I don't need closure," Krillin objected, perhaps a bit too quickly.

"Well, then, for the love of Dende—why the hell are you even discussing this with me if you've already come to a decision about it?" Roshi snapped peevishly. He fished out a red-capped marker from his gaudy tropical-print shorts, flipped open his magazine, and re-immersed himself in his little happy world of obliging females and their frilly underclothes.

Krillin left him to his own devices; he was already immersed in his own little monologue. "Well...I guess...it wouldn't hurt if I did let them come over for a little while. Who knows? Maybe Master Roshi's right and they just wanna make peace. Besides, I guess it'd be nice to see faces from my old stomping grounds." He paused, eyeing the letter in his hand as if expecting it to object, then declared brightly, "All right. I'll write Walna and Akoru back, tell them they're welcome to stop by. Besides, I wouldn't mind finding how my old masters and fellow monks back at Orin Temple are doing."

"Good for you, Krillin," cheered Turtle.

Krillin was grinning toothily as he turned toward his ex-sensei. "Hey, Master Roshi, where do you keep the envelopes? It's been a while since I wrote a letter."

"Er...it's in a box...top shelf...of my room. Yeah." As it was, the Turtle Hermit was having trouble juggling two subjects in his brain at once, especially if one of those subjects happened to be girls with scanty, near-transparent attire and the other a bunch of white papers folded together to accommodate other bunches of papers. "Uh, no, wait...that box's full of my magazines...uh, look in...the box on my table...no, that one's got my collection of bikini postcards..."

"Oh, Master," Turtle said again, in the tone of the long-suffering. He glanced resignedly at Krillin. "I'll get it. I know where it is." He waddled off toward the house, ignoring Roshi's half-hearted protest as he took the lemonade and magazines with him.

Krillin was about to start after him when Roshi exulted, "Hey, Krillin, whaddaya think of this?"

The former monk turned toward him only to get an eyeful of glossy near-unclothed female.

"Master Roshi!" He pushed the catalogue away from him, blushing severely. One of the lingerie models on the proffered page was circled in ruby ink; she was trussed up in a black number stippled with silver studs and numerous belt buckles, an obvious sample of what the S&M section of the catalogue had to offer.

"So?" Roshi tittered, sounding not unlike a schoolgirl asking a pal her opinion of a cute outfit. "What do you think, Krillin?"

"To tell you the truth, Master Roshi, it's not really your style."

Roshi forgot to be careful with his new catalogue and used it to whack the younger man on his head. "Not for me, you nincompoop! For Goku!"

Krillin was treated the unfortunate mental image of his strapping best friend suffocating in the bandanna-sized garb with the matching garters. A moment later he remembered that Goku was female now, and the blueness on his face promptly metamorphosed into crimson. "You want to get Goku a piece of lingerie?"

"Now when you say it like that it sounds just wrong," sniffed Roshi, settling back into his hammock.

"But...but..." Krillin stammered feebly. He was saved from having to explain its many levels of wrongness when he felt the tickle of a familiar fast-approaching ki. He scarcely had the time to twist his head in the right direction when Piccolo swooped down from the sky, stirring up a minor sandstorm as he landed.

"Krillin." The Namek accorded him a curt, acknowledging nod. "The plan's changed. We can no longer afford to wait for the Supreme Kai to return with a solution to Goku's problem. We are going to get Goku and then we are going to hunt dragonballs, and then we are going to turn her back."

"Dragonballs? What, right now?" Krillin searched Piccolo's rigid countenance and instantly deduced that something was up. "What happened, Piccolo? Did Babidi show up?"

Piccolo bared his teeth. It might have been a smile or a sneer. "In a way. I found his corpse."

Even that was enough to prize Master Roshi's gaze away from his precious catalogue.

Krillin decided that he must have misheard. "His what?"

"His corpse. Dende was appointed by King Kai to keep watch over Babidi's ship. He noticed some movement around the area earlier, but he didn't think it was Babidi, and I volunteered to check. There was nothing near the ship, but when I expanded my search, I found a cave two miles or so away. Inside were the remains of a fire and some half-eaten deer and boar. Further inside I found a body." Piccolo inclined his head, his chin sinking behind the bunched cloth of his collar. "I showed it to Dende, who contacted King Kai. He recognized it based on his knowledge of Bibidi the father, and he identified it as Babidi the son."

Krillin made a time-out signal with his hands. "Wait, wait, hold on—correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Babidi supposed to be the most powerful sorcerer in the universe or something?"

"King Kai seems to think so," remarked Piccolo, his tone indicating that he for one did not put much faith in King Kai's convictions.

"Then how can he be dead?" cried Krillin.

"My opinion is that the minion—or minions—he brought up here from Hell killed him, the same way they killed his underlings back in that ship."

Krillin had an idea of where this was leading, and he didn't want to be the first to arrive at the likely destination. "Which means..."

"Which means that with Babidi no longer around to serve, they're free to do whatever they damn well please." Piccolo's countenance grew even more stoic. "And if the Supreme Kai's theory proves right, then sooner or later—though something tells me it'll be sooner—they're going to make their move."

"Great," Krillin commented.

"When did this happen?" piped up Roshi, shedding his façade of innocent non-eavesdropper. "I mean, when did Dende notice that there was someone near the ship?"

"Two hours ago," Piccolo answered.

"Well, if this Babidi person's been dead for that long and his recruits've been running wild since then, why haven't they made a made a move yet?" Roshi wanted to know.

Piccolo exhaled impatiently. "How should I know? Maybe they're still waiting for something, someone..." He paused, his ruminations taking a digressive path. "Although...did any of you sense anything strange around midnight last night?"

"Around midnight?" Krillin stroked the pads of his index and middle fingers across his crinkled brow. "I'm not sure...what do you mean, anything strange?"

"Like...an energy signature. A new one. Stronger than a normal human, but nothing as drastic as Cell's or Frieza's. I would've easily overlooked it—if it hadn't been so close to where Babidi's craft was."

Krillin and Roshi exchanged uneasy glances.

"Now what in the hell d'you suppose's going on there?" demanded the Turtle Hermit. "Some sort of convention?"

The sky was a shade of cerulean that should have been consoling, but the color, unfamiliar and overly bright, stabbed the back of his corneas like thousands of tiny glass needles. Or perhaps that wasn't the color at all: it was the sunlight filtering through his lids, its non-scalding warmth alien on his skin.

"Wouldn't we be less conspicuous inside of that cave instead of sitting here out in the open?" he asked irritably, for what must have been the fiftieth time since the two of them had teamed up. "Why the hell did we decide to relocate?"

"Because, General, they would have eventually found us had we stayed where we were." His companion was sitting under the shade of a tree, his eyes closed and his stance relaxed in feigned meditation. Flecks of sunlight dappled his worn-leather skin, mutton-chop sideburns, thick mustache, and elevated black hair cropped short. He had the look of a war-weary veteran, even though he was only slightly older than the general was; there was a jagged scar intersecting the top of his left eyebrow all the way down over his closed left eyelid and the top of his weathered cheek. He was wearing a voluminous white robe-cape combo that nearly concealed the armor he wore underneath—as well as the brown tail he had coiled around his waist.

"There's that 'they' again," groused the general. "Ever since our paths crossed you've been ranting about 'they' and you've never once bothered to enlighten me. Who the hell are 'they' and why the hell are we hiding from them?"

"Because now is not the right time. Not yet. Not while my son still sleeps, and our numbers are few."

"Your son? Why should I give a damn if your son is still asleep? He has done nothing but sleep!" The general shaded his eyes. He could still not get over the vibrancy of his surroundings: jades and olives around them, yellow ochre and burnt sienna a bit further off, all housed under an impossibly blue ceiling—vividness that could not have been accomplished with Hell's decidedly limited palette. "As for our being few in number—what the hell did you expect? Did you forget, old man, that our race is extinct?"

The robed man cracked open his eyes. "If it is, then we should not even be here in the Living World, should we?"

"Almost extinct," the general amended through gritted teeth. He did not like this man, this reticent, self-important second-class vassal who spoke to him with a cold politeness that only barely masked the contempt that bubbled underneath. Something about him nagged at the general's memory, which had been rusted by his time in Hell and all those years he had spent in Frieza's employ, hopping from planet to planet in an almost never-ending cycle of extermination until his mind gave up on trying to get a foothold on distinguishing details. "But that still doesn't change the fact that the rest of our race is dead and festering in Hell, while for some reason I alone have been returned to the Living World!"

"What makes you think," the other man said coolly, "that you are and will be the only one?"

The general gaped at him for the span of some seconds, uncomprehending, and then jumped to his feet, the ground shuddering underneath his massive frame.

"Where are you going?" the robed Saiyan queried sharply.

"I'm going to do what I should've done the moment I got here—I am going to find the prince."

The older man gazed up at him as though he had lost his mind. "What?"

"You heard me, old man. Whatever game you've got planned, I'm not going to be part of it. Not anymore. I got more important things to take care of."

"How will you be able to find him?" challenged the sitting Saiyan. "Hell might have been obliging enough to permit you to retain your armor, but apparently that consideration doesn't quite extend to your scouter. What makes you think that you'll be able to find the prince among the billions of Earthlings out there?"

The giant hesitated a bit, apparently not having considered this quandary. Then he decided with unconvincing bravado, "I'll make him come to me."

With that, he took to the air in a blast of grass blades and upturned loam.

For a moment Paragus contemplated hauling him back and reiterating the reasons why they could not risk confronting the prince or a certain party of Earth dwellers, but then he remembered that the elite could reduce him to dust if he so wished. That, and he really didn't give a damn what happened to the latter.

After all, Paragus thought cynically as he watched Nappa fly toward certain catastrophe, the general had laughed in his face, on that fateful day in planet Vegeta's throne room, when Paragus had begged the indifferent king for the life of his newborn son.

End of Chapter Six

Closing Notes: Incidentally, am I the only one who hasn't seen another Goku-as-a-girl fic? I mean, I've seen scabs of Vegeta ones (half of those seem to involve the Jusenkyo Springs), but not a single Goku-oriented one. I mean, that was basically why I tossed in this fic, just to buck the system. And then, of course, it somehow ballooned into this...oh, well. ^^

Next: Goku is taken hostage on a shopping spree spearheaded by a determined Bulma and Chi-Chi, Piccolo and company orchestrate a dragonball hunt and Goku's new training regimen, a prince and his friend cross paths with the vengeful Nappa, and Shin and Kibito encounter a Saiyan in Hell named Bardock.