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

Author's Notes: Well, I suppose I'm going to have to address this sooner or later: there've been a couple of readers who've been less than enthusiastic, so to speak, regarding the whole gender-switch issue. I get the impression that I'm being asked to write something a bit more..."mainstream", I guess, is the word.

This's the first Dragonball fic I've ever written, and probably the last; I don't think I have it in me to write another (except maybe a short Krillin family piece). I wrote the first parts more on a whim than anything else, and then it became...this. I don't know whether it's supposed to be serious or funny or whatnot, but I'm pretty okay with how it's going. I get to tackle characters' psyches along with the usual battle scenarios; I'm able to delve into Saiyan culture and history and the connections between Heaven and Hell and everything in between; I can explore how a change in one person can affect a whole dimension—all of these I can tackle in this fic. What it all boils down to, I suppose, is that if one isn't comfortable with the subject matter, then one doesn't have to read it.

Okay, I need to get to the reviews. Thanks to everyone who provided them. :) I'm sorry I can't reply to every one. It's that space thing, you know.

G-jin: Hmm...I really haven't seen any of the Dragonball girls wear spandex, so there wouldn't be any to lend to Goku. Vegeta's the only one who might have some, but I doubt he'd let Goku borrow any. ;P

Hyperbole: I'll read your fic if you decide to write it. :) As for Buu, well, don't count him out just yet. And er...Bardock (one of my absolute favorite characters ever) shows up in the next installment. I tried and tried and I couldn't fit him into this one. ~_~

Well, I gotta cut it off here. Thanks as always to everyone for the reviews; they aid a great deal in my speed. Want me to go faster? Drop me a note. ^_^

The Kakarotte Factor
by Echelon

Chapter Seven:
Vendettas

Unlike Trunks, who came into the world with approximately three wisps of lavender fuzz on top of his head, little Goten had been born with a full crown of thick, soft black spikes and a tail, looking eerily like a Saiyan pureblood. The fact had perturbed Vegeta to no end—how could the son of third-class Kakarrot possess more Saiyan characteristics than his own?—but the issue was exacerbated when Trunks grew a mane of floppy, pastel-purple hair more suited to an Earthling than a Saiyan half-breed. It had taken the prince a while to be convinced that the boy was, indeed, his progeny.

Still, every now and then his disbelief would resurface, especially at times when he was feeling especially resentful toward a certain third-class Saiyan. The last time it had happened, Trunks had unfortunately overheard, and from then onwards, the little boy had developed the semi-involuntary habit of trying to yank the other demi-Saiyan's hair out of their roots whenever he got the chance.

"Oww!" the younger child wailed as the other boy zipped by over his head and casually snagged a protruding spike from his scalp.

"Whoops. Sorry, Goten." Trunks looked down at his offending hand and was profoundly disappointed to see only a few ebony strands there. "I guess it must've gotten caught. It's your fault, you know—it's that hairstyle of yours. It's like a bird's nest or something. Maybe," he suggested, trying not to seem too eager, "you oughta shave it or something."

"No way," Goten declared vehemently. He was sitting on the oversize suede couch that dominated the living room, safely ensconced between the three or four enormous vanilla-colored throw pillows he'd propped up around him to form an improvised bastion.

"But you'd have a lot less hassle without hair," argued Trunks. He plodded over to the other end of the couch, flopped down, and arranged himself into an inverted position, his legs sprawled vertically against the cushions and his neck dangling over the edge of the couch. "You wouldn't hafta wash it everyday, and you don't hafta go for haircuts and stuff, and people wouldn't keep getting their hands caught in it."

"You're the only one whose hand keeps getting caught in it," reminded Goten. "You're kinda clumsy, arent'cha, Trunks?"

"I am not clumsy!" protested Trunks, adopting the deeply offended yet defiant tone of the falsely accused. "I'm actually grabbin' your hair, so that doesn't count!"

Goten peered suspiciously at him over the rim of his marshmallow fortress. "Why're you grabbing my hair?"

"Because I'm bored, that's why," the other boy retorted, and hoped that this would be the end of it.

"You grabbed my hair because you're bored?"

Trunks squinted at the upside-down TV screen. They were in the middle of some blockbuster martial arts action movie, complete with bombastic revolving-camera sequences, life-threatening stunts, and neutron-bomb-worthy pyrotechnics.

It was driving the both of them to mind-numbing boredom.

"Look at that," Trunks said as the onscreen bad guy leveled a city block with his flamboyantly hefty but nonetheless impressive shockwave-blaster-slash-bazooka-slash-super-gun. "See how it exploded? That was so fake. The smoke doesn't look right, and the rubble and stuff went flying the wrong way. It's so obvious that they used dynamite to blow it up."

Goten was similarly educated in the dynamics of explosions, and easily confirmed his friend's observations. "Yeah. And look how they're fighting. They're so slow," he pointed out as the hero and villain engaged in blurry fisticuffs.

Sluggish as it was to them, the sight of martial arts violence was enough to whet the average Saiyan's appetite for similar destructive activities, and Trunks was no exception.

"Do you wanna stop by your dad's gravity room?" asked Goten, reading the older boy's mind.

"Are you kidding? Once he gets inside he practically seals himself in there. We won't see him until dinner." Trunks's fingers twitched as the villain sent the protagonist through several windows and a wall. "Hey, Goten, this movie bites. I bet we could make a better fight scene."

"Really? You think?" Goten's countenance lit up with excitement, which then dissolved a second later. "But, Trunks, remember what your mom said the last time we did our play-fight?"

Trunks waited until he was sure his entire head felt swollen with diverted blood, then swiftly vaulted himself back to a proper upright position. "Oh, like we're supposed to be afraid of her?" he scoffed.

"But she said that the next time we tore up any part of the house she was gonna cook for us," declared Goten.

The tan drained from Trunks's complexion; even his father was known to flee—in his own overbearing and utterly composed way, of course—from his mother's so-called edibles. "Well, uh...well...we won't...we won't play-fight in the house then. Simple as that."

Goten pushed down the front gates of his cushion stronghold. "Where're we gonna go play-fight then, Trunks?"

Trunks hummed a snatch of some nameless fight tune as he mulled this over. Onscreen the hero and baddie chased each other across car hoods, fire escape stairwells, and brownstone roofs, shattering glass, demolishing brick, smashing concrete and asphalt as they ducked, swiped, and generally tried to kill each other. The tinny screams of the dismayed citizens were white noise against the movie's hard-rock destruction soundtrack as the camera panned back and up in a dramatic overhead shot of the ruined block.

"Let's go fly around the city," Trunks said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Goten was peering closely down at a loose thread on the top of a pillow, his head tilted in the older boy's direction. Trunks reached out.

"Hey!"

"Sorry," responded Trunks, automatically.

"Get outta here! You tellin' me that Goku's a chick?"

Piccolo glared down at the portly ninja, not bothering to hide his disdain. "Yes. And that is why I'm appointing you to collect two of the dragonballs."

Yajirobe harrumphed, knotting his arms over his chest. "Why would I wanna do that?" he whined. "At least lemme see how she looks b'fore you turn her back."

The Namek looked at him as though he were a chopped-off piece of Frieza's tail. "Get going."

"All right, all right! So pissy. Yeesh." Yajirobe slipped the dragon radar Piccolo had given him into one of the pouches strung around his substantial waist and ambled off, murmuring to himself under his breath. "Ain't fair. Known the guy since he was a kid, but can't get to see him as a girl. Ain't fair at all..."

Piccolo dragged his hand down over his face as Korin trundled over to stand beside him.

"Why only two?" the cat wanted to know. "You could've asked him to get all seven balls."

"It's faster that way." Piccolo watched as Yajirobe tossed a rope over the rail surrounding Korin Tower and began his descent. "I sent the others to fetch the rest."

That task had been easier than it could've been. If Piccolo had nursed any lingering qualms regarding Goku's propensity for befriending people, they were all but eliminated: her allies were all too glad to aid her in her time of need. Yamcha, Krillin, Tien, and Chaotzu had each agreed to retrieve one dragonball, using their own inherent ki radars to track them down—though Piccolo got the feeling that Tien and Chaotzu only half-believed his narration of the current events.

"That makes six," observed Korin. "What about the last one?"

"I'm in charge of that."

Korin tapped his paw against his furry chin. "So Goku's been turned into a girl, eh? Must be fun."

"Fun," Piccolo intoned stiffly, "is not the way I would describe it. More like someone's means to an end. That's why we need the dragonballs, to turn her back before this's used to someone's advantage."

"I see." The cat nodded. "And why isn't Goku with you now?"

Piccolo scowled: earlier he had flown to Capsule Corp. to pick up both Goku and the dragon radar, and had been less than pleased to find out that the former had just been taken hostage by Bulma and Chi-Chi on a shopping expedition. He would have tracked them down immediately had Mrs. Briefs not informed him, with much unwarranted glee, that they were going to buy undergarments—upon which Piccolo, with great discretion and more than a bit of chagrin, had decided to postpone his retrieval for at least an hour. "She's...preoccupied. I am going to fetch her later." He breathed in a whiff of thin high-altitude air, then turned and marched away. Korin tagged after him, having to scamper to keep up with the Namek's much longer strides.

"Do you need a Senzu bean?" asked the cat, acutely heedful of some nameless upcoming conflict.

"No," Piccolo affirmed. "Not yet, anyway."

"Where are you off to now?"

"I am going to get the last dragonball." He halted some feet away from the railing, ready to launch into the air, but something held him aground.

Korin surveyed him with his eternally slanted squint. "What's wrong? Did you change your mind about that Senzu?"

"No." The Namek's obtruding brow knitted in sudden thought. "I just realized something. We found Babidi's corpse. King Kai identified it. We all agreed it was him." He inclined his head, allowing Korin to fully see the perturbed glint in his eyes. "If Babidi was the one who cast the spell on Goku, and he's supposed to be dead, then why hasn't the spell worn off yet?"

Frieza was in a less accommodating mood than Cell, though Shin privately attributed this to his less than stellar condition (his ivory skin was now a checkerboard of scratches, sooty patches, and dried blood) and the fact that his father (looking no less battered himself) had harassed him with great merriment all throughout their interview (mostly regarding his son's mania with a certain Saiyan). After listening to their barbed exchanges for far longer than they would have wanted (at the end of which Frieza finally snapped and began tossing death balls), Kibito was duly convinced that Hell badly needed a psychiatrist of some sorts.

Shin had laughed at that, obviously glad for the reprieve from the grimness that had permeated their current conversations, then reminded him that this was Hell, and there was no room for social workers in this place.

Kibito had felt inclined to agree, but after tracking down the Ginyu Force, the gigantic King Slug and the icy Cooler, even Shin was starting to discern an epidemic of various Goku-related psychoses (Cooler had been especially unhelpful; his responses to the Supreme Kai's questions had all deviated into violent, rambling tangents about Super Saiyans and their annoying hair). By the time they had finished cross-examining all of Hell's elite, the both of them had come to one inexorable conclusion: under no circumstances should Son Goku be ever allowed to make a detour into Hell (again).

"I just don't understand it," Kibito was muttering as he and Shin resignedly made their way back from the belly of the beast. "How could a single person—an Earthling, at that—have pissed off so many people in here?"

"Saiyan," Shin said.

Kibito blinked down at his somber-faced companion. "Eh?"

"I meant—Son Goku is a Saiyan. Not an Earthling." The Supreme Kai breathed easier as the ground underneath their feet acquired an uphill tilt; the elevated levels were peopled with the lesser offenders—murderers instead of mass murderers, psychopaths who actually were unhinged instead of those who pretended to be, individuals who viewed slaughter and peccadillo as informal necessities instead of recreational activities. Not much of a sea change, Shin admitted to himself, but the ambiance was infinitely more bearable than where he and Kibito had just been, in the deepest bowels of Hell, breathing the same metaphorical air as the worst of the worst of what the universe had to offer.

"I find it hard to believe that Goku could be of the same heritage as those thugs we ran into," muttered Kibito.

"Well, he is—she is. It really is remarkable, isn't it? A protector born from a race of destroyers. The Saiyans were a truly formidable people. That would explain Goku's power, as well as Gohan's."

By this time the ground was completely level, their backdrop now taking on the interior of an underground cavern, replete with stalactites and stalagmites that dripped from ceiling and floor like icicles. Shin took a seat on the next flat-topped rock-like outcropping he came across, intent on organizing his thoughts. Kibito was far too anxious to sit still, and elected instead to pace back and forth in front of his master.

"All right," Shin began after a short pause. "Let's go over what we've learned so far. Not long after Babidi visited the Demon World to recruit Dabura, a commotion started up in the dimension below—Hell. It turns out that the one responsible was a single Saiyan, presumably acting under the guidance of his father. Perhaps it's just me, but I sort of got the feeling that the father might have conspired with the likes of Cell and Frieza—all of Hell's biggest notorieties..."

"And all of whom seem to be on a first-name basis with Son Goku," Kibito pointed out.

Shin glanced up at him, silver eyebrows lifting. "That's right. They do."

"Then..." His assistant stopped in his tracks, stunned. "Master, are you saying that all of the chaos in Hell, all the panic in Heaven, the deserted ship, those dead bodies, Babidi's disappearance—all of this because..."

"...of a vendetta?" the Supreme Kai finished for him. He ventured a weary smile. "Vengeance happens to be one of the very few things that can transcend generations, worlds, even dimensions. You should know, Kibito: Bibidi may be dead, but his evil lives on in his son."

At the mention of the wizard, the both of them grew subdued again, their thoughts returning to their previous morbid states. Finally Shin raised his head.

"We are operating on borrowed time, Kibito," he said quietly.

"I know." Kibito panned his gaze over their environs. The area was wholly deserted, though its hollows echoed with the wails of disembodied voices and its walls were limned by bobbing outlines—the efforts of souls straining to find a way to break out from their allotted boroughs of Hell. "The ogres should be done reporting to King Yema. Perhaps we should visit him; surely by now he has the names of those who have yet to be accounted for."

"Perhaps." But Shin's mind was still fixated on their preceding discussion. "Nonetheless, there are still a good number of questions that have yet to be answered. What did Babidi discuss with the father? How have his plans changed? What of their present whereabouts? For that matter, what of Buu's?"

His assistant eyed him reluctantly. "What are you suggesting then, Master?"

"I think...we haven't found out everything that we could have." Shin propped his left elbow on the palm of his right arm and massaged his chin with his left hand. "Perhaps we should pay another visit to the Saiyans."

Kibito cringed inwardly at the thought of a return trip to that particular corner of Hell. "I highly doubt there's anything more we can extract out of them other than what little they've already told us," he said, trying to keep the petulance out of his voice.

"You may be right."

The two of them snapped their heads around at the unexpected intercession. Situated between two teeth-like flanges were two figures—a man and woman dressed in a markedly recognizable style of armor. The male was tall and brawny, with narrow, square-jawed features and elevated ebony hair pulled back into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck; the female was petite but built like a tri-athlete, her lighter-colored hair cropped tomboyishly short.

"We don't usually rat on each other," the female went on; it was she who had spoken earlier. She eyed the two intruders circumspectly. "So if you're here to interrogate us, you are wasting your time."

Shin recovered his powers of locution. "You are...Saiyans?"

The female looked at him as if the question was the most ridiculous one that had ever been put to her. "Yes."

"But...you are..." Kibito was similarly mystified; there weren't supposed to be any Saiyans on any of the elevated levels. For a race like the Saiyans, who had been assured of a place in Hell long before the bulk of them were eradicated, traipsing beyond the boundaries of their assigned Underworld district was next to impossible.

"You are accusing me of lying?" the female snarled. The belt she wore around her waist suddenly twitched of its own volition, and Shin and Kibito started as they realized that the "belt" was round, brown, and furry—a tail.

Of course, thought Shin. The Saiyans had tails. I can't believe I forgot.

"No, not at all," he said out loud. "It's just that, well...we really didn't expect to see Saiyans...on this level."

The male spoke up for the first time, his gentle, pensively amused baritone catching both Shin and Kibito unawares. "You mean this far away from the other Saiyans?"

Before Kibito could answer in the affirmative, the female butted in, her tone acid. "If you have nothing more to do here than ask us these questions, then we're going to have to ask you to leave."

Countless epochs of being the Supreme Kai had rendered Shin nothing but skilled at playing peacemaker. "We mean no harm. We are merely passing through." He ventured an introduction. "My name is Shin, and my companion here is Kibito."

The female ogled the both of them suspiciously until the male noted, serenely: "Come on, Celipa—do they really look like they could be from around here?"

The thought of anyone actually believing that the Supreme Kai could be a local of this forsaken place made Kibito bridle, but Shin seemed pleased at the male's observation. "Well, we're not. The only reason we're here is for information."

The female—Celipa—was silent a moment, then muttered, rather reluctantly, "If you must know, the only reason we're not with them is because of our commander."

Shin cocked his head to one side, frankly astounded at the admission. "There are more of you?"

The two Saiyans linked stares and seemed to conduct a lengthy and complex conversation with their eyes. Before Shin and Kibito had the chance to feel voyeuristically guilty, the female broke her gaze and whirled back toward them.

"There's us," she said gruffly, as though trying to be annoyed with their line of questioning. "Me and Toma." She jerked her thumb back toward the male, then jerked it in another direction, indicating other non-present individuals. "Then there's Totepo and Pamboukin. And, of course, there's our commander...and his family."

Kibito was still not wholly persuaded. "That still does not explain how you have all come to be here."

"We are a crew," Toma asserted steadily, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Our commander couldn't stay with the others below, and he needed us. What else could we do but follow him here?" He exhaled, slow and sad. "We may be Saiyans, Shin, but not all of us turn our backs on our own."

Shin didn't know what possessed him to ask it: curiosity, maybe, over the fact that such a bloodthirsty and perfidious people could somehow bend the laws of Hell to stand by one of their own. "What happened to your commander?"

Celipa pursed her mouth, clearly unwilling to share, but Toma was far more obliging.

"Our commander," he said carefully, "has a gift."

Celipa chuffed at his wording. "Gift. That's one way to put it. He can barely function sometimes, all because of his 'gift'."

Toma sighed. "He sees things," he told Shin and Kibito, almost apologetically.

"Hallucinations?" Kibito theorized in spite of himself.

He was promptly lanced by a two-punch combo of rebuking eyes.

"Not hallucinations," Celipa said with some fervor. "Something more."

Shin was suitably intrigued. "May we see him?"

The other three looked at him with a diverse assortment of emotions: disbelief from Kibito, distrust from Celipa, thoughtful hesitancy from Toma.

It was Toma who got the last word, but only because he found his voice first. "We'll take you to him."

Celipa glowered at him in open disapproval, but his only response to this was a tiny smile and a diffident shrug before he turned and sauntered off. She settled instead for shooting the two intruders admonitory looks, then pivoted and stomped after her companion.

Kibito was stunned. "Master..."

"Bear with me for a while, Kibito," Shin requested, and started off after the departing Saiyans.

His assistant had no choice but to follow him, down into this strangely isolated subterranean level of Hell.

People made fun of Bento because he worked in an upscale underwear boutique in West City Shopping Mall.

Even his girlfriend mocked him for his occupation—that is, when she wasn't busy snubbing him or pelting him with bathroom items for yet another imagined slight—but he endured it (inanely, everyone thought) because he knew something about working in upscale underwear boutiques: they drew females—gold-card-toting, botox-and-silicone-augmented, classy-yet-secretly-nymphomaniacal females—like bees to honey.

Of course, not everyone who frequented Valencia's Secret fit those oh-so-desirable parameters—there were always those over-the-hill matrons who insisted on fitting negligees at least three sizes too small, or those embarrassed-to-hyperventilating males trying to choose the perfect intimate gift for their significant others, or the occasional meathead whose sole purpose was to follow him around asking very loud and very ribald questions about women's undergarments. But they were worth it, because Bento noticed that the store patronage seemed to conform to a very specific karmic balance: the more unattractive a customer, the more stunning the next one tended to be.

So far today Bento had serviced two three-hundred-pound women who insisted vigorously that they were size tens, an octogenarian who required his personal opinion of several bra-and-panties combos, and at least five Neanderthals who had trailed him around the boutique, sniggering incessantly like schoolgirls sharing a secret. Bento figured that it was way past time for karma to pay him his due.

The boutique's doorbell dinged daintily, signaling the entry of yet another customer, and Bento had to mentally recite a few calming stanzas from his salesman handbook before he went to meet him/her.

It turned out that the customer was in the plural: three women, to be exact. The one in front he swiftly recognized as Ms. Briefs, a loyal patron of the store (an attractive enough lady, though presumably taken in spite of her lack of a wedding ring; she was mother to a purple-topped hellion who had once reduced the security personnel to shuddering, gibbering piles of mucus and tears—personally, Bento had nothing but pity for the kid's father). Directly behind her was another woman who appeared to be the stereotypical country housewife, from the tight bun on top of her head down to the modest nondescript Chinese-style outfit. She wore no makeup and appeared to be more matronly than she actually was. She also seemed to be unfamiliar with the merchandise; she kept glancing around at the rows of danties as though trying to figure out what their purpose was. Lagging behind the two was a walking mountain of brand-name garment boxes and boutique bags.

"Goku, are you chewing my shirt again?" Ms. Briefs asked placidly, checking out a stack of nighties near the entrance.

The mountain stopped moving. The boxes and bags did a casual landslide onto a well-situated decorative loveseat, and Bento could see for the first time that the "mountain" was, in actuality, a young woman.

A young woman who, for reasons unknown to him, seemed to be sucking determinedly on her front neckline.

"Goku?" pressed Ms. Briefs.

The Goku girl wiped her tongue one last time on the fabric, then spat it out. "No."

She was...Bento couldn't find a word to describe her. The first thing he riveted on was her hair—dark and untamed, looking as if it were suffering a permanent case of static shock. Nestled in between the wayward spikes was an incongruous blue-and-white headband, which she bore like a crown of thorns. Her ill-at-ease bearing and her uncomplicated demeanor convinced Bento that she was the youngest of the three—and also the least girlishly-inclined. Her face and body seemed inordinately incompatible: a face that suggested that she was incapable of harm—big midnight-velvet eyes and ingenuous mouth—on top of a body designed to incite twelve-car pileups if it was ever set loose on the freeway.

Bento had to tilt all the way to one side to take her all in.

"Is there any mouthwash around here?" Goku asked, her voice much too loud in the confines of the boutique.

"Goku, hush." Ms. Briefs smiled at her with all her teeth showing, then turned to acknowledge Bento. "Hey, there! How's it going?"

The young man pulled himself back upright, the very picture of deference. "Good afternoon, Ms. Briefs."

"How many times do I have to tell you, Bento? My mother's name is Ms. Briefs. Call me Bulma." The blue-haired woman paraded up to him, planted her elbow on the counter, and gave him a conspiratorial wink. "Hey, listen. I'm feeling generous today, so I thought I'd buy some much-needed undergarments for my friend here." She seized Goku by the shoulder and yanked her forward, ignoring the other woman's alarmed yelp. "So what do you think, Bento? Got any suggestions?"

Bento was careful to keep his gaze above Goku's chin. He had already established that the girl wasn't wearing a bra underneath that ruffled-front tank she had on, and his brain was already filling with more suggestions than was strictly necessary. "Uh...yeah. Er, actually, we just got a new shipment of...um, what exactly are you interested in?"

"Bras, panties, lingerie—you name it, she needs it," Bulma announced, expertly blindsiding whatever protest the Goku girl might have made.

The second female—the one with the bun—looked askance at her blue-haired friend. "Bulma...you're not actually going to buy her a whole set of...of..." She gestured feebly around at their flimsy, lacy, satiny surroundings. "...these....things, are you?"

But Bulma had already warmed to her altruistic motives. "Why not? I've got six platinum cards burning a hole in my wallet and one of my very best friends is in dire need of suitable underwear. Besides, have you taken a good look at her lately, Chi-Chi?" She mimicked an award ceremony hostess, rolling her hands toward Goku's chest as though it were the proffered trophy. "That ain't an A-cup there, people. She's gonna need some support."

Goku's arms sprang up to shield her upper torso; it had almost become as much of a reflex action as a backhand, or an elbow to the solar plexus. "A-cup?" she echoed dubiously.

The way she said it made Bento realize that she had no idea what she was talking about. "You don't know?" he burst out, and felt a fuzzy melting sensation when the Goku girl turned her big dark eyes on him.

"Should I?" she queried in puzzlement. Bento had to stifle the urge to facefault.

"Oh boy. All right, Goku, listen." Bulma curled her fingers as though she were clutching an invisible tennis ball. "A-cup. Like..." She glanced around and pointed at a passing straw-haired woman with limbs like cleaning pipes and a frame that looked like it weighed approximately eighty-eight pounds. "There! That one. Definitely an A-cup."

The woman overheard her and shot her a dagger-filled glare, but Bulma was far too immersed in her extemporized lecture to notice. "Now, B-cup's more like this." She slightly widened the span of her fingers so that the unseen tennis ball swelled into an unseen pomegranate. "All right, like that."

Bento hooked a finger under his collar and tugged; Bulma's discourse on bra sizes was beginning to snare a healthy amount of stares of the other store patrons, most of them females. Even the males lingering outside Valencia's Secret seemed to be inching closer to the entrance.

"As you can see, the B-cup's a little bigger." Bulma jabbed her index finger toward the other brunette. "You ought to know—Chi-Chi's a B-cup."

If Bento wasn't certain as to whether the entire store was listening, he got his answer when multiple heads swiveled toward the woman in question, creating a minor draft inside the boutique.

Chi-Chi crossed her arms fiercely over her front and glowered at the unwanted onlookers, who immediately resumed their respective pretenses of minding their own business.

Goku, however, continued to eye her raven-haired companion in sudden fascination. "You're a B-cup?" she asked, almost delightedly.

"I'll have you know," Chi-Chi told her with a huff, "it's the heavier end of a B-cup."

Goku seemed both perplexed and enthralled by this hitherto unknown nugget of information. Bento could not figure out for the life of him why this could be so.

Bulma patted Chi-Chi's shoulder. "Hey, I used to be that size, too. Now..." She tossed back her own shoulders and indicated her chest, grinning slyly. "C-cup all the way."

It was her turn to be pelted by stares.

"And then, after the C-cup," the blue-haired woman went on without missing a beat, "there's the D-cup."

Goku seemed to be trying to work out in her mind the notion of altering breast sizes, but she ventured, "And after the D-cup, there's the E-cup, right?"

Bulma shook her head. "No. It stops at D-cup."

"No E-cup?"

"Nope. D-cup's the final measurement. There's nothing after that, not unless you count the double-D-cup. That's the kind that look like you've shoved watermelons down your shirt." Then she added wickedly, "Kinda like yours."

Bento felt a second draft as an abundant quantity of heads turned once again.

Goku was oblivious; she gaped at her grinning blue-haired friend in horror. "No, they're not!" she protested, genuinely distressed, and Bento found himself strangely charmed even as he wondered what rock this girl had been living under all her life. "Watermelons're bigger!"

Bulma rolled her eyes. "Geez, Goku, don't have an aneurysm or anything. I was kidding. They're not that enormous. I bet they're a middle-to-heavy C-cup." She shifted her attention back toward the spellbound Bento. "So, kid...you got a bra you think would be perfect for my incredibly naïve friend here?"

"We have the very latest and hottest Valenica's Secret strapless bra," Bento recited before he could censor himself. "A chest like that deserves nothing less to showcase it—"

Chi-Chi slammed her fist down on the counter, leaving a spider's-web design of radial hairline cracks on the damask-colored wood. Bento very nearly scaled the wall behind him. "My husband's chest does not need to be showcased!"

Through his fright, Bento had to stop and rewind his thoughts. Did she actually call Goku her husband?

"Aw, relax, Chi-Chi. He didn't mean anything," Bulma said. She appeared completely unmindful of the other woman's slip of the tongue, and for that matter, neither did Goku. Bento was greatly thankful; perhaps he had been hearing things after all.

Goku scrunched up her face. "Do I really have to wear a bra?" she complained.

Beyond her Bento saw a young man opening his mouth, obviously to voice a veto, and was summarily bopped by his annoyed girlfriend. The action was repeated more than a few times by various other couples.

"Yes, Goku, you do," Chi-Chi told her categorically. "Once you get some support, it'll be a lot easier for you to move around. Trust me—for someone like you, there's no way around it."

It didn't take long for the younger woman to yield. "Okay. Fine. I'll get one."

"Good for you, Goku!" Bulma enthused. She fluttered over to a bra rack draped with magenta silk and selected a lacy ebony number, which she held up for inspection. "Oooh, check this one out. Doesn't this look just so romantic?"

Goku glanced at the scalloped-cup strapless bra and noted with dismay that she could see Bulma's beaming face through the material. "Bulma...I don't think I necessarily want a romantic bra."

"Fine, fine. Sheesh, excuse me for trying to share with you my excellent taste in clothing." Bulma returned the bra to the rack, and Bento was profoundly disappointed. "All right, Goku, what kind of bra do you want?"

"Well..." Goku examined the floor with gratuitous interest as she twiddled her fingers. Bento could almost swear she was blushing. "Um...I want a simple one, you know...no lace and ruffles and stuff...just a plain white cotton one."

Bulma looked like her fashion sense had been mortally stabbed through the heart. "What? That's it? A plain white cotton bra? Please, Goku, that's so...so...blah."

"What's wrong with wanting a bra like my wife's?" she countered defensively, and turned to the other brunette as if for confirmation. "C'mon, Chi-Chi, tell her that's what you're wearing now."

Bento lost his balance and hit the marble boutique floor with a loud thwack. There were more than a few similar reactions from those within eavesdropping range.

Chi-Chi reddened, snatched up a nearby bra the color of candle wax, and thrust it at the other woman. "Here, Goku. Go try this on."

Goku blinked down at the undergarment, but it was opaque and it looked just like one of Chi-Chi's, so she nodded readily. "Okay!" She started off, then stopped. "Um...try it on...right here?"

Bento, who had just begun to pull himself back to his feet, lost his hold on the counter's edge and collapsed back down on the floor.

"Uhhh...I don't think so, Goku." Bulma clamped her hands over the younger woman's slender shoulders, rotated her in the appropriate direction, and pointed. "See those stalls over there? You can try it on in there. You sure that bra's the right size? Here, bring this D-cup with you. Just in case," she added at Goku's skeptical expression. "Now, go on. Go. Shoo."

Goku trotted off dutifully, and both Chi-Chi and Bulma released matching sighs of relief as she disappeared into the changing rooms. The store audience, deprived of their impromptu entertainment, rather reluctantly dispersed.

Chi-Chi mopped her forehead with her shirtsleeve. "There's got to be an easier way to shop for Goku than this."

"You're telling me." Bulma's cell phone trilled the latest Capsule Corp. advertisement jingle. She fished it out of her handbag, flipped it open, and pressed the headpiece into her left ear. "Hello. Bulma Briefs speaking."

"Bulma?"

"Hey, Dad. What's up?"

"Er...actually, nothing, sweetheart."

Bulma shook her head at her father's intermittent scatterbrained spells. "Then why'd you call?"

"Well...is Goku with you?"

"She's...kinda busy right now, Dad. Why're you asking for her?" She cupped the base of the cell, suddenly wary. "Dad, does this have anything to do with her tests?"

"The tests—oh, no, honey, nothing's wrong with Goku's tests. I just...well, I'm just curious about her brainwaves."

"Her brainwaves?"

"Yes. I was wondering...I'd like to ask her to go through a couple more tests, including an MRI scan."

"Why..." Bulma watched as Chi-Chi poked curiously at a display of merrywidows. "Why would you want to have her go through an MRI scan, Dad?"

"Ah...I remembered something. Before the androids, before Cell, back when Goku was sure that she—then a he—was going to have that heart disease, I convinced her—him—to go through a quick but complete medical check-up. One of the tests I ran on him was an MRI scan. I was hoping to...well, do a comparison."

Bulma still wasn't following. "A comparison? Why?"

"Bulma...Goku's DNA shows that, physically and genetically, she's an honest-to-goodness, 100% female. It could be that she's one psychologically as well."

His tenure in Hell might have lasted either just a minute or the better half of a millennia—he wasn't sure—but however long or short it had been, it seemed that Earth hadn't changed all that much. Rolling emerald hills, alabaster urban jungles, sandstone arroyos: everything pulsating with life and color as though they had never once been targeted for annihilation by the Saiyan race.

It galled him, the fact that these insignificant Earthlings continued to live, reveling in their helplessness and their ignorance, while his own noble race had been all but wiped out on the whim of a maniac. These humans were such flimsy, soft-shelled creatures, strangers still to intergalactic affairs and communication; how was it that they were still breathing while the Saiyans, for all their glorious might and promise, were not?

A joke, Nappa decided sourly. It had to be some sort of twisted cosmic joke.

He was passing over a city now, one that bore a moderate resemblance to the one he'd obliterated, once upon a time, on that fateful day he and Vegeta had landed on this planet seeking the dragonballs—and a traitor named Kakarrot.

Just the memory of those names was enough to send his blood pressure skyrocketing, and he gazed down at the metropolis below, down at its happy, bustling citizens looking like so many ants, and a sinister grin slunk across his lips. Earth was about to experience a vicious case of déjà vu, and he was just the Saiyan to give it.

"Hey, you can fly, too."

Nappa did the airborne equivalent of a stumble. The gathering ki in his fingers dispelled as he wrenched his head toward the voice.

For a second he thought his fury was making him hallucinate: there was a child hovering just a few feet above him—an Earthling boy with ridiculous fluffy purple hair and probing blue eyes.

"I mean, you don't usually run into people up here," the child went on conversationally, while Nappa wrestled with the possibility that the Earthlings might have mastered the ability of flight while he had been dead. "There's not a lot of guys who can fly. Even my friend Goten just learned how to do it, and he's a whole lot stronger than you."

The child's impertinence served as a spark to Nappa's already powder-keg state of mind, enough to make him halt in mid-air and wheel on the smaller flier. The boy could not have been even one-fourth of Nappa's size, but to his credit, he didn't so much as blink as the former loomed ominously over him.

"You..." Nappa was almost speechless in his indignation. "You insolent brat! Do you have any idea who it is you are talking to?"

The boy simply cocked his head to one side and crossed his arms, and the general was suddenly, chillingly reminded of his murderer.

"No," the boy said, sounding almost bored. "Should I?"

Under ordinary circumstances, Nappa wouldn't even have wasted his time on a youngster, and especially not an Earthling one. But the ire that had been festering inside him ever since he had woken up here on Earth—intercepted by a mad Saiyan too unimportant for him to have any recollection of—coupled with the onslaught of his returning memories, of his life and how it had ended, all conspired to strip away his rationale. Nappa was in the mood to destroy something, anything, and this boy, with his infuriating, unflinching conduct and his unconscious imitation of a certain prince, made a very tempting target.

Nappa thought he saw the boy's eyes narrow a split-second before he swung his huge fist into the small face.

There had been many, many individuals who had been on the receiving end of that kind of punch, and they all reacted in different ways. The really fragile ones were killed instantly, their skulls imploding like fruit. The sturdier ones lost only their jaws and mandibles, or their eyeballs, or had their noses smashed flat. The toughest ones, if they weren't instantly knocked out cold, were at least propelled back several feet by the force of the blow.

The boy's reaction was none of the above.

Nappa drew back his arm, his visage frozen in disbelief. The only proof that he had scored a direct hit was that the boy's face was now turned slightly to the side. That, and the sharp throbbing in the general's fist.

"Boy, you're a touchy one," the boy remarked. His stance remained unchanged, and there was no sign of bruising on the struck cheek. "You call that a punch? That's nothing compared to my dad. Heck, even Goten can hit harder than that!"

Nappa could actually feel his mental faculties crumbling; how could he, a Saiyan elite, a general of armies, possibly be ineffective against a child—an Earthling child, at that? His mind refused to compute it; he had to be delirious, perhaps he was still recovering from his inter-dimensional jet lag...

"Hey, Trunks, who's your friend?"

Moving through his stupor, the general twisted toward the second voice, and his shock increased a thousand-fold.

Peering up at him, bright-eyed and cherub-faced, was a Saiyan child. No, not a Saiyan child—there was no sign of a tail, and he was wearing a pastel-colored outfit no Saiyan youngster in his right mind would wear. But the hair and coloring were undeniably Saiyan.

And with good reason: the child was a carbon copy of Kakarrot.

"How am I supposed to know?" asked the purple-haired aberration. "I barely began talking to him when he started swinging at me."

"Really?" The dark-haired child regarded Nappa inquisitively. He was obviously younger than his fair-haired friend—probably just out of toddler-hood. "Are you a bad man, then?"

The sight of that un-Saiyan innocence superimposed on those Saiyan features jarred Nappa; he had seen that kind of deviation before, only once, on Kakarrot's half-breed son. But this wasn't the same child, Nappa realized dazedly. Could it be...?

"Well, of course he is, dummy," the other boy said in response to his younger friend's question. "He tried to hit me." He paused, his countenance taking on a crafty angle. "Heyyy...maybe we can use him for the fight scene. Whaddaya think, Goten?"

"That's a great idea, Trunks!" The smaller child grinned up at the shell-shocked general. "Hey, mister, you wanna fight with us?"

It was only then that Nappa was able to regain his oral capacities. "Fight with children? You dare mock me?" The muscles under his armor bulged, his battle ki shining murderously in his eyes. "Brat, you are talking to a Saiyan elite! The commandant of the entire Saiyan army—"

The purple-haired boy didn't even grant him the courtesy of finishing his rant. "You're a Saiyan?" he scoffed. "You're such a liar. The Saiyans were wiped out a long time ago."

Nappa spun on him, close to hysterical, and seized the collar of his neon-green sweater in a death-grip. "How," he practically spat into the boy's face, "do you know about the Saiyans?"

Faster than Nappa could react, the boy tore the general's grip off of his collar with one hand and hurled him, almost nonchalantly, into the city below.

Nappa tasted asphalt and gravel and soil, and was only vaguely aware of the sounds of triggered alarms and human screams through the roaring in his ears. By the time his body burrowed to a stop, he was far too deep down to climb out, so he gathered his energy and forced himself back up, shooting out of the ground like an enraged living missile.

He touched down in the middle of a separate street, ignoring the cacophony that ensued—colliding metal and screeching rubber—as he combed the sky for his tiny prey. To his surprise and gratification, he saw the boys turn tail and flee, leaving two distinct energy trails daubed across the blue.

Nappa felt an exultant grin split his dirt-coated lips. "Oh, no, brats," he growled. He sprung into the air in an explosive blast of power, toppling over several nearby humans and overturning a host of cars. "There's nowhere you can hide from me."

For all the children's alleged strength (and Nappa was still not convinced that this was the case; the first punch had been an anomaly, and he had been caught off-guard by the older boy's feint—that was all), they were not very fast. Though the two had gotten a considerable head start, it didn't take long for the general to close the gap.

Nappa had been planning to stop the youngsters dead in their tracks by grabbing each one by the scruff of his neck, but, without warning, the two suddenly stopped on their own and turned back toward him. The general halted as well, making sure that there was only a few feet's distance between him and his targets. He sneered down at them, making a show of cracking his knuckles.

"For brats, maybe you aren't that dumb after all," he growled, his adrenalin pumping at the prospect of bashing these aggravating rugrats' heads together. "I see that you've figured out that trying to escape from me is useless."

"Escape from you?" the purple-haired boy parroted in disgust. "We weren't trying to escape from you. We were trying to lead you away from the city."

"Yeah," piped up the Kakarrot-child, looking exceedingly satisfied with himself. "We even flew real slow so that we wouldn't lose you."

The general slowly lowered his hands and looked down. True to the brats' words, they were now high above a rocky gulch that had bordered the outskirts of the city. He raised his gaze, his voice speciously quiet. "You...slowed down...for me?"

"Of course. We can move a lot faster than that," the older one boasted. "But we had to make sure that we were far enough. I mean, if my mom gets riled over us messing up the house, then imagine how pissed she'd be if we messed up the city."

If the Saiyan general had been over the edge before, he was certainly falling down that chasm now. These children—this purple-haired Earthling rugrat with his unprecedented knowledge of the Saiyan race and this tiny clone of the third-class Saiyan who had humiliated him—actually thought that they were toying with him. He might have laughed out loud had he not been utterly overwhelmed with rage.

And, as usual, he let his rage do the talking.

He struck at the Kakarrot-child first. To his vexation, the boy easily vaulted over his fist like it were a toy hurdle. The punch he aimed toward his purple-haired friend missed by inches as the latter bent his waist to the left in a 45-degree angle. Nappa's subsequent blows were similarly unsuccessful; it was like trying to hit a pair of exceptionally energetic holograms. The children employed all the high-level speed tricks: blurring, afterimages, and illusion, sidestepping and dodging with a skill far beyond their years. And, as if to add insult to injury, they chattered animatedly back and forth with each other all throughout the one-sided skirmish.

"Hey, Trunks, this guy's kinda slow. D'you really think he's a Saiyan?"

"I don't know, Goten. I thought they were supposed to be a little better than this."

"That's 'cause I don't think he can transform."

"Nah, I don't think so. Hey, let's hit him."

"I'm not sure, Trunks...I don't wanna hurt him."

"Be quiet!" A blood vessel pulsed from Nappa's hairless scalp; he was slipping deeper and deeper into a berserker rage with each failed attack. He had to assert control now; he had to show these children just how much of a mistake they had made by choosing to provoke him.

The Kakarrot-child stared up at him, and yet again Nappa was reminded of another child—a revolting Saiyan-human hybrid whose skull he had tried to crush underneath his boot because the former had startled him with his power.

Nappa had never forgotten that child's affront to him. Kakarrot had come to rescue his son in the nick of time before the general could pay the boy back through pain.

Well, Kakarrot was nowhere around now.

"Die, half-breed!"

He stretched his mouth open as wide as it could go and belched out a beam of deadly golden energy.

It was one of his more advanced techniques, certainly not one he would have used so early in a fracas, and especially not on a petty child. But it was something he had been saving for a long, long time—a payback he owed to Kakarrot's half-breed spawn. And if he could not personally deliver it to the latter, then this little Kakarrot clone would be a more than suitable replacement.

The child slapped the beam away as easily as though it were a piece of confetti.

A petrified Nappa could only gawk as his own massive energy attack surged back toward him.

He didn't know how long he was out, only that when he finally managed to pry open his eyes, all he saw was black.

"...killed him!"

"I'm telling you, he's not dead."

There were voices, he was sure of it, but they sounded muffled, as though they were coming from a different room.

Or a different ground level, Nappa realized as he felt the scrape of pebbles against his temple and chin. The beam that had been deflected toward him had driven him down into the valley below and imbedded the top part of his torso deep into the earth.

He tried to dislodge himself amidst the ferocious objections of his cranium and upper body tendons. The loose rocks over his head shifted, allowing blades of light to stab through the blackness.

The voices started up again, and this time they were distinguishable.

"Look, Trunks! He's moving! He's still alive!" he heard the Kakarrot-child exclaim in delight.

Delight? Nappa thought through his pain-filled haze.

"Huh. He's tougher than he looks, Goten," the other boy replied.

"This's so cool! We haven't had a playmate who lasted this long with us."

"Yeah, even that meat-eating dinosaur we found last week."

Nappa pulled his head free of the rock and collapsed on the ground, his head lolling to his side. His vision was a potpourri of multicolored dots overlaid against blinding white, and his brain felt like it had been shaken loose inside his skull. As it was, he barely acknowledged the noise of approaching footsteps.

"Hey. Hey, mister," said the Kakarrot clone. "You alive?"

"Whoa. He looks seriously messed up. Hey, Dad. That's the guy who was talking about—whuh—"

A boot crunched into the stony ground in front of Nappa's rapidly clearing vision, and suddenly all thoughts of the children vanished from his mind. The boot was a pristine white, with golden-orange tips and a stiffly creased calf. There was only one armor in the universe that included this style of footwear.

Nappa gurgled as a hand closed over his throat and forcefully hauled him up from the rubble. The hand was definitely not that of a child's.

"Nappa."

He knew that voice; he had known it from back when it had been a ten-year-old child's tenor, then a teenager's, before it had deepened into an adult's baritone. The voice had been that of his orphaned charge, his ally against Frieza, his companion during those planet raids, and then, finally, his executioner.

Nappa lifted his head and locked gazes with the man who had killed him, all those years ago.

"Prince Vegeta," he rasped.

End of Chapter Seven

Closing Notes: Before I forget, thanks to all for the girl-Goku fic recommendations! As a matter of fact, I finally located the one G-jin mentioned—too bad it's unfinished! :( I also found one called "Dan Dan Kokoro". It's good, too, enough to satisfy my current appetite for girl-Goku fics; I'm almost tempted to stop writing this and just indulge on the former. ^^ Geez, why didn't I see any of these fics before I started writing this? I gotta admit, I'm really, really tempted...

For now, anyway, since there still aren't that many of those kinds of fics, I suppose I'm gonna have to content myself with doujinshi (incidentally, there seem to be a lot of girl-Goku doujinshi, even though there're few girl-Goku fics). Still, though the drawn stuff is certainly pretty to look at, their plots are mostly a mystery, since my Japanese's pretty much lacking. ~_~

Next: Vegeta and Nappa reminisce on old times (sort of), one of the Z-gang runs into a (Legendary) complication on his dragonball hunt, Piccolo and Goku start the re-training (with a little help from Heaven), and Shin and Kibito really meet Bardock (and his family).