Chapter 9: A Counterplot is Unveiled
Son Gohan woke slowly, rising out of dreams of fire and cacophony to the reality of sunlight coming through a friendly window, a hard floor beneath him, and a pillow thrown behind his head. For a moment, he floated there, hearing the murmurs of familiar voices around him, and thought he had never felt better in his entire life-- at peace, without a care, like a distillation of every Sunday morning in a whole year. But then, what the voices were saying began to penetrate his consciousness, and reluctantly he opened his eyes to the new day.
He was lying on the floor of Bulma's living room. His shirt was singed, and torn in places-- over his ribs, across his abdomen-- but all his wounds had been healed, and the muffled feeling that had been his concussion of the night before was now gone. Senzu bean, then; he could almost remember someone-- Kuririn? Kuririn's hands, yes, trying to get him to safety. It was Kuririn's voice he heard now, wafting from the other room along with the scent of breakfast.
"...why would they attack Capsule Corp? Have you been hiding something?"
"Nothing I haven't had for the past five years, and more!" Bulma sounded even crankier than normal.
Gohan sat bolt upright. The room he was in was large and empty; and there was something he needed to ask. He followed his nose to the kitchen.
Sitting around the table were Bulma, red-eyed and exhausted, and Kuririn in one of Vegeta's shirts; Bulma's mother was flipping pancakes as a stoic Tenshinhan stood at attention. Chaotzu stood beside him. As Gohan burst into the room, everyone turned, and the conversation died, leaving only the sound of Mrs. Brief's sizzling frying pan.
"K... Kuririn!" He stuttered into the gap. "I--" He remembered his manners, then, and bowed politely. "Thank you very much! But..." a memory flashed into his head, vague and blurred-- a barrage of bullets, a flashing attack, a small body falling to the ground-- "...I thought you... died," he finished, trailing off lamely.
"What, you mean again?" Kuririn laughed. "Sorry to disappoint, but not this time. Tenshinhan brought senzu beans. Why do you think you're feeling so great, anyway?"
"Then Vegeta...?" Gohan said, eagerly. There was still hope he hadn't done any great damage, that an apology would be enough this time to clear everything up. Bulma's accusations were the only thing he could remember clearly from the previous night. Those and a crushing sense of guilt for his role in the whole ill-conceived plot to defeat Vegeta. It seemed like it had all happened so long ago.
Bulma looked up at him fully at last, and he could see the gaunt lines in her cheeks. She shook her head, then turned to take a ferocious gulp of coffee.
"You'll choke, dear!" said Mrs. Briefs, calmly, then turned to Gohan. "Vegeta-san is in the hospital," she smiled. "Still hasn't woken up. Pancakes?"
"Th... thank you..." Gohan muttered, anxiously. What was the protocol for accepting food from the bizarrely unphased sort-of-mother-in-law of the man who was in a coma as a direct result of one's own actions?
Bulma's mug slammed against the table. "Enough of this!" she railed. "Gohan! Explain yourself, before we do it for you! Who attacked our house last night? What did you do to Vegeta? Where is your mother?"
"I don't know!" Gohan protested, feeling weak. Hunger usually had that effect on him. "I... I'd better explain..."
"Huh! NOW he'd better explain!" Bulma muttered. Kuririn, taking pity on him, had pulled him up a chair, and was piling pancakes onto his plate. Gohan took a deep breath and launched into the story.
When he was finished, Bulma shook her head, annoyed.
"I don't know how it got into the drink," Gohan said, for the third time. "I don't even know what can cause that sort of reaction. It must have happened while we were dropping off Goten with Piccolo-san; that's when we were dissolving the muscle relaxers in a pitcher..."
"Still doesn't explain helicopters," Kuririn said, and squinted.
"He just drank it?" said Tenshinhan, cryptically. It was the first thing he'd said in the entire conversation.
"Well, whoever they were, they haven't come back," Bulma said, and stood up. "Probably after the dragonballs, I guess; we'd better go and gather them before someone else does. Goku and I used to get this sort of thing all the time, back when we were dealing with the Red Ribbon Army," she sniffed, proudly.
Gohan was struck with a sudden dread. Vegeta was at the hospital. Everyone else was not. If someone cared enough about getting him out of the way to poison him, then-- "Vegeta!" he said, jumping up from the table, knocking a chair over as he did so. Mrs. Briefs jumped.
"Yamcha and Puar are watching out for him," Kuririn said. "Relax, kid."
Gohan's eyes bulged. Yamcha? Watching over Vegeta?
"Yamcha has been very supportive," Bulma bristled. "He said anything he could do in a time like this; so I told him to watch Vegeta while I went and gathered up the dragonballs. I'm not about to get left behind sitting around waiting while everyone else goes galavanting around!" she crossed her arms, sniffing.
Poor Yamcha, Gohan thought.
"I'll go with you," Kuririn offered. "At the very least, that way we can use them to cure Vegeta, and get Chichi back, whatever's happened. Gohan, want to come? It'll be like old times, back on Namek. Only, uh, less Nameks, I guess. More grass."
"Piccolo," said Gohan. Suddenly the vast quantity of pancakes he'd consumed felt like a ton of bricks. That was the one thing, the one thing he'd tried his hardest to remember! He had to know that Piccolo was all right. He ran to the window and flung it open, heart beating in his chest. He couldn't feel any sort of connection to his mentor. And what that meant for Goten, the biggest responsibility he had in his life--
"Where are you going?" cried Kuririn.
"The Lookout," Gohan said over his shoulder, and then flew up out of the window.
"Wait! Gohan!" Kuririn stood, following after him through the tiny opening out into the sky. Tenshinhan and Chaotzu followed suit, although the window was a little small for the former.
"Hey!" screamed Bulma as they vanished into the sky. "Damn you, what about me!"
***
Chichi was also awake; she had barely slept in the seven or so hours she'd been in captivity. It was hard to tell. The duct tape itched her lip, and after devastating reports had come in on the radio, she'd tried to laugh triumphantly, only to have it come out as bubbly coughing from her nose. She hadn't tried that again. After the last reports, the radio had gone quiet, and she'd been abandoned to her cage in the control room, no idea of what time of day it was, where she was, even if it was day or night. So she'd looked around to see what, if anything, could be of use to her in escaping.
What she'd found wasn't really useful, but at least it was interesting.
A vast jumble of wires and circuitry, enough to make Dr. Briefs proud, sat at the opposite end of the room, hooked into a computer monitor which was currently switched off. At the center of all the maze was an ancient computer chip, archaic in design as well as extremely well-used, and battered, as if it had been in a battle. Part of it was entirely missing, and a light on the side of it was shattered. Tiny wires in profusion fed off of it into the circuit boards, for all the world like a strange mechanical life support. It made Chichi shiver.
Other than this discovery, all the banging on her bars in the world had done her no good. Nobody was around to hear her, so she'd finally given up and lain down, only to find that sleep wouldn't come to her. What could they want from kidnapping her? What did they stand to gain from destroying Vegeta? She was determined not to fall into a cycle of guilt over what she'd done, but she did feel awfully foolish, like a child who'd just learned about snapping turtles the hard way.
The door opened, and a man carrying a breakfast tray emerged from the bright light in the hallway. Impasssively, he slid a narrow dish of some sort of rice porridge through the bars, then reached through and pulled off the duct tape.
Chichi immediately began cursing at the top of her lungs.
"Stop it, please, Mrs. Son," said the man. To her shock, Chichi realized he sounded genuinely distressed; and it surprised her so much that without really noticing, she did exactly as he'd asked.
"Please turn around," he said, and when she did, he cut the bond of her hands so that she could eat. She recognized him now-- Goon Number Two.
"I'm sorry for the inconvenience, Mrs. Son," he apologized. "It was necessary to protect you."
"Pfotect me fwom wat?" Chichi said, her mouth filled with porridge.
"I don't know how to say this... General?" He called. Mystified, Chichi waited with him, chewing her porridge, as Goon Number One came into the room, and shut the door behind him.
"Mrs. Son Chichi," he said, gruffly. "I'm going to ask you some questions."
Chichi chewed, narrowing her eyes. Better not explode just yet; he might let her know what was going on.
"You have a son," said General Goon. "Tell me, has he ever been... abducted?"
Chichi stopped chewing, then started again more slowly. Cautiously, she nodded yes.
General Goon sighed, then continued. Goon Two looked heartstricken. "And was he missing for a long time... several months, say? A year?"
Chichi nodded again. What was this, trivial pursuit.
"Mrs. Son, I don't know how to say this," said General Goon, with careful seriousness. Chichi tried not to snicker at the way he was unconsciously aping his predecessor. General Goon sighed. "Mrs. Son-- your son is an alien."
"He's only half alien," protested Chichi.
Both men's jaws dropped.
"She knows," whispered Goon Two, in horror.
"The tape! Did you get it on tape?" General Goon said excitedly.
"What tape?"
"Idiot!"
"I mean... uh..." Chichi hastily backtracked, trying to instill a look of terror on her face. "heh heh... all kids seem like aliens. The half that comes from the... the other parent. It's always strange raising kids. You know. My little Gohan, half-- I mean-- all alien? It's not possible!"
The Goon Twins gave her a suspicious look, then shrugged.
"He's no longer your real son," said General Goon, compassionately. "He's been replaced by a Namekian imposter as part of a plan to usurp control of Earth's precious dragonballs and gain dominance over our world and humankind."
Chichi bit her lower lip. Namekian imposter? Sure, Piccolo had changed him, but not his DNA!
"It's true," General Goon went on, Goon Two nodding seriously in the background. "Last night, we attacked the floating citidel which is the center of the Namek power, as well as a powerful corporation which was a mere front for a warrior training program they've been operating for the past several years. That second attack, ma'am, you can be proud to have played a part in, even if you didn't know it; we turned your own silly prank into an opportunity to infiltrate and knock out their main warriors.
"Sadly, both attacks ultimately failed," he frowned. "We may have underestimated this threat to our global security."
"You're completely crazy!" Chichi couldn't hold onto it anymore. "Namekian power floating citidel? International corporate fronts for training alien warriors?" In point of fact, Chichi reflected, it was frighteningly close to the truth, with a tinge of balmy added in.
"I know what you're thinking," General Goon reassured her. "It's what my superiors thought, too, until I convinced them based on the records of the old Red Ribbon Army group to invest money in some basic surveillance and recon. What we turned up changed all of our minds. Lieutenant-- fetch the tapes," he ordered, and the underling saluted and fairly fled from the room, leaving the two of them alone.
Chichi had a crawling feeling along her skin. Surveillance? Someone had been watching their house? This particular, stark, raving mad someone?
"Oh, have no doubt about it, Mrs. Son," General Goon nodded solemnly. "Aliens are living among us. What I am about to show you will send shivers down your spine."
(next time: General Goon conclusively proves his thesis; Gohan visits the Namekian Floating Citidel Stronghold; plus, did Piccolo survive his desperate ordeal?) (heh... didn't think the humor portion was gone permanently, didja?)
Son Gohan woke slowly, rising out of dreams of fire and cacophony to the reality of sunlight coming through a friendly window, a hard floor beneath him, and a pillow thrown behind his head. For a moment, he floated there, hearing the murmurs of familiar voices around him, and thought he had never felt better in his entire life-- at peace, without a care, like a distillation of every Sunday morning in a whole year. But then, what the voices were saying began to penetrate his consciousness, and reluctantly he opened his eyes to the new day.
He was lying on the floor of Bulma's living room. His shirt was singed, and torn in places-- over his ribs, across his abdomen-- but all his wounds had been healed, and the muffled feeling that had been his concussion of the night before was now gone. Senzu bean, then; he could almost remember someone-- Kuririn? Kuririn's hands, yes, trying to get him to safety. It was Kuririn's voice he heard now, wafting from the other room along with the scent of breakfast.
"...why would they attack Capsule Corp? Have you been hiding something?"
"Nothing I haven't had for the past five years, and more!" Bulma sounded even crankier than normal.
Gohan sat bolt upright. The room he was in was large and empty; and there was something he needed to ask. He followed his nose to the kitchen.
Sitting around the table were Bulma, red-eyed and exhausted, and Kuririn in one of Vegeta's shirts; Bulma's mother was flipping pancakes as a stoic Tenshinhan stood at attention. Chaotzu stood beside him. As Gohan burst into the room, everyone turned, and the conversation died, leaving only the sound of Mrs. Brief's sizzling frying pan.
"K... Kuririn!" He stuttered into the gap. "I--" He remembered his manners, then, and bowed politely. "Thank you very much! But..." a memory flashed into his head, vague and blurred-- a barrage of bullets, a flashing attack, a small body falling to the ground-- "...I thought you... died," he finished, trailing off lamely.
"What, you mean again?" Kuririn laughed. "Sorry to disappoint, but not this time. Tenshinhan brought senzu beans. Why do you think you're feeling so great, anyway?"
"Then Vegeta...?" Gohan said, eagerly. There was still hope he hadn't done any great damage, that an apology would be enough this time to clear everything up. Bulma's accusations were the only thing he could remember clearly from the previous night. Those and a crushing sense of guilt for his role in the whole ill-conceived plot to defeat Vegeta. It seemed like it had all happened so long ago.
Bulma looked up at him fully at last, and he could see the gaunt lines in her cheeks. She shook her head, then turned to take a ferocious gulp of coffee.
"You'll choke, dear!" said Mrs. Briefs, calmly, then turned to Gohan. "Vegeta-san is in the hospital," she smiled. "Still hasn't woken up. Pancakes?"
"Th... thank you..." Gohan muttered, anxiously. What was the protocol for accepting food from the bizarrely unphased sort-of-mother-in-law of the man who was in a coma as a direct result of one's own actions?
Bulma's mug slammed against the table. "Enough of this!" she railed. "Gohan! Explain yourself, before we do it for you! Who attacked our house last night? What did you do to Vegeta? Where is your mother?"
"I don't know!" Gohan protested, feeling weak. Hunger usually had that effect on him. "I... I'd better explain..."
"Huh! NOW he'd better explain!" Bulma muttered. Kuririn, taking pity on him, had pulled him up a chair, and was piling pancakes onto his plate. Gohan took a deep breath and launched into the story.
When he was finished, Bulma shook her head, annoyed.
"I don't know how it got into the drink," Gohan said, for the third time. "I don't even know what can cause that sort of reaction. It must have happened while we were dropping off Goten with Piccolo-san; that's when we were dissolving the muscle relaxers in a pitcher..."
"Still doesn't explain helicopters," Kuririn said, and squinted.
"He just drank it?" said Tenshinhan, cryptically. It was the first thing he'd said in the entire conversation.
"Well, whoever they were, they haven't come back," Bulma said, and stood up. "Probably after the dragonballs, I guess; we'd better go and gather them before someone else does. Goku and I used to get this sort of thing all the time, back when we were dealing with the Red Ribbon Army," she sniffed, proudly.
Gohan was struck with a sudden dread. Vegeta was at the hospital. Everyone else was not. If someone cared enough about getting him out of the way to poison him, then-- "Vegeta!" he said, jumping up from the table, knocking a chair over as he did so. Mrs. Briefs jumped.
"Yamcha and Puar are watching out for him," Kuririn said. "Relax, kid."
Gohan's eyes bulged. Yamcha? Watching over Vegeta?
"Yamcha has been very supportive," Bulma bristled. "He said anything he could do in a time like this; so I told him to watch Vegeta while I went and gathered up the dragonballs. I'm not about to get left behind sitting around waiting while everyone else goes galavanting around!" she crossed her arms, sniffing.
Poor Yamcha, Gohan thought.
"I'll go with you," Kuririn offered. "At the very least, that way we can use them to cure Vegeta, and get Chichi back, whatever's happened. Gohan, want to come? It'll be like old times, back on Namek. Only, uh, less Nameks, I guess. More grass."
"Piccolo," said Gohan. Suddenly the vast quantity of pancakes he'd consumed felt like a ton of bricks. That was the one thing, the one thing he'd tried his hardest to remember! He had to know that Piccolo was all right. He ran to the window and flung it open, heart beating in his chest. He couldn't feel any sort of connection to his mentor. And what that meant for Goten, the biggest responsibility he had in his life--
"Where are you going?" cried Kuririn.
"The Lookout," Gohan said over his shoulder, and then flew up out of the window.
"Wait! Gohan!" Kuririn stood, following after him through the tiny opening out into the sky. Tenshinhan and Chaotzu followed suit, although the window was a little small for the former.
"Hey!" screamed Bulma as they vanished into the sky. "Damn you, what about me!"
***
Chichi was also awake; she had barely slept in the seven or so hours she'd been in captivity. It was hard to tell. The duct tape itched her lip, and after devastating reports had come in on the radio, she'd tried to laugh triumphantly, only to have it come out as bubbly coughing from her nose. She hadn't tried that again. After the last reports, the radio had gone quiet, and she'd been abandoned to her cage in the control room, no idea of what time of day it was, where she was, even if it was day or night. So she'd looked around to see what, if anything, could be of use to her in escaping.
What she'd found wasn't really useful, but at least it was interesting.
A vast jumble of wires and circuitry, enough to make Dr. Briefs proud, sat at the opposite end of the room, hooked into a computer monitor which was currently switched off. At the center of all the maze was an ancient computer chip, archaic in design as well as extremely well-used, and battered, as if it had been in a battle. Part of it was entirely missing, and a light on the side of it was shattered. Tiny wires in profusion fed off of it into the circuit boards, for all the world like a strange mechanical life support. It made Chichi shiver.
Other than this discovery, all the banging on her bars in the world had done her no good. Nobody was around to hear her, so she'd finally given up and lain down, only to find that sleep wouldn't come to her. What could they want from kidnapping her? What did they stand to gain from destroying Vegeta? She was determined not to fall into a cycle of guilt over what she'd done, but she did feel awfully foolish, like a child who'd just learned about snapping turtles the hard way.
The door opened, and a man carrying a breakfast tray emerged from the bright light in the hallway. Impasssively, he slid a narrow dish of some sort of rice porridge through the bars, then reached through and pulled off the duct tape.
Chichi immediately began cursing at the top of her lungs.
"Stop it, please, Mrs. Son," said the man. To her shock, Chichi realized he sounded genuinely distressed; and it surprised her so much that without really noticing, she did exactly as he'd asked.
"Please turn around," he said, and when she did, he cut the bond of her hands so that she could eat. She recognized him now-- Goon Number Two.
"I'm sorry for the inconvenience, Mrs. Son," he apologized. "It was necessary to protect you."
"Pfotect me fwom wat?" Chichi said, her mouth filled with porridge.
"I don't know how to say this... General?" He called. Mystified, Chichi waited with him, chewing her porridge, as Goon Number One came into the room, and shut the door behind him.
"Mrs. Son Chichi," he said, gruffly. "I'm going to ask you some questions."
Chichi chewed, narrowing her eyes. Better not explode just yet; he might let her know what was going on.
"You have a son," said General Goon. "Tell me, has he ever been... abducted?"
Chichi stopped chewing, then started again more slowly. Cautiously, she nodded yes.
General Goon sighed, then continued. Goon Two looked heartstricken. "And was he missing for a long time... several months, say? A year?"
Chichi nodded again. What was this, trivial pursuit.
"Mrs. Son, I don't know how to say this," said General Goon, with careful seriousness. Chichi tried not to snicker at the way he was unconsciously aping his predecessor. General Goon sighed. "Mrs. Son-- your son is an alien."
"He's only half alien," protested Chichi.
Both men's jaws dropped.
"She knows," whispered Goon Two, in horror.
"The tape! Did you get it on tape?" General Goon said excitedly.
"What tape?"
"Idiot!"
"I mean... uh..." Chichi hastily backtracked, trying to instill a look of terror on her face. "heh heh... all kids seem like aliens. The half that comes from the... the other parent. It's always strange raising kids. You know. My little Gohan, half-- I mean-- all alien? It's not possible!"
The Goon Twins gave her a suspicious look, then shrugged.
"He's no longer your real son," said General Goon, compassionately. "He's been replaced by a Namekian imposter as part of a plan to usurp control of Earth's precious dragonballs and gain dominance over our world and humankind."
Chichi bit her lower lip. Namekian imposter? Sure, Piccolo had changed him, but not his DNA!
"It's true," General Goon went on, Goon Two nodding seriously in the background. "Last night, we attacked the floating citidel which is the center of the Namek power, as well as a powerful corporation which was a mere front for a warrior training program they've been operating for the past several years. That second attack, ma'am, you can be proud to have played a part in, even if you didn't know it; we turned your own silly prank into an opportunity to infiltrate and knock out their main warriors.
"Sadly, both attacks ultimately failed," he frowned. "We may have underestimated this threat to our global security."
"You're completely crazy!" Chichi couldn't hold onto it anymore. "Namekian power floating citidel? International corporate fronts for training alien warriors?" In point of fact, Chichi reflected, it was frighteningly close to the truth, with a tinge of balmy added in.
"I know what you're thinking," General Goon reassured her. "It's what my superiors thought, too, until I convinced them based on the records of the old Red Ribbon Army group to invest money in some basic surveillance and recon. What we turned up changed all of our minds. Lieutenant-- fetch the tapes," he ordered, and the underling saluted and fairly fled from the room, leaving the two of them alone.
Chichi had a crawling feeling along her skin. Surveillance? Someone had been watching their house? This particular, stark, raving mad someone?
"Oh, have no doubt about it, Mrs. Son," General Goon nodded solemnly. "Aliens are living among us. What I am about to show you will send shivers down your spine."
(next time: General Goon conclusively proves his thesis; Gohan visits the Namekian Floating Citidel Stronghold; plus, did Piccolo survive his desperate ordeal?) (heh... didn't think the humor portion was gone permanently, didja?)