Chapter 10 The Waiting Game

4:16 Earth approach, Ichigo's Ship.

"Planet Earth within Scouter range." the computer dutifully told her.

"Give me a reading, exclude any power levels below 30,000."

"There is a power level of 36,000 moving rapidly westward towards a large city in the Southwestern part of the main continent. There is a power level of 52,000 several hundred miles to the South by Southwest of that city."

"That's it? Computer how many power levels do you detect above 20,000?

"There are 4 additional power levels detected between 20,000 and 30,000."

I don't understand, there should be many more high power levels then this. It doesn't make sense. UNLESS! That stupid ship that I spotted a few hours ago! I didn't scan it! All of the high level warriors must be on different planets! Well, the highest one must be the leader. I'll go talk to him first."

"Computer keep watching the two highest power levels. Land near the highest one."

"The second highest power level has disappeared."

"What?"

"It reached a complex in the city it was headed for and is no longer detectable."

"Is the complex interfering with the scans?"

"There is not any detectable interference with the scouter."

"The second highest power on the planet just vanished and you can't tell me anything as to how or why?"

"The power level is no longer detectable. There are no detectable problems with the ship's systems."

'What is going on down there?' Ichigo wondered. She decided that she would orbit the planet and continue to scan it for a while. She didn't like the fact that something as powerful as a Ki of 36,000 could just vanish.

***

Meanwhile, Roshi had arrived at the Capsule Corp. He had been in a hurry and could not hide all of his Ki, but he hoped that he had hid enough of it.

"WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?!?!?!" Slip demanded. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO BE HERE HOURS AGO!!!"

"I'm sorry my mother wouldn't let me leave until I was done with my chores."

"There is a horrible killer coming here and you were worried about CHORES!!! Why didn't you just LEAVE? You could have flown away and there is nothing your mother could have done. I mean it is not like she would punish you for saving the world!"

"I bet she would have."

"AHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!! You are SUCH a mamma's Boy!"

"Sorry, well I'm here now, what is going on?"

"Well look at this." Slip said while pointing at a huge map of the Earth. "about ten minutes ago a little icon popped up on the screen. It said that the GKSS had detected an abnormality. I had no clue what the GKSS was so I opened it."

"Yeah."

"Well it stands for Global Ki Surveillance System. Bulma had built it to keep track of Vegeta and Goku. It uses satellites to track all Ki sources on or above the planet. It had detected that girl and that is why it started flashing. It also detected you coming here. It said that you had a power level of 36,000 and she has a power level of 34,600."

"Crap! I was in a hurry and let too much ki be detected!"

"Yep, if we can detect her, she can detect us." Slip said matter-of- factly.

"So where is she landing?" Roshi asked.

"That's the strange part. She isn't. Her ship has entered orbit, but it is not landing."

"Why would she not land? Has she sent any messages?"

"No, and her ship does not seem to accept the ones the Government sends to all incoming ships either." Slip said.

"That is really weird. I wonder why she doesn't just ask the government the same questions she asked everyone else."

"Couldn't tell you. Unless she knows that we are here and does not want to waste her time."

"AHHHHH NO!!!" Roshi screamed. "SHE'S WAITING FOR NIGHT TIME!!!"

"AHH! The moon!!! WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT! SHE KNOWS THAT SHE CANNOT BEAT YOU NORMALLY, SO SHE IS PLANNING ON DOING IT AT AS AN OUZARU!!!! WE'RE ALL DEAD!!!" Slip screamed right after.

Roshi had to admit that he was afraid. What was he to do? He couldn't fight an Ouzaru. The girl would turn him into goo.

"Call Boxers and Tee. They will have to help. Oh, and tell Boxers to bring the sword."

"Right, Boxers' sword will come in handy if you have to cut off her tail."

Roshi was thinking about everything which he knew about this girl when he suddenly realized something.

"Ah, Slip, we may be getting ahead of ourselves. We don't even know for sure if the girl is a Saiyan. Also, even if she is a Saiyan, she would have no way of knowing that the full moon was tonight. I bet she is just being cautious. I mean, why wouldn't she just land where it is already night if she intends to use the Ouzaru?"

"Then why isn't she landing?"

"I don't know. Like I said, she is probably just being cautious. She may not have expected finding a power level that could challenge her own."

"Right! Well if she behaves like what records on Vegeta say, she will challenge the strongest person on the planet! THAT IS YOU, YOU IDIOT!!! SHE IS GOING TO COME HERE!!! AFTER DARK AND SQUASH THE CITY INTO RUBBLE!!!!" Slip screamed as she started to unscrew a few bolts from a weird bow like thing.

Roshi realized that there was not going to be an easy way to calm Slip down. She just was too excited to think straight and that was that. Besides, she was armed with a screwdriver and was acting really weird.

"Ah right... well, I will just have to lead her away from here if that happens. Ah, what are you doing? Hey Slip!"

Slip was so busy running around the room looking for who knows what that she didn't even notice he had said anything. She was practically ripping the place apart. She found a little laser pen like thing and started fiddling with some other piece of equipment. All this while humming something to herself.

Roshi had never seen Slip get riled up like that before. At this rate he guessed that she would have the entire Capsule Corp taken apart and put back together by latter this evening.

"Ah, well I'm going to call Boxers and Tee and get them to help. I might need Boxers' sword."

Boxers had inherited Trunks's Sword and kept it meticulously sharp. Roshi knew that if the girl really was a Saiyan, they might need that sword to save their lives.

Once again Slip just ignored him as she grabbed a glue gun and started gluing two something or others together.

***

"I'm sick of waiting!" Ichigo finally decided.

She had sat up in the bridge of her ship for two hours trying to figure out what had happened to that power level. It never reappeared, and Ichigo was beginning to doubt that there had ever been an actual power level detected. Occasionally, the scouters picked up echoes and false readings. It was close enough to her own power level, that she guessed that it could have been a false reading off of her or something. It really didn't mater, she had decided, whatever that reading had been it was gone now.

"Computer, set down as close to the source of the 52,000 power level. I might as well start with the biggest one. That will probably be the only person who will know anything anyway."

"Course plotted. The power level is located about 4 km above the surface of the planet. More input needed."

Huh? The power level never moved, but it is 4 km above the planet? What is it with this planet???

"Land on the ground below the power level. I will then fly up and meet it."

"New course plotted. Touchdown in thirty minutes."

'Now to get ready,' Ichigo thought to herself. She looked down at herself and decided that the light blue armor that she had on would be good enough for this planet. It was more regal then the other suits of armor that she had left and if there were actually any of the rebel Saiyans down there, she wanted to look as regal as she could.

'Hmmm,' she thought, 'I should braid my hair.' I have nothing to do for the next half-hour or so while the ship lands anyway. 'Hmmmm, it would make me look somewhat more presentable.'

Ichigo's hair was quite long. Even with the natural tendency of a Saiyan's hair to defy gravity, the genie style ponytail that she usually had her hair in reached all the way down her back. Since long hair was easy to grab and use against a person, it was generally frowned on in Saiyan society to allow a child's hair to grow out so long. Ichigo, however, did not care. The pictures and paintings of her mother had shown her with her black hair flowing all the way down to her ankles. Since a Saiyan's hair essentially stopped growing once they reached adulthood, Ichigo had vowed as a little girl not to cut her hair until after she was married, or Queen, or fifty, whichever came first.

Even though the vow meant next to nothing now that Ichigo was close to being mature, she still kept it. As Ichigo set about taming her unruly hair she thought about one day about a year back when Sakura and she had been training in the dogo. Sakura had grown her hair out to almost match Ichigo's. The girl had gotten away with it because if anyone mentioned something about it, those words would get back to Ichigo. Ichigo laughed as she recalled the great hunks of hair that had started falling off of Sakura's head that day. In a matter of hours she went from having long hair that descended to the small of her back to having the shortest hair Ichigo had ever seen on a Saiyan. To make matters worse, at least in Sakura's eyes, her hair all shot to the left side of her head and the only longer spikes spiked streaght out over her ear. Sakura said it made her look lopsided.

Sakura's molting was relatively uncommon, but not unheard of. Most people slowly lost hair until it was whatever length it would be as an adult. On the flipside, some people's hair grew almost overnight. Since Ichigo's hair had not fallen out or changed length in any major fashion when she hit puberty, she was fairly certain that it would be this length for the rest of her life.

Meanwhile the ship descended through the layers of clouds to land near the base of Korrin's tower.

"Landing successful. You may disembark at will." The ship dutifully reported.

Ichigo gave herself one final look over, she then slipped her personal scouter over her left ear and stepped out the hatch of the ship.

Her first few steps had a large bouncing gait to them until she got used to the lower gravity. "Hm, no wonder the people of this planet are so weak. This gravity is almost nothing." Taking a deep breath she slowly exhaled. "At least this planet smells normal." She said to herself as she looked around.

About a km away stood a tower. It was thin and white. It also went up higher then Ichigo could see. Her scouter also indicated that the high level ki was most likely at the top of that tower.

"Oh well, I needed the exercise anyway." She said as she walked to the tower. She decided that she would climb the tower using only her pinkie fingers. It should be a good workout.

*** "She landed by Korrin's tower!" Slip screamed.

"I see that! I'm going, wish me luck!" he called back as he ran for the door.

"You don't need luck! You need to remember to keep your power level down so you can surprise her!" Slip said as she threw the ancient scouter to him.

Roshi caught it on the run. "Ah, Right! Ah Kintoun!" he called for the yellow cloud as he ran through the door. If he could get close enough to her on his cloud, he might be able to use some of his father's tricks to try to get an actual read on her. There was something about her that just plain bothered him. He almost wanted to call it a premonition, but he had never believed in premonitions.

It took almost an hour to fly from the Capsule Corp to Korrin's tower. While he was traveling, he had been keeping a constant watch on both his own power level, and the girl's position. She seemed to be slowly climbing the tower. This made no sense to Roshi. He couldn't figure out why she had not just flown up to the top.

Oh well, what ever her reason for slowly climbing the tower, Roshi was not going to complain. It gave him more time. It also allowed him to think about the past week. He had made several startling discoveries during the week. This past week had been like a big huge wake up call. Having a real danger to motivate one to remember one's lesions was a definite factor.

First, he had realized that his father had been teaching him things that would help him fight his entire life, even when he had not known it. One such instance that came to mind happened when he was six or seven. Goshu had taken him to town to one of his father's friends houses for a men's night of cards. Roshi had been bored, but his father had slowly taught him how to play poker.

Later that night, after he had gotten to understand the rules to some extent, his father had opted out of a hand to take Roshi aside. While the two of them watched the others play cards, his father had taught him to sense out how good or bad a person's hand was by sensing their emotions.

For the longest time, Roshi had thought that this technique was good for only cheating at games. And after a while, he had forgotten about it entirely. Thinking about it now, he should have realized something was up when his father never won a single game of cards. He obviously used that ability for other purposes. Roshi had just not realized it.

Roshi had always been a quick study. He would pick up things quickly, but he also forgot about things just about as fast. Unfortunately, Roshi's father had never really pushed him in his training. If he seemed to know something, he was never pushed to use it.

Once Roshi had remastered being able to hide his Ki, an ability he had done without thought as a child, but somehow forgotten, the floodgates had opened. He recalled playing catch with a rotten egg when he was five. His father had put an egg out in the sun for several days to let it get good and rotten. Then he had blindfolded Roshi and forced him to sense without seeing the egg and play catch.

Roshi had later learned that his father had been using a rock for most of the day, but that did not matter. He after a few days of catch he could sense his father's arm as it moved to throw the egg or rock or ball and then sense the object as it approached. By the time he was seven Roshi could do almost anything blindfolded. Then he had started going to school in town, and had over time forgotten everything.

The more he had practiced the past week, the more he had become amazed at how much better of a fighter he would have been if he had only remembered his childhood games.

'Oh well, enough of the trip down memory lane,' Roshi said to himself. He was almost to the tower now and had to prepare for what could be the battle of his life. He did not want to fight the girl, but he could not forget what Piccolo had said.

"You will most definitely make her furious, so be prepared to fight." Piccolo had said about removing the girl's tail.

If only there was another way, Roshi thought. He looked up at the sky. No, it is already almost 8:00. I have very few options. If she wants to fight, I will have to get rid of that tail before she can go Ouzaru or I'll be as good as dead.

As he drew close to the girl, he tried to determine what her mood was. The only other person he had done this with in the past week was Slip. Slip could be read like a book. This girl however was a mystery. She was deep in thought, and was not aware of his approach. That was important to know, but it was about all he could get off of her.

He circled around so that he was behind her and flew up within 8 meters of her. Her scouter did not seem to register him and she was so focused on something that she did not hear him.

Roshi looked at her. The girl appeared to be climbing the tower with her pinkie fingers. She looked to be about his age. From behind her, the most noticeable feature was her hair. Roshi had never seen a girl with such a thick braid before. The braid reached down to below her waist and was almost as big around as his arm at her head. Roshi sat on the cloud for a few moments just looking at that hair.

Then, he gave her a closer look. She had been climbing for close to an hour using her pinkies. She was not the slightest bit tired. And that armor at least looked heavy.

She had on a light blue and white piece of armor and had a dark almost navy blue cape.

'That cape was going to be a problem,' he thought. 'How am I supposed to grab her tail when it is hidden behind that stupid cape? Oh well, I guess now is as good a time as any.'

"Ah excuse me, but what are you doing?" Roshi asked from behind the girl. * * *

Well this chapter is almost unchanged. Sorry about the shorter chapters, but there is really nothing much I can add to this without changing the story.

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