Disclaimer: The most of DBZ that I happen to own is just a bunch of bilingual DVD's.

Author's Note: Hey hey hey! It actually didn't take me a year and a half this time! Enjoy!

Oh, and I also apologize in advance for 'Fred'. I know it's cheesy, but I couldn't find any other way.

***

"Mmmmm...this is so great, just lying here like this..."

"Hmph! What the hell's so great about it?!"

"Oh, I don't know...there's a nice breeze coming in from the window, and it feels so good to just lie here and have nothing on my mind." She stretched her arms outward in a catlike manner and snuggled up against him, her fragrant hair fanned out against his bare chest. "And besides, I have YOU to share it with me!"

All she got in reply was a loud snort. But that, she supposed, was normal. She took a moment to turn and look him in the face, at his piercing obsidian eyes, haunted eyes that still hinted of the neglect and horror that he had experienced during his lifetime. "You're so uptight all the time, you know that?" she said as she felt him immediately stiffen in response to her sudden movement. "What is there that you could possibly worry about? Why don't you live for the moment for once?"

Her curiosity was quickly rewarded with a stiff reply, a reply that she had come to dread over their brief affair. "I have to go train."

"Again?! For what? You've trained for seven days straight, for sixteen hours a day! Why do you push yourself so hard?"

"I'm going now," was all he said, kissing her mouth brusquely as he disentangled himself from her and made ready to leave.

She watched as he retreated from the room without a look behind, the door clicking shut behind him. Tears welling up in her eyes, she shook her head as she stared at the mussed up coverlets, muttering sadly, "This was a mistake. ...A total mistake."

***

"Your invoice, Miss Briefs!" The technician's voice rang out from behind her, startling her out of deep thought and bringing her instantly (but perhaps not regretfully) back to the present.

"Wha?..." Bulma shook her head as if to banish all near-forgotten thoughts out of mind. She stared at the middle-aged man, asking almost incredulously, "You mean...you mean your team is finished with both the lab and the hangar already?" She grabbed the bill from his extended hand, glancing it over.

He nodded. "Yup! There wasn't much of it to clear and repair, really. The whole area had been kept in top condition---some of it upgraded, in fact."

Bulma stood to shake the man's hand. "I can't thank you and your team enough," she stated warmly with a genuine smile. "The faster everything's done, the faster we can manufacture again."

No sooner had the man left and she had resumed getting the papers in her office back in order than a familiar squeaky little voice could be heard in the outside corridor, screeching out her name shrilly. "Bulma! Bu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-lma-a-a-a-a-a-a!!"

"What is it?" Bulma asked quite crossly as Puar zoomed in, looking quite winded from all the yelling.

"Bulma, there's something alive under the rubble! AND it's beeping!"

"Oh, geez..." She got back up and followed her excitable little companion out into the corridor, cursing angrily under her breath as she stomped down the stairs. "Always interrupted...never get a thing done around here...and here I thought it was important."

The thing was actually in one of the offices, buried under some debris somewhere near the desk and also emitting a shrill, annoying beep every five seconds.

"See, Puar?" Bulma grunted as she bent over to paw through the heavy rubble. "It's just some kind of machine. It's not alive or anything. It's probably movement sensitive and it picked you up when you came nearby."

"Well, whatever it is, it sure is annoying!" Puar declared, her wings beating rapidly in the air as she maintained her position overhead. "Shut it up!"

After a few minutes Bulma finally unearthed the offending object, which was very moldy (going by the smell) and coated with a thick layer of white dust, still beeping loudly enough to wake the dead. She stared at it in disgust for a moment, cursing its stupid sense of timing. Something held her back, however, keeping her from silencing it, from chucking the horrible thing against the wall to punish it for disturbing her work. There was something else about it, she noticed, something that seemed oddly normal, as if she had seen it frequently a long time ago. In fact, it almost looked like a-

"Hey...Puar? Take a close look at this thing. Does it seem...familiar to you?" Bulma looked up at the pink feline, a strange look slowly creeping over her face. "It almost looks like the-"

"The Dragon Radar!" Puar exclaimed happily, swooping in and brushing the dust off with her slender pink paws, indeed revealing it to be that. "But why is it beeping? Nobody turned it on..."

Bulma shook her head. "You don't turn it on, Puar, that's the funny thing. The only time that it beeps like this is when a wish is being made. And what's weird is that no one's made a wish here for about nineteen years...the Dragonballs don't even exist anymore. They disappeared when Piccolo died!"

"Maybe it needs to be fixed," Puar cut in, looking at the device curiously.

"Yeah..." She stared at it, turning it over in her hands. "I think I'll do that. Although there's not much of a point anymore; I mean, there IS nothing to track with it..." She stood up and headed for the door. "I don't know, I just don't know. I'll look at it when I have the time..."

She paused in the hall when all of a sudden the beeping stopped and they were left only with a tense silence. "It stopped...how odd..." The thing now lay innocently in her hand, looking as if it had never done anything.

Deciding to leave the matter alone for the moment, she went back to her office and placed the radar on top of her desk, taking a moment to stare at it again before she resumed her work. The fact that it was the Dragon Radar seemed to unnerve her, although she had no earthly reason why.

She tried to shake the strange tingling feeling out of her stomach. (It beeped. That stupid thing beeped. Why?)

(Is it broken? But it shouldn't be, even after all these years; I built it to last.)

(Well, no use worrying about it now. The Dragonballs are gone, we all know it, and the Radar's probably just gone haywire for some reason or other.)

She sighed and picked up the freshly written contract between Capsule Corp and the newly reinstated staff. (Trunks, just hurry home, will ya? Your mother's starting to get just a little too paranoid about everything.)

***

Trunks, of course, was in reality at least a light year away on Namek, currently doing something that his poor mother had never even dreamed of. Wiping beads of sweat from his forehead, he grinned as his Saiyan eyesight once again discerned the tightly-knit circle of people who were all sitting in the shade of a mountainous dune about a hundred yards away.

This was it. They had, at long last, found them.

It had been a tedious, miserable walk that had spanned for four long hours, but even that hadn't bothered him. He happily thought that even a hundred hour walk would have been much worth this reward. Although, he reflected rather ruefully, it would have been better if his friend would have actually talked to him for at least awhile, and not just quietly marched at his side, looking grim and silent. Gohan seemed to be off in his own world at the moment, not having opened his mouth since their last conversation, not talking unless it was something connected with the search itself. Trunks thought it all-in-all strange. He might have started out as the shy eleven year old boy that he had seen back in the other timeline, but the Gohan Trunks knew never acted like this. Not as far as he remembered, at any rate...

Trunks gave a puzzled glance over at his longtime friend, whose eyes and jaw were set in such a way that he looked like he was going to a funeral and not a sixteen year reunion. (What's up with him anyway? You think he'd be at least a LITTLE happy about this whole thing, but instead he's looking like he has a stick rammed up his derriere. ...Chi-Chi's not THAT bad, is she?)

He shook his head as he dismissed the thought. (Might as well not worry about it. He'll tell me when he's ready; he was never one to let something keep on bothering him. We've got other stuff to do right now..)

They were getting closer; enough to be in speaking distance. Trunks's heart rose as he managed to catch a glimpse of Vegeta, who was in fact looking much like himself, with his arms crossed over his chest and the usual scowl pasted on his face. At least something was sacred in both times... (Maybe these guys won't be such strangers to me after all...)

They were now standing just feet away from the newly revived. A hush fell over the group of people, the air becoming even heavier and tenser than it had during the silence that had reigned beforehand. Both groups looked each other over curiously, each as astonished as the other. Even Gohan, who had full well known what to expect, was temporarily tongue-tied. All that could be heard was the sound of the whipping wind upsetting the sand dunes, causing dust to whirl into the air and for them to rapidly blink it out of their eyes...

Finally it was Piccolo who spoke. "Are you the ones who revived us?" he barked, his eyes narrowing as he attempted to assess the newcomers.

"I did," Trunks replied, stepping forward, suddenly feeling uncomfortably aware that everyone was staring at him. "I revived you all."

There was a long silence as everyone continued to stare at him, as if expecting him to explain every last detail. That didn't happen, however, as Trunks only turned a deep crimson and stood motionless, his chronic shyness suddenly taking over and refusing to let him use his vocal chords. "Uh...well...I-"

"Hey!" Chi-Chi's voice suddenly rang out clearly as she squinted not at Trunks but at the person standing next to him. "Hey! You look like- you look exactly like my-"

Everyone was starting to agree.

"Yeah, he DOES look like-"

"But he's all grown up-"

"Look at him!"

"-Gohan!"

Gohan, unlike Trunks, did not blush at the sudden rush of attention. "Well, that's because I am Gohan," he explained, a small smile forming on his face.

A dull roar suddenly ensued as half the crowd surrounded Gohan, the tension and jumpiness that had taken ahold of everyone beforehand now suddenly forgotten. They all looked genuinely happy as they took in the sight of the (somewhat) happy-looking, well-adjusted young man, some of them hugging him tightly and others talking excitedly at him. Even Piccolo had to smile as he finally recognized the adult version of the child he had always had a special bond with.

"Gohan! It's really you!"

"Wow! You've really grown, kid! It must have been those Senzu Beans!"

"Guess THIS answers our question of how long it's been since we died!"

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, Gohan!! Give your mother a great big KISS!"

"So YOU'RE the one who revived us, Gohan!"

Gohan just smiled and shook his head while trying to avoid the flailing arms of his overemotional mother. "No, it wasn't me," he replied, albeit a little chokingly, as Chi-Chi was hugging him so tightly that only the Jaws of Life could have pried her off. "I was just revived a little while ago myself. Save your thanks for Fred over there!" He gestured over towards Trunks.

Trunks opened his mouth in protest. "Hey, my name's not-" However, he couldn't tell what exactly his name was, as he grunted in pain when Gohan's foot flew out of nowhere and got him square in the shin. Gasping angrily, he shot him a dirty look in order to find out why, but Gohan just shook his head reprovingly, putting his finger over his lips.

"Hey, isn't that a Capsule Corp jacket you're wearing?" Yamcha asked him curiously over the roar of everyone's voices. "Do you work there or something?"

Trunks again opened his mouth to tell the truth, but before he knew it Gohan had cut in. "Employee, sparring companion, but above all friend," he said airily, in a voice quite unlike his own. "We've known each other for years. That's why he knew how to revive us."

"Hey, I don't- I'm not-"

"Sparring companion?" Chi-Chi echoed. "But wouldn't you knock the poor boy's head off?"

"Surely even a half-breed like you would be able to kill this weakling in one blow," Vegeta sneered, breaking his usual silence.

Gohan cursed himself momentarily for running off at the mouth, but he was smart enough to find a quick answer. "Er---he's got his own -uh- special type of fighting," he managed to come up with. "He's a good opponent."

"Gohan, I don't think-"

"-He came here all the way to Namek just to gather the Dragonballs and revive us. You NEED to be strong to do that, right, guys?"

"I'm NOT Fr-"

"Well, I think we'd better get going," Gohan interrupted in a loud voice. "Fred and I have already had a long day, and the afternoon's slipping away. There's a village of Nameks nearby, I guess, so we'll spend the night. C'mon, everybody!"

Trunks scowled as he began to follow Gohan and the others north, towards the edge of the desert. Just what the HELL was going on?! Why didn't he want the others to know his name like that?!

He needed to pull Gohan into a corner somewhere and force him to explain. Desperately.

***

It was indeed a long time before Trunks could get Gohan alone that night, as everyone and their grandmother, even Dende, had to crowd around him and ask him every question under the sun. He sat on a rock and scowled at them all evening, waiting for them to shut up and let him approach; not unlike Vegeta, in fact, who was doing practically the same thing except on the other end of the village (except, well, he was probably doing that because he WANTED to). Trunks almost had the urge to go over there and explain everything to him, as he was the main reason he was here on Namek in the first place, but some invisible force held him back. A tiny little voice residing in his brain seemed to tell him that Gohan would not approve.

The sky had gone long dark and the fires were just starting to grow when Trunks finally got to talk to his old friend, who was trying to look unobtrusive next to a small blaze towards the edge of the camp. Budging up a little bit as to give Trunks a little more space by the fire, he then cleared his throat and stared at his friend with raised eyebrows, almost as if he had been expecting this for awhile.

Trunks spoke first. "Gohan, why did you-" he began in an unnaturally high voice. "Why did you - why did you DO that?!"

"Why I didn't tell them who you really were and that you're actually part Saiyan like me and everything?" Gohan replied quickly, poking a stick into the fire. "I did that because- because...because for the moment it's -well- actually for your own good."

Trunks was not satisfied with his answer. "But WHY?! I really don't see any point in lying like that!"

"I do," Gohan cut in shortly, giving his friend a serious look. "Listen, I think we should let Bulma handle the rest of this. Neither of us are really fit to explain. I only know parts of the story, and you -well- you shouldn't be broadcasting that you're Vegeta's son just yet."

Trunks noted that his speech seemed oddly rehearsed. Knitting his eyebrows in confusion, he questioned, "But what's wrong with that?"

"Trunks, just trust me on this. You're living proof that they've been dead for sixteen years. They're not ready to handle any surprises - they need someone familiar like Bulma to explain it all. And about Vegeta - he's-" He stopped in frustration for a moment, looking as if he had almost let something slip. "Listen, just trust me," he went on, almost angrily. "Don't answer any questions until we get back on Earth, and keep pretending you're Fred. You might be glad you did in the end."

"But-"

"But nothing!! I'm grateful for what you did for me and the others, but there are a lot of things involved with it!" Gohan snapped, moodily throwing the twig into the fire. "Now why don't we just shut up?! I don't want to ruin my first night alive in six years!"

***

As Trunks later headed out into the darkness towards his hut, he kept running Gohan's words over and over in his mind. He shouldn't tell anyone, he should just let his mother take care of everything...his orders had been rather cryptic. What was the point in keeping anything secret? It was bound to come out anyway!

Gohan was hiding something, he was sure of that much. After all, those had been some rather flimsy excuses he had made back at the fire. It was a shame he was in no position to find out the real truth; not until he was back home, at any rate...

(He let that one sentence slip...I know it. That about me being Vegeta's son...did something bad happen...something I don't know about?)

Too tired to think about anything anymore, he sunk down on the straw pallet inside his hut and fell into a deep sleep.

***

The Namek village had by all appearances died down for the night. With the fires all going out one-by-one and everyone slowly shuffling off to bed, the camp eventually became dark and silent, almost ghostly under the bright but distant light from the planet's four moons. Wisps of mist from the atmosphere's vapors were already beginning to curl and writhe within the village's deep valley, promising for a foggy morning.

There was one person, however, who didn't wish to drop off just yet. Moodily kicking a clump of grass, Vegeta shifted slightly as he leaned back against a house, feeling restless and virtually wide awake. He couldn't sleep, not when he had this much on his mind, anyway...and especially when he had had a long dirt nap already to begin with. He suspected it had been at least ten years since his death; his Ki was currently so weak that it pained him to even walk very far.

His hand slowly strayed down to his chest, where Android 18's Ki ball had seared through his body, immediately killing him. Even the coveted Super Saiyan level had not helped him there; she had destroyed him as effortlessly as if he had just been another human futilely trying to get in her way. (What pain...what humiliation...Killed like that in front of the Namek. I'm sure by now he's told those other weak fools all about it, too.)

His finger went further down, lightly brushing the large brown scar that now graced the area over his heart. Yes, the injury was now healed, and he was now as alive and whole as he had ever been. But something else had been destroyed when he had fallen, something that he could never get back. That something was his pride, of course.

(Honestly, though, what shred of dignity did I even have left? First it was Frieza, then that fool Kakarot, then - then it was HER.) A shudder of fury overtook him as memories flooded back into his brain, memories that were still fairly fresh in his newly revived mind - memories that he rather would have forgotten along with his death.

He sent another clump of grass spinning into the night air. (Hell, why did those morons revive me in the first place? What's the point anymore? I don't even have a rival to compete with!)

He hoped that this sudden burst of emotion just had to do with his recent revival and not because of weakness on his part. (And to top it off, why is all this crap even bothering me?! I've grown weak - too weak. I was even becoming weak before my death. I am a Saiyan warrior! Not some weak Earth fool who needs comfort in others!)

(WHY didn't I just purge the planet when I had the chance?! I had the golden opportunity to do it---but instead I got entangled in that OTHER mess. And now I'm trapped. Who knows how strong Kakarot's brat has become, and as for that other weird kid, I KNOW he's masking his Ki. Even when masked a power level like that is unheard of. Just who is he anyway?!)

Finally coming to the conclusion that the Namekian night air was seemingly addling his brains to the point of *shudder* softness, Vegeta slowly got up and stumbled off towards the outskirts of the village, to the hut he was forced to share with Yamcha. He already hated the prospect of a roommate, but it was going to take all of his willpower just to not smother him with a pillow as he slept. And especially if he snored.

He sunk down on the pallet made up for him on the far side of the room, staring up at the high white ceiling that glimmered eerily in the moonlight, knowing that despite his weariness he would be unable to sleep tonight.

Author's Note: It might be awhile until I update again. I've got a lot going on right now. But don't worry! This story is kinda my baby; I want to see it through to the end and I won't abandon it. I'm just in sort of a dry spell compared to my other fics (and I haven't even posted one of them yet!). Oh yeah, and don't worry about the age difference b/w Vegeta and Bulma. I'm taking care of that right now in the chapter that I'm writing! I found a really interesting way to do it...

As always, thank you for the kind reviews. It lets me know that you're reading (that's the most important part) and kind of where to take my next chapter. Thanx!