The Corridor of Time

BY MARA ROBERTS

Chapter 3

Capsule Corp.
Year 762

"Where is my son?" Chi-Chi screamed across the room. After the dragon disappeared and the dragonballs scattered, everyone had waited in a stunned silence for Gohan to appear before them. Remembering Namek and how Piccillo hadn't shown up exactly where the dragon had been, everyone reached out excitedly to sense for Gohan's energy. They found no trace of his ki signature.

The Namekian Elder tried to explain what had happened, but he was at a loss himself. And as he was taking the brunt of Chi-Chi's rage, he didn't have much time to figure out exactly what went wrong. Bulma and Piccillo went over the wish many, many times. The exact phrase had been right on, he had been at Earth's spiritual check-in station, and then revived. He should have been on Earth...

Otherworld
where time doesn't exist

Kibuto had looked long and hard for an eternity, but he found no sign of Son Gohan. He was beginning to worry. There were all sorts of dangers in Otherworld, the transition plane between Heaven and Hell. Beings of the upper resting places could come and go, and sometimes an eternal sufferer escapes and wrecked havoc for an eternity or two before he was subdued into submission. If the lad were caught into a whirlpool of enervation... The Ogier shuddered at the thought. Oh, the Ogier prayed to the Kais, please do not let the boy be caught in such a place that makes Hell look peaceful.

He continued his trek to where Gohan had been last seen when he noticed an anomaly. The Corridor... he was suddenly flooded with relief. The door was slightly ajar; there was hope! The boy had stuck to the main passageway, he likely wasn't aware of the shoot-offs into other... The Ogier shook his head and got back to business.

Kibuto summoned the keypad and used his pass to access the vids that followed the people in the corridor. Someone was in there! Immediately he ordered a search and rescue squad brought into the vicinity. Now if only Gohan hadn't fallen through the barriers within the walls... but that life force was still in there; whose could it be but Gohan's? The rescue team entered the corridor and sped through, to find the boy before trouble found him.

Roshi's Island
Year 352

Gohan woke up bright and early, eager to see his mother's shining face at the breakfast table. He looked around, and memory came crashing back. He wasn't home in his room; he was on Roshi's island. He was not surrounded by books and other educational tools but by smelly socks and sweat-soaked gi. And he was not alone; two bodies shared the room with him. Specifically, Krillian's and Yamcha's.

As sunlight streaked through the windows, his roommates stirred as well, and dressed for the day in Roshi's colors. They were proud to wear his symbol on their fighting gi.

"Hey, it's good that you're up. Before breakfast we do early morning exercises, like skipping and zigzags, and delivering milk," Krillian explained.

Yamcha elaborated, "If you'll be staying with us, Master Roshi probably wants to test you and see what you can do. Why don't you get dressed and head on outside? Of course, you won't be expected to keep up with us, but don't worry about that. You'll be there soon enough. Just do your best and you'll be fine."

Gohan nodded and put on the Saiyjin armor Vegeta had given him so long ago at Namek. The three headed outside to wait for Master Roshi.

Finally the master emerged, and he carried with him a smaller version of his school's colors.

"Here, Gohan, put these on," Roshi proffered the clothes. Seeing Gohan's confused look he added, "That armor looks pretty inhibiting. I want to see what you can do without anything holding you back or slowing you down."

"Okay," Gohan nodded in understanding. Deciding not to mention the armor's flexibility – the technology didn't exist in his time on Earth, so he knew it would be very odd in the past to say the least – he striped down to his underwear and put on the orange and navy gi of the Turtle Hermit School. Roshi then led him over to a rock and told him to run as fast as he could to the tree, which was one hundred meters away. He would be timed.

"Ready?" Gohan nodded. "Okay, then. Go!"

And just like that, as though no time had passed, Gohan was standing by the tree. For an instant it seemed there had been two of him, but that meant he had moved at the speed of light!

Gohan looked around. Jaws were in laps, and his friends were in shock. I guess I overdid it a bit.

"Just how much do you train?" Yamcha asked, shakily.

"Sixteen hours a day," Gohan replied, when he realized his friends took him seriously. "Um... I was just joking. I've never timed myself, but I do train a lot."

"Oh," Yamcha looked relieved.

"Well," Roshi butted in, "your speed is impressive, but you can never know enough technique. One day, you may find an opponent as fast as you are, and if he's smarter, he'll win."

Gohan nodded sagely, "Yes, I know. Three times so far in battle I have faced adversaries, faster, stronger and smarter than myself. I would have died if it weren't for my... dad..." Gohan's voice trailed off at the end.

The others exchanged glances. There were people faster than Gohan?

Master Roshi interrupted their thoughts, "Now let's see how strong you are."

"'K." Before Master Roshi could assign him a task, Gohan walked over to a mountain and punched it. It crumbled immediately into rubble.

"I... I... uh...I think we'll work a bit on your education. Body should never outstrip mind, after all. You boys go on with your normal routine."

The two walked off, talking. "Yeah, he's defiantly stronger that Goku. Who'd have imagined?"

"So, with all this training and fighting I assume you haven't had much time for studying, correct?"

"No," Gohan said. "I haven't been studying of late."

"Okay then, lets start with the basics."

"Okay. There's this one concept I can't seem to manage, concerning rotating conics and anti-derivatives..." Gohan then proceeded to go into a whole string of technical terminology, effectively overwhelming Roshi with his scintillating conversational proficiency (1), much as I am doing to you now with my 'verbose' vocabulary.

Capsule Corp.
Year 762

Bulma sighed. Everyone sat around the living room in a stunned stupor. They had tried everything they could think of, but all had failed. Goku had planned on scouring the world over for his son, but Bulma told him it was futile. The only plan that could work would take one hundred and twenty days, and then some. By then they would have gathered the dragonballs and could demand an explanation from Porunga. If he failed to answer, they would wish for one, and then wish Gohan back home. The third wish would be to revive Yamcha, as Tien and Chaoztu would undoubtedly want to be brought back together. It would take two more times of summoning the dragon to revive Tien and Chaoztu. The third wish would bring Krillian to Earth's check-in station in the spirit realm, and a fourth summoning of the dragon a third of a year later to bring him back for good.

But for now, everyone sat, and mourned, and comforted the Sons as best they could.

"A-hem." Someone coughed. As everyone looked to see who dared impose on their grief, they saw none other than Kami himself, standing there.

"I believe I can answer all your questions..." the god began.

(1) First off, I'm actually amazed that I managed to cram so many SAT words into one little sentence. I sort of have them on my mind; I'm taking it in two weeks, (of course, by the time I post I'll have gotten my scores back) but you can still wish me luck. Okay, for those of you who don't have mothers who send you to a professional tutoring place that hands out more work than an English teacher (takes deep breath) I was basically saying Gohan was speaking Greek. For specific definitions, please see below.

technical – long, specific words usually based so much in Latin that it's scary. terminology – fancy words; effectively – successfully; overwhelming – crushing; scintillating – very smart sounding; conversational – talking; proficiency – skill; verbose – wordy; vocabulary – something every sane English student runs screaming in terror from, at least in my class. My English teacher made us memorize the list of 20 words, look up a definition, write how ever many definitions there were down, as well as a lot of synonyms (and I do mean a LOT), and antonyms (and not just one or two). And we had to write a sentence with context clues. We also had to know the parts of speech, their variations, and those parts of speech... I mean, how annoying! But, I must admit, it increased my vocabulary by leaps and bounds.

I know I went overboard with the definitions, but I've always found that even when simple words are surrounded by long, Kami-only-knows-what-they mean words, it's easy to forget what the easy words mean, too.