The 13th Dimension.

Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ. I do own myself, as I recently bought back my soul from Microsoft. (Yay!) People who use character-me in their own fics, either actually believe this happened in DBZ or thinks that I am cool. Nevertheless they will be spanked, unless they tell me first and does a good rendering of me. (Types the author like she actually believed people would do that...)

Author's notes: Ahh, more rewriting to do. This version of chapter 2 is actually longer than the first one. Hopefully I will be able to stay more true to the characters than I did the first time around. (The author is shuddering at old drafts of chapter 3) Also I would like to thank people who have reviewed this. I didn't think the story would be liked by anybody, except for one guy who hasn't reviewed even though I told him to, and the reviews really surprised me. Which is why I update sooner than I had planned to, I usually like to take my sweet time with that, since I'm always working on more than one fic. So, ehh, be prepaired to have to wait for chapter three. It's in the works, but you will have to wait. (Sorry, I really am.)

Like last time:

"talking" 'thinking' #broadcast or something#

Chapter 2, What the hell happened?

Bulma felt sorry for the young girl, she seemed to be nice, even tough she should have realised what a mistake it was to talk against Vegeta. 'Wait a minute, what did he say? In case you turn out to be useful?'

"Hey, you jerk," she yelled at him. "Are you just gonna use us and kill us?"

"What is it with you humans? Your entire species have done nothing but been an eyesore to me. Even when you are not standing in my way, you are just annoyingly stupid."

"Answer my question, now."

Vegeta almost vinced at the commanding tone of her voice. 'Who does she think she is, to be talking to the prince of saiyajins like that? Freezer?'

"Why should I?"

Bulma was certain that steam was coming out of ears. 'Who does he think he is, refusing me, Bulma Briefs like that? Kami?'

"Because I said so, you jerk."

Gohan was in the meantime helping Rebecka get to her feet.

"Are you alright, Rebecka-san?"

"I'm fine, thank you. Is he always like that?"

"Who? Vegeta-san? Well, yeah, I think so. I have only known him a couple of months. He used to be our enemy before, but now he's okay, I guess. Daddy thinks so anyway."

"Your enemy?"

"He tried to destroy Earth, our homeworld, and wish for immortality so that he could rule the universe, or something. So we had to fight him, but then he began fighting on our side for a while, and after that he got killed, so I don't know."

By this time Rebecka's eyes were bulging out of their sockets, and her jaw was somewhere at groundlevel. Just as she was about to ask something, she didn't know which question to ask first, she was interrupted by a voice.

# Are you there, everyone? Can you hear me?#

"Who is it?" everybody gasped, except for Vegeta. He just doesn't gasp.

# I am the great Kaiou. Son-Gohan, Bulma, Vegeta, are you all there?#

"Yes, we are, mister Kaiou-sama. All three of us." Gohan was beaming with joy now.

"Who is Kaiou, Gohan?" asked Bulma.

# Kaiou-sama, if I may.#

"He is the one who trained Daddy and Piccolo-san in the other realm," said Gohan.

# Not only that, I am also in charge of overseeing the northern part of our universe. Which brings me to the reason I contacted you.#

"Really?" asked Bulma. "You mean that you know how we got here, and how we can get back again?"

# First things first. Now, is there another or several other persons there with you?#

"Yes," answered Bulma, "a girl named Rebecka is here. Rebecka?"

Still looking for whoever was speaking, Rebecka hesitantly spoke up:

"Hmm, hello, Kaiou-sama, wherever you are."

# Hello, Rebecka. Good, that means that I can reach into all of your minds at once.#

"Reach into our minds?" Rebecka panicked.

# Don't worry, I am not reading your minds, I am merely speaking to you, sort of say.#

"That feels better to know," said Bulma. She and Rebecka let out a collective sigh of relief. They certainly didn't want someone invisible to look through their minds. Neither Vegeta nor Gohan seemed to worry about that, though.

# Anyway, it seems something has happened to the wish that was executed, due to certain disturbances...#

"What wish?" demanded Vegeta. "I thought there weren't anymore wishes."

# Oh, that's right, you don't know everything that has happened. Well, while Goku was fighting Freezer, the dragonballs on Earth were collected to grant a wish. With this wish, all who had been killed by Freezer were brought back, including the Namek elder Guru. This gave us back the Namek dragon for a moment, allowing us access to the last of the three wishes. With this wish, everyone on Namek except for Freezer and Son-Goku, were to be brought back to Earth. However, some kind of disturbance interfered with the wish, and everyone got pulled towards a different dimension. Since the Namekians, and their dragonballs, have a natural protection against outside magic, they were unaffected by this disturbance. You three on the other hand don't have this protection, and were therefore pulled to the this dimension.#

"But why this dimension? And how come I got involved in this?" Rebecka had gotten a little more comfortable by now to speak with the invisible deity. She could accept his presence in her mind, as long as he didn't read into her secrets...

# I am getting to that! Can't you have a little patience here? Anyway, as I was saying, you three were pulled to this dimension, that is the thirteenth dimension from your own. The reason you were pulled to this dimension, was because the origin of the disturbance was thirteen dimensions further away. You see, what happened was that the disturbance of wich I speak, somehow polarised one or more beings to the opposite pole of the dragonball-wish, turning these beings into a magnet, figuratively speaking that is. You were simply pulled to each other, and met in the middle.#

"Yup," said Rebecka with a hint of sarcasm, "that sounds simple enough."

# That reminds me, I have a few questions for you, Rebecka.#

"Okay, I'm listening." She tensed up. Rebecka had a feeling that these questions would be very important, and that their return depended greatly on how well she answered them.

# First of, what is the last thing you remember before you ended up here?#

"Well, I was going in to the kitchen to..." Rebecka started.

# That's okay, you don't have to answer.#

"Huh? But..." Why did he ask if he didn't want her to answer?

# Now, second question, what is your world like?#

"What?" Rebecka was stumped. "That's a pretty big question, I can't answer that in a jiffy."

# Don't worry, you have already answered it.#

"Huh? How? I didn't say a word..." Then it hit her. "Hey, you read my mind, didn't you? You said you weren't going to do that."

# No, I said I wasn't doing that, I never said I weren't going to.#

Rebecka started to mumble to herself about loopholes and conniving, invisible deities who used them.

# Anyway, it seems that the radiation your microwave poured over you, charged you with some sort of energy that has the opposite wavepattern of the dragonballs. You should consider yourself lucky, if you had received any more radiation than what you did, you would have been killed.#

A very pale young woman swallowed audibly, before trying to pull herself together to hear Bulmas question.

"Okay, now that we know how we got here, can you tell us how to get out of here and back home?"

# Well there might be one way to get you out of there, but it is a longshot.#

"Please anything," pleaded Bulma, "we'll do whatever it takes to get home."

# Well, considering that it was a wish made with dragonballs that brought you here, why not simply use the dragonballs to wish you back.#

"You mean that if everybody back home gathers the dragonballs, we can be wished back?" asked Gohan.

His face was shining with innocent hope.

"Idiot," barked Vegeta. "If both the Namek-dragon and the Earth-dragon have been used, what wish is there left for us?"

"That means we have to wait another year for the dragonballs to be active again." Bulma looked first at her surroundings, then at the others standing there. Alone in a freakish desert with only Gohan to protect her from the psychopatic killer that was Vegeta. For a whole year.

"NOOOOOOO!" she screamed, making the ones with sensitive hearing back away a meter. Rebecka just put her hands over her ears. "There has to be another way. I want to go hoooome!"

# Just let me finish, would you. There is still a small chance.#

"Really?" asked Bulma, her tears drying instantly.

# Well it is simply a matter of how much this dimension you're in have in common with our own. As long as it's less than a hundred dimensions away, there's bound to be some real similarities, such as harbouring the same kind of species, and the same planets, and also more importantly, the same kind of relics.#

"Well," said Rebecka, trying to figure out what those similarities could be. "Gohan said before that your homeplanet's Earth, and since that is the name of my planet..."

"Wait a minute! By relics, do you mean dragonballs?", blurted Bulma out.

# Yup, that's what I meant.#

"What are these dragonballs you keep talking about?"

"We'll explain later, Rebecka. First things first. Kaiou-sama, do you really think there could be dragonballs in this dimension?"

# There is a possibility of it, yes. Can you find out if there are?#

"Wait just a sec," said Bulma with a twinkling in her eye. "Gohan, do you still have the dragonballradar?"

Gohan started to look frantically after pockets he didn't seem to have.

"Wait, Bulma," he said looking at her. "Don't you have it?"

"Of course I don't!" She looked angrily at him. " I gave it to you guys, remember?"

"Then..."

Gohan suddenly looks fearstricken, earning him suspicious looks from the others, especially from Vegeta and Bulma. Swallowing some saliva, he bravely continued speaking.

"Then I must have dropped it on Namek. Imagine that." He tried to laugh it off, with a hand on the back of his head. And then heuickly crouched down, raising his arms for protection against the onslaught.

"YOU WHAT?"

When Gohan didn't say anything, Bulma continued her tirade.

"YOU DROPPED MY RADAR ON A PLANET THAT HAS BEEN DESTROYED, IN ANOTHER DIMENSION."

"Please Bulma, calm down. He probably didn't mean to." Rebecka really didn't think now was the time to argue.

"So, little halfbreed. You have lost our only means of getting out of here. Leaving us all stranded in the middle of nowhere." Vegeta seemed eeriely calm, except for that vein twitching on his forhead.

"Oh, don't sweat it, Vegeta. I can always build a new one." Bulmas statement came as a surprise to everyone.

"You know how to build this radar?" Vegeta was almost shocked, by the concept of this Earth woman knowing how to build anything at all, considering what an airhead she seemed to be.

"Of course I do," said Bulma, putting her fists on her hips. "I invented them after all."

"But, Bulma-san, don't you need equipment or something?" Gohan was slowly growing braver, talking back to her.

"I got it all here." As she said that, she pulled out a small box from a pocket on her west.

Rebecka, who thought that that had to be the smallest toolbox she had ever seen, couldn't help but ask.

"But if you have the means and the knowhow to build a new radar, why did you get so angry at Gohan?"

"Because he shouldn't have been so careless with someone else's property."

Following that statement, everyone hearing it dropped on their backs.

"Kaiou-sama!" Yamcha ran up to his sensei who was lying on the ground.

"Are you alright?" asked Chaozu who was hovering above him.

"I'm fine. And so are they." Kaiou-sama got up in a sitting position. "I was worried about Vegeta, but it seems that he is willing to cooperate with the others. He did so before when they were fighting Freezer, so things should look good on that."

"What about that unknown being you were talking about?"

"It would seem that we have nothing to fear there either. But now that we know that they're fine, and will remain so for the time being, we should look at how Goku's doing! Remember that the whole Universe is resting on him."

And so Kaiou-sama turned his antennas towards Namek, along with the attention of the three fighters that were with him.

Vegeta was the first to get up. Followed closely by Gohan and Rebecka. Bulma was taking out capsules from her little box, looking at each one of them.

"Hmm, yes," she mumbeld to herself, "that seems to be it."

Then she turned to the others.

"It seems I have everything I need right here. I'll start working right away."

"That's great, Bulma-san," said Rebecka. "But how about explaining a few things to me? I don't understand anything that's going on here."

"Hmm, I really should start building the radar," Bulma said slowly. "Do you know anything about handling circuits?"

"Ehh, not that much," Rebecka put a hand behind her neck as she spoke. "I know how to weld and stuff, but I have never really handled with circuits."

"That's OK, as long as you know how to handle a screwdriver, and promise to be really careful, I think I can find some way for you to help me out here."

"Thanks, that would be great!" Rebecka knew she would just have felt awkward if she just stood and watched as Bulma worked.

"And while we work, we can probably throw in a little chit-chat." Bulma winked her eye to Rebecka in a playful manner. "Right, then lets get started!"

As Bulma said that, she threw a capsule on the ground where it immediately exploded. Rebecka was not the only one who gawked at the house that was standing in its place.

Vegeta had all along been standing to the side of things, trying to evaluate the situation as it stood for him. The Earth woman, the one with the blue hair, was essential to keep alive for now. She would be needed, not only to build the radar for detecting the dragonballs, but also to maintain it should it at any time break before all of the dragonballs had been found. As for the others... The halfbreed son of Kakarott had proved himself to be valuable in a fight before, it would be a waste to get rid of him, before he knew for certain what kind of adversity could stand in the way. Not to mention that if things turned sour, the boy could be used as leverage against the woman. As for the other Earth woman, the one with the lightbrown hair, she didn't seem to be of any use. Of course, as he did not yet know if she could be holding in on some vital information that could be necessary later, it was best to be careful with her. Besides, if the halfbreed was anything like his father, she could be used as leverage as well. All in all, it was in his best interest to keep them alive, for now. All of a sudden, there was an explosion and a house appeared out of nowhere.

"What happened?" asked Rebecka. "Where did that come from?"

"Don't tell me that you don't have capsules in your dimension?"

"Well, we have vitamin capsules, but not freaking house-out-of-nowhere-capsules!" Rebecka turned to look at how the others had reacted. Gohan didn't seem to think it was any less ordinary what Bulma had done, then if she had looked at her watch. Vegeta however showed a reaction similar to her own for one second before he regained his composure. She found it a bit odd, that Vegeta would be more surprised than Gohan. Then she remembered what Gohan had said about Vegeta trying to destroy their world. Maybe Vegeta was an alien in their dimension, an alien for Bulma and Gohan.

"Well, it's OK to be surprised. Eventhough there are similarities between our dimensions, there are bound to be differences as well. The capsules are an invention of my father's, they can be used to store practically anything. Except for living beings of course. This is a house-capsule. It's my favorite one, and has a tech-lab inside. Lets get inside and start working."

"OK," said Rebecka.

Bulma walked up to the front door and opened it as the two of them stepped inside. As she was closing the door, Bulma remembered herself and turned to Gohan.

"Gohan," she said. "Me and Rebecka will try to fix a radar and find out if there are any dragonballs here. Can you keep Vegeta busy without one of you causing random destruction?"

"Hmmm," said Gohan as he thought it thorugh and looked off to Vegeta's direction. "I'll try."

"Great!" said Bulma and closed the door with a slam, quickly locking the door.

Meanwhile back in Rebecka's dimension, the microwave was doing a extensive scan of its surroundings. Disappointed in the lack of a scorched corpse on the floor, it was wondering how its nemesis had managed to escape. He knew that the dosis of rays had not yet been lethal, but it had been bad enough for her to not be able to move away. And yet she had managed to do so anyway. She was a truely worthy opponent. He had to dispose of her, or he would never find peace of mind. After completing the scan, he analysed the results. Interestingly enough there were traces of methylicolerilis in the air, the kind that usually was only found in wormholes between dimensions... Of course! That conniving female had managed to escape to another dimension. She was indeed a worthy opponent.

Vegeta understood that for the time being it was best not to disturb the women. The halfbreed had needlessly explained that they were working on constructing a radar, and he, as a prince and a soldier, didn't have any real knowledge in that field. It wasn't as much of a setback, as really annoying. He seldom needed to depend on technology, even less now that he had finally gotten the hang of sensing his opponent's strength without a scouter. But when he did depend on technology, he also depended on the weakling who could provide it. How frustrating. But he saw no reason to change that. He knew enough of the technology he was accustomed to use to be able to handle it well, and the few times when he was as dependent as he was now, came so infrequently and had to do with so different branches of technology that it didn't really matter if he fully understood one. It would most likely be useless knowledge before he got a chance to use it. He took a look around him, trying to come up with some way to make time pass by a little faster. He came to look at the small boy who was still in awe of the strange colours.

"Be careful with that," said Bulma. "I only have a few of those, they're rare to come by."

"Yes, I'll try," answered Rebecka, as she tied her hair more securely in a ponytail while fighting to keep herself in control. Usually when she was told that she had to be careful with something, accidents happened. But as long as she could keep her focus it would be alright. As she turned the screw a final turn, and carefully moved the screwdriver away, she could allow herself to relax. Bulma was in the meantime working furiously at the rest of the radar, using tools and equipment Rebecka had to struggle to find a name for, and had a eager look on her face, that was clear to see without hindrances thanks to a string that she had tied up her hair with. For some reason this look made Rebecka relax, as it seemed familiar somehow. She decided not to overthink it, it probably reminded her of someone she knew or something like that.

"So," she said to Bulma, "then you went to Namek to get their dragonballs to wish back your own dragonballs with?"

"Pretty much," said Bulma. "Except... We were hoping on wishing back all of the warriors who got killed as well." She said this final part with a sad tone in her voice, and Rebecka went silent for a while. She was used to always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and she didn't want to make things worse for her new friend.

Bulma looked up at Rebecka. Realising what her new friend was probably thinking, Bulma continued, in a way of changing the subject. She thought it would be unnecessary to let Rebecka stand in a uncomfortable silence.

"Of course, I don't know much more after that. I missed pretty much all of the action that was going on, it all just got very confusing to me when the ground started shaking and rocks fell down everywhere."

"Earthquakes?" asked Rebecka. "Or would that be Namekquakes?"

"Ehh, I don't know, actually. Like I said it was very confusing, there were no indications that such a heavy Erthquake would happen so soon. But it was probably Goku fighting. Could you hand me that circuit?" She tilted her head towards the small table, where lots of small parts where laid spread out. Her hands were busy with holding some other parts together.

"Sure," said Rebecka as she walked over to the small table. "Is it really possible? To be able to shake the ground by the enourmousness of your fight?" She held the circuit out to Bulma, who used her nose to point it to where she wanted it.

"I don't know about it being possible, but I wouldn't put it past him. Or any of them." Loosening her grip slightly, she allowed for the circuit to slip in place. Then she slid her goggles down over her eyes, and started to weld them together. Rebecka turned back to one of the other tasks that Bulma had given her before. As she was working on it, she couldn't help but think about how wrong things were. Even after all of the explanations, hardly anything made sense to her. She didn't understand why her microwave had attacked her. Nor how it actually could do that. Nor why Bulma, a person she had just met, felt like an old friend already. She started to consider if perhaps it all was just a dream, and that anytime now she would wake up and forget everything. Letting her thoughts drift away she dropped one of the instruments on her left hand. Letting out a yelp, she didn't know whether to be angry at herself or happy for being so clumsy. Atleast now she knew it wasn't just a dream. She looked over at Bulma who hadn't heard her yelp over the other noise inside the lab. Rebecka thought back to the pain she had felt when she got attacked by the microwave. It couldn't possibly be a dream. Even though you can sometimes feel pain in dreams, there are limitations. It was unthinkable as it was to have felt such pain for real...