OK, I said I would begin updating all my fics, this is my first step in doing that. With luck all fics will be updated inside the week.

I am deeply sorry that I took a year's absence, and I apologize. There has been a lot of personal frack going on and I just couldn't write until this last couple months, so I have a lot stored up to do. I hope to make it all up to you with my new chapters and the new Inuyasha fic I launched.

Disclaimers. I do not own DBZ, SM, B5, ST, OR ANY OTHER SERIES OF TV OR MOVIE REFERENCED HERE. Kudos to those who got all the references to Sailor Pluto, Vorlons, Q, and the like. What can I say, I love a good in joke. Anyhow, the character whose POV I am using, Ami, is MINE MINE MINE! Actually she is based on my own emotions and daydreams.

"speech" 'thought'

CHAPTER TWO: WHAT THE-!

I FELL. It seemed like forever. A cloud I passed through chilled me to the bone, Spreading out in free fall, I caught a glimpse of what looked like a stone (!) square below me. Rolling onto my back, I slammed my eyes shut. 'Damn, this is gonna hu-!' I felt immense pain for a moment and than nothing.

Goku and Uub leapt apart as something crashed to the ground between them. When the dust cleared, Goku looked into the small crater and found, to his shock, A girl about the same age of his youngest, give or take. Unsure, he ackwardly squatted downand picked her up, straightening carefully as his sons, Vegeta, Trunks, and Piccolo reached his side. Goku looked at Vegeta, puzzled and confused at the turn of events. Vegeta rolled his eyes and tilted his head back towards the waiting area, heading that way himself. As Goku stepped out of the crater, a furred, brown appendage dropped from the girl's side into open view of the public.

Piccolo's eyes positively bulged as he spied the fur. "Goku, she has a saiyan tail!"

Vegeta, Trunks, and Goten whirled from the stride towards the waiting area to stare as Goku laughed in his usual, good-natured way. "Wow, she does! Cool! She must be at least part Saiyan!"

"Really, Kakarotto, we NEVER would have guessed." Vegeta glared at Goku. 'Idiot.' Growling low in his throat, he levitated lightly from the ground, up and over to the viewing box his mate and daughter were sharing with their "friends." "Woman, we must go."

Bulma was already on her feet, moving to the window and the impatient man waiting to carry her home. "Who is that Goku has, Vegeta?"

"A saiyan girl. We need to know if she is full, part, and what happened to her." Without waiting for her answer he arrogantly lifted her into his arms and began to slowly rise into the air, pausing to glance behind him. "Trunks, bring your sister, Kakarotto, bring her to Bulma's."

"Wait, Vegeta!" Gohan was half out the window, leaving Videl to explain things to her father and grab Pan. "I can help."

"Hunm."

Goten stopped to collect his mother as Trunks grabbed his sister Bra. Vegeta, Goku and Piccolo were already most of the way to Capsule Corps.

An hour later, the group had more questions than they had started with. The girl was floating in a regeneration tank across the room from Gohan and Bulma as the summarized their findings for the rest of the group, scattered around the room in various postures.

Gohan was shaking his head at the x-rays. "Either she was badly beaten or she had absolutely no control while she was falling and that caused these injuries. Her tail alone had three fractures." Goku and Vegeta visibly winced at the thought as Gohan continued. "Seven broken ribs, broken spine, skull fracture, compound fractures in both legs, she's lucky she survived."

Bulma objected. "Not lucky, just a full blooded saiyan twenty year old girl."

Frowning more than usual, if possible, Vegeta glared at his wife/mate. "Impossible, woman. Kakarotto and I are the only two remaining full saiyans.

"Well, apparently not. At first I set the tank for a hybrid like Trunks, but she barely responded. Since she can't be a full human with that tail, I set it up for a full saiyan, and she's healing as fast as you or Goku would, maybe more so because of her age. I did a blood test to be sure, Dende knows she was losing enough of it, and there's no doubt." She leaned back against her console, a pensive look on her face. "We have a barely post-teen saiyan girl on our hands."

"WOW, cool!" Goku was still his normal, chipper self. Everyone else simply ignored his enthusiasm, or tried to.

"Kakarotto!" Yep, Vegeta was pissed. Again. "She may be a danger." Chi-Chi and Trunks nodded agreement, just as the timer on the regeneration tank clicked off. After a few hours of sleep now, the girl had a lot of answering to do.

I ached. A rather general, full body ache was the first thing I was aware of. It wasn't unbearable, just very, very annoying. Faint voices floated through my consciousness, but I only caught a couple words and phrases out of the jumble. Tired, I was just SO tired. Deciding that struggling for awareness was far more effort than it was worth, I slipped back into sleep with a sigh.

Some time later, I didn't know how long, I came to. Two or three people were in the room, talking. I slowly opened my eyes, narrowing them quickly against the light. An involuntary moan of protest escaped me as I was blinded by the glare. One of the voices said something in a low tone, followed by a door shutting. Tentatively, I shifted on what I assumed was a bed just as I heard footsteps getting closer. A soothing, nearly motherly voice came from my left.

"You were out for over twelve hours, how are you feeling?"

I coughed, trying to clear my dry throat. "Like I was hit by a train." My eyes were adjusting quickly and I blinked up at the woman beside me. 'Blue hair?'

She smiled down at me and I relaxed slightly. It was funny, but I just didn't feel threatened by her. Unusual, considering what the last day had brought.

"My name is Bulma," she said.

I tried to not let my expression give away my surprise. 'Bulma? THE Bulma! O possible freakin' way!' Out loud I just responded, "Ami." I began to sit up, shaking my head to try and clear the residual disorientation. A few more hard blinks cleared the room for me, and, wonder of wonders, I could see clearly. The day was looking up.

Bulma tilted her head to one side, frowning. "What happened to you, were you attacked?"

"Waylaid, not attacked." I sighed heavily, knowing the truth was going to sound fantastic, not to mention stupid. Seriously, how do you tell a person that their life is chronicled as a cartoon where you're from! Not to mention I had the damnedest sense someone was just outside that door. "Well, I raised as a human on, well… I guess you could call it another Earth. You are familiar with the theory of parallel dimensions?" I waited for her to nod before I continued. "I was driving to college……. Next thing I knew I was dropping through the sky like a damned rock.. Saw this huge square below me, and then I blacked out."

No sooner had I finished than the door slammed open. For one outrageous moment I half expected it to be Q, though I had never mentioned him by name, and WHY would he bother with a door?

Instead of Q, I was confronted by none other than an angry Vegeta followed by Goku, still trying to reason with him. Needless to say…it wasn't working.

"Girl." His voice was gruff. "Why do you think we would be so stupid, as Kakarotto here, to believe you?" Scornful too.

I took a slow, deep breath. 'How in the name of hell do I deal with fracking Vegeta!' Exhale. Breathe in again. "You should believe me because its the truth. I am not foolhardy enough to go crashing to the ground on my own, especially when I CAN'T FLY!" Only at this point did I realize I was shouting, and at someone who could conceivably kill me without blinking. I shut up.

Vegeta really looked pissed this time, and I had the sudden feeling I was going to die. I was really getting tired of that feeling. Had it too many times lately. He stepped towards me, reaching out with one hand, but there was no way I was just going to sit there and let him rip me apart.

As soon as I recoiled from he, he sneered at me in disgust. "Girl, I have better things to do with my time than maiming you. Simply let me touch you and I can determine if you are somehow telling the truth or lying like I know you are."

I was still wary. Paranoid? Who, me? "How?"

His eyes narrowed, obviously unused to explaining himself. "Saiyans are naturally mildly telepathic. As such, I will read your mind."

THAT worried me almost as much as his killing me. "If it's the only way you will believe me, fine. ONLY recent memory though. Some things a girl wants to keep private." Again he approached and I held up a hand to stall him. "Your word of honor as a warrior on it."

I think I caught him off guard with that request/demand. He frowned as me before nodding solemnly and advancing once more. His bare fingertips brushed my forehead and I remember that they felt as cold as liquid oxygen. Next thing I knew I was sitting back on the bad, slightly dizzy.

"She stays." I stared at Vegeta's back as he made the announcement and turned to leave. 'Jerk, that's all I get!' If he felt the glare I had leveled on his back, he didn't let on. Odd, since looks like that should be able to not only kill, but atomize. 'Oh well.'

For the first time since I fell into this…mess, I really looked around. Goku, Bulma, and Chi-Chi, who had entered sometime during the Veggie incident. They all looked the same, yet slightly different from their cartoon versions, could be the fact they were flesh and blood. 'Weird.'

The thought of the series brought my mind back to my home and I gasped in realization. "Oh dear God. My parents, they must think I'm dead." My chest tightened at the thought of the pain my family would be going through, especially my grandmother, already depressed and angry because of my grandfather's poor physical condition and progressive Alzheimer's. 'What if I can't get back?' The pain of that thought was almost physical, and I doubled over, arms wrapped protectively around my stomach as a tear fell from my eye.

Bulma was there in a second, running a scanner up and down in the space in front of me. "Are you okay?" Chi-Chi was a wary step behind her.

Craning my neck up, I looked unsteadily at them. "My family. I can't get home, I might never see them again." I curled into a ball of misery on the bed, verbalizing it made it more…real, I suppose. Felt like someone had socked me in the gut.

Chi-Chi's face softened up visibly, and she clearly relaxed, actually sitting on the bed with me and placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. Must have been that maternal instinct. I didn't think of it at the time, because I was shaking hard by then. My situation hit me like a nasty body blow to the kidneys, forcing my air out in a rush. Goku just stood there with this stupid, bewildered look on his face until Bulma shooed him out of the room as she sat down on my other side. As soon as Goku left, I broke down. My chest heaved as I let out a heavy sob. I heard Bulma speaking softly to me as Chi-Chi rubbed my back in slow circles, trying to comfort me, but all I could think of was my family, how they must feel. They had to be hurting, and so I hurt with guilt for not being there. "Dear God, help them and me.'

After I had cried myself out, a painful process that took over half an hour, I was still shaking, even if I was calmer. Bulma's head suddenly shot up, a gleam in her eye that was, honestly, frightening. "Ami, why don't we just use the Dragonballs to wish you back to your earth?"

HOW could I FORGET the DRAGONBALLS! 'DUH!' Eyes wide, I nodded an affirmative. Maybe I could get home!