Time Distorted
Chapter 10
By: Mara Roberts
Piccillo stared at Gohan warily. The boy had settled back into a defensive position and seemed to be regarding him with a mix of feral anger and concern. Some part of Gohan recognized his sensei, saw him as the ultimate role model, saw him as impossible to beat. But the small hint of worry was swiftly crushed as Gohan bent low and changed stance to attack. Piccillo had only his reflexes to save him – Gohan moved so fast that Piccillo lacked the time to analyze, much less predict, Gohan's attack.
His arm stung with the first hit, and Gohan continued his ferocious assault. Having taught Gohan everything he knew, Piccillo was at last able to see a pattern and defend himself accordingly.
But no matter that he knew where Gohan would strike, Piccillo was no match for the raw power that coursed through Gohan's attack. He was wearing down, losing speed and power every time sensei and student exchanged blows.
Piccillo was thrown against the wall and slumped against it. Why fight the inevitable? Gohan – his student, his savior, his first friend – was going to kill him. Maybe if he let the kid make it quick, Gohan would feel less guilt when he was again himself. A feeling of shame swept over the Namek, that he had failed his student so; failed to teach him to protect his mind; failed to defeat him here, today; failed to break through to him, now.
He wallowed in despair.
Then fresh rage tore through his chest – why should he care! This brat had pestered and annoyed him, opened the door into his hear that had been closed for good reason – the irony was not lost on Piccillo that the very emotions Gohan had stirred in his heart made him lean towards defeat. Would the boy that saved his soul now destroy his mortal frame? It made him seethe.
Piccillo drew on the rage, harnessed it, ready now to attack, to kill his only friend. In that instant of fated decision, Bibidi struck.
"Argh!" Piccillo cried out in pain. His knees buckled and his hands clutched his head, screaming in agony as wave after wave of psi fire seared his mind. Piccillo had defenses in place – he was not ignorant of such abilities – but he never before thought himself an amateur. He realized then it was not his mind that could protect him, but his heart. The heart Gohan had opened and Piccillo just violently slammed shut. Although Gohan – Kakorott – had condemned him to death with that unwitting act, he had saved him from worse. From this.
Piccillo released his guard, allowing waves of shame and hate to pass, coated by the darkness that was Bibidi. When he stopped fighting it, moreover, embraced it, the rage in him calmed, the shame dissipated and the coat of darkness had nothing more to hold onto, and no more of Piccillo's shields to keep it condensed and contained. The taint soon found itself completely washed from Piccillo's mind.
That's when he knew. Piccillo had found a way to break through to his student. Gohan, by locking his emotions up, making them fight his ever-strengthening mental shields, caused his dark emotions to grow stronger through deliberate neglect. By not acknowledging the anger and pain he felt, forcing himself to remain the happy-go-lucky innocent boy everyone expected him, needed him, to be, Gohan was unable to work through, much less release, his negative emotions.
Piccillo made a choice.
He dropped all his mental shields and dove into Gohan's mind, trying to reach him telepathically, and unfortunately, leaving his physical self completely undefended.
Sensei? a timid voice asked.
Gohan! Listen to me – you have to let it go.
Let what go?
Your anger, your pain. Just look around, look at what you're doing… what they're causing you to do.
A feeling of shock swept through the boy's mind and he withdrew. Piccillo feared Gohan ahd retreated deep inside himself, afraid, thereby giving Bibidi firmer control. But then Gohan came back in a rage, pushing everything foreign away from him. Piccillo was slammed brutally back into his own mind and could only hope Bibidi suffered the same.
Piccillo reentered his body with a groan and winched his eyelids up. He was bruised and bloodied all over, but no one injury seemed too bad. Gohan lay on the floor, barely breathing, eyes shut tight in concentration. Piccillo tried to sit up to watch his friend, but blinding pain from naval to neck made him think better of it; he slumped back down.
Piccillo reached out with his ki-based senses and waited an agonizing ten minutes. Suddenly, a strong, oil-slicked psi rushed out of Gohan's mental system like Pilaf on the run from raging monkeys.
Gohan gasped, drawing air into his lungs in racking pants before his breathing evened out and he opened his eyes. He looked around for a bit before settling on his sense. "Hey, Mr. Piccillo."
"Kid," he spoke gruffly, not about to admit to his worry and relief. "What have I told you about relying on only the physical senses, especially sight? You should have sensed any Ki and noticed me right away when you woke up!
Gohan only let out a small laugh and listened to his friend rant as they patiently waited to recover enough energy to move a toe.
"And another thing! I knew you had a higher ability than you'd demonstrated, and this proves it. When we get home I'm going to triple your amount of training time and go harder on you than ever before! Make Bulma build you a GR like Goku had en route to Namek…"
((o))
Mie took point as they entered a new room; a strange aura manifested from there. It was a large circular room, with a cocoon of sorts in the middle.
"My baby is in there." Mie and the others spun, wondering why they hadn't noticed the man before. Their question was answered when the person materialized out of air. He was tall, bald and green, but that was where his similarities to Piccillo ended. For one, he lacked ears, and his eyes were a harsh crimson shade. He wore a garment so flowing, that if he were not clearly wearing pants one would think he wore a dress. The haughty expression coupled with madness completed his attire. His height was actually atypical of his species, the Majins. It was a physical manifestation of his sorcerer's abilities. Furthermore, his Ki could not be sensed. Mie compiled the facts in her mind. That meant this was a mere underling, but…
"Bibidi." It was not a question.
"Yes. And that is my darling Buu, in the cocoon. Don't bother trying to destroy it; it won't work."
Bardock powered up, intent on proving him wrong, but a malicious glint in their enemy's eye warned Mie that would be disastrous. "Bardock, stop! That's what he wants us to do!"
Bardock paused, and though his gaze never moved from Bibidi or Buu, he somehow spoke with his eyes his unvoiced question.
"Any energy we throw at it will be absorbed, and will help re-energize Buu. That cocoon is a sort of healing pod, designed to absorb any Ki it's hit with; see the conduit?"
"Clever girl. But it is of no consequence. This facility is set up to absorb all energy given off within these walls, including that lost by Piccillo and my newest acquisition, Son Gohan."
Mie relaxed, and gave a smile. "We don't have enough energy, even combined, to reawaken that monster."
"I know. That's why I've been gathering Ki for centuries, both on Earth and at several other satellite locations. It's all redirected here. As you can see, it is almost to capacity." Bibidi waved his hand, and a dial appeared. Indeed, it was fueled to twenty-nine kilis, on a scale of thirty-two. (Majins do not have a ten-base counting system, but rather an eight-base counting system). As they watched, the scale inched up towards thirty even.
"Wait a minute. You said 'Earth and at several other satellite locations'. What do you mean? We're on Earth; isn't this your home port?" Gohan asked.
Bibidi smiled wickedly. "When you entered this room, you were teleported across space and time to the dead world of Kubindi. The doorway sealed and the room disappeared upon this transportation. Your friends cannot reach you, nor you, them. Your situation is quite hopeless, it would seem."
Bardock's senses tickled. His gaze was continuously drawn to the cocoon in the room's center. Well… If we don't do something soon, I'd say within the next twenty-five minutes, Buu will emerge. That thing is set to absorb Ki, but how about physical damage? Before anyone had time to blink, Bardock charged, fist cocked, and swung at the cocoon. Strangely enough, his arm passed right through. In a panic, he pulled it out again, and was met with no resistance.
"A hologram!" Mie said. "I should have known." Facing Bibidi, she said, "You're transmitting your image from the cockpit of this ship. That means…"
Bibidi smile turned to a frown.
She scanned the room for a projection unit and found it on the door from which they came. Jumping up, she grabbed it in her fist and smashed it flat. The illusion of a cocoon wavered and disappeared, showing only a strangely tentacled creature lying in a hole that reminded Gohan strongly of Sarlaac. It was obviously there to absorb energy, as Mie had said.
"Well," he said nervously. "Nothing for it but to keep moving, then."
((o))
Gohan and Piccillo rushed after the others, not worried about getting lost – there was only one path. Strangely enough, they came to a dead end. There was a wall, and nothing beyond. Even straining their senses, they could detect nothing. Gohan attacked the wall in his impatience; he could sense that Mie and the others had gone through here! Why couldn't they? Worse, it was his fault the two of them had fallen behind! They had to find the others; an uneasy feeling reverberated in his gut. Something was desperately wrong. He stretched his senses far and wide, looking for any trace of the familiar Ki, to no avail. He stopped short of covering the hemisphere; his friends were not in range. In frustration he leaned against the side wall to think, and fell right through.
Piccillo was startled to see his pupil's legs sticking out of a seemingly solid wall, and then saw his head pop out, dismembered from his body. "It's a hologram. C'mon."
Gohan stood up and Piccillo followed, looking at all the strange gadgets.
Gohan spoke excitedly. "It looks like the transmitter for a teleportation device! See here, the energy is gathered and here the molecules are scanned and the data is transmitted to a receiver so a person can be restructured correctly – a very risky procedure; far safer for a person to teleport themselves as their mental projection of their physical self is far more reliable than a computer, which is easily corrupted by its environment, hackers and extraneous occurrences. I remember doing a report on the theory of teleportation for Mom. But look here! Ingenious; see how the designer integrated the planet's spirit power to act as a neutral filter to avoid such corruption and to give the traveler a boost over large distances? It's not instantaneous teleportation, but it's close…"
"Our friends were sent somewhere else?"
"Um… yeah…"
"Can you get us there as well?"
One could actually see the fear creep over Gohan's face. "No way! I don't have the knowledge for this. One report does not an expert make…"
"Can't you try?"
Gohan hesitated. "Well, I remember seeing some plans in Bulma's lab once, and didn't Mie say something about Intuition?"
He got down on his hands and knees and opened a panel, allowing a pound or so of wiring to come tumbling down. Gohan sighed, and wished with his whole heart that Bulma were here with him. Gohan gasped. It seemed as though he had inadvertently made a psychic connection with Bulma's mind. But how? She hasn't even been born yet… It was an older Bulma than the one he knew, in her forty's, and she was talking to a pale-haired teenager who looked vaguely reminiscent of… Gohan couldn't put his finger on it and shook off the distraction. The important part was that he talk to Bulma, convince her to help him. This was easier said than done, however. It seemed his telepathy only manifested itself as Bulma's subconscious thoughts. On reflection, this made sense; Bulma did not have the metnal training he did. On the other hand, it made for slow progress. She kept trying to ignore him to concentrate on her current project, whatever it was.
Finally, after ten agonizing minutes of fiddling with the machinery, he pulled himself out from under an apparatus Piccillo didn't know the name of. Turning to his sensei, he spoke. "I don't know how well it'll work. It'll be unstable at best."
Piccillo nodded. "Let's go."
They left the room and walked towards the formerly solid rock wall, which now wavered oddly. They stepped through, moving as though under water, and finally entered this in-between space completely. Gohan would have gasped in surprise if he had lungs to do so, but his body had dematerialized completely. Nonetheless he could feel that they were rushing along at a breakneck pace, though they still remained in the Milky Way. He realized then that he was not seeing through the visible spectrum, but rather through the electromagnetic spectrum, specifically, the gamma range.
They hurtled closer and closer to a giant, dead mass, which Gohan worked out must be a planet. With a rush of air in his ear, Gohan rematerialized in a circular white room and had to keep himself from stumbling into that which he immediately termed 'Sarlaac'.
"Whoah." Gohan breathed a sigh of relief at their safe arrival, and glanced to his right, sensing his sensei and companion arrive as well, a few seconds after Gohan. Probably due to his greater mass.
It was clear from the feel of the room that their friends had been here. As there was only one exit out, the two immediately rushed through it, almost stumbling on their friends at the other end of the hall, a mess of bodies and blood strewn behind them, proof of some fight just ended.
The three readied themselves to attack what they saw as imposters, but Gohan held up his hands. "It's us!"
"The teleporter was destroyed," Gohan Sr. said warily.
"I fixed it. With Bulma's help."
Mie relaxed. Bibidi had no way of knowing about Bulma. The genius scientist hadn't even been born yet. The other two relaxed upon seeing this. "Who?"
Mie glanced at them. "That's not important. We have better things to deal with."
"Right."
They walked forward, into another circular room, identical to the last. Bardock stepped forward to touch the cocoon in the center and stepped back when it gave him a slight shock.
"That no hologram," he said, absentmindedly rubbing his hand.
"No, it is not," said Bibidi, emerging not from thin air, but through a conventional doorway to their left. "And thank you so kindly for donating that small sum of energy for Buu's reawakening.
A/N:
1) Wondering why Babidi didn't gather energy from so many sources as well? Cause he wasn't as good a wizard, that's why. Bibidi's no idiot, unlike his son.
2) If anyone knows where Kubindi is from, they get a free cyber-cookie.
