Versus 4: Temporal Distortion
--A Little Rain Must Fall--
She felt that there were certain things she could tell her mother freely and certain things she could tell her father freely. She'd gotten a pretty good handle on which was which over the course of her life. She could talk to her father about things that dealt with fighting and training. And she could talk to her mother about things that dealt with technology and people. It kept things simple. The person who specialized in fighting should be consulted about fighting. The person who specialized in relationships should be consulted about relationships.
But now that some aspects of her life were beginning to meld together, things weren't so simple. Mostly with her father. She'd talked to him about relationships on several occasions. Her current situation was no different. So she would tell him her story.
"You knew I had feelings for Goten a long time ago," Bra started. "I won't go into any of that. I'll start when he came back from being gone for all those years."
Vegeta took a seat at her desk silently and folded his arms across his chest.
Bra simply paced around the room as she spoke. "I'd tried to get over him while he was gone, but when he came back, my feelings for him had only seemed to grow..."
"They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder," Vegeta added.
Bra looked a little surprised. She hadn't expected him to have input. At least not so soon.
"Yes," she said. She finally stood still and stared out the window for a while. The droplets that fell outside her window were fast and steady. A peaceful rain. No thunder. No lightning. Just rain.
"Any time I was feeling down about not being able to be with him, I would do things and not remember that what I've done. One minute I'm doing something and the next thing I know, I've...lost time," Bra explained. It was the same terminology she'd used with her mother. It was really the only term she could use to explain it.
"Lost time?" Vegeta asked.
Her mother had asked the same question. A perfectly reasonable question so she couldn't blame them. "Large amounts of time would go by and I wasn't aware of it. I'd look at a clock and a few minutes or a few hours would have passed. It even happened during that last fight with Goten."
Vegeta nodded. "And your mother believes this is cause for concern, so she's running around like the mad scientist she is." He looked at Bra out of the corner of his eye. "There is no cause for concern. It happens all the time with people who are on the edge of attaining a new form."
WHAT! Hold on! Hold it. He didn't say anything about attaining a new form the other day. Of course this was the first time she's mentioned to him that she'd been 'losing time'. Bra could feel her hands begin to tremble as she continued to stare out at the falling rain. There was no way she was capable of reaching Super Saiyan 3. It was impossible.
He'd surely seen that his daughter was thunderstruck by his statement, so Vegeta went on. "Think about it. When you were first strong enough to make the transformation into Super Saiyan, you were too young to care about time, right? There isn't that much of a change when you go from Super Saiyan to Super Saiyan 2, so it doesn't have the same effect. Then there's the transformation from level 2 to level 3. It's a pretty dramatic transformation considering the first two."
Bra was trying to take in everything he was saying, but it just wasn't making sense. Why had she never heard any of this before now? She'd always heard the legends of how the Saiyans before her became Super Saiyans. But she'd never heard of any adverse effects. There had been no mention of these Saiyans losing huge chunks of time. You would think that it was something a parent would want to tell his child, who he knew had aspirations of making these transformations. Her father had never said anything to her before now. Goku couldn't have said anything to his sons because if Gohan knew, he would have said something to Pan. And of course, Pan would have said something about it if she'd known. Had Goten known, he would have let her know something as well.
And what about presently? Someone somewhere had to be experiencing these time losses besides her. Goten was just as strong as she. He'd been stronger for a long time. Was he not experiencing some of the same problems?
She looked at her father out of the corner of her eye. "You never went level 3."
Vegeta smirked. "You've never SEEN me go level 3."
Bra gasped. All these discoveries in such a short period of time were almost overwhelming. It was all beginning to make her head spin. "Why?"
"Using it in an actual fight expends much more energy than it's worth. To have the ability to attain that level and to have trained at that level makes lower levels more effective. I am no stronger at level 2 than you are. I've simply experienced a level beyond that. It allows me capabilities that I otherwise wouldn't have had," Vegeta told her.
It was all jumbled nonsense in her head.
"Besides, I can deal with having blond hair. But not long blond hair. It looks ridiculous," Vegeta added, very seriously.
Bra tried to stifle a laugh as she envisioned her father with the long golden locks she'd only seen Goku with on one occasion.
So her father had reached a new level of Saiyan without her knowledge. She should have been angry. As angry as she was when she first found out that Goten had held back on her on so many occasions. But she wasn't. There were plenty of things that her father never talked to her about, so in a way, it was no big surprise. She wouldn't bring up the fact that he hadn't talked to her about this, even though he could feel that she was getting close to making the transformation.
"Well, maybe that's why those test results were the way they were," Bra said.
To Vegeta it must have seemed to come out of nowhere. He looked at her strangely.
"Mom's running brain wave tests on all the Saiyans. She thinks that--" Bra began.
Pan came to her opened bedroom door. "Oh, hi, Vegeta." She was surprised to see him there.
Vegeta just looked at Pan.
"Has anyone seen my dad?" Pan asked. "It's pouring outside. I didn't want to fly home in the rain."
Like Pan cared about flying in the rain.
"He left. I don't think it was raining then," Bra said. She looked at her father, then back at Pan. "I'm sure my mom'll take you home." She raised her eyebrows. It was supposed to be a signal to Pan that she should leave so that she and her father could continue their conversation.
And surprisingly, Pan noticed. "Alright. I'll see you at school tomorrow." She disappeared quickly.
Bra looked back at her father.
"You were saying something about brain wave tests," Vegeta reminded her.
She nodded. "Right. Mom's performing tests on all the Saiyans so she can see if there's a difference in the waves. You and I seem to have an extra wave in our readings. She's checking to see if the others have that same wave. Do you think being close to a new transformation could do something like that?"
Vegeta shook his head. "I'm not really familiar with that sort of test, but I only recently ascended to level 3. There's no new transformation for me. Not any time soon anyway." He frowned. "It sounds like she's making things more complicated than they should be."
"Maybe you should talk to mom about it," Bra suggested. "I'm sure that if you pool your resources, you'll come up with some sort of explanation."
Vegeta began his patented grumbling and headed out of her bedroom.
Bra's world was still a little unstable. There were so many things that she didn't understand. She wasn't even sure if her father would talk to her mother about this.
What she needed was a drink of water. She slowly walked into the kitchen as Pan emerged again, followed by Bulma.
"Bra, I'm glad I found you," Bulma said. She handed Bra a capsule. "Could you take Pan home for me? I've gotta study these EEG readings. I think I'm getting close to a discovery. I still need to run some tests on the rest of the guys to be sure." She smiled.
Her mother seemed to be enjoying this a little too much. Bra grabbed a bottle of water and looked at it. "Come on, Pan."
"Thanks, honey," Bulma told Bra. "I'll see you later, Pan."
"Alright. Thanks Mrs. B.," Pan said to Bulma. As Bra's mother rushed out of the room with all her papers in hand, Pan looked at Bra. "So, what were you and your dad talking about?"
Bra headed out the door with Pan in tow. The rain poured down on them so hard that they may as well have flown to Pan's house. "Tell me something," she said as if she had ignored the question Pan asked. "Has your dad ever mentioned losing portions of his memory when he was training to become a Super Saiyan?" She hit the button on the capsule and tossed it out in front of them.
After the little explosion occurred, they got inside the car. They were both almost soaked to the bone. Pan looked at Bra strangely. "What kind of a question is that?"
"Did your granddad ever tell you what it was like before he was able to transform into a level 3 Super Saiyan?" Bra asked.
"What are you talking about, Bra? You're not making any sense," Pan commented.
"Yes or no?" Bra questioned. She started to drive.
"No," Pan answered. She looked at Bra out of the corner of her eye. "Are you feeling okay, Bra? You're starting to worry me."
She wasn't sure how she was feeling. All she knew was that she had to get some answers. And it seemed the only way to do that was to get them straight from the horses' mouths.
--End A Little Rain Must Fall--
--That's the end of yet another episode of Versus 4. Kinda short. We're slowly but surely making progress here, but it seems there are more questions now than ever.
--Thanks for past reviews. And thanks for reading this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And I think you'll really enjoy the episodes to come, so stay tuned.
--Oh, yeah. I meant to add my whole theory on things here. I'm not the biggest fan of GT, so I got rid of the whole Super Saiyan level 4 deal. (Here come the flames.) The limit here is level 3.
