--Note: I figured I should explain something before I confuse everyone. While it may have seemed like I as saying that Vegeta and Bra were close in power, that's not true. It's always been my theory that at a given level of Super Saiyan you can only become so strong, that is, before you transform to the next level. But while you are at lower levels it is possible to get stronger. That way, when you make the transformation, you will be stronger than a person who just made the transformation at an earlier point in their training. It sounds confusing, but maybe some of you understand what I'm trying to say. And now on with the story.

Versus 4: Temporal Distortion

--One Rainy Wish--

"I just found out that when a Saiyan is strong enough to reach the next level, he starts to lose time," Bra told Pan.

"Lose time?" Pan asked.

Okay, Bra decided that she would stop using that term. At first she figured it was self-explanatory, but apparently she was the only one who understood it. "Lose time. Like one minute you'd be doing something and then the next thing you know, several hours have passed."

Pan looked at Bra strangely. "I don't follow."

Bra rolled her eyes, then looked back out at the rain-covered road. The windshield wipers tossed Heaven's tears from side to side as they drove along. "Let's say that you're riding along here. That's what you remember doing. Then let's say you're suddenly in your bedroom sitting on your bed and it's completely dark outside your window."

"That would be weird," Pan said.

"That's what I mean by losing time," Bra told her. "The thing is that you've been walking around doing stuff, only you don't know what you've done." It sounded more like the definition of sleep walking now that she thought about it. Maybe she should use that term instead. Well, except she wasn't sleeping.

Pan was silent for a moment. "That's kinda like what you said happened to you when you fought Goten the other day, right?"

She was thinking! By golly, Pan was putting that Son brain of hers to use. Not saying that the family wasn't smart in their own way. Of course, they were. Gohan was a scholar. Goten was...once a teacher. Goku was...Goku.

"Right," Bra answered. She watched some of the traffic going by on the opposite side of the road.

"Are you saying...?" Pan began.

Oh, this was one for the history books. Pan was using her brain for something besides mischief. Bra wished she kept a camcorder around so that she could have documented evidence of this moment.

"Are you saying that you're about to reach a new level of Saiyan? You're about to become a level 3 Super Saiyan?" Pan asked.

Bra shrugged. "That's what my dad said."

"Oh, come on, Bra. You know your dad knows everything there is to know about fighting and being a Saiyan," Pan commented. She smiled. "Wow. You'd be the first in our generation to go level 3. This is so exciting. I can't--"

"That's not the point," Bra interrupted. "The point is that no one told us about these...side effects. And they knew full well that we wanted to attain these levels. So why wouldn't they say something about it?"

Pan shrugged. "I have no idea, but you just passed my house."

Bra slammed on breaks and almost sent them both flying out through the windshield. She blushed in embarrassment and frustration. "Sorry." She turned around in the middle of the road and headed back to Pan's house.

"It's alright. I always look forward to being tossed around in a car like that," Pan said. She laughed a little. "Listen, I'll talk to my dad. Maybe he knows something and isn't telling me. And when I catch up with my granddad, I'll ask him some questions. You keep working on your dad. He should know more than anyone else." She suddenly shouted, "HEY!"

Bra slammed on breaks again, but this time they were both ready for it. "Don't do that," she said calmly.

"My fault. Why don't we go over and talk to Goten and Trunks? Maybe they know something. You and Goten are about at the same level, right?" Pan questioned.

"That's true. I was thinking about asking him," Bra told her. She started back driving again.

"Great. You ask Goten and I'll handle Trunks," Pan declared.

--soon--

Pan giggled as they walked up to Goten and Trunks' apartment. She signaled for Bra to do as she did. She slowly and quietly began to levitate and positioned herself upside down above their door.

For a person who didn't want to fly home in the rain, she was sure taking her sweet time out here as it poured down upon them. Bra complied, however, because it would get them inside faster. She copied what Pan was doing.

Pan knocked on the door and levitated up a little further.

After a couple of seconds, the door opened and Pan covered her mouth to keep from laughing.

"Hello? Is anybody there?" Trunks asked, stepping out a little farther past the doorway. The dunce. He looked around.

As he turned to go back inside, Pan dropped down on him like a ton of bricks, knocking him to the ground flat on his back. She laughed. "Hey."

Trunks looked at her for a while, then smiled. "Oh, hey, Pan."

It was a funny sight to behold really. Pan was just lying there on top of him and neither of them had sense enough to move. So now they were both getting soaked while Bra continued to levitate upside down outside their door, also getting soaked. She didn't have sense enough to move either.

"Hey, don't leave the door wide open like that," Goten called from inside the apartment. He stepped to the door and looked at Trunks and Pan. He raised his eyebrows.

Pan had finally stopped laughing. She jumped to her feet seeming to imitate a jack-in-the-box. "Come on. Get up. You're alright," she said to Trunks. She turned to the voice she'd just heard. "Hey, Goten."

Bra looked at her brother and saw that his face was a little flushed. She wasn't sure if it was from the fall or--

"You can come down now, Bra. The joke's over," Pan called to her. She laughed and went marching inside.

"What are you guys doing here?" Goten asked. He took Bra's hand and pulled her down out of the air.

Bra flipped back upright as she descended and smiled at Goten. "We were in the neighborhood." It was a lie, but it sounded like the right thing to say.

Goten pushed Bra's wet hair behind her ears. "You're gonna catch pneumonia 'in the neighborhood'."

His touch was like a warm cup of tea. Mm, a warm cup of tea.

They headed inside and Trunks finally decided to follow.

"You're ALL gonna catch pneumonia," Goten told them. He looked Bra over. "I've got a hair dryer."

Pan went to the kitchen and took off her shirt. She started wringing it out in the sink along with her hair. All she had on now was her bra and jeans. "So, what are you guys up to?"

As relationship shy as Pan was, she sure wasn't shy about much else. She didn't have a care in the world right now. In a way it was a good way to be. Bra wished she could be as carefree as Pan sometimes.

Trunks was watching Pan from the doorway. Goten didn't seem to notice it, but Bra did. She smiled.

"We were just playing a few video games. Nothing special really," Goten said with a smile.

"Sorry to interrupt the small talk, but do you mind if I dry out my hair with your dryer?" Bra asked. She took Goten's hand and led him to his bedroom. Closing the door, she leaned against it and smiled. "I think there's something going on there with those two," she whispered.

Goten raised his eyebrows. "You may be right." He looked her up and down.

Bra blushed a little under his gaze. "Goten, I came here to talk to you about something."

Goten looked out the window. "Maybe you'd be more comfortable in some dry clothes."

"It's not so bad," Bra told him. "I really need to talk to you about--"

"Okay, I'd be more comfortable if you had on some dry clothes," Goten said.

Bra blushed a little deeper and watched as he walked over to his closet. He pulled out an old Cream t-shirt and a pair of shorts.

"I remembered that you were eyeing this shirt some years back," Goten continued with his usual smile.

She could have fainted. Where did he always get these fantastic band shirts when he wasn't really that much into music? She accepted the clothes. "Thank you."

She slowly made her way toward his bathroom, but when she turned to close the door, he was standing there. "I should probably get that dryer for you." He walked past her and started messing around under the cabinet. "Here it is." He set the hair dryer on the side of the sink.

Bra nodded.

Goten didn't move.

"I think I can handle it from here," Bra said with a laugh. She started pushing him toward the door.

"Oh, yeah. Of course," Goten muttered. He laughed a little too. "I was just making sure you have everything you need. Uh, just use that towel if you need it." He closed the bathroom door behind him.

Maybe he would have liked staying there to watch her change clothes...

After a few minutes, Bra came out of the bathroom wearing the clothes that Goten had given her. Her hair was pretty much dry. She didn't want to spend a whole lot of time on that. Her main focus was asking Goten, "Do you have spells where it seems like you've been sleepwalking?"

Okay, there had been no prep for that question. It seemed to come out of nowhere. She had a tendency of doing that from time to time.

Goten was sitting on his bed and was now giving her a strange look. "Excuse me?"

The sleepwalking terminology was no better. Bra walked over to his desk and sat in the chair. She looked at the picture of herself from Pan's big summer carwash scheme and smiled a little. Then she looked serious again and glanced back at Goten. "Have you ever lost time?"

"You mean like doing something and then not remembering what you did?" Goten asked slowly.

Bra nodded. That was exactly what she was asking! He understood. Maybe he, too, had experienced this.

Goten looked at Bra strangely. "I can't say that I have. I mean, except on occasions when I've been unconscious." He thought for a while. "No, I've never had that problem."

But...he seemed to understand perfectly what she was talking about. "Are you sure? Maybe you should think on it a little longer. When you were young, before you turned into a Super Saiyan maybe."

"That was so long ago. I mean, I was really young," Goten told her. "Why are you asking me this? Is something wrong?"

Bra sighed. "No, nothing's wrong..." She didn't want to tell him that she'd been suffering from multiple losses of time over the past few weeks. He might think that something was really wrong.

Goten looked at her for a while. "Talk to me, Bra. If there's something wrong, please tell me."

Bra looked away. "I said nothing's wrong."

"I thought we'd gotten farther than this. I thought we could talk to each other about things that were bothering us," Goten said. "I'll tell you what bothers me. Hearing you ask a question like that and then never getting an explanation of why."

Bra shook her head. "It's just something I was talking to my dad about."

"Okay. Will you talk to ME about it?" Goten asked.

She was about to say something, but she couldn't. Some force was stopping her from speaking. She knew that good relationships were based on communication and honesty. And if she wanted their relationship to work that they would have to be open and honest with each other. It wasn't really her style to be so talkative, but she planned on doing anything within her power to keep Goten around. So, once again, she put aside her pride and spilled her guts.

She took the long way around when she told him the tale, but it was basically the same thing she told her father. Goten listened carefully, never interrupting. Then she told him about what her father had told her.

"Level 3. Are you sure?" Goten asked.

Going level 3 seemed to be everyone's main concern except hers. "That's not the point, Goten," she told him.

"Right. Sorry," Goten said. "Well, I don't understand. I thought you and I were pretty much at the same level. If Vegeta says that's what happens when Saiyans are close to transforming, then he probably knows. Nothing like that's ever happened to me."

"Well, I wouldn't say that he probably knows. No one had seen a Super Saiyan in a long time when my dad was on planet Vegeta," Bra reminded him.

"Yeah, you're right. Maybe he's just speaking from personal experience," Goten said. "I think I'm pretty close to level 3 myself, but I'm not 'losing time', as you put it."

Bra folded her arms across her chest. "Well, what would you call it then?"

Goten thought for a while. "I'd call it...losing time."

"Thank you."

"The only way to find out what's what is to ask my dad," Goten said. "He's at level 3. He also went Super Saiyan later in life. He should know something."

--End One Rainy Wish

--Alright. This is the part I need a little help on. Any opinions, thoughts, suggestions, flamings, or what have you are welcome at this time. Let me know. Am I getting in over my head on this? Is the story progressing too slowly? Too quickly? Let me know something. Sure, I'm in too deep to dig my way out now, but it would be nice to know something like this.

--Okay, you are free to make any good or bad comments you chose, but try not to get on me too bad about how fast I'm getting these chapters out or how short the chapters are. Some of this stuff actually takes a little more thought than what I'm used to. And I'm also trying not to step on my own toes with some of this stuff.

--Questions are welcome. Pointing out something from now that may not make sense according to what's gone on before is definitely a good thing.

--Thank you for being a wonderful audience. I think we're finally getting somewhere now and it's kinda exciting for me, so excuse me if I ramble. I hope to have another chapter out at least by the end of this week. Thanks again for past reviews and thanks for reading this episode. See ya next time.