Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super, or anything else related to the Dragon Ball universe, or any of its characters. They are all owned by Akira Toriyama.
A/N: Hello? Is anyone still out there?
It's been a really long time.
Discord: A3dTszc
(See A/N at the top of Chapter 1 for context)
"Was that a house?" Yamcha asked, shocked at what had just occurred.
"I have no idea," Krillin replied, equally astonished.
"It sure looked like one to me," Tien said. "Where did it come from?"
"Gohan… What the hell was that?" Piccolo asked.
Gohan continued to stare at his still outstretched hand from his capsule toss for a few more moments, before finally turning to face all of his allies.
They were looking at him in astonishment. As if they couldn't wrap their minds around what he had just done. It probably had come as a bit of surprise, to be fair. That was sort of the point. The entire foundation of his strategy thus far had been to set up a series of expectations and then suddenly break them all. By spending so much time talking, nobody had expected him to suddenly attack the way that he had. Not his allies, not Piccolo, and certainly not the Saiyans.
He hadn't even told Piccolo about most of the preparations he had made. He had explained some of them to his mentor, but not all of them. So even Piccolo had been surprised by this. The idea behind all of this deception was to create another double-blind. If his allies had been aware of what he could do, there was a chance they would give it away somehow. So to maximize the odds of success, he needed to be the only one in the know.
Idly, he used his bubble sensing technique to locate Vegeta and Nappa inside the rubble that used to be his house and noticed that they were both still alive. Nappa seemed unconscious, and Vegeta was still struggling to keep himself awake. But due to the fact he was barely moving anymore, Gohan was nearly certain that the fight was over. At the very least, they were in the endgame.
All he had to do now was follow through on his final idea, and then it would be over. But in the meantime, he figured he should enlighten his temporary allies as to what had just happened. Mostly to make sure they didn't screw up anything unintentionally.
"That was a capsule house," Gohan confirmed.
"Okay… And why did you just throw one of them at the Saiyans?" Krillin asked.
"Because it was possible to defeat them by doing so. The fight is almost certainly over, now. Take a look." Gohan pointed over towards the wreckage of his house. "See that yellow gas?" he asked.
"That's…!" Krillin exclaimed after noticing the cloud. "What is it?!"
"It's knockout gas," Gohan replied. "And it is very highly concentrated. If you get close enough to that cloud of gas to smell it, you'll fall asleep really quickly."
Gohan turned to his allies, still wearing his half-broken porcelain mask and continued.
"I spent the last few months carefully rigging the house I just threw at them with a series of traps in preparation for this exact moment," Gohan explained. "You just saw the results."
He clenched his fists and steeled himself.
"I'm ending this now," Gohan declared. "If you could all please stay out of the way, that'd be great. I need you all as a backup in case something goes wrong."
Gohan pulled out another capsule from his pocket and opened it up, revealing a gas mask. He quickly pulled it over his face and fastened it. Then, using magic materialization, he created a simple sword in his right hand and started advancing toward the gas cloud.
Vegeta was in real trouble.
It was only his willpower keeping him awake, and that was rapidly diminishing. He would be falling unconscious in a matter of seconds no matter what he did. Maybe a minute at the most. So he had to do something right now if he wanted to live.
Glancing over at Nappa, he immediately noticed that the idiot was already asleep. He would have no help there. Fighting in his current state was impossible as well. He couldn't focus on anything except not passing out.
But despite this, he had come up with two options. One of them, however, probably wouldn't even work with the capabilities that the brat had already shown to him. Vegeta's original plan, if Nappa had been awake that is, had been to get the idiot to launch a power ball so that they could both transform into that state. Doing so would have reinvigorated them, purged the toxins from their systems, and given them the strength to turn everything around.
Since creating an artificial moon like that used up so much energy, however, he hadn't wanted to create it himself. He had wanted to instead keep his own reserves as high as possible for the inevitable battle ahead of him. He had wanted Nappa to be the one to do it because Vegeta didn't care at all about whether that idiot made it out of this alive. Let Nappa waste his energy so that he wouldn't have to.
But this idea went out the window upon realizing that Nappa was unconscious.
His next plan had obviously been to take the loss to his Ki reserves and launch the thing himself. But then he had remembered the capabilities that the brat had revealed about himself. He could catch energy attacks with those… devices of his. This meant that if Vegeta used this technique, there was a good chance that the brat would just grab it before he had a chance to transform. And then he would have wasted all of that energy for nothing. So he decided to make that his final strategy to use as a last resort, and instead went with his other plan. The one that actually had a chance of working.
His ship was outfitted with a medkit that had a number of injections that he could use on himself that would be able to instantly cure him of his affliction. All he had to do was call his ship here, actually make it to the thing, and then he would be cured. It'd take about 30 seconds or so for the ship to arrive since he had already called it a moment ago.
All he had to do was wait, now. Glancing up through his squinted eyes, he noticed the brat put on what appeared to be a gas mask over his face, and begin walking towards him.
Vegeta would not lose to this kid.
As soon as Gohan was close enough to notice the device in Vegeta's hand, he froze in disbelief.
He stopped walking.
Gohan didn't even know how to describe the sheer feeling of accomplishment he experienced at that moment. Because Vegeta had done exactly what Gohan had predicted he would.
Since an alien like Vegeta had to have encountered weird pathogens and toxins all over the universe, Gohan had anticipated the possibility of the Saiyans possessing a cure to his knockout gas. Upon seeing what appeared to be a ship controller in Vegeta's hand, however, Gohan was able to deduce a few things immediately.
They did not have the cure for his knockout gas on them at this moment. Or if they did, it was not easy or convenient enough to use as a first resort. Calling in their ships was apparently the best thing they could do.
So Gohan had stopped closing the distance between them.
Vegeta was about 30 meters away now, and the Saiyan was glaring at him, watching every move he made. This was why Gohan had stopped moving entirely.
If he continued to walk forward, Vegeta would think to himself: 'Damn. The ship won't make it in time. I better take drastic measures,' or something to that effect.
The current situation might destabilize if that happened. And it was a pointless risk that could easily be mitigated by simply not allowing Vegeta to feel so cornered.
All Gohan had to do to win was wait Vegeta out. If he forced the Saiyan's hand, Gohan's victory could slip away from him.
So this was his final move.
Vegeta would probably never know it, but standing perfectly still was yet another trap of Gohan's. A vicious, and devious trap that he had carefully prepared as well.
Because what Vegeta had failed to consider in this plan of his, was the fact that Gohan had been inside a Saiyan spaceship once before. Raditz's spaceship to be exact. He had known in advance what they looked like. In particular, Gohan had known how big they were. Or how small, rather.
Small enough to say… fit inside a capsule?
Gohan was capable of splitting his body into 5 clones with the multiform. One was in orbit with his Ki battery. The second was the power manager, whose sole duty was redirecting and allocating that energy to all of the other clones that needed it. Then clones 3 and 4 were on the battlefield itself. He was piloting clone 3 right now, and clone 4 was a short distance away in a supporting role. But this still left one clone remaining. Clone number 5.
So where was it?
It was really hard to overstate just how extensive Gohan's preparations had been. Everything had been calculated out in advance. And everything he had done had had multiple purposes behind it.
The lure he had used earlier on―the pulse of energy he had used to bring the Saiyans to his carefully prepared battlefield―had also drawn the Saiyans away from their ships.
And this gave clone number 5 an opportunity to investigate them.
Clone number 5 had a very specific mission. To investigate whatever ship or ships that the Saiyans had used to get to Earth. Gohan had predicted that it was highly likely that the Saiyans would arrive in similar ships to the one that had belonged to Raditz. But there hadn't been any way to be totally sure about this in advance. Maybe they would have had a massive mothership instead, or something. One filled with enemies. There had been no way to know for sure.
So the mission had been to investigate, collect intel, and make a plan based on what he found. If they were small ships like the one that Raditz owned, then clone number 5 was to capsulize them to ensure that the Saiyans could not call them during the fight to either retreat or to counter any of the biological warfare tactics Gohan had intended to implement.
If it was a giant mothership instead, then the plan had been to improvise based on the new information.
It had all depended on what clone number 5 saw when he got there.
But Gohan's prediction had been correct. He had gotten lucky. Two spaceships, exactly like Raditz's were what he had found, so the plan had not been complicated by unwelcome surprises. And so he had capsulized them. Because he could.
In other words, Vegeta's ship was not coming. And this was why standing perfectly still was such an incredible move to play.
Because Vegeta did not know that his ship wasn't coming, so he was waiting for an event that would never happen. And waiting just brought him closer and closer to unconsciousness.
How long would it take for Vegeta to realize that something was wrong?
Too long, in all likelihood.
Under his mask, Gohan grinned.
'Something isn't right,' Vegeta thought to himself, as he stared at the kid. By his count, 30 seconds should have passed. Where was his ship?
Vegeta pressed the button on his controller again and broke his gaze with the brat to stare at it in disbelief.
Why wasn't it here yet?
Bang!
Startled, Vegeta frantically looked back up at the kid and noticed…nothing. A huge sound had just ripped through the air that he couldn't identify. It had broken him out of his thoughts, and now he was looking around, trying to find the source.
But nothing was out of place. The brat still hadn't moved from his position and seemed to be content to just stare at him from afar.
What the hell had that brat just done?
The instant Vegeta had broken his gaze with him, Gohan had enacted another plan of his. Yet another psychological trap with multiple purposes behind it had come into play, and it had to do with his sword.
When someone sees someone else carrying a sword, they tend to subconsciously assume that they are intending to use it as a weapon and attack from short range with it. This wasn't Gohan's intention at all, however. His sword was mostly for show, and to keep Vegeta's eyes focused squarely on him. Obviously, the Saiyan wouldn't notice what his clone was doing off to the side as a result.
Ki users had a weakness. For all of their incredible strength, they could be caught off guard. His dad Goku could probably survive mountains being dropped onto his head provided that he was in a battle-ready state at the time. However, if he was asleep, or if he was caught completely off guard, all bets were off. If his dad was asleep then he could be killed by an ordinary human with a knife to the throat, just like anyone else.
The secret to a Ki user's power was, perhaps unsurprisingly, their Ki. If they weren't in a position to use it, they were effectively powerless. They were psychics after all. Ki users. And the key to their monstrous durability was the energy shield that they consciously surrounded themselves with.
But that was just it. You had to use that shield manually. It wasn't just automatically active all the time. This shield couldn't be used when you were asleep, for example, and this made all Ki users intrinsically vulnerable to a well-placed, precisely calculated strike that they didn't expect.
Saiyans may have had higher durability than most, but it remained true that without their energy shield, all that remained was biological material to get through. Their bodies were made of matter. And matter obeyed the laws of physics.
This idea was the key to what he had just done.
While the clone he was currently piloting stood perfectly still to keep Vegeta's attention fixed on him, his other battlefield clone had carefully positioned himself a few hundred meters away in a tree and had waited for the exact moment that Vegeta had broken eye contact.
Vegeta had briefly glanced down at the remote in his hand, and Gohan's clone had taken the opportunity to strike.
A single gunshot had rung out and the bullet had struck the defenceless, unconscious Nappa in the head, killing him instantly.
Guns were almost entirely useless in a fight against Ki users. But they did have a single, tiny, niche use case in which they could be useful. Long ranged, precise attacks on an unconscious opponent that could not defend themselves and that was in no position to receive aid from an ally.
A gun was precisely manufactured to shoot a projectile a certain way. So while Gohan could throw stones at a similar speed, he did not have this extreme degree of precision over where they would go. He could probably achieve a similar effect to a bullet if he filled whatever rock he threw with Ki and telekinetically guided it to its target, but this was detectable.
Using Ki in this way almost certainly would have been detected by Vegeta and as a result, he may have been able to save Nappa.
Even though these Saiyans could not sense power levels, it had to be the case that they still had some sort of instinctual mechanism that allowed them to react to high-speed Ki-based attacks like that. Otherwise, they never would have survived so many years of battling.
But not bullets. There wasn't any Ki inside those, which let them slip through their senses whenever they weren't specifically looking for them.
And that was quite possibly the only use for a gun in this sort of battle. In the hands of a Ki user that waited for a perfect, opportune moment, and with a mountain of deception behind their every move. Every other attempt to use a gun would fail due to the bullets harmlessly bouncing off the target.
Even barely conscious, Vegeta would easily be able to defend against a hail of bullets at a moment's notice. They'd literally just bounce off him harmlessly because he was currently in a battle-ready state. So even if Vegeta didn't notice the projectiles coming, since Saiyans always kept that Ki shield active whenever they were on the battlefield as a precaution against surprise attacks, it wouldn't matter.
This strategy only worked when that shield was down.
Vegeta's was active. But Nappa's on the other hand…
He couldn't use it. And thus the one weakness that all Ki users shared could be exploited.
Gohan simply couldn't pass up the opportunity.
It was simply a coincidence that Vegeta hadn't noticed the small hole in Nappa's head yet.
Vegeta understood a moment later why the brat wasn't moving.
The kid knew. The kid always seemed to know.
Everything.
He knew that his ship wasn't arriving for some reason, and was waiting him out.
Vegeta's eyes widened in realization a moment later.
'Of course!'
Those damn… devices of his!
Vegeta had seen the proof that the kid was capable of cloning himself. And there was no reason to expect that all of those copies were on the battlefield at the moment! He could have had others elsewhere! This brat had taken them! Their ships!
'We lured you here,' he remembered the kid say a few minutes ago.
Enraged, Vegeta immediately threw all of his hopes on his final plan. The power ball. He needed to transform to end this.
Gohan could pinpoint the exact instant that Vegeta realized what was happening, and as expected, Vegeta started raising his energy immediately in preparation for something.
But Gohan didn't intend to ever know what it was. Because he had no intention of allowing victory to slip from his grasp when he was this close to it. So when Vegeta moved, so did he.
Gohan could have done any number of things. He could have done what he had done to Nappa a few moments ago. Gather some energy from his battery to create a ball and throw it at Vegeta. Or he could have begun a close-range assault. Or he could have started charging his laser attack. He really had a ton of options.
However, he ultimately decided to play it safe. He prioritized the speed of his counterattack above all else. He would not give his opponent a chance to focus on anything or to concentrate. And he still had plenty of tricks up his sleeve to do that. He had planned for a very long battle after all. So he had plenty of capsules and equipment left in his arsenal.
A year was a long time to make preparations.
Gohan reached behind him and caught another primed capsule from his clone, and without delay, he hurled it at Vegeta while the Saiyan was preparing whatever energy attack he was intending to use.
The point of Gohan's counterattack was to simply get the Saiyan to lose focus on whatever it was that he was trying to do. Gohan did not have the intention to kill Vegeta with it. Just distract him. He would just keep attacking at vulnerable moments making Vegeta fail to complete whatever he was trying to do until he finally succumbed to the gas.
Gohan had settled on using the same trick that he had used to take out Nappa's eye. A giant capsulized metal tube containing a fully powered laser inside that he had fired off months ago and captured. He had created a decent number of them. So he had plenty more than just the one he had used earlier.
The way he saw it, there was no need to waste energy when he didn't need to. If he hadn't caught this laser a few months back when he had originally launched it, back when he had been practicing and perfecting the technique, it would have simply exploded that day and gone to waste. By catching it instead, he could put it to good use without draining his own reserves.
Before Vegeta could fully prepare his technique, he was interrupted by a giant laser slamming into him. It completely broke his concentration on his power ball and stopped him from forming it.
In desperation, he tried to think of a new strategy as he rapidly summoned as much energy as he could to hold the new attack at bay.
But he quickly realized that the attack was far more powerful than he had expected. Since the brat had created it so quickly, he had expected something small and manageable. Instead, he had found himself dealing with a very powerful attack. Nothing compared to his own attacks when he was at his best, but it was certainly worthy of respect. And he would have respected that attack if it weren't currently trying to kill him.
But it would not be enough to take down the Prince of Saiyans. He'd make sure of it.
With a final shout of exertion, Vegeta finally broke the attack and caused it to dissipate. It would have been so much easier if he hadn't been a hair away from being comatose.
Vegeta raised his half-lidded gaze up again towards the brat and glared at him in defiance.
In his dazed state, he could only watch as the brat casually threw something else at him without delay.
Another, small, white object.
Vegeta's eyes widened.
He wasn't ready yet.
This was the last thing he was able to think before a second laser, identical in every way and just as powerful as the first, slammed into him, knocking him out.
As soon as Vegeta was unconscious, another gunshot rang out.
He was killed by it.
Discord: A3dTszc
