Disclaimer: Dragon Ball Z belongs to Toriyama Akira and will never be mine.

Discovering Gohan

Years Later

Seventeen-year old Son Gohan glared at the person standing before him. He raised a hand to rub the blood off his split lip and smirked.

"I knew you had more in you," Vegeta said with his own smirk.

Gohan crouched down into a defensive stance and waited for his opponent to make the next move. He waited patiently as he watched the saiyan prince struggled to remain in the super saiyan form after a hard long battle.

"I'm not so sure about you, though," Gohan stated.

The shorter man snorted.

The young demi-saiyan stood up from his crouch and stretched his back, enjoying the sensation of his tired muscles loosening. "I'm beat. How about we call it a day and finish tomorrow."

Vegeta merely grunted, walked over to the gravity machine, and turned off the mechanism. Almost instantaneously the force held within the room dropped to its normal pressure. "I'm going to shower," said Vegeta.

Gohan watched as his adoptive father walked out of the room and into the many halls of Capsule Corp. He was used to the saiyan prince's behavior and attitude around him. Vegeta never really did agree to adopt the child of his worst enemy, so Gohan understood the reason for negativity Vegeta cast upon the demi-saiyan. Shortly after Chichi's funeral, Gohan had asked to use the gravity chamber to train, but Vegeta obviously refused access to the boy. However, after some persuasion, Vegeta had agreed.

Gohan pushed the button to close the doors and walked down the halls to his room. Once inside, he immediately jumped into the shower. This was another one of those days where Gohan had a tedious study session early in the morning, then an intense training session with Vegeta in the evening. By now Gohan had read and excelled in all the courses to have graduated from college, but he had chosen to stay home. After experimenting with going to school for a year, Gohan decided that going to school was not his thing. He preferred studying at home. He had been home-schooled since he was a child and had remained home school to this day. Goten and Trunks were home schooled as well, though neither of them took the teacher seriously. Which was why Gohan had decided to tutor the two after their lessons. Gohan knew that Trunks and Goten wouldn't take anything seriously, especially during a lesson. However, when Gohan entered the room to tutor them, both children immediately focused all their attention to what Gohan had to teach them. The two boys had too much respect for Gohan. Gohan was always there for them and was the strongest warrior in the universe, though he hid his power most of the time.

The young demi-saiyan changed into his usual evening clothes and walked down the hall toward the kitchen. He was always hungry after training. He fingered the necklace around his neck as he approached his destination.

"Today's session was longer than usual," Bulma commented as she placed a jug of fruit juice in front of Gohan.

Gohan shrugged and took a sip. "Vegeta is getting stronger. It's only a matter of time before I'd be forced to ascend."

Bulma sighed and watched as a few of the robots placed dishes of food in front of her adoptive son. "Honestly, all you saiyans care about is getting stronger or what will fill your stomach!"

Gohan shrugged again. He hadn't been able to show that many emotions since the day he made his promise. He figured that in order to be strong, he mustn't have any weaknesses. Having emotions and caring about things were one of those major disadvantages. During the Cell games, he had cared too much about torturing Cell to avenge the people that his power went to his head. Therefore he had decided to seal off his most of his emotions to prevent that catastrophe from ever happening again.

"Anything new happening?" He asked in between bites of food.

Bulma sighed again and slumped down into a chair next to him. "I'm working on this new invention of mine, but I just can't seem to get it working properly."

"Can I see the schematics?"

She reached into her coat and de-capsulated the schematics. " I'm not sure what's wrong since there's no real error in the schematics."

Gohan took a bite of the apple he was munching on and then at the papers. He scanned the contents quickly and pointed to a certain part of the paper. "You miscalculated something here."

Bulma raised an eyebrow and looked to where he was pointing. "Oh, Josie wrote that." Bulma sighed in exasperation and brought a hand to her temple. "I need to fire that girl. She's giving me too much trouble and this isn't the first time she screwed up the calculations."

"Do you have a pencil on you? I'll help you fix the problems," offered the demi-saiyan.

After a little while, Bulma sighed with relief. "Thanks a lot Gohan. You don't know how frustration can cloud my mind sometimes."

He nodded his head and took a bite out of his sandwich. "If you want, I can help you calculate things when you're busy with another project."

"I'd love that Gohan. Just come into my lab after your evening snacks."

Gohan stared at the machine placed in the corner of his room. It was something he had created a few years when he was studying about the Saiyan rejuvenation tanks. He had been interested in how it had worked and decided to build one, but changed his mind and created something totally different. This machine looked like a rejuvenation tank, except the patient stood up instead of sat down. It allowed the fighter to enter into another world to train without being disturbed and was way better than the gravity machine.

Gohan took off his necklace and put it on the dresser next to him. The necklace was a little device he had conjured up a little while after he created this training machine. The necklace allowed Gohan to keep his power at a desired level to make training more challenging. Usually Gohan would wear it when training with Vegeta under his power level during the Cell Games. Vegeta had yet to ascend and he wanted to push Vegeta to reach Gohan's level. Once the Saiyan Prince succeeded, Gohan would adjust the setting on his necklace.

The demi-saiyan stepped into the machine and put on the facemask and waited for the tank to fill up with water. He closed his eyes and felt his mind and body drift away from each other slowly. When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't in the tank inside his room anymore. He was in another world where the gravity far exceeded the gravity chamber. The place was barren and blank. There was nothing but white for miles on end. Yes, this would the perfect place to train undisturbed. This was where Gohan usually trained before he went to sleep. In this world, he was free to train to his heart's content. Here, he didn't have to hold back, afraid to crumble the house or cause an earthquake. He could do what he wanted when he wanted.

The thing with this machine was that Gohan was not physically transported to this other world. No, the effects of training and what happened would appear on his body, even though he wasn't physically there. This was one of the secrets he had in training to become as strong as he was. After what seemed like two hours of training, Gohan decided to leave that little world behind and came back to reality. Only two minutes had passed in the real world where he had trained. That was the thing he loved about his machine. He could train as much as he wanted without having to worry about cutting into his study time.

Gohan took off the pair of shorts he wore and changed into his sleeping clothes. As he went to sleep, he had an unnerving feeling that something was going to happen tomorrow that he wasn't going to like.

"High school?" Gohan questioned.

"Yes," replied Bulma.

"You must be kidding. I went to school once and I didn't like it," he stated.

She shrugged and asked a couple of the robots to load the table with food. "Gohan, I understand what you mean about not liking school, but that was two years ago. People change so you don't have to worry about the kids picking on you because you're smart or because you're different from them."

"And why is that?"

"You're going to Orange Star High. No one will know you and you can start all over again. Now, you're lucky that I didn't decide to enroll you in West City High or else you'd be taking out your frustrations on the gravity chamber again."

"Just why did you decide to enroll me in school again? You know that I hated school and all the people there," Gohan said a little angrily.

Bulma stared at him straight in the eye. "Your mother always wanted you to have friends and socialize with other people, but you couldn't do that because you lived too far away. Now that you're this close to schools and people, you're turning down the opportunity."

Gohan shifted his gaze to the wall and kept his arms crossed.

The blue-haired scientist sighed and placed a comforting hand on her son's shoulder. "Gohan, please do your mother and me this favor. Just for the last two years of high school. I'm asking you that much. You don't even have to go to college if you don't want to."

After a long silence, Gohan sighed and looked up at her. "For two years, right?"

"Yes," she answered with a soft smile.

"I'll do it, but only because it's for my mom—not because I want to."

"Have you finished with your petty study session yet?" Vegeta demanded as he walked into the room.

"Yes," answered Gohan.

"Good, now eat up. I want to train as soon as possible," growled Vegeta. This was Vegeta's usual greeting. It was either that or "Brat, hurry the fuck up." The saiyan prince sat down at the table and began to devour the mountain of food.

"As usual," Gohan grumbled to himself. He knew that Vegeta heard him, but he didn't really care.

Shortly after, the two younger demi-saiyans rushed into the room, devouring what was left of the mountain of food before running off to play.

Just as Gohan was about to follow Vegeta to the gravity chamber, Bulma placed a hand on Gohan's shoulder. "Where do you think you're going?"

"The Gravity Chamber," Gohan replied simply.

Bulma shook her head. "Not today, Gohan. Today, we need to get your school supplies."

"What? School? The boy doesn't need to attend school. He could easily take your position at this measly place," growled Vegeta.

Bulma snorted. "Just so you know, Vegeta. Gohan agreed to go back to school and will not be joining you in your training today."

"What?" growled, befuddled. "Why would he want to do that?"

"I promised Bulma that I would go to school because my mother wanted me to," Gohan explained monotonously.

Vegeta narrowed his eyes at both of them and said grumpily, "Boy, you better not give up on our evening training sessions. I'm only allowing you this day off for your school supplies."

"Oh shut up, Vegeta," Bulma said exasperatedly. "Gohan is free to do as he wishes. Stop telling him what to do."

"Don't worry, Vegeta. I'll still train with you," Gohan said as he ushered Bulma out of the room.

"Gohan, what are you saying? You won't have time to spend on training if you're going to school," Bulma pointed out.

"What do you mean? I've learned all the stuff school teaches now when I was six. I can finish the homework and projects easily," he reminded.

The blue-haired woman sighed. "Fine. But I'm limiting your training time. Only two hours of the Gravity Chamber."

"Okay," answered Gohan. He didn't really care about the Gravity Chamber since he could do much more with his own machine. He never told Bulma about it since he didn't want the only place where he was able to unleash himself be taken away or duplicated. It was a secret and he intended to keep it that way.

After hours of tedious clothes and school supplies shopping, Gohan was relieved to finally be home. He had no intention of doing anything but sleeping. So he went straight to bed and straight to sleep.

Well, I see that I've gotten some positive responses from the first chapter and I'm very pleased to know that people like the revision so far. To CW who asked if I was going to discontinue The Wretched Life of Our Hero, I am not quite sure as of right now. It depends if this story comes out better than the original or not. Thanks for reading, I hope to see you next chapter. And don't forget to review and leave me a comment about your opinion. It matters a lot to me.