Chapter 7 - Arrival

Yamcha waved as he neared and a moment later landed beside Gohan. "What's up Yamcha?" Gohan asked.

"I just thought I'd let you know Videl's out for the truth." the man said with a sigh. "She caught me in class and started asking questions about the Cell Games, complete with Budokai photos and broadcast pictures."

Gohan groaned. "Man, she's the persistant type too. But what set her off wondering about all of that?"

"She had a picture of Goku, an overlay of his Budokai photo and him as a Super Sai-jin at the Cell Games." he explained. "She probably recognized his name after you told her, and then recognized one of us from the video and went from there. You're just lucky your looks have changed so much over the last seven years."

"Man... I don't know what to do." Gohan said leaning against a nearby tree. "I don't know how she'd take the truth, and I just met the girl... You know, it's not exactly how I'd like to introduce myself to her after only a couple of days. 'Hello, my name is Gohan. I'm half alien, have enough power to blow up the entire solar system, and I saved the world from Cell but your dad took the credit.' Yeah..."

"You worry too much." a gruff voice came from above.

"Like you're one to talk Piccolo." Yamcha said. "Not that you'd understand girl problems."

Piccolo smirked. "No, I suppose that's your specialty."

"Wha, hey!"

"So, what's up Gohan? I trust you didn't signal me over this girl..."

"Huh? Oh, no. My Astronomy teacher found... well, there's a Space Pod heading for us. It'll land around here somewhere too. I'm going to check it out as Saiyaman since Mrs. Solaria will be there, but I wouldn't mind having you in the shadows keeping an eye on things." Piccolo nodded.

"A Space Pod?" Yamcha asked. "Oh man, like whatever made Spoppovitch go all wacky earlier wasn't bad enough."

"Yeah, tell me about it." Gohan said with a sigh. "I called Mirai earlier too, he should be out here soon actually. The three of us should be enough... Um, Yamcha, could you stay here and keep an eye on mom for me? Just in case things don't go so well."

"Sure man, no problem."

Gohan gave him a wave as Yamcha went into the house. A moment later he floated up into the air with Piccolo. "It's not going to be easy to sense out this teacher of yours." Piccolo said.

"Wont have to." Gohan replied. "When I talked to Mirai earlier he said the same satellite that tracked dad's return ten years ago can be used now too. He's bringing the device with him."

Piccolo gave him a nod and the two moved over to a large rock and sat down on top of it to await Mirai. The lavendar haired time traveler arrived a few moments later in his traditional outfit, complete with the sword Bulma had gotten him a few years back. It appeared to be the same sword he'd brought from his own time and had shattered against the Androids. Entirely possible, but rather confusing to think about at times.

"So, could the satellites find the Space Pod?" Gohan asked as he stood up again.

Mirai nodded. "Yeah, and it's moving beyond fast, though it's slowing. From the data I have it was doing at least ten thousand times the speed of light a little over a day ago when it first showed up on the scanners as it passed by the sun."

"Is that even possible?" Piccolo asked.

Mirai shook his head. "Mom studied Goku's Space Pods, both the one he first came in and the one he came back in ten years ago, and they could only do about a hundred and twenty times the speed of light. To be going so fast... either this one's the most advanced or it had some form of help to gain its speed. When it does come down it'll be doing at least a hundred miles an hour still."

Gohan nodded as he touched his watch and activated his Saiyaman outfit. Holding out a gloved hand to Mirai the time traveller turned over the tracker to Gohan who took a glance down at it and then began to fly off slowly to find where the pod would land. The display had several images on it. One was a pair of circles with a line connecting them, obviously a view of the entire Earth and the course of the pod. The second on the screen, which was changing now and then, showed a close-up version of the first image. The third was a flat downward view with two points, the tracker and the projected landing point of the pod. The fourth and final image was the same, except an actual video feed from one of the satellites.

"Oh, hey..." he zoomed in a bit on a small cliff about twenty miles from where he was and saw a large air boat landing. A moment later Mrs. Solaria emerged along with about a dozen others he didn't recognize. "Yep, that's her, and she brought more than just her brother. Anything to make this more difficult."

"I could just knock them all out when we get there." Piccolo said. "It wouldn't be that hard to put them to sleep for a few hours."

"No, that will only make Mrs. Solaria even more suspicious." Gohan said. "She's paranoid about everything. Best to let them be."

A moment later Mirai and Piccolo dropped down into the trees and Gohan landed on the cliff a few yards behind Mrs. Solaria and her group. "Well, hello there." he said in his deep Saiyaman voice. This caused them all to turn around and stare at him. "I'm not sure you should be here, it could be dangerous."

"And just who are you?" a man in a white lab coat asked with a really sqeaky voice. He reached up and pushed his thick glasses back up his nose before running a hand through his thick and wild red-orange hair.

"I am!" he struck a quick pose. "The Great Saiyaman!"

"You're that guy from TV today!" Mrs. Solaria cried. "The one that caught the car that Spoppovitch threw at Videl. I knew it! Spoppovitch was an alien! Let me guess, you're a space cop or something, right? The bizarre get-up and corny lines are a disguise... you probably don't even realize how bad it is since you don't know the planet too well..." she'd stopped talking to Gohan halfway through and was now talking to herself. "I bet that thing is probably a shipping device and has supplies and stuff in it. Yes, that has to be it..."

"Actually, Mrs. Solaria, you are quite wrong. Spoppovitch is very much Human and I'm no cop. As for the the Space Pod I don't know what is inside it. That is why I'm here."

"Don't worry." A large guy in camo said grinning. He then raised a large black shotgun. "If there's anything dangerous in there I'll just blow it away! Heh heh heh. We don't need any stickman playing hero."

"We'll see about that." Gohan said under his breath while walking up the hill to the edge of the cliff. He gazed down at the tracker and checked how far out the pod was still. "A good ten or fifteen minutes yet... and it looks like it'll be landing a few hundred yards out from here yet. That's good at least."

"What are you looking at?" Mrs. Solaria asked walking up beside him. She saw the tracker and the Capsule Corp. logo emblazoned on the back and the top right corner on the front. "Oh, you're tracking it with Capsule Corps. satellites!" she cried happily. "I should have known you were connected to them somehow! Oh! That's how you just showed up and then vanished, and caught that car! You must be using some new top secret Capsule Corp. inventions!"

The man with the squeaky voice walked up on Gohan's other side and gazed at the tracker and Gohan. "Hmm, yes, I've theorized that Capsule Corp. was far more advanced than they appeared from the outside. This device is clearly decades ahead of any other company's technological abilities. And I've heard of their deal with the Earth military for the construction of mechanical exoskeletons to enhance strength and such... and rumors of Nano Machines that could give Super Human abilites, as well as teleportation devices. You're probably field testing the stuff, aren't you?"

"I, er..."

"Yes, yes." he said nodding. "I quite understand. Top Secret company information and such. It's simply astounding what Capsule Corp. is able to do..."

"Mr. Kagakusha!" a voice called from back by the air boat. There was a moment of silence and then it came again. "Excuse me, Mr. Kagakusha!"

"I think you're wanted, brother." Mrs. Solaria said.

"Hmm, oh, oh, yes, yes." he said turning. "Lost myself in thought again." With that he walked off to speak with whoever had called him.

Gohan turned his eyes skyward and looked about for any sign of the approaching Space Pod, and then looked down at the device again. "Let's see, it's coming from the other side of the world actually. According to the tracker it'll most likely circle the planet twice to help it slow down before actually coming down. Let's see, the west is... behind me." He turned and looked behind him.

"So then, it seems my brother was right." Mrs. Solaria said as she looked at Gohan's tracker again. "I thought it odd that it would land on the opposite side of the world it was approaching..."

"Simply dynamics." came a new voice. Gohan glanced and saw a young woman he sort of recognized. It took him a moment to realize it was a student from school, his Advanced Phsyics class... Anna Lysa or something. She walked up from the air boat and looked off the same direction as Gohan. "This thing is moving at incredible speeds, it can't simply fall right into the atmosphere. Without looping the world at least once it would merely bounce off our atmosphere."

She then looked toward Gohan. "And maybe you can put a word in for me at Capsule Corp." she said. "I applied for the Robotics and Co-op work but couldn't get in, apparently it was full before I could apply. But I think my skills would be wasted anywhere else."

"Er, well, I have seen what you can do." Gohan replied, making sure he kept his Saiyaman voice up. He wasn't used to holding conversations with it so it wasn't as easy as he'd expected. "So I'll see what I can do for you."

Anna looked at him a little confused. "How have you seen what I can... oh, you saw my application information and the projects I did. Those aren't actually my best works in my opinion, but all I had to submit. I'm even good with computer re-imaging. Like today at school I compiled a script to shift a three-quarter profile screenshot to align with a frontal photo and aged the frontal photo. Videl was trying compare the similarites between some Goku guy and this blonde guy..."

She stopped as Gohan interupted her. "What was she looking for?"

"Don't know. Something to do with the Cell Games." she said shrugging.

Gohan mentally sighed. Videl certainly was resourceful. Suddenly he saw a spark just over the horizon. A glance at his tracker verified what he'd thought. "Here it comes for the first pass." Kagakusha's squeaky voice proclaimed as the fiery haired man approached again. A second later a streak of blue and white light zipped passed over head and into the distance again. There was silence in the group as all waited for the pod to return.

Gohan watched the tracker in his hand as it followed the pod around the world as it descended. The projected course began to slowly drift closer and closer to the cliff. After a moment it stopped, not over five hundred yards away as originally marked, but only a hundred and fifty. Considering the height of the cliff... "Everyone, get down!" he cried dropping to the ground. The others looked at him for a moment but then did as he said and dropped. A moment later the pod zipped passed over their heads only feet above them, it came within inches of hitting the edge of the cliff but missed and continued down to the forest below.

Gohan was already on his feet and flying down after it by the time the others managed to get back onto their feet, quite shakily at that. There was a loud thunder like roar as the pod slammed into the ground. The area shook savagely from the impact as a cloud of dust and shattered trees was thrown into the sky. Gohan pulled to a stop at the edge of the cloud and floated there as it settled. He used a quick and weak burst of Ki to clear the dust away so he could see.

Unlike the previous pod landings he'd seen this one hadn't smashed out a crater. It had smashed out a trench at least a hundred yards long. He floated down toward the ground and the pod. As he neared he realized that more than just the terrain was damaged. The Space Pod barely even looked like a Space Pod now. It was scourched black, there were cracks everywhere snaking across its surface, and it was radiating an intense heat. Obviously it hadn't been constructed to deal with such a vicious landing.

As he touched down at the edge of the trench he saw that several of the trees in the area were still smoldering from the friction and that the ground had been scorched so badly that the layer of sand a couple feet under the surface of the ground had been turned to glass. He walked slowly toward the pod. He could feel a low power from within, maybe a little stronger than Roshi. As he reached the pod there was a groan from inside, followed by a grunt, a gasp of pain, and then a flash of blue as a ki field blew the pod, or at least what was left of it, apart.

Gohan turned for a moment to shield himself from the debris and then looked back. He could hear some low moaning punctuated with gasps of pain now and then as the new dust cloud from the blast began to settle. Thanks to the moonlight he could just make out a shadow moving within that cloud. The person who had been inside the pod was on their knees at the moment holding their side.

The dust began to fall and he was able to make out the top of a head covered in black hair, the person's face was turned toward the ground. A moment later the dust was below their shoulders and he saw a sight that was quite familiar yet different as well. The person wore a grey body suit with white gloves, boots, and battle armor. The armor looked as though it had been of the type Gohan had worn on Namek, only the colors were different. The shoulders and abdomen area were dark purple, the chest plate was black, and the trim around the edges red.

But that had been in another life. Now the armor was cracked and shattered, barely hanging together. The body suit was in shreds as well, more hanging off the owner's body than not. Blood was caked on the armor and soaked into the body suit. Gohan went to speak when suddenly the person coughed up blood and then collapsed to the ground. He moved over to them quickly, Mirai and Piccolo emerging from the forest to join him.

"Man, he's in bad shape." Gohan said stopping and bending down to check for a pulse, even though he could still sense a fading energy from them. A rapidly fading energy.

"I think you mean 'she'." Piccolo said. From where he stood he had a pretty good view of her face, and she was obviously female.

"Well, either way..." Gohan said moving to lift her. "She's dying just laying here. We need to..."

"Wait, Gohan." Mirai said. "She's too injured to move, you could make things worse. I'm the fastest, I'll fly off to the Lookout and get Dende and then come right back."

"Alright, be quick." Gohan said. Mirai nodded and lifted into the air. There was a flash of gold as he transformed, and then he blasted off toward the Lookout at top speed. Gohan sat down on the ground near her and the rubble of the pod and waited, trying to figure what was going on. "Mirai said the pod was going about ten thousand times the speed of light... How is that possible?"

Piccolo shrugged. "I don't know physics so I wouldn't know."

"That's not the problem." Gohan said looking up. "At the speed of light time comes to a near standstill for the person within the ship. At one hundred times the speed of light, theoretically, time should freeze completely within the ship. At one thousand times the speed of light, theoretically, you should overcome the friction of time itself and be moving at twice the speed of time, in other words, going backward in time. Theory says that anything over five thousand times the speed of light should rip itself apart as it presses against the fabric of space and begins to tear out of the universe..."

"So, what does that mean exactly?" Piccolo asked.

Gohan shook his head. "I'm not exactly sure... I do know this, we need to gather up what's left of her pod and take it to Bulma." he said taking a capsule out of his clothes.

"I'll handle that. You stay here." Piccolo said as he took the capsule. A moment later he'd gathered all the debris together, capsulated it, and taken off.

Gohan sighed and looked toward the sky. First the stuff earlier today and now this. Life was certainly becoming interesting again. He looked off to his right as he felt Mirai nearing again. A moment later the time traveler had landed and powered down as he set Dende down as well. The small Guardian moved over to the fallen girl and held his hands over her. A second later the golden energy began to flow from his hands and into her body.

Mirai moved around to where Gohan was, and where he could get a better look at the girl. "She can't be more than twenty years old, if that." he said kneeling down. "Do you think her injuries came from the crash?"

Gohan shook his head. "No. That's battle damage. Serious battle damage. She was in a really bad fight. The crash certainly didn't help any though."

A second later the golden energy flow stopped and Dende stepped back. "She's healed." he said. "But she'll probably still be out for a while yet. I healed her body but I can't restore her energy. She's probably exhausted."

Gohan nodded. "We should take her somewhere to rest up... My place is closest, and knowing mom she'd get better care there than at a hospital." He bent down and gently lifted her up. "I'll head home and get her into a bed."

"Ok. I'll fly Dende back to the Lookout and then go help mom with the pod parts." Mirai said picking up the Namek again and lifting into the air. "I'll talk to you later Gohan."

"Yeah, call me if you find anything or need some help."

"Will do."