Maybe he didn't know?

Maybe Goku and Chichi had kept their history with martial arts from their children? It explained why Gohan could still barely throw a punch and also why she hadn't heard a peep about Goku from him, but Videl didn't feel it was particularly plausible.

Gohan was too smart. As sheltered as he was, she refused to believe that he had never heard of Son Goku's exploits two decades ago. They were almost legendary. Sure, he hadn't been a celebrity or anything, but too many people knew about his victory against Demon King Piccolo or had heard about his eyebrow-raising tournament finals for it to have flown under the radar. Gohan was even named after a famous martial artist for God's sake; there was no way the kid who had managed perfect scores on all his entry exams hadn't made that connection yet.

Videl scrunched up her nose. There went that theory.

She blinked for a few seconds as she looked at her surroundings. The clock on the wall was slowly ticking towards its eschatological destination - half past three. Their History teacher was droning on about the key factors that culminated in some important event Videl couldn't bring herself to care any less about while students everywhere were slumped in their seats, looking at their phones, or staring at the walls in boredom.

The crimefighter was getting more and more tempted by the minute to pretend there was some kind of hostage situation so she could escape her dire predicament but in the end, it turned out she didn't have to.

The bell rang and suddenly dozens of students sat up a little straighter and started packing their things. Videl was one of them, firmly clasping all her books in her left hand as she prepared to bolt towards her locker until she felt a hand grab her shoulder.

"Slow down there," said Erasa. "What's going on with you today? I spent the entire class trying to make eye contact with you, but you didn't even notice!"

"Sorry," Videl shrugged. "I guess I've been a little stuck in my own world."

"What have you been thinking about?"

Videl glared at her friend half-heartedly. "Gohan, obviously."

"Sorry, I just wanted to hear you say it." Erasa grinned mischievously. "So what's up?"

Videl began to walk towards her locker as Erasa followed. "There's something strange going on with him. Okay, maybe he's not Saiyaman, but there's more to him than meets the eye."

"More than being a cute, sheltered dork, you mean?"

"Definitely," said Videl. "There's something about the way he behaves that I just can't put my finger on."

"Let me guess, it keeps you up a-"

A glare from Videl prevented the blonde schemester from finishing her sentence.

They continued to walk silently until they reached Videl's locker. Erasa pressed for a proper answer to her question. "So what's got you all hot and bothered today?" she asked. "I can't imagine that you're fretting over who you'll go to prom with, like the rest of us."

Videl put her books away and grabbed her bag. "I discovered something interesting about Gohan last night."

"You've got some dirt on Gohan?" Erasa questioned. "I guess all that time you spend hanging around real detectives down at the station isn't going to waste after all."

"Well, I don't know if you could call it dirt," said Videl, flinging her own locker shut before following Erasa to hers. "It's just a very important fact that he failed to mention to any of us."

"Wow, you sound annoyed," remarked Erasa. "Does he have a lot of booze tucked away somewhere in that mountain cave of his or something?"

"No, but his dad was a three-time World Martial Arts Tournament finalist. And a champion too!" exclaimed Videl as her frustration reached a boiling point. "Even his mum made it to the quarterfinals."

"Huh, who would have thought?" Erasa shrugged, rather nonplussed about the whole situation. "I wonder if that's where his parents met."

"He proposed to Chichi on the stage," Videl continued sourly. "Son Goku. I can't believe I didn't see the connection sooner."

"Oh, didn't he win the one before your dad? The one against the green monster thing?" asked Erasa, perking up suddenly. Videl nodded, prompting Erasa to triumphantly exclaim, "See, I told you I paid attention to all those stupid fights you made me watch when we were kids!"

Erasa made a quick pit-stop at her locker to exchange her books for her school bag and a bottle of vitamin water.

"Do you think I'm getting suspicious over nothing again?" asked Videl as they made their way towards the school's front gates.

"Maybe," said Erasa before frowning a little. "I can see why you had that look on your face during History, though. If his parents are martial artists, why doesn't he know how to fight? And why hasn't he mentioned it during your self-defence classes? You'd think it would be relevant to the conversation, y'know."

"Exactly," replied Videl. "At first I thought that maybe he didn't know, or that he was embarrassed about it, but it just doesn't make sense no matter what angle I look at it from."

Once again, they walked side-by-side without a word until Erasa broke the silence a few minutes after they left school grounds. "What if Chichi didn't allow him to learn how to fight as a kid? I haven't met her in person, but she sounds like one of those mums that have their kids reading academic papers instead of bedtime stories."

"That makes sense," Videl admitted after a moment of thought. "I came to the same conclusion when I was thinking about why he seems so sheltered. His mum seems like a dominating personality, not that she's been rude to me though."

"Reminds me of someone else I know," quipped Erasa.

Videl lightly boxed Erasa on the arm. "So he wasn't allowed to fight like his dad when he was a kid and he just hasn't mustered up the courage to say anything about it yet? There has to be more to it than that."

"Maybe he didn't want to gloat," Erasa suggested. "If you could get away from the weight that your last name holds, the good and the bad, wouldn't you be kinda glad?"

"Hmmm…" Videl trailed off as she thought about her friend's question. "Point taken. Being my father's daughter has its perks, but it also means people care more about my last name than my first. Fame is a bit of a double-edged sword."

"So there you have it," said Erasa as she dusted her hands off each other. "Chichi didn't allow him to learn martial arts and he didn't tell us about his family's history with it because he didn't want the attention. Case closed."

Videl shook her head. "Still, if his father passed away - I'm assuming they were close because he doesn't seem to have many friends - wouldn't he want to honour him by learning how to fight like him?"

"I dunno," said Erasa. "I guess you'll just have to ask him. Can't blame him for not wanting to make you any more suspicious; poor kid's probably going to be scared of big cities for the rest of his life."

…

Gohan punched thin air not for the first time that day. His assailant ducked under his outstretched fist and half-hearted follow up with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine before forcing him to block a counter attack.

"Getting sloppy, are we Gohan?" asked Vegeta before taking the opportunity to crack a few knuckles. "I would hate to see how you fare in an actual fight."

"I'm holding my own, aren't I?" Gohan retorted. "I'm a little rusty, but I still step out to stretch my limbs from time to time."

Vegeta responded by planting a fist into Gohan's gut. He gave him no time to recover before he began raining blows onto the younger Saiyan.

Gohan stumbled back, his body racked with pain immediately. "Thanks for that," he remarked sarcastically. When he glanced upward, Vegeta was charging him again, fist coiled and arm cocked back. He batted the punch aside and countered with a quick jab to the prince's chest. Gohan's feelings of relief at making contact soon gave way to thoughts of Vegeta's next move as the pair resumed swapping blows.

While he really was holding his own, he could tell Vegeta was just toying with him. His instincts may have dulled, but even he could still tell when a warrior wasn't trying. He kept on the offensive, alternating between right hooks and left jabs. Some of his attacks connected, but Vegeta mostly dodged, occasionally striking back.

Eventually, Gohan could tell the elder Saiyan was growing tired of the fight. Without powering up, Vegeta sidestepped his next attack and followed with an elbow to his right shoulder.

The younger Saiyan stepped back, softening the blow but falling right into Vegeta's trap. He saw the right hook travelling towards his side, but couldn't avoid it. It connected and sent bolts of crackling agony coursing throughout his body.

God, it had been a while since he had been hit like that.

He groaned as Vegeta afforded him a blank stare and the chance to catch his breath. It was odd. He'd seen all sorts of emotions flash over Vegeta's face through the years, but this was the first time he could recall the Saiyan prince looking disappointed.

Gohan darted around the shorter man with a dizzying burst of speed, targeting his back, but he had to throw an arm out to block the elbow that Vegeta outstretched. The prince turned on his heel and delivered a fierce knee to his ribcage.

Gohan retreated, embarrassed as he nursed his aching ribs.

"Was I really that easy to read?" asked Gohan.

"I thought I told you that you're not toying around with some pesky little insect," said Vegeta, flared nostrils betraying his cool delivery. "You should call it quits before you get hurt. That Namekian should feel ashamed of himself."

Gohan sighed, knowing that he could do little else but allow the man's insults to drip off his body and onto the hard floor of the gravity chamber alongside several beads of sweat. "Let's just hope this was educational."

The half-blood expected a snort but was surprised to see Vegeta nod.

"Hopefully, the brat will now understand the true importance of proper technique," he said as he glared through the walls of the gravity chamber. Trunks could see them because of several cameras that Bulma had mounted around the room, but Vegeta had never been one to let something pesky like a sturdy wall get in his way.

After a few moments, the pair found themselves looking at a bewildered set of eyes so wide that they were in danger of falling out of their sockets.

"Woah, that was way cooler than watching Dad beat up a bunch of bots!" exclaimed Trunks. "And you're stronger than I thought, Gohan. You can totally beat up bad guys like Goten says."

"Thanks," the older halfbreed said with a frown. "I did beat Cell after all."

"Dad says he was just an overgrown cockroach," countered Trunks with a shrug.

Gohan raised an eyebrow as he looked in Vegeta's direction.

"Is it the boy's fault that he cannot fathom the extent of the power you wielded that day?" asked the prince.

Gohan sighed. "I suppose not."

...

Videl had to admit that she had more to go on than she'd first thought. It wasn't information strictly related to Gohan per se, but there was a surprising amount of content to be found that was centred around his father.

After her conversation with Erasa, she realised that she had come to a crossroads of sorts - a fork in the road as far as her investigation was concerned. She could either approach Gohan directly for answers to the questions that wouldn't stop pulsating through her mind, or she could do some quiet prodding on her own.

Given that she was an aspiring detective, she had a natural inclination towards the second option. The fact that she still felt a little ashamed of herself for hounding Gohan so much when she was convinced he was Saiyaman also made it clear that the latter was the more comfortable option for her.

So she found herself blowing the dust off an old whiteboard that had been lying at the back of her closet for years and began to plot out everything she knew about Son Goku, which was as good a starting point as any.

It was easy enough to pull up a video of an interview with both Goku and Krillin, a monk she'd watched fight with Goku before. They wore the same uniform and certainly had a rapport going between them. Did Gohan know Krillin too? If he did, would he mention that he saw the bald man in the tapes Videl had given him?

She shook her head in frustration when she realised that she had no way of knowing that he'd watched any more of those fights from old martial arts tournaments. He'd been dragging his feet ever since Videl had offered to teach him self-defence, after all.

She would have to dig deeper.

After that, public records were sparser. Newspaper clippings from the first tournament Goku had participated showed all the fighters and some pictures of the crowd. She decided to check anyone Goku had been seen with in the pictures and found a still of him next to another fighter from the tournament, Yamcha. Thanks to the numerous posters plastered all over Sharpner's bedroom walls, it was easy to recognise the Titans' star batter. The unique scars on his face meant there was no mistaking it.

There wasn't anyone else in the picture that she could recognise. The only other thing that caught her attention was a woman with oddly coloured hair doing her best to focus on the camera and ignore the wandering eyes of an old man.

Her next stop was the pictures from the second tournament. Again, she could see Goku, Krillin and Yamcha grouped together - although the future baseball star was now wearing the same orange gi as the other two. The article that the picture was embedded in mentioned that Goku went on to fight in an incredibly competitive final, almost forcing Tien Shinhan into a stalemate. While that was hardly new information to Videl, she noted an interesting tidbit that mentioned the two had become friends after gaining a mutual appreciation for each other following the tournament's conclusion.

Perhaps she would have the most luck tracking down Tien. After all, how easy was it to blend in with a crowd when your forehead housed a third eye?

Pictures from the last tournament Goku fought in were few and far between. She knew who the eight fighters were in the finals off the top of her head. She decided maybe rewatching the tournament with her new perspective of the fighters would help, so Videl searched her tape collection for her copy of the tournament.

When she failed to locate the relevant cassette, she frowned for a moment or two before her eyes widened in realisation: she'd forgotten that she lent it to Gohan as part of the collection she had tasked him with studying.

She opened her laptop and found a video on the web which lacked the fanfare of the official tape, but had all the main fights. Once she had overcome the mild inconvenience, she grabbed her whiteboard and pressed 'play'.

Videl skimmed over the quarter-finals, taking a few moments to pay special attention to Goku's fight with 'Anonymous' given the discovery she had made the other day. She snickered a little at the fight's cheesy conclusion before turning her sights towards the main event, namely Goku's fight with Tien.

It was a little hard to avoid drawing comparisons between the way they fought and the way Saiyaman routinely rounded up criminals. The speed at which they were moving at, the techniques they were using…

She shook her head before refocusing on the video. Being hyper-focused on Saiyaman had led her astray before and besides, she had to pay close attention to the interaction between the previous tournament's two finalists.

That article seemed accurate, after all. The two appeared to be friendlier with each other for while their last bout was a desperate slog to emerge victorious, this one seemed to have a relaxed aura about it even though the level of skill on display was equivalent.

If she wanted to stretch things, that left her with three possible candidates to help her discover more about the elusive Son family: Krillin, Yamcha and Tien.

She wasn't sure who to go after first, mostly because she wasn't sure where to start when it came to locating any of them. She didn't know much about baseball and she didn't even know what Krillin and Tien had been up to since their last appearance at a World Martial Arts tournament. There was the possibility of using her police ties to obtain some information she could work with, but that seemed like an abuse of power.

'Maybe Dad can help with this,' she thought to herself.

...

Yamcha flung his bat and helmet to the side and looked towards Puar. The game had been terribly boring and the ex-bandit couldn't help but notice the parallels between it and what his life had become recently: soulless and uninspired.

Sometimes he missed hanging out with his friends like back in the good old days, but that was neither here nor there now. Krillin and Bulma both had families of their own and Goku was likely up to his usual shenanigans in Other World.

Being a professional athlete when there was no-one in the entire stadium even remotely on his level was perhaps the most insipid thing he had settled for since he first met Puar all those years ago. It certainly paid the bills, though.

"How was the game, Yamcha?" Puar squeaked, the floating cat's voice rising a pitch on his name as always.

"We won. I decided to only hit a homer once today, for fairness," he explained. In some games, he hit a homer at every second opportunity but in others, he grounded out or popped the ball up when the Titans had a lead to keep things equitable. He made his money and earned his fame, but the repetitiveness grew dull.

Everything had grown a bit dull, honestly.

Which is why it surprised him to hear his doorbell ring. The momentary surge of excitement that coursed through his body was stillborn, however, as he realised that it was probably just another supermodel whose name he wouldn't be able to bring himself to remember in the morning looking for a good time.

He grumbled as he made his way to the door, Puar hovering above him as if to make her disapproval even more obvious. She didn't agree with his actions, but she never judged him for them. She knew he was just trying to make the most of his situation.

Perhaps tonight would mark a turning point in his days of tepid debauchery. With how colourless things had been since he and Bulma broke things off, he was finally beginning to understand why Goku preferred to live in a remote house off somewhere in the wilderness.

He opened the door and blinked hard. Instead of the attractive temptress he had been expecting to see was a scrawny looking high-school student wearing an oversized white tee and biker shorts.

"Uhhh…" He took a few moments to collect his thoughts before speaking. "Hello?"

The girl immediately spoke to him, no greeting at all. "I'm Videl and I was wond-"

"Sorry kid, I don't do autographs anymore," he said before pausing. "And say, how'd you get past security anyway?"

There were a few security guards posted outside his house to keep his legions of adoring fans from troubling him. Yamcha didn't exactly need the security, but it kept him from being bothered and allowed him some privacy.

The serious expression on her face gave way to an embarrassed one as she looked towards the ground. "I kinda snuck in. I jumped the fence when he wasn't looking."

Yamcha considered the girl for a second time. She was pretty short, truth be told, and his fence was easily a few metres high. That was pretty impressive for a normal person when he considered that she did it all without being detected.

"I could have you arrested, y'know?" Yamcha said after a moment. Something in the girl's eyes told him that she didn't doubt it. She really was determined to meet him. "How about this? I show you my personal collection of balls, you pick something, I sign it, and you go on your merry way?"

She hesitated for a moment or two before agreeing. Yamcha's eyes narrowed in suspicion, but he invited her in nonetheless.

He sat her down in the room where he kept all his baseball junk. Championship winning bats, record-breaking balls, old jerseys - collectively, it would all easily be worth in excess of two billion zeni.

"So what's your favourite game?" he asked. Yamcha didn't make a habit of giving his stuff out, but he figured that he couldn't possibly put it to good use anyway. He felt that his baseball days wouldn't last for too much longer.

"Actually, I'm not here for an autograph or anything - in fact, I don't even know that much about baseball," said Videl. "I'm here-"

Yamcha sighed. "Kid, you're too young for me. And why are you trying to do this anyway? Go find someone who'll treat you right."

The adolescent was now beet red. She cleared her throat. "Thank you for that. I'm… umm… not here for that either."

Yamcha smiled unabashedly at her. She didn't seem to have malicious intentions, but then again he had never been the best judge of character. "So what are you here for then?"

"Well, if you'd just let me finish I'd tell you," she said as irritation flashed across her features. He couldn't help but see a bit of Bulma in her even though they looked nothing alike.

She took his silence as her cue. "I've been trying to gather some information on Son Goku and I thought you'd be an excellent place to start."

Yamcha's eyes widened in surprise. "Son Goku, you say? What's gotten someone like you interested in a dead man?"

"It's for this project I'm doing," she replied. "I wanted to find out more about him, but he's not alive anymore and I can't find anything about any of his other friends."

Yamcha laughed nervously as he tried to determine exactly what was going on. "Isn't coming out all the way here to talk to me a little much for a high school research project? Don't most of you folks just plug questions into a search engine and call that a good day's work these days?"

"I'm really interested in this project, though," she said. "I've always had a passion for martial arts and Goku's been one of my heroes since I was a kid. Alongside Tien Shinhan, Krillin, and yourself, of course."

So she was a fan after all, just one that was more interested in his fighting days than his baseball ones. Unlike the others who had all had decent showings at each of the tournaments, Yamcha had only ever made it to the quarterfinals so people tended to focus on his baseball career.

"Well, what do you want to know?" he asked, figuring that as long as he left out the parts about thousand-foot-long eternal dragons and Super Saiyans answering a few questions wouldn't do any harm.

"What kind of person was he?"

"The best kind," said Yamcha after a few moments of thought. "He cared about doing right by those around him, about doing right by the world. He was the type to pick up an injured bird lying on the sidewalk and nurse it back to full health, if you know what I mean."

Videl nodded. "So people - his friends - liked his personality?"

Yamcha laughed loudly at that. "Well, it could get a little annoying if you were in the same room as him for too long - he had a heart of gold, yes, but he was never the sharpest tool in the shed - but yeah. We all loved him dearly."

"And was he a family man?" she asked next.

The ex-bandit paused and took a few moments to think about the question. "That's a difficult one. He loved his wife and son very much, but he was so incredibly passionate about martial arts that it felt like it isolated them sometimes. I can't say anything with certainty because I don't know myself, to be frank."

"I've heard that being truly dedicated to your craft sometimes comes at the cost of pushing away those close to you," Videl suggested as an explanation.

"Yeah, don't have to tell me twice," lamented Yamcha before the life suddenly sprang back into his eyes. "So what's your craft anyway, kid? I can tell you're in high school, but what do you want to be? A journalist?"

"Nah, I hate journalists," muttered Videl, much to Yamcha's confusion before she answered, "a detective."

"You mean like for the police?" he asked and she nodded in response. Yamcha wolf-whistled. "I can't say I've met too many people with that ambition, at least after they understand what following through with it entails."

"What can I say?" Videl shrugged. "I like solving mysteries."

Yamcha chuckled nervously. "Wait, I'm not like under investigation or anything, am I?"

"No, nothing like that," said Videl. "I'm not even a real cop… yet."

"What do you mean by 'real cop?'" asked the perplexed baseball superstar.

"I help the police deal with petty thugs and crooks around my city," explained Videl.

"Oh, that's umm nice," stammered Yamcha as his eyes narrowed. "Which city?"

"Satan City," Videl said with an odd look on her face. "I flew here by my jet-copter."

Yamcha's eyebrows rose curiously. What kind of teenager could afford a jet-copter?

"Sorry, I didn't, uhh, catch your last name before," said Yamcha as a look of realisation began to dawn on his face.

In the end, she didn't really even need to say it.

"Satan. Videl Satan."

...

This chapter was brought to you by Kakarot Son and DarkVoid116.

Team Dragon Star is a collaborative effort headed by different writers to bring you stories like this one.