Chapter Sixteen: Visitor
Chapter Notes: -
With his acute sense for danger, Son Gohan immediately knew that there was something amiss.
At first he panicked when he saw the dangerous looking machines activate, but after a while, he realised that they weren't harmful in any way and so he tried to calm down his classmates.
However, the die had already been cast. Teenage boys and girls started running around like headless chickens in panic while some tried to be heroes and impress the ladies by putting on a brave facade and putting the said girls behind their backs in a sign that they will protect them no matter what.
The only two people calm in the room were Gohan and Videl.
Videl observed Gohan with keen eyes.
Her memories from yesterday were long recovered and she watched him calmly, no, excitedly, urging him silently to show her more.
'Show me, Gohan,' she thought to herself. 'Show me what you're going to do in this situation.'
She found it hard to believe that the room labelled G.R. that she entered yesterday could alter the Earth's gravity but quickly changed her opinion when she reminded herself where they were staying at.
She found it even harder to believe that Gohan could walk around freely in 10x of Earth's gravity. However, she had seen the feat with her own eyes. That was no illusion or hallucination. She knew that she had found concrete evidence to support her claim that Gohan was the Great Saiyaman (or had strength and power to match the buckethead's at least).
Beside her, Erasa - albeit being in a state of panic herself - still managed to worry for her best friend.
"Is something wrong, Videl?" she asked.
The young blonde girl was genuinely worried for Videl and added, "Are your muscles still hurting from yesterday?" when she saw her best friend's preoccupied gaze.
Videl gave her friend a reassuring smile, "Yeah, only a bit though."
In fact, her muscles were still in agony, but she didn't want to cause Erasa any more worry than necessary.
Erasa noticed that Videl was observing Gohan with interest and she felt a pang of jealous protectiveness over Gohan, but she knew that Videl's gaze wasn't an observation for love. It was a gaze that wanted to uncover Gohan's secrets.
She, being aware of Gohan's secrets, secretly wished that Gohan would just do nothing.
She felt privileged to know things about Gohan that others did not and a part of her wanted to keep it that way. However, she wasn't a selfish woman so she too joined Videl in observing Gohan to see what he would do.
Surprisingly, Gohan was only trying to call attention to himself and calm everyone down. The two girls didn't know that Gohan knew that there was no real danger.
In Videl's head, she was already thinking, 'I see. So you would rather keep your secret than save these people's lives. How despicable, Gohan.'
However, before she could continue, Gohan suddenly tensed up and changed his aloof look to one of seriousness. She didn't have to know how to sense auras to know that something had changed.
Gohan disappeared from her eyesight and before she knew it, the machines were being taken down one by one. Cold sweat trickled down her back as observed the feat before her. It was impossible to follow Gohan's movements with her eyes.
"How can he move so fast?" she thought to herself.
This kind of speed was already past what humans could hope to achieve. This strengthened her doubts about her father's capabilities. "My dad definitely can't move that fast. If he can do this, I wonder how strong he is? Could it be that he really is the one who beat Cell?"
Thankfully, nobody in the room other than Videl and Erasa saw Gohan take the machines down. That was the reason why Gohan moved at that speed in the first place.
By the time Gohan was done, everyone other than Videl and Erasa had already evacuated the area. Trunks, after worrying about how to solve the problem and seeing Gohan take care of it, had already made himself scarce. Heaving a big sigh like he just completed a chore, Gohan started becoming weary after feeling the stares that he got. A stare of admiration, a piercing stare. Erasa and Videl were both looking at him but for different reasons.
"How am I supposed to explain myself now?" Gohan wondered to himself.
With her signature glare, Videl took a step forward and opened her mouth when suddenly, a blinding flash of light froze all three of them on the spot.
Gohan could make out the outline of something where the light came from and he felt like he had seen this happen before. Yes. Once when he was a kid. Could it be?
He felt a surge of excitement grip him. That and a sense of wariness.
He had only witnessed the light once, but it probably happened twice. Sure enough, a large space-craft looking thing with Capsule Corporation's logo materialised before their eyes.
"This is not good," Gohan concluded.
Expecting to see his good friend that he hadn't seen in seven years, Gohan on one hand felt joy. On the other hand, however, that same friend had been the harbinger of bad news from the future.
Expecting a tall guy with a head of purple hair, Gohan was greeted by the unexpected sight of an orange bandanna.
Wearing the bandanna was a short girl as tall as up to his belly button who looked very much like his mother during her teenage years. The resemblance was so uncanny that Gohan unintentionally screamed out "MOM?!"
"Papa!" the girl cried out.
Rushing towards Gohan, the girl gave the teen a bear hug.
Taken aback by the cry and the sudden action, Gohan stood still, taken aback.
He tried to detach the girl from him gently by gripping her shoulders softly, but he felt the girl's shoulders tremble. Hearing small sniffles, Gohan understood that the girl was crying. Feeling awkward and not knowing what to do, he looked towards the girls with eyes that clearly meant, 'Help, what am I supposed to do?'
Both Erasa and Videl too were taken aback by the girl's words, but seeing Gohan look like a lost puppy, Videl could only shrug while Erasa walked up to the girl and said kindly, "Hey, it's okay. We're not going to run away from you so you can let go of Gohan now. Do you like cakes? Maybe we can go up to my room and talk over tea," she suggested.
Looking at Erasa with slight animosity in her eyes, the girl nodded her acknowledgement.
At Satan City General Hospital, Sherry didn't proceed to Mr. Lao's room after she got the information from the front desk. Instead, she went about and disguised herself as one of the staff. The security was rather lax, so she managed to do this easily.
There was an odd smell of petrol all over the hospital.
Those that noticed lodged complaints and the staff tried to search for the problem starting with the air-conditioning and ventilation system.
None of them guessed that it was the new cleaner's fault for mopping the floor with petrol.
It took quite a bit of time to cover the whole hospital floor with a layer of gasoline, but Sherry had done it. She especially put more around the floor where Mr. Lao stayed. Now, taking off her disguise, she smiled wickedly and licked her lips at the thought of how much money she would be making once she completed this job.
She poured some gasoline along the road, quite a ways off from the hospital as a buffer zone for herself before pretending to take a smoke, puffing through half a cigarette and discarding it on the ground.
The effect was instant. Like falling dominoes, fire followed the line of gasoline, burning the hospital down. People's screams could be heard in the distance and, try as they might, the fire was too large to be put out by mere fire extinguishers. The sprinklers weren't working despite having been recently serviced.
In a mere thirty minutes, a 1029 hospital patients, visitors and staff members were burned alive.
Lime hummed merrily to herself as she walked back from the convenience store to the hospital.
She was happy that her grandfather had made it through.
As she walked, she saw a familiar face from the village.
"Sherry?" wondered aloud.
"Huh? Lime?"
Sherry didn't expect to meet Lime on the way back, but with her quick wit, she instantly formed a plan to take up the girl's time just in case she ran back and see the blazing inferno and try to save her grandfather.
"Sherry!" Lime exclaimed happily. "How are you?"
"Not bad, and yourself?"
"Good, good. Did you come to visit grandpa?"
Lime was good friends with Sherry because the girl always visited her grandfather to give him food.
Sherry smiled, "Yeah. I'm so glad to see that he's okay," she lied. In fact, she hadn't seen Mr. Lao at all, but she wasn't going to say that.
Lime's eyes became slightly watery as she said, "Yeah. Now I just have to worry about paying for the hospital bills," she laughed.
Acting the good friend part, Sherry patted Lime's back and offered to go for a cup of coffee and have a slice of cake. Her treat, of course.
Back in Erasa's room, the girl wearing the bandanna clung to Gohan like super glue.
Bulma dropped by to talk about what happened in Cerebro briefly before leaving them to themselves to talk to the other students.
There was a short silence where everyone munched on their cakes before Videl's curiosity got the better of her.
"Hey, kid, what did you mean when you called Gohan 'papa'?"
Her opinion of Gohan dropped as she thought him to be a womaniser who could even have a child.
Erasa, Gohan and Videl held their breaths as they waited for the girl to give an answer. She had a conflicted look in her face.
In fact, she made a serious blunder. She wasn't supposed to call Gohan 'papa' as it may drastically change the future. There would be a possibility that she wouldn't be born. She was just so happy to see her father alive and well that she made that mistake. However, she couldn't take it back now, so she decided that it was better for her not to exist than to live the future from where she came from.
"My name is Pan," she began. She looked at Videl with all seriousness. She knew the raven-haired girl's attitude very well, so she spoke like she was stepping on thin ice. "I'm your and Gohan's daughter."
Erasa looked like she was about to faint from that revelation while Gohan blushed furiously at the thought and exclaimed, "What?!"
Videl on the other hand smiled sweetly. The kind of smile that meant shit was about to go down.
"Oh, really?" she said while smiling.
It wasn't a question. It was more of a statement.
Suddenly, her face contorted with rage and she bellowed, "Stop joking around, kid! Who would want to marry a nerd like him?"
Now, the apple does not fall far from the tree, they say. Pan inherited all of Videl's fiery personality plus Chichi's too.
"Apparently you like him enough to have sex with him and be pregnant with me, so get over it!"
"Wha-?" Videl was taken slightly aback from the reply. "You're a year 8 kid. You should be about twelve. What do you know about sex?" she blushed.
"They teach you that in SexEd in primary school, duh!" Pan rolled her eyes.
The truth was, Videl becomes less fiery when she becomes older and she would more often than not spoil Pan. So Pan wasn't used to being spoken to like this. At the moment, she didn't feel like she was talking to her mother but an unreasonable teen.
Erasa and Gohan watched as the Videl and Pan exchanged retorts, wondering what to do.
"Ugh! And what proof do you have that I'm your mother?" Videl screeched irritably.
"You have a mole the shape of the shape of Australia on your left butt cheek about two centimetres big."
"Wha-?! I do NOT!" Videl said embarrassedly.
"Yes you do! You take baths with me and I help you scrub your back. In fact you trim because papa doesn't like it shaved, you gossipped to me just the other day while we were bathing."
"Lies! You probably installed cameras in my house, you stalker!"
At that statement, Pan hit her palm with the side of her fist as if she remembered something.
"Speaking of cameras," she pulled out a locket that she wore on her neck.
Opening it, she showed everyone.
On the picture was a woman with a bob cut kissing a spiky haired man. In the woman's arms was a baby.
The kissing couple looked older, but it was definitely Gohan and Videl.
There was silence in the room once more as people tried to take this information in.
Finally, Erasa spoke, "So you really are from the future, huh?"
Pan looked at Erasa with animosity again. Knowing how things are going, the future may drastically be changed and she knew that Erasa would be one of her mother's competitors for Gohan's heart. But fortunately, she was polite enough to put that difference aside. She came here with a mission after all.
"Yes. I came to give you a warning."
"Hold on a second, even though this picture proves something, I still don't believe it. You probably photoshopped this or something," Videl argued.
Pan sighed. Now that she was in a serious mood, she reprimanded Videl, "Mum, I know things about you that only you and I know. The things we shared together and all. Do you really want me to run through the whole list for you in front of papa and Erasa?"
"I-"
Videl shut her mouth and admitted defeat at last.
"Okay, so mine and Gohan's daughter," she stated the obvious.
"Yes."
She looked at Gohan and blushed deep red. She was in denial before, but now she understood. What she felt for Gohan was love. She was in love with Gohan.
"Ahem. Okay, that's enough you love birds, let's hear what Pan has to say," Erasa interrupted, noticing the atmosphere.
"Oh, uh, yeah… right," Gohan mumbled. He too blushed red.
"Papa, I want you to promise me one thing."
"Uh, yes?"
"Papa, never use the Dragonballs ever again. Not even the Namekian Dragonballs."
"What? Why?"
"You and mum will get married after high school. At least, that's how it was supposed to be. That's two years from now. One year after that, I will be born. I'm 13 years old now, so 16 years from now, the calamity will happen."
(A/N: In Japan, they follow 3 years of middle school and 3 years of high school if I'm not wrong.)
"Go on," Gohan urged.
"I don't exactly know how many times the Dragonballs will be used in the span of 16 years, but what I know is that the Dragonballs will crack after accumulating negative energy and the Shadow Dragons will be born."
What Pan didn't know was that the Shadow Dragons were born from the Black Star Dragonballs, but that hardly mattered since the accumulation of negative energy came from the use of the normal and the Namekian Dragonballs anyway.
"Those Shadow Dragons destroy everything. Not even grandpa at his Super Saiyan 3 mode can stop them."
"Wait, there's a mode even greater than Super Saiyan 2? And not even that can stop them?"
Gohan felt like he was spiralling downward. Seven years ago, he was the youngest person to reach Super Saiyan mode. And the first one to reach Super Saiyan 2. He knew how much power he could wield and how hard it was to beat Cell even in that mode. If there's a Super Saiyan 3 mode and not even that could stop these Shadow Dragons, he wondered how much of a monster these Shadow Dragons would be.
There was a short silence from Gohan while Erasa and Videl tried to digest the information and follow the conversation.
Suddenly, there was a voice inside everyone in the room's head.
"Super Saiyan 3 and Shadow Dragons? That sounds fun!"
Lime's knees gave out.
She watched as Satan City General Hospital burned to ashes.
She was already far too late to save her grandfather.
She didn't want to accept it. She ran as far as her legs could carry her and before she knew it, she was already at Capsule Corporation. She asked around for Gohan and was directed by Bulma to Erasa's room. She didn't know that she had been followed by a certain blonde male (Bulma didn't notice and just thought of him as another one of the students).
She entered the room without knocking and stormed in.
"Gohan, why didn't you save my grandfather?!" she screamed at Gohan.
She was deeply upset and started crying while thumping at Gohan's chest weakly.
"You're the Great Saiyaman, right? Why didn't you stop the fire at Satan City General Hospital?" she sobbed. "Why didn't you save my grandfather?"
Feeling sorry for the girl, Gohan embraced her gently and patted her back softly. He didn't know what to do.
"If that's the case, why don't you just wish him back with the Dragonballs?" a voice in everyone's head said.
End of Chapter Sixteen
To be continued...