Chapter Eighteen: Complications

Chapter Notes: -

A/N: -

There was a tense air around Capsule Corporation.

The appearance of both Pan and Knead had everyone confounded to silence and they could only watch as the scene played out before them.

Knead let go of his grip on Pan's clothes and settled her down on the floor.

He pressed his forefinger and thumb on the gap between his eyes and heaved out a long sigh.

"I have a long explaining to do. Can we go up to some place more private?"

The group found themselves once again leaving to walk up to Gohan's room.

"You can come out now, by the way, Lemon," Knead said to no one in particular.

Like how Knead appeared out of thin air, a red-haired girl too appeared.

She looked very much like Lime except without her confident looks. Instead, she had large eyes that seemed to constantly threaten to cry at any moment in time. Even her lips formed a comical horrified look about them.

"This is Lemon, my half sister."

Lemon ran towards Knead's side and hid behind him.

As she peered at the group with wide, scared eyes, Videl noticed something brown and distinct from Knead's side.

"I-is, is that a tail?" she asked with wonder.

"Oh my, you're right."

Pan looked with disdain at the two and folded her arms.

"Okay, explain while we move to the room. I have questions and I want them answered."

Lemon shied away even more behind Knead at this forceful statement.

Gohan took one long look at her and realised something.

"Hey, I feel like I acted the same way before when Dad first took me to Master Roshi's island and introduced me to everyone!"

He smiled, reminiscing about those times. That's right. He was a coward before he came under the tutelage of Piccolo.

"Uwa, uwa uwa uwa!" Lemon exclaimed. "It really is daddy! He looks so young."

"Okay, we don't have time for this. Move it you big baby," Pan said impatiently. "Geez, really. You look like you're the same age as Knead but you're acting like a five year old."

"Hey!" Knead said.

"What? I'm only telling the truth."

Seeing that arguing would result to nothing, Knead just sighed and shook his head.

"Whatever, let's go."

Once they reached the room, Pan began asking Knead a barrage of questions while all three of the girls crowded around Lemon and spoilt her by giving her food and drinks.

"Ohhh, she's adorable!" Erasa exclaimed.

Lime was blushing and glancing at Gohan and Lemon and asked the child, "Are you… my daughter?"

Lemon looked at the ground with downcast eyes and said sadly, "I am and I'm not."

The girls were stunned to silence until Videl asked, "What do you mean you are and you're not?"

"The reason why Knead treats me very well even though I'm only his half sister is because we're born from the same mother. Which means you," she pointed at Erasa.

Before anyone could interrupt her, she continued.

"Following my great grandfather's death - your grandfather, Mr. Lao - during the hospital fire, you became rather… reckless, so to speak. You went and picked a fight with daddy but he refused so you ran away to find the Dragon Balls on your own. That's when you met with an accident. It was bad and the surgery performed to save your life forced the doctors to remove your womb."

Knead decided to join the conversation and sat down on the bed beside Gohan while Pan on the other side.

"Many things happened after that and to make a long story short, you and mum - I don't know if she was already in love with dad at that time - decided that fighting over dad would only make it difficult for him to choose so you both agreed to share him."

"But you couldn't have children so after Knead was born, Bulma helped with the fertilisation process between you and dad and Erasa agreed to bear me."

"Wait, what does that have to do with me affecting your future?" Pan interjected.

"Okay. There are two theories about time travelling. One that involves the butterfly effect where if someone were to go back in time and change something, it would affect the whole future.

"The other theory is parallel worlds. If someone travelled back in time and made a change, another world will be made, hence the future from where that person came from would not be affected."

"Right," Pan agreed. "But it has been proven from the stories I heard from grandpa about a future Trunks coming to warn them about the androids that the latter is true. So that's not a theory anymore but a fact."

Knead and Lemon nodded.

"That's what we knew too. But then…"

"In the future where we came from, Bulma and Vegeta have a daughter called Bulla Briefs-"

"Hey there's one from the future where I come from too!" Pan exclaimed excitedly. "She's my best friend and- oh, right."

She stopped when she saw Videl scowl at her.

Knead cleared his throat. "Ahem. Yeah, so Bulla is about our age. We were all hanging out when all of a sudden she started growing older right in front of our very eyes."

"Not very old mind you, just about two to five years older, I reckon."

Everyone in the room sat in silence as they heard this piece of information.

"We couldn't pinpoint the problem. It could have been a result of anything from being exposed to radiation too much in Capsule Corporation to perhaps some unknown effect on half-Saiyan women to even some unknown enemy performing magic on her!"

"So we did the only thing that we could come up with and asked the Eternal Dragon."

"For some unknown reason, there's a time rift that happened here that connected our world to this current timeline."

After everyone listened, Pan folded her arms and put her nose up in the air.

"Hmmph! Well that's your problem and not mine," she said flatly.

Knead glared at her but didn't argue.

"You're right. It's our problem so stop messing with this timeline anymore than necessary."

"What, you think it's my fault that Bulla started growing older right in front of your eyes?"

"Well from what I saw and heard, you won against Vegeta and now he's obsessed about making a daughter so who's fault do you think it is?"

Pan rolled her eyes.

"Whatever, I'm done here. I've already said what I needed to say. Papa, don't use the Dragon Balls anymore."

She got up and left.

Knead grit his teeth.

"Tsk. Selfish woman!" then he turned to look at the group and said, "Anyway, me and Lemon are going to stay to continue observing the situation. When we see that things have stabilised back to how they were, we'll leave."

"Wait, so where are you guys going to stay?"

"We can camp out in the wild somewhere. There's houses in DynoCaps remember?"

"I have an idea. Why don't you stay with me?" Lime suggested.

"Rejected. We don't know what our presence will do to affect the future so we'll observe you all as incognito as possible."

And with that, the situation was settled.

After the talk, everyone left to do their own stuff. Everyone except Gohan and for some reason Videl who stayed back.

Something had been bugging her the whole time since all these superhuman events started.

She stood in front of Gohan. She was a whole head or more shorter than him but she was undaunted.

"Alright, so…" she said in an accusing tone. "You really are the Great Saiyaman, huh?"

Gohan gulped. There really was no way that he could hide nor deny that fact now.

Of course, he didn't reveal himself, but after everything that happened, anyone could make the connections between the clues dropped by Pan, Knead and Lemon.

He sighed.

"Well, I guess I can't lie to you. Yes, I'm the Great Saiyaman," he finally admitted.

"And the Golden Warrior?"

"All me," he said resignedly.

Videl thought for a moment and nodded her head.

"Good. Right, I have a proposal."

"Erm, wha-?"

"Let me rephrase that. I'll make you an offer you can't refuse."

"Yes?"

"Join the World Martial Arts Tournament and teach me how to fly. I may not look like it, but I'm a fast learner. I'm sure I can catch up to you and that Vegeta guy until that time," she said with certainty.

"And if I refuse?"

"I'll let everyone know your secret."

Gohan didn't take long to give his reply, but his reply wasn't quite what Videl expected.

"Go ahead. Let everyone know. I'm sure no one will believe you."

"But-"

"No buts, Videl. I'm doing this for your own good. You don't know what you're dealing with here."

"Yes, I do."

"No, you don't," he said in a tone that clearly meant 'Don't argue'. "You don't so give it up, okay? I don't want you to hurt yourself."

Videl blushed. Just a bit. But this was no time for romantic feelings.

She was a very stubborn woman.

"I hate it when men treat me like I'm delicate, Gohan. I'm SURE I can handle it," she grit her teeth. "I'm going to show Dad and that pineapple haired man and everyone…" she added under her breath.

Of course, Gohan didn't miss that.

He firmly shook his head and stated in a final tone, "No."

Angry at being rejected, Videl expressed her frustration.

"You… you…! Urgh! I hate you!" she shouted, then kicked him in the shins.

This had the reverse effect of hurting her instead.

Clutching her aching foot, she grumbled tersely and left Gohan's room.

As soon as she left her father's room, Pan headed straight for her Time Travelling machine.

She had accomplished what she needed to do (in a sense, she thought to herself), and was prepared to leave.

"Papa, I hope you heed my words," she thought to herself.

She hopped into the pilot's seat, set the coordinates and double checked to make sure everything was set correctly. Satisfied, she pulled the lever that would throttled her back into the future. She braced herself for the uncomfortable and painful feeling of being squeezed through a narrow tube but the sensation didn't come.

Something was wrong.

"Eh?" she uttered aloud in surprise.

She wasn't very smart but from what Bulma taught her, if she encountered problems with the machine, she shouldn't really press the red troubleshooting button multiple times in case she gets shot forward in time too much, but she forgot that and did anyway.

Fortunately nothing happened.

"Crap. What am I supposed to do now?" she panicked.

She wasn't as smart as Bulma and Trunks and she certainly didn't get her father's brains so adrenaline fuelled fear gripped her.

Maybe…

That's right! Maybe she could get Bulma to examine the machine!

True, the current Bulma might not know the specifics of the machine, but with luck, since she invented the machine in the future in the first place, she'll be able to figure out how.

She estimated that it would take at most a month if she looked at it positively - which is still a long time - but as she walked down the hallway in search for Bulma's ki she could only resign herself that predicament since she didn't really have another option.

It took a while to find her, but Pan managed to get Bulma to spare some time in her busy schedule to check on Time Machine.

"Hm, at least it doesn't look damaged externally to me," Bulma concluded.

"What do you think is wrong with it?"

Bulma took another look at the machine and said, "I can't really tell, kiddo. I'll have to run some tests but I can't guarantee anything since I don't know anything about the technology from the future."

Pan looked dejected and said, "Can I at least stay and watch you run those tests? I might be able to help."

Bulma took a quick glance at her watch - a notion that Pan didn't miss - and said, "Honestly, I have a meeting to attend, but I'll see if I can spare a few more minutes. Hey, it's not that bad. I'll be back at night and we can continue looking through this together, alright?"

"Yeah…"

Her reply was unenthusiastic. She wanted to go back to her own timeline as soon as possible.

And so, Bulma capsulised the Time Machine and went to her testing lab where she and Pan ran some simple tests to try and find out what was wrong.

They haven't gotten very far with the testing when all of a sudden, Pan felt a pang of nausea. Her vision blurred and she felt a rising urge to vomit which she thankfully managed to stop herself from doing.

Large beads of sweat started forming on her forehead and the pain was evident enough on her face for Bulma (who was too engaged in running the tests) to stop and notice.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asked worriedly.

"No…thing…" Pan mumbled in between gasping for breath.

"It doesn't look like nothing. Is that a side effect of time travelling?"

"What do you mean?" Pan asked, but instead of waiting for an answer, she looked at her own hands.

They were clammy, but that wasn't what made them seem off. They looked ghostly white and instead of looking solid, they were shimmering and crackling about similar to how TV channels looked when there was no signal in the old days.

Pan screamed out in horror out of surprise but managed to quickly gain her composure.

The scream seemed to do the job since she instantly felt better and the weird thing happening with her hands stopped.

"Whoa, what was that?" she asked, knowing that there would be no answer.

"I-I don't know, but it seemed pretty bad. Like, your whole body was doing the shimmy… yeah…"

"…"

"Are you sure that's not an effect of Time Travelling?"

"…"

Pan thought for a moment. It was indeed possible that this was some unknown effect of Time Travelling, but from she's heard, when Trunks travelled back in time, there was no such side effects so she wondered.

"…I'm not so sure, but I hope going back to the future where I came from can solve the problem," she finally said.

"Yeah, about that. There doesn't seem to be any internal damage to the machine either. So… no external damage and no internal damage - of course, there's always the possibility that the tests I ran simply aren't up to date with that kind of technology to make an accurate diagnostic - but with these results, I can only conclude that this thing," she tapped the Time Machine, "Has ran out of juice."

Pan smiled, "Great! That means we only need to refuel it and I'm good to go!"

Bulma shook her head.

"Sorry, kiddo. The fuel for this machine isn't something that we currently have on this planet. I can take a sample of whatever's left in the fuselage and analyse it then try to replicate it, but that would at least take me a week or a month at most."

"But-!"

"Sorry, I have to go, I'll get back to you later when I come home," Bulma said hurriedly before she rushed off.

As she watched Bulma head off, Pan clenched her fists hard.

She realised something.

Was it possible that what was happening to Knead and Lemon's timeline happening to hers too? It was unlikely but not impossible.

Perhaps the Shadow Dragons had an ability that linked the timelines of the parallel worlds together.

She shook her head.

She wasn't even sure she could trust those two. For all she knew, they could be lying about coming from another timeline.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more suspicious of them she became.

"Something's off about those two. No, just one of them. The one called Lemon. It's odd that she has a tail. The reason I don't have one is apparently because the Saiyan blood is too thin for 3rd Generation Saiyans like myself."

(A/N: According to Akira Toriyama, the reason why Pan can't go Super Saiyan is because the Saiyan blood becomes too thin from her line onwards. However, Goku Junior and Vegeta Junior who are a generation or two after her could turn into Super Saiyans. Also, he admits that he forgot about giving Trunks and Goten tails but covers it up by explaining that Goten and Trunks don't have tails because of genetics when in fact they should because TT and tt would result in Tt meaning their genes contain information about having tails.)

Whatever it was, she couldn't take any chances. She didn't know if whatever problem they were experiencing from their timeline was happening to hers too so apart from working even harder to convince her father not to use the dragon balls, she resolved that she must first make sure that she wouldn't disappear from existence. She must make sure that her parents - Gohan and Videl - get together.

Videl stormed off Gohan's room.

She knew she shouldn't be angry especially since she was the one who was asking him a favour. In fact, she had less of a reason to be angry when she considered the thought that she essentially tried to blackmail him but for some reason she was pissed off anyway.

"That Gohan… he just makes me so… urgh!" she ground her teeth in frustration.

She didn't know why she was so angry at him.

"'Don't want you to hurt yourself' my foot!" she muttered.

Her face heated up whenever she thought about him and how he cared for her. She knew that he cared for all of his friends but she still felt special and perhaps that's what made her angry.

Along her way she encountered Pan and she wondered, "Hey, didn't you go back to the future?"

Pan blushed red in embarrassment, scratched her cheek the way Gohan does when he was embarrassed and said so similar to him, "Ah, yeah… about that…"

Before the two of them knew it, the mother and her future daughter were walking side by side chatting as if they knew each other for most of their lives (which was the case for Pan).

"I see, so the time machine that you came in ran out of juice, huh?" Videl concluded with a raised eyebrow.

She found it hard to believe and Pan, as though she read Videl's mind, replied, "I know it's a bit hard to believe but yes."

"Hmm, well, what are you going to do now then? Just stay here and wait?"

Before Pan could reply, the same thing happened when she was with Bulma.

"AAAARGH!" she screamed out loud.

Videl watched in horror as if she was watching the scene from a movie. Pan's body fizzed out for a split second before everything went back to normal as if nothing happened.

"Hey, what was that?"

Pan huffed and caught her breath before giving out a calculated reply, "It must be a side effect of time travelling."

Of course, she had other theories namely Gohan and Videl making choices that would end up with them not ending up with each other but she didn't tell Videl that. She realised that if her theory was true, then giving out an honest answer could have negative effects on her timeline so she went for a more subtle approach.

"In any case, you seemed like you were angry when I met you down the hallway. Did something happen between you and Papa?"

This time, without blushing, Videl formed a fist and stared at it while saying through gritted teeth, "That Gohan…"

A large comical sweat drop formed by Pan's temple as she tried to resolve the issue.

"So he won't teach you how to fly and he won't participate in the World Martial Arts Tournament? And that's what's making you angry?" she said while trying to fight back a laugh.

Of course, Videl noticed that and growled, "I have my reasons, okay?"

Wiping off a tear from the corner of her eye, Pan switched to serious mode. She knew that the World Martial Arts Tournament and Gohan teacher Videl how to fly were key points in them forming a relationship. She knew the seriousness of the matter but couldn't help laugh at her mother's childish reaction anyway. Still, this was indeed a problem and she added two and two together thus concreting her theory on why she was experiencing these fizzing out intervals.

Looking at her mother seriously, she started, "Mama…"

Videl who was lost in her own world of petty anger felt a shiver run down her spine.

It was weird being called that. Maybe she would feel different in the future, but for now as a teenager, she felt awkward at being called 'mama' by a child who's about half her age. Still, she didn't stop Pan from calling her that and bore with it. She didn't feel like she had the right to.

She met Pan's gaze and met the child's seriousness. She was a person of justice so she gave respect to people when respect was due no matter what their age were.

"I want you to answer truthfully. Do you like Pap- I mean, Gohan?"

"Wha-!"

"Just answer me."

Videl blushed and started twiddling with her fingers.

"Ah, erm… I like… as a friend… yeah…"

Pan gave Videl a bored, scrutinising look and said in a monotonous tone, "Ah, is that so? That's all there is to it?"

"Wh-what? Don't look at me like that! Of course! That's all."

"Well, I'm not fizzing out, so you're obviously lying."

As Pan said this Videl finally asked herself, 'Do I really like Gohan? In a romantic way?'

She didn't want to admit it but her heart told her otherwise.

"…a bit…"

"Sorry? I didn't hear that."

"I said a bit," Videl said in a small voice. "Maybe I like him a bit. In a romantic way, that is."

"Just a bit?" Pan teased with her eyebrows raised, a smug, mocking look on her face obvious for the embarrassed Videl to see.

"Hmmm?" Pan pressed.

"Ah geez! Fine! I like him! I love him! A lot, okay?" Videl admitted in the soundproofed confines of her room. "But I already told him I hate him and he obviously doesn't like me because I hound him too much," she added tersely.

Pan smiled.

Ah youth. She hung out often with Bulla and both of them played with the hearts of many boys their age despite being so young. She had a lot of experience with romance (PG 13 only. Nothing above that) and she couldn't believe how pure and innocent her parents were compared to the kids in her days are.

Whatever it was, she considered it a good thing.

At least she wouldn't have to deal with a lot of drama, she thought as she smiled devilishly, already thinking of playing cupid.

"That's not a problem," she reassured Videl. Then she leaned in close to her mother's ear and whispered, "Right so this is what you should do…"

Videl listened intently and nodded her head vigorously. Whatever Pan was whispering to her was making sense so she didn't really notice the fact that it was a child that was giving her these advice.

End of Chapter Eighteen

To be continued...