Chapter 1: Enter the Dragon Trio
It was a normal day at Kame House in the year Age 774, which meant that as per usual, the sun was shining its warm rays on the small lone island. Meanwhile, the ocean's waves were gently lapping against the island's shore, and a soft, cooling breeze was wafting its way through the three palm trees that rested near the lone pink framed, red roofed home that was the centerpiece of the small tropical atoll.
Above the trees, as a light gust of wind blew through the miniature slice of tropical paradise, was the creaking sound of Kame House's rooster-shaped weather vane as it moved from north to northwest.
And on this day, sitting outside behind the house with her legs crossed in the Lotus pose, was a small girl. Her eyes were closed shut as her mind was deep in meditation.
Her outfit consisted of dark blue training shoes, an orange tank top with a matching colored pair of pants, a black cloth belt wrapped around her small waist, and two matching blue wrist bands. Resting on her back was a large dark blue colored turtle shell that dwarfed her small body by a comical amount.
The last noticeable thing about the girl's uniform was a large circle with the kanji for turtle printed on the back, with a small patch that lay on the front side of her outfit near her heart that shared the same kanji.
The gust of wind blew a few strands of blond hair and the little girl opened her eyes, suddenly ceasing her meditation. Like her father, her eyes lacked whitened irises, though in its place was a peach/pink hybrid that matched the rest of her body's skin tone flawlessly. Like her mother, the young girl's pupils were a nice shade of blue in place of her father's black. Turning her head, she looked up at the sky, and could see in the distance a small shape that was fast approaching the island.
More importantly, she could sense the being's ki, and thankfully knew the person that said massive power belonged to was a friend.
With that, the blond little girl uncrossed her legs, stood up, and stretched the back of her arms before moving on to her legs. After she had finished, she walked around to the front of the house and went inside, where her mother, her father, and her martial arts master were preoccupied.
Her mother was watching a dated sitcom from over 20 years ago, her knuckles rested on what looked like a very bored face while her father and her master were currently deep in concentration due to a game of Go Fish.
"I just thought that I would let everyone know Mr. Son Gohan will be here in approximately a minute and a half."
Her mother gave an indifferent grunt, her naturally narrowed eyes still glued to the TV screen. Both her father and master looked up from their card game, looks of momentary surprise soon replaced by joy, when they located Gohan's fast approaching energy signal.
"Man Roshi," her father said as he set his hand of cards on the table face down. "We must have been into our game something fierce to not notice Gohan of all people coming in like that."
The Turtle Hermit gave a sage nod of his baldhead, his snow-white long beard bobbing up and down as he did so.
"You're telling me…" After rubbing his beard in thought, the old man turned to his student's daughter. "Thank you for telling us Marron."
Marron, as she always did, smiled warmly at her master's praise.
DBZ
Moments later Gohan Son, the son of Goku and the one who had defeated the monstrous being known as Cell many years ago, touched down on the island in front of the Kame House, where all four of its residents were waiting for him.
"Hey Krillin!" Gohan said, grinning as he gave them a friendly wave.
"Hey buddy." Krillin did his best to hold back a snort. "You lose a bet or something?"
Gohan, though a pair of bulky black sunglasses that covered his eyes, gave the shorter man a confused look. "What do ya mean?"
"I mean ya look like you just came from a costume store that was going out of business."
"That, or you dropped out of clown collage." 18 added, a small sarcastic smile spreading to her thin lips as she said this.
Gohan was clearly flustered as he put up his hands in defense. "Hey, Bulma came up with this thing herself in order to protect my identity for the 25th World Martial Arts Tournament."
"Pity," 18 commented with a voice that was a blend of playful mockery and her normal monotone voice. "I can only hope that her brain hasn't faded as poorly as her sense of fashion has. After all, 17 and I still need someone to keep us in working order."
Krillin arched a black eyebrow up. "Why are you competing in the World Tournament for? Ever since that grease ball Hercule Satan won the last one, the whole thing's kinda gone downhill, hasn't it?"
And so, Gohan went and explained why exactly it was that he was competing in the 25th World Tournament, and why he was wearing the ridiculous getup he was wearing (outside of protecting his identity he apparently had plans on becoming a superhero of all things).
He also mentioned that a very handsome sum of Zenni would be awarded to the first five place winners. But the biggest news of all, no doubt, was the fact that his father was coming back from the afterlife for a full 24 hours.
THAT, Marron noticed, had put everyone in a good mood. Especially her father who was still grinning ear to ear along after Gohan had left Kame House.
"Man," Krillin said. "I still can't believe Goku's coming back to life for a whole day."
"Really now?" 18 remarked, her blue eyes looking playfully sarcastic. "After mentioning that fact for the 15th time since Gohan left, you STILL can't believe it?"
Krillin chuckled at his wife's comment. "Alright, alright, point taken. But can you blame me honey? I mean this is Goku we're talking about here after all!"
"True, true." Master Roshi said with another nod. "I'll be good to see the old boy again after all this time, as he's no doubt become even stronger after all these years in the afterlife."
"Just think Marron, you'll finally get to meet daddy's friend after all these years of hearing me and Master Roshi blather on and on about him. Isn't that exciting?"
Marron nodded, trying her best to look as enthused as she could about meeting a man she had never met before.
"Yes father… But-"
Krillin looked at Marron with a confused expression. "But?"
"But I was wondering… could I enter as well?"
"W-WHAT!?" Krillin nearly stumbled and fell down in shock face first. "Y-Y-You can't enter sweetie, you're only 7 years old!"
Marron's eyes narrowed as she gave her father a look of annoyance, and 18 couldn't help but smile inwardly in pride.
"So what, you were only 12 when you and Mr. Goku entered the 21st Tournament, weren't you daddy?"
"I-Well yea, but it was different back then! Everyone was a lot weaker back then and the standards weren't as insane as they are now! Besides, you'll be competing with Super Saiyans-"
"I can spar and keep up with mother pretty well, and she was able to keep up with them. And if I can keep up with her then I know I can wear down Chi and Bra and the rest if I try my hardest!"
Seeing the determined look on his daughter's face, Krillin turned to his wife and former master, his face blanched with drops of sweat that began to form from fear of the idea of his poor Marron going up against someone like Vegeta. The image was not a pretty one. "Help me out here guys!"
"If she wants to do this, then let her, I say."
"Roshi!"
The old hermit raised a hand, cutting Krillin's outrage short.
"Your daughter is a student of the Turtle School, and a fine one at that. She's easily far stronger than either you or Goku were when you were twice her age. AND need I remind you, she completed her training with twice the amount of weight that you two used and has been training constantly since then? If she wishes to prove herself in the tournament, well then far be it from us to keep her from her dream."
Krillin turned to 18.
"You know she has my stubbornness dear, she won't give up until you let her enter," the blond woman said with a small smirk.
Krillin looked back to Roshi, then back to his wife. He sighed.
"Alright Marron," Krillin said as he turned to face his daughter. "You win, you can-"
"OH THANK YOU DADDY! THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!"
"Marron… Can't… breathe."
Marron quickly detached herself at her father's strangled comment, her cheeks pinking slightly in rare embarrassment as she did.
Rubbing the back of his neck with one of his hands, Krillin looked at Marron with a serious expression, which she returned to him with equal intensity. "You are aware that your training will have to be stepped up quite a bit young lady-"
"Don't worry about that, Father," Marron said.
"I'm going to get help in preparing."
"Oh?" Master Roshi asked. "Who exactly did you have in mind?
"Well, I could find Mr. Shinhan or Mr. Yamcha, or I could go to Kami's Lookout and see if I can't convince Mr. Piccolo or Mr. Dende to give me some advanced training, or maybe I could even find Uncle 17 and see if he could help me out some..."
"Do you plan on keeping the turtle shell?" 18 asked while her daughter stood there in thought, her voice neither judging nor criticizing, simply curious.
Marron shook her head, her ponytail smacking back and forth as she did. "No. Bra's been working on a special weighted suit. She says it'll be like a wearable gravity chamber, and I'll be able to adjust it by command alone. Speaking of which, I was planning on going over to West City to see Bra and pick it up today."
"I see." Krillin could feel his shoulders slump a little. Why couldn't she have been the type of little girl who would just be happy to cheer her parents on in the tournament? "Well, good luck kiddo. See you on the day of the tournament I suppose. If you get lost or scared or-"
Marron smiled at him. "I won't daddy, you, mom, and Master Roshi have trained me too well for that."
Krillin felt his body relax at that, a surge of pride swelling from within his breast at his daughter's praise. "I know kiddo, still, you know where everyone's located if you do run into trouble right?"
Marron nodded with a self assured look on her face.
Now it was Krillin's turn to give a small smile. "Then get outta here you! And make sure you train extra hard, ya hear?"
Marron let out a small, childlike laugh and nodded one final time before shooting off in the air, leaving her parents and master behind her in a trail of an off white aura.
When he could no longer see his daughter on the blue horizon, Krillin let out a deep sigh as he folded his arms under his chest.
"Man, I knew that girls were supposed to mature faster then boys, but I didn't think she'd mature that quick."
"What did you expect?" 18 asked. "She is my daughter after all."
"And my student!" Roshi added with a wide grin on his face. "Besides, at least she has some manners on her and watches her tongue, that's certainly more than can be said for Bulma and Vegeta's daughter."
DBZ
Bra Briefs was many things. She was (in no real order): a child genius, an inventor (or at the very least a tinkerer of old inventions of her mothers'), a scientist (or at least a scientist in training), and over all a very mature and intelligent recently turned 7 year old.
She had all of her (human) grandfather and mother's brains in spades, and she knew it. She was proud of it, damn proud of it even. She was proud of her brains, of her maturity for her age, of her being a Brief. And why shouldn't she be?
The Briefs family was a family worthy of respect. Her grandfather had changed the world with his invention of the Hi Poi Capsule (or DynoCaps as some people called them), her grandmother was a sweet soul (who Bra was sure grandpa had made immortal at some point with either his science, his money, or possibly both given that she STILL didn't look a day over 20 even after all this time) that everyone loved, and her mother…
Well, in fairness, her mother was hardly a saint; one can't exactly call someone as moody and short tempered as Bulma Briefs a saint. Let alone the fact that she wound up marrying someone as big a jerk as the Grump, aka her father Vegeta.
And speaking of her father the grump, that brought up the topic of what she wasn't proud of being. What she wasn't proud of was the other half of her bloodline; her Saiyan half as represented by that overblown raspy voiced windbag of a father of hers. She wasn't proud of the fact that her father was a violent jerk, as opposed to just being regular jerk like he was today.
Nor, from what bits and pieces her father told her and Trunks about the Saiyan race, was she proud of her so called "people's" culture. If one could describe what amounted to two stereotypical meat headed men, thumping their chests and punching one another in the arm a culture.
Sounded more like a testosterone drenched excuse to go out into the universe and act like a bunch of space bullies. Say what you would about humans, but at least they had civilization and science, sweet beautiful science, on their side if nothing else.
She was not fond of like training like her older brother Trunks was, or flying (why waste ki when you could have a machine do it for you in comfort and style?) that much, or any of the other crude warrior nonsense that her father forced her older brother to go through.
Or that 'Sayian pride' baloney that her father kept on rambling about when he wasn't ranting about his long dead rival Kakarot or being the Prince of a long since dead race that, when you got right down to it from a technical standpoint, considered of just one member.
So why was it that she was currently in her father's gravity room that lone day in the year Age 774?
Well, the answer to that was twofold: Her father, pompous jerk that he was, was now forcing her to train in order to compete with 'that blasted fool Kakarot's's daughter ChiChi Jr.
The other reason?
Bra had needed to figure out how the gravity chamber worked, and given how possessive (just one of her daddy's oh so many fine qualities) her boar of a father could be, Bra had decided to start training a few months ago with him and then staying a bit afterwards to look at the room's inner workings.
Now, with Marron's suit done, the plan had been to somehow weasel out of training with her father, but as luck would just have to have it, 'that simpleton Kakarot' was coming back on the day of the 25th World Martial Arts Tournament. Which meant double time for her and Trunks to show up Gohan and Chi.
"For goodness sake Bra!" her father barked in his signature raspy and annoyed voice. "You'll never become a Super Saiyan or defeat Kakarot's girl at the rate you're going. We've only got the room up to 15 times the Earth's gravity. Pitiful. Well, at least there's always your brother if nothing else…"
At hearing her older brother's name, Bra felt her left eye start to twitch just a wee bit uncontrollably. Memo to self, Bra thought as she gritted her teeth madly in pain. Make robot to shave off dad's idiotic looking widow's peak at some point in revenge.
When her father had deemed that they had trained enough for the day, Bra madly ran (not flew, mind you) back to her room/laboratory on the second floor of Capsule Corp.'s headquarters.
"Thank Kami, it's finally over!" Bra let her tired, weary body slump to the floor as she inhaled the smell of oils, silicon, copper, electrical circuits, and the other wide assortment of smells that made up her personalized laboratory. Her own Science Sanatorium (aka what would have otherwise been her closet for shopping and clothes had she any interests in either).
"Bad day I take it Bra?"
The lavender haired girl looked up and saw Marron smile at her, a platter of her grandmother's fresh baked cookies resting in one of her hands.
"Your grandma let me in, hope that's okay." the blond martial artist said, offering the plate to the young child genius with the warm, friendly smile that she usually had on her face when visiting the Briefs. Smiles like that made it hard for Bra to believe that cyborg 18 was really her mother, outside of the blond hair of course.
Bra spent no time in snatching all 24 cookies and shoveling them down her throat with barely a chew and a half before swallowing. Marron couldn't help but laugh at that small, barbaric display. "Very Saiyan of you Miss "I'm a human first and foremost'."
Bra could feel her face burning in embarrassment as she swallowed them all in one big gulp. "S-Shut up! You know how much I hate training with my father, the big dumb jerk!"
"Come on, even if he is the Prince of all Grumps, he's still your dad."
"Maybe, but just cuz he's there doesn't make him a good dad. Besides, that's easy for you to say, your dad is one of the nicest people on the planet and your mom's worst crime was taking a third rate cowgirl outfit from a third rate clothing store and a food van. And besides, you know that your mom loves you, all YOU have to put up with is Pervy McBeardFace and his dumb, perverted antics."
"Hey!" Marron's voice was sharply raised and her eyes narrowed in annoyance. The young student of the Turtle Style didn't like it when people focused only on her Master's perverse side… no matter how annoyingly prevalent that side of him was most of the time.
"Perverted or not Master Roshi still deserves our respect. He might not be the world's strongest fighter any more, but he still has more life experience and wisdom then either of us. And THAT makes him worthy of our respect, got it!?"
"Alright, alright," Bra said, resisting the urge to roll back her eyes as she knew that would just make the blond even angrier if she did so.
"No need to get so angry like that Marron. I'm not saying he's not wise, or that he doesn't have more experience living then either of us most likely ever will, or that he isn't worth respecting to an extent. I'm not saying that at all."
"Then what are you saying?" Marron said, voice tense and her eyes narrowed into a glare.
"I'm just saying that regardless of all that, he's a pervert and it becomes kinda hard to take him seriously at times when he acts like a horny 13 year old around our moms."
Marron's only response was to do the best imitation of her mother that she could as she shot her friend a glare that was as cold as an iceberg. Bra simply countered her blue-eyed glare with the best impersonation of her father as she could manage.
The two soon quickly realized the futility of their efforts, and Marron was the first to break eye contact and just drop the topic altogether for the moment.
"So you've finished the suit I take it?"
Bra nodded to her with a wide grin on her face as she gave Marron a thumbs up. "You bet."
Moments later, Marron's normal uniform was thrown on the floor, while she worked the back zipper of the outfit, pulling it up as high as she could make it. Finishing that, she glanced down at her new outfit.
It was the same orange as her regular gi, made of what felt like something similar to a wetsuit, and covered her whole body from the neck down. Unlike her uniform, however, the large circle with the kanji for turtle was on both the front and back of the jumpsuit.
Marron began to throw a few lighting fast punches, which she then followed up with a couple of quick jabbing kicks. The outfit may have slowed her body down just slightly, being only at 40 kilos, but it didn't seem to restrict her body's movement in any way as the suit was made of a very fluid mesh-like material.
"Sorry I wasn't able to add any blue in like your regular uniform.," Bra said with what almost sounded like a hint of sheepishness. "But between my studies, dad's training, and all the other projects I'm working on at the moment I didn't have the time."
"It's fine, so long as the suit does its job," Marron said with a careless shrug.
"Oh it will," Bra said with more than a touch of pride in her young voice. "Made sure of that. Can go up to at least 150 times the gravity of the earth for now. Can always upgrade it too it if need be, if ya want to that is."
Marron crossed her arms in thought. "Don't think I'm quite up to that level yet. I've only worked my way up to 200 Kilo shells, so I think I'll sticking with just ten times the gravity of earth and work my way up from there if that's too easy."
Suddenly she cringed as she felt the weight of the suit magnify in intensity.
"Works quick, doesn't it?"
"Yep," Bra said with a nod as she rubbed her nose with an index finger, giving a small sniff as she did so. "Anything else you think you'll need?"
Marron rubbed her small chin in thought. "Can't think of anything. If Mr. Goku was able to survive training throughout the world I think I should be okay. Why?"
Bra shrugged, "No reason, just curious and looking out for one of my best buddies is all. After all, given the weirdness and craziness of our families, it's not like either of us can have so-called 'normal' friends. Besides I need someone to rant about my father to."
At that comment, both girls began giggling. When they had finished Bra added, "Not like you could break it, made the thing out of a sort of spin off of geromantium, which was another thing that wasn't a walk in the park to make either."
"Still, at least they're better then the pair that Mr. Gohan had on."
Bra half groaned, half laughed at the memory from earlier that day. "Oh don't mention that outfit Marron, please. I mean, poor Gohan looked like he stepped out of an Akira Toriyama manga done while drunk."
Marron gave her friend a puzzled look. Had the young girl a nose, she would have wrinkled it in confusion. "Who?"
"You know, the Blue Dragon guy?"
Marron's confused look remained in its place and showed no signs of changing.
"Crono Trigger? Sandland? The Dragon Quest games? Dr. Slump?"
"I don't read much manga." Marron shrugged with an indifferent expression that would have done her mother proud. "Mostly just training and martial arts studies for me."
Bra facepalmed as she shook her head in mock disgust. "You really need to expand your horizons Mar. All training and no play will just dull yourself in the long run."
The blond girl thought it over. "Maybe so, but I can do that after the tournament is done with. In the meantime, I've got training to do. Speaking of which-"
"Way ahead of you," Bra said. With that, she clapped her hands three times. One high pitched, one low, and the third high again. The one window to her lab slid open automatically, and a cool city breeze blew in, causing more then a few papers to float and fly about the room as a result.
Marron levitated herself off of the floor and made her way toward the window. When she was halfway out the window, she turned around back to Bra.
"Best of luck with your training, Bra!" An awkward silence passed between the two girls. "You know what I mean." Marron muttered softly, her face a much darker shade of pink then it had been at Kame Island.
Not waiting for her purple haired friend to respond, Marron flew out the window, blasting off at a much higher speed into the distance when she was a good number of feet away from Capsule Corp building.
"Yeah," Bra said out loud as she went about gathering her papers, her face visibly pained at the thought of all the oh so wonderful training that was in store for her in the near future. "I'll need it."
Many weeks later, the day of the 25th World Tournament finally arrived.
And it was on this day that Chichi Jr glared at the spiky black mess that was her hair with her usual passionate dislike and annoyance. She attacked it with the long comb in her left hand, and when that didn't work, she went at it with the brush in her right. After nearly a whole minute of frantic combing, the daughter of the late Son Goku threw both of her weapons down in frustration.
Chichi Jr 0, stupid spiky hair a zillion.
When it came to her physical appearance, Chi thought her mother had named her poorly. In fairness though, her mother had been expecting a boy like Gohan and had even gone so far as to pick out a name, Goten. So the fact that she had given birth to a girl came as quite a shock to her. Thus the daughter of the Ox King did the only thing she could think of at the time and named her newly born daughter after herself.
Now, if Chichi Jr had grown up to look like a miniature clone of her namesake mother, that might not have been too terrible a fate all things told, if still a bit annoying for everyone thinking of her as nothing more than a carbon copy of her nevertheless much loved mommy. But Chichi Jr didn't look like mother, she instead looked like a near exact replica of her often mentioned dead father.
Save for her eyes, which had a least a bit of feminine appearance to them, she had the same short body, short cubby limbs, and the same baby fat round face. And then there was the hair, that Kami damned hair. Chi had tried everything she could think of short of shaving herself bald to change the style of it. She didn't even care any longer what style it was so long as it was different.
But it seemed to be that she would forever be stuck with her father's overly spiky hair. Chi's reflection in the bathroom mirror frowned. Oh well, after the many hours she had spent on working on her trying to style her hair, it was time to move on to the rest of her body. Her outfit was red, not because she felt particularly heroic, but because it was the opposite of blue (a color that her mother had worn a lot as a child and young adult) and not orange (which was associated heavily with her father) from all the pictures of him as a young man before he died for the second time.
It was a basic martial arts training uniform, or at least that was what it looked like. In reality it was what her friend Bra called a 'Graviform'. Chichi Jr had found the outfit's weight changing powers to be pretty cool all things told, and couldn't help but admire the simplistic effectiveness of the uniform's design. If nothing else, Bra had good taste in clothing designers.
It was then that she heard Gohan's voice rang out from the other side of the bathroom door: "Hey Chi, think you could hurry up in there? Bulma and all the others are here and waiting. Now come on, you don't want to be late to meet dad do ya?"
"Give me a minute Gohan, just five more minutes okay!"
"Fine, but afterwards I'm coming in there, alright?"
She opened the door eight minutes later and walked out. To her right was Gohan, dressed in the green tunic he'd be wearing along with the white turban and bulky sunglasses that would be hiding his identity for the day.
"How do I look?" Chichi Jr asked.
Gohan folded his arms and frowned. "Honestly? Like dad as a kid but with a red uniform instead of an orange one."
Chi sighed again. That was everyone's reaction, no matter if it was this outfit, a dress, or even experimenting with makeup. 'Oh Chi, you look just like your father did when he was young, only he never wore red/dresses/makeup.'
After awhile, the 'Cross dressing Goku' jokes went from confusing (as Chi had never met her father and could only glean so much of his personality from stories that her mother, brother, and family friends told her) to just plain annoying. Heck, it was part of the reason she had gotten interested in wearing dresses and dancing and singing in the first place, if only to mark herself as not just a simple clone of her deceased father. Even if she wasn't good at any of them, save of course, for sparring with her mother.
"Guess it will do." Chi muttered at last.
And with that Chi, Gohan, and Chichi Sr. all went out to the Capsule Plane.
Two hours later the Briefs, the Sons, Master Roshi, Krillin, and Android 18 were all inside Bulma's Capsule Plane.
"I've ridden on slugs faster than this vehicle!" Vegeta groused loudly to no one in particular.
"Oh hush," Bulma said.
Bra looked at her father. "Why were you even riding a slug in the first place father?" she asked in a tone that dripped with the sort of genuine curiosity that only a child scientist in training could pull off.
Vegeta looked at her, his cross expression remaining on his face as he spoke. "It was a stealth mission, one that went horribly, horribly, wrong." He ended the last of that sentence with an 'and-that's-all-we'll-talk-about' tone.
Gohan gave a small, fake cough. Vegeta and everyone else turned their attention to the costume clad young man. "Say, Vegeta, and this goes for Chi, Bra, and Trunks as well, I was thinking we should all make a promise to NOT go Super Saiyan at the tournament today."
Vegeta stared at the eldest of Kakarot's children for a moment in disbelief.
"And why would we do that?"
"Well, I for one think it's a good idea." Vegeta glared at his wife with an expression that said: No one asked you woman. Bulma continued, ignoring Vetega's glare.
"After all if you went in with your hair golden, there's a very good chance that someone would recognize you guys from the Cell Games. And if that happened then it would only be a matter of time before the media would be hounding our house, badgering us day and night for interviews and talk shows and the like."
Vegeta snorted. "I fail to see the issue. When those annoying reporters come, I'll just destroy them all."
He looked around. Everyone from Kakarot's brats, to cueball and his tin can of a wife, to even his own children, were giving him THE LOOK.
The Prince of all Saiyans sighed. "Very well, there will be no Super Saiyan transformations for the tournament."
At this Krillin let out a loud, audible sigh. "That's a relief. Maybe now I'll have a chance at placing, right dear?" he gave 18 a small jab on her arm with his elbow. But 18 simply kept her face locked in its usual disinterested expression.
Krillin sighed and looked over to Gohan. "Sure will be nice to see Goku again after all these years, won't it?"
Gohan nodded. "You bet it will."
As Krillin and Gohan continued their conversation, Chi glanced over at Trunks, who was currently bickering with his younger sister as per the usual.
"-And that makes checkmate big bro, best outta 50?"
Trunks scowled at her, his blue eyes narrowed in annoyance. "No, I'm sick of losing to you."
"Speaking of which, are you SURE you aren't interested in my deal?"
"I'm sure," Trunks replied. "As tempting as throwing the match and not having to deal with math homework for the rest of my life would be, the chances of dad finding out aren't ones I'm willing to risk. So if you want to win little sister, it will have to be on your own merits."
"Don't worry Bra, if we fight you can have the match, so long as you at least try that is!" Bra sighed as she moved her face from her smirking brother to look over to Chi. "Thanks Chi." She looked up front where her father was at. Thankfully he seemed too preoccupied with arguing with their mother to be paying any attention to their conversation.
Just then, Bulma's voice rose suddenly in volume. "Well space slugs or not we're here regardless Vegeta! Now we just have to find a place to park the plane…"
One parking job later, everyone was out exploring Papaya Island, the island that was the location for the World Martial Arts Tournament. Before them was a mass of shops, stalls, and venders, selling things from cotton candy to ice cream to the many passing visitors and tourists.
Bra had a mostly bored look on her face, as she could have gotten that and the crowds of strangers back home without having to travel two and a half hours. Trunks seemed to be more focused on the upcoming fighting, while Chi looked to be more then a bit unnerved by the massive crowd of people around her.
Having lived up in the mountains for most of her life, Chi so far didn't seem to like the idea of having so many strangers around her, or the sheer din of noise that said strangers were producing with their aimless, annoying chatter.
"Man, this place sure has changed since our day." Master Roshi commented.
"I'll say," Bulma said. "Used to be a lot smaller back then, didn't it?"
Roshi nodded sagely. "Indeed it was, indeed it was."
"You alright hun?" 18 asked, glancing down to her husband.
"I'm simply worried about Marron is all," Krillin muttered half to himself. "She mentioned a week ago from that call to Kame House that Goku wouldn't be the only 'old friend' showing up for the tournament."
"So you're thinking that she might have roped Yamcha or Tien into this thing?"
"Maybe, she IS your daughter and can be pretty forceful at times."
"True, I-"
However, 18's sentence would go unfinished as at that moment everyone heard a familiar noise behind all of them. It was a noise that most of them, save for the children, hadn't heard in seven years. It was the whooshing sound of Son Goku's Instant Transmission and with everyone's hearts beating at different but still rapid intensities, they turned around.
Much to their joy, shock, wonder, amazement, and in 18's case, indifference, Son Goku stood before them back on Earth once more. After an absence of seven years, their friend, father, and saver of the world so many times over, had finally returned.
AN: So another chapter and many, many years later we pick up at the 'real' starting point of the story. Hopefully everyone will like my unique takes on some of the more underused Z Kids.
And on that note, I believe that answers your question about Goku, Guest. Though for the record he'll be staying out of the action after he returns to Other World and he'll be staying there.
Full Power: It seems I was a touch unclear, what I meant to say was that while Ness Frost was helping me edit my chapters, I noticed just how badly I was when it came to noticing my own (at times painfully obvious) errors in spelling and word usage. So it was more my realizing just how piss poor my own editing abilities were then a comment on Ness Forst's character.