Epiphany.
The Supreme Kai had talked about it, explained what it was, but Goten had never understood the concept.
Until he did.
Goten had been amazed at Goku's transformation, and the energy he sensed from him, it had seemed so familiar to him, and in the heat of battle, he had felt himself transform, and it was…
Time had stopped then. Not slowed down. Stopped.
He was standing there, gazing at his hands, and looked up to see Goku frozen in mid-sentence. The other fighters were also frozen, and Goten looked around to see someone, anyone, who was unaffected. Kai Kibito was there, and had a knowing look on his face, but like the others, was completely still.
"What happened?" Goten asked himself, if only to break the deafening silence. He knew he could find his way out of this, he wasn't afraid, he just had to figure it out.
Goku was standing there, transformed, with Goten, Super Saiyan, he had called it.
"Am I a Saiyan?" Goten asked, but the question, like the one before it, was not meant to be answered, for it already was. He knew he was, just as he knew there was a connection between him and Goku that went beyond that.
This was not a time for stupid questions.
Truth, Goten thought, knowing the purpose for the epiphany was to go beyond what mortals could understand. "Goku is my father," he said, looking the man over. "He has to be. We can't both be Saiyan, and come from Earth, and not have some kind of connection. And mom always said that my father was a great fighter," he said to himself, thinking back to the adoptive mother he had lost so long ago. She was here, too, in Otherworld, somewhere.
But that wasn't what he needed to learn.
Truth. He looked into Goku's eyes. "It's strongest when I look at him. It has to do with Goku, with my father," he said softly. He reached his hand up to Goku's head, and closed his eyes. "What am I missing?" he asked, getting his mind ready for anything, just like when he trained with the Supreme Kai, only now it was he who was taking the images, from someone else. "What am I - "
He was lying on the ground, helpless, a tall man with long spiky hair and armor grabbing the back of a little boy's shirt, the little boy was crying, he was so scared…
He was in a small space pod, desperate, searching computer records for some kind of sign, anything, that would guide him…
He was dreaming, his heart was going out to that boy, lost, alone, scared, and then the boy did something so horrible, his very heart broke…
Truth. "I will restore what you lost." The words seemed to come both from him and around him. And suddenly, everything made sense.
He could see it, those thoughts the Supreme Kai had been implanting into his brain, he could understand their meaning, he could understand what time was, what the universe was, what the Kai were, and what…
What he was.
And then everything went black.