Piccolo:

Piccolo did not know what to say for several seconds. He watched silently as Kera took Gine in her arms and walked away with her without a word. She said nothing to the child. She probably didn't know what to say either. How could one react when one had just seen a not quite two-year-old make another being explode?

He had feared that something would happen at some point. He had hoped that they would have more time. That they could still prepare. He hadn't known how, but they had needed more time. Both Kera and Vegeta had not taken the prophecy seriously.

He looked to Vegeta, who was staring ahead of him, and how he was tapping his front teeth with his thumbnail like Kera did. They both did this when they were deep in thought.

"Vegeta ..."

"Not a word, Namekian," he cut him off and followed Kera.

Piccolo sighed. Both of them were stubborn. He would have to wait until their tempers calmed a little.

"What do we do now?" Bulma's eyes widened in fear.

"I'm going to talk to Dende. Maybe he has an idea on how to stop Gine's powers."

Bulma swallowed. "Vegeta and Kera certainly won't agree."

"I'm afraid so too."

Slowly, movement came back to the bystanders. They walked towards the pavilion, scattering, and only Piccolo, Menka, Dende and Bulma remained behind.

"Dende, do you think there's a way to bind Gine's powers?"

Dende shrugged. "I don't. There are ... spells for that sort of thing. I'll look that up. Whether this will help with Gine, though, I can't promise you."

"I will help you," Menka said.

"Thank you." Dende smiled at her. "We'll start first thing in the morning."

"Thank you." Piccolo looked back at Bulma. "I'm going to find Kera and then we'll fly home. We'll take Gine with us."

"All right. I don't know if I'd be comfortable with her right now. I mean, she's a child. But that power ..." She shook herself.

"It's difficult for all of us." He took a deep breath.

"I'll find Reyak. Then we can go."

Piccolo nodded his thanks to his daughter and walked towards the pavilion. He turned back to her after a few steps and saw her hugging Dende tightly. He returned the hug as well and then looked into her eyes for a long time. Only reluctantly did he detach himself from the sight. He had to talk to Dende about that. Later.

Piccolo did not see Kera and Vegeta at the pavilion with the others, who seemed to have mostly recovered from the shock. The mood seemed more relaxed. Goku stood a little apart, looking surprisingly thoughtful and not eating.

"Are you still thinking about what you saw?"

Goku did not turn to him, but only nodded slightly as he looked towards the spot where the fight had taken place.

"I wonder what would have happened if we had fought. Did Gine only intervene because she feared Goten and Trunks were in danger? Was she afraid they wouldn't make it on their own? Maybe it wasn't ... malicious, but just a protective instinct."

"I also don't think she did it because she enjoyed it, but maybe really because she wanted to protect. Still, we have to be careful. She is untrained and still very young. What else is to become of her?"

Goku nodded slowly. "We must train so that we are prepared for anything."

Piccolo let that sentence stand uncommented. He should have known that Goku would put his focus on something other than preventing things from getting worse in the first place.

Kera:

Kera had walked with Gine through the pavilion into the hotel, found a bathroom and started to clean Gine up. She was concentrating only on this task. She feared that if she did not give it her full attention, she would panic, that she might lose her temper.

She had repressed the thought of the prophecy, had not wanted to let it happen. She wanted to think it was a fairy tale. But now something had happened and they had to deal with it somehow. Somehow they had to cope with it.

Slowly, almost mechanically, she cleaned Gine's face and arms of the green liquid, which she realised was the blood of the attackers, while Gine looked at her with wide eyes.

"Mama One sad?"

Kera blinked. "No. Just thinking." Questioningly, Gine tilted her head. "You just ... released a lot of energy."

Gine nodded. "Helping."

"I know, little one."

Gine yawned heartily and Kera noticed how her eyelids were already getting heavy. That was when she heard the bathroom door open. Without turning around, she knew Vegeta was standing behind her.

"Daddy One." Gine smiled tiredly and reached her arms out to Vegeta, who picked her up. Immediately she nestled her head in the crook of his neck. As if it were natural, he swayed gently back and forth and Kera saw Gine's limbs go limp. She had fallen asleep.

"The energy consumption really knocked her out, didn't it?"

Kera did not respond to Vegeta's statement. "What are we going to do now? The prophecy is coming true. She will bring chaos upon us and ..."

"Calm down." Vegeta's tone was sharp and brought her back to this world. "That was an incident now. That she will be very strong, we knew so. She is a pure Saiyan and magic has played a part in her growth. We need to start training her urgently!"

"Training? So she can destroy us all at once?!" Kera's breathing quickened and at the same time she felt like she couldn't breathe. Darkness formed at the edges of her eyes.

Suddenly her head jerked to the side. Vegeta had hit her. Not hard, but enough to make her focus on him again.

"Don't freak out now! We're going to get through this together. Do you understand me?"

"Yes." She took a few deep breaths until the darkness disappeared and she could think clearly again. "I'm flying home with Piccolo and the kids now and I'm going to take Gine with me. Tomorrow morning we will meet and begin her training."

Vegeta smiled briefly. "That's how I need you." He handed her Gine, who was oblivious to the change and slept blissfully on.

"Vegeta, what do we ..."

"We'll deal with that if it comes to that," he interrupted her. "No one knows what it means that she's supposed to bring 'chaos'. Maybe she is just very strong. We will teach her how to use her powers."

To Kera's ears, his words sounded like an excuse, an appeasement, but she was too tired to argue now. She gave her brother a kiss on the cheek and left the bathroom.

Piccolo:

"Hey, Dad!" Stumbling, Menka came to rest on the ground beside him.

"Not so stormy. What's wrong?" Alarmed, he looked at his daughter and wondered what had got her so upset. His first thought was of Gine and he feared that something had happened again since the outbreak a few weeks ago, but then he remembered that she was up on the rock with Kera and he didn't feel any special energies from there.

"I was just with Dende and Gohan was there too. He gave me this."

She handed her father a cream-coloured square envelope, with Kera's name and his, and the names of the children, written sweepingly on it.

"What's this?" he asked as he accepted the envelope.

"Open it already." Menka seemed very excited.

A white card emerged with two intertwined golden rings on it. Piccolo raised his eyebrows in amazement. He opened the card and got the answer for his daughter's excitement. It was an invitation to Videl and Gohan's wedding.

"So he did decide," he muttered.

"Who decided what?" asked Kera, who floated down to them with Gine in her arms.

Wordlessly, Piccolo handed her the invitation. Kera smiled as she read the lines. "It was only a matter of time."

"Are we going, Mama?" Menka was still hopping from one leg to the other.

"Of course. And we should go with Aunt Bulma to pick out a fancy dress for you, right?"

With a cry of joy, Menka hugged her mother before running off. Probably to tell her brother that they had been invited to a wedding.

"Are you going to wear a dress too?"

Kera shrugged. "Bulma will surely make me put on a dress. I don't care." She turned away from him and flew back up to the rock with Gine.

Piccolo swallowed. A few days after Gine's power outburst, he had told Kera about his plan, that if Dende and Menka found a way, he would have Gine's powers bound. Kera had not been at all taken with the idea and since then they had only exchanged the most necessary words. He had to give her credit for one thing: stubbornness and perseverance were two very distinctive qualities in her.

'I think a dress would look great on you,' he sent thought after her, but it remained unanswered.

Kera:

"You're still not talking to Piccolo?" Astonished, Bulma looked up at Kera, who was standing on a small stool in the living room of Brief's mansion while Bulma staked out the hem of a dress. When Kera had told her that she was considering wearing a dress to Gohan's and Videl's wedding, Bulma had gone into raptures of jubilation and had immediately presented her with designs for a dress she had been working on for some time.

"But you only design practical things?", Kera had asked her friend, completely perplexed.

"Well, this is practical. It's made of the same material as your Saiyan battle suits, only much more elegant."

Kera had agreed to wear at least a sample piece and then had been immediately smitten by the dress.

Bulma straightened up. "There, now I just need to sew around the hem and I think it'll be ready. What do you think?"

Kera looked at herself in the large mirror and smiled. She turned a little and looked at the dress from all sides. "It's perfect."

The top of the dress was tight and remotely reminiscent of the breastplate Vegeta and Kera normally wore. Only the stripes didn't run horizontally, but crossed over, mimicking the lacing of a corsage. The straps did not rest on the shoulders but fell down to the upper arms. The dark blue skirt was almost floor-length but was open at the right side up to the hips, giving Kera enough freedom of leg movement.

"Then why are you still talking to me? I'm also in favour of keeping Gine's powers in check somehow."

"It hadn't been your suggestion," Kera said simply, as if that would suffice as an explanation.

Bulma sighed. She seemed to have given up trying to steer Kera in a different direction on this issue.

"By the way, I received a message from my friend that he finished analysing your DNA samples," she changed the subject.

"Really? So, what came out of it?" Kera was more than curious. Just before they had all left Hercule's hotel, Bulma had had the presence of mind to have all the Saiyans give samples, which she had promptly forwarded for analysis.

"It is as we had already suspected. Vegeta, you and Tarble have one parent in common. Tarble is not related to Goku."

"So if our mother's story is true, the king must be our father. Only we still don't know who Tarble's mother is." Thoughtfully, Kera looked out the window. "We'll probably never find out either. But it's nice to know he's my half-brother. I'll call him right away."

Tarble had left them only two days after he had arrived on Earth, but they now knew how to contact him and Kera would take the opportunity to call him with Vegeta.

"Do that. And give him my love."

"Will do." Kera carefully removed the dress and put her preferred outfit back on. Then she handed the dress to Bulma to be re-sewn. "I'll just make the call with Vegeta, then I'll fly home."

"You haven't ... told him yet that Piccolo wants to bind Gine's powers, have you?" Unsure, Bulma looked at her friend.

"No. I'm still too angry. He'd react the same way I did, and then we'd just get each other amped up and then probably do something stupid." She sighed. "I can see why Piccolo would consider it. I'm just so angry because he's already discussed it with Dende without talking to me and Vegeta first and that he sees that as the only solution. It's good that we're training Gine now."

"Don't you think that will make her more dangerous?"

Kera shook her head and shrugged at the same time. "I don't know. She's learning to focus her powers better that way. I just can't imagine her being fundamentally evil and throwing the Universe into chaos. I'm afraid if we suppress and ignore her now, it'll be more of a trigger because she won't feel understood by us."

"You might be right."

They were silent for a while, each indulging her own thoughts, then Kera straightened her shoulders and sought out Vegeta in the gravity room.

Vegeta:

"I was wondering when you were going to come over," Vegeta said instead of a greeting as Kera entered the gravity room.

"I had suppressed my aura. How did you know I was here?"

"Ever since we merged, I feel like I perceive you differently. So by the way I feel Kakarrot's aura differently."

"He didn't say anything about that."

"He's probably too stupid to notice such subtleties."

"Vegeta, you're always so mean." Kera lightly nudged his shoulder. "Bulma's almost finished the dress for Gohan and Videl's wedding, and she just told me the results from the DNA sample are in."

"And?"

"As suspected. Tarble, you and I have the same parent."

"Do you want to tell him?"

"Of course. That's why I'm here. Then we can call him."

Using the gravity room's control unit, Vegeta established a connection with Tarble, but he was unreachable. They left a message asking him to call back and trained for a while longer. Both of them were not quite up to it and they ended the training again after a short time.

Annoyed, Vegeta grabbed a towel and a water bottle and grumbled to himself.

"I know what you're thinking."

"Since when can you read minds?" he asked his sister, who was looking just as gloomy as he was.

She plopped down on the floor and took a big gulp from her water bottle before saying anything. "You're as annoyed as I am that we haven't reached a new level yet."

He sat down on the ground opposite her and nodded.

"I mean, I don't have to create this Super Saiyan 3. I don't want to look like a caveman."

"I can do without that too," Vegeta agreed with her.

"But something new would be cool."

"Perhaps we lack the imagination for that. We know another level we don't want, but we don't know what a next level should look like or what we want to achieve with it either."

"You're being philosophical today." Kera sighed. "You're probably right about that. We're too dogged about what we don't want." They were silent for a while longer, then Kera stood up. "I have to go home now. I'll see you the day after tomorrow," she said, glancing at the clock. She gave Vegeta a kiss on the cheek and left the gravity room.

In two days, the wedding would take place. Vegeta had little desire to put on a suit and mingle, but he had promised Bulma that they would spend more time together and that included attending Kakarrot's brat's wedding.

He smiled as he thought back to the fight with Gohan when he had first landed on Earth. Back then, Gohan had been a child. Almost helpless, yet powerful. He had more or less watched the boy grow up. He could hardly believe himself how much time had already passed and how long he had been on earth.