Dragonball Extreme

Gohan landed a few blocks from the college and approached it on foot. It had taken nearly the full hour to get there, and darkness was quickly setting in. He thanked his saiya-jin heritage for being able to see through the dark glasses in dusky twilight, and he knew that heneedneed them. The moon would be rising soon.
The secretary at the front desk greeted him as he walked through the door. \"Ah, Son-san!\" she exclaimed. \"It\'s good to see you back. You\'re feeling better, I hope?\"

Gohan nodded shortly. \"Yes, much better, thanks,\" he replied. \"I\'d love to chat and catch up, but I need to get to class.\" He waved to her and walked down the hall.

The secretary stared after him. \"Weird,\" she thought. \"Wearing sunglasses this time of night.\" She stared at him as he walked down the hall, and her eyes almost bulged out of her head as she spotted the furry brown appendage swaying lazily behind him. She shook her head and turned back to her papers. \"Weird,\" she repeated.

Gohan hesitated outside the door to his classroom. \"Something\'s not right,\" he thought. \"It\'s too quiet. This class has a bunch of party hounds in it, they should be all but swinging from the rafters.\" He strained to listen closer, but there still were no sounds except the occasional turning of a book page or a scritch-scratch of a pencil. \"Did they move my classroom on me?\" he wondered. He opened the door and stepped inside.

It was his classroom, he realized, as he recognized the students and materials around the room. However, something was definitely amiss. Instead of goofing off or scrawling out last-minute homework assignments, they were all sitting studiously at their desks, working diligently at books and papers before them. Not one of them raised their face to look at him as he entered.

Gohan frowned. \"What in Kami-sama\'s name is going on?\" he wondered. He didn\'t remember having a lot of homework selected for the last few days.

He cleared his throat. \"Well, it\'s good to see that you\'ve been keeping up with your work in my absence,\" he said.

Faces snapped to attention. \"Son-san!\" a voice in the back of the room cried. There was an audible sigh of relief in the room.

\"We didn\'t know you would be back today, Sensei!\" a young woman at the front of the room said.

\"I just called back in today,\" Gohan replied. He glanced at the papers a young man in the front row was working on. \"Let\'s see where the substitute left off,\" he said. He reached for the papers on the boy\'s desk.

The young man looked down at the desk red faced. \"Gomen, Sensei,\" he said. \"I was up all night reading the chapters, and I fell asleep...my homework\'s not done.\"

\"Chapters?\" Gohan echoed. He looked over the papers, then frowned and picked up a text book. He paged through it. \"This work is six chapters ahead of where we left off!\" he exclaimed. \"Is this what the substitute left for you?\"

\"Actually, he assigned through chapter seven,\" another student said.

Gohan frowned again. \"That wasn\'t in my lesson plan,\" he said. \"All of you can hand in what you have done; I\'ll take a look at it and get things straightened out.\"

He walked around the room collecting papers. As he passed one young woman\'s desk, she handed her papers to him with shaky hands. Gohan noticed red welts across her knuckles and the backs of her hands. \"What happened to your hands?\" he asked.

\"Oh,\" she stammered, \"n-nothing. I-I was being disruptive, and-\"

A dark haired youan san sitting next to her cut in. \"She dropped her pencil and that jerk of a sub hit her with a ruler,\" he snapped.

Gohan\'s face snapped to attention. \"What?\" he asked incredulously.

The young man rolled up his sleeve to show a slash in his arm that had a red, angry welt around it. \"The guy didn\'t seem to like it when any of us stood up for another person either,\" he said.

Gohan\'s eyes narrowed in anger. \"What was his name?\" he demanded. \"Have any of you said anything to the dean about this?\"

\"We threatened to,\" someone spoke up. \"But he told us that the dean had called him specifically because he\'s one of the best in the field.\"

Gohan turned away. \"I can hardly believe that,\" he seethed.

Just then, voices in the hall interrupted their conversation. Gohan recognized one of the voices as belonging to the school dean. The other seemed vaguely familiar too, he thought.

\"Oh yes, I\'m glad to hear that your regular teacher is better,\" the vaguely familiar voice was saying. \"That class really is an unruly bunch. I don\'t know how any kind of teacher puts up with them. And you\'ll have to keep an eye on them too; they have no motivation to learn whatsoever.\"

\"Well, I\'m surprised to hear that,\" the dean said. \"All of those students are doing quite well in their classes.\"

\"Oh, I suppose they are,\" the other voice replied. \"After all, their teacher was giving them work better suited to underachievers. But, if you\'ll excuse me, I left a couple of things in the classroom. I\'ll be right back out.\"

Gohan\'s eyes had narrowed to angry slits during the conversation. His tail snapped angrily behind him as the man entered the room. He surveyed the man\'s appearance; an older man, with wire-rimmed glasses, salt-and-pepper curly hair that was a tal tall on top, but cropped close at the back of his neck. He seemed familiar...Gohan couldn\'t put his finger on it at first, but as the man gave a disdainful glance over the classroom, Gohan recognized him immediately.

\"YOU!\" he shrieked. He flew across the room and grabbed the man by his shirt collar. \"How dare you?! How DARE you hit my students?!\" He pinned the man against the wall. \"You never learn, do you?!\"

\"What do you mean?\" the man demanded. \"Do I know you? Unhand me, you beast!\"

Gohan dropped the man roughly on the floor. \"Yes, you know me,\" he seethed, his tail snapping behind him like a whip. He took off the dark glasses. \"I am Son Gohan; I put up with your abuse as a child, until I couldn\'t stand it. Then you cried for my mom like the coward you are and she took it upon herself to throw you out of our house!\"

The man stared at Gohan; he remembered those angry saiya-jin eyes. \"Oh, yes, I remember you,\"saidsaid disdainfully. \"Well, I see it holds true, once a brute, always a brute. I don\'t know how an idiot like yourself ever earned a teaching license.\"

\"Sensei is not an idiot!\" a male voice shouted from the back of the room.

The man smirked. \"And I see your unruliness is wearing off on your students. I did have to straighten a few of them out, this room was like a jungle full of monkeys.\"

Gohan\'s anger was building quickly. He didn\'t want to blow up in front of his students, but the asshole was seriously pissing him off. He grabbed the man by the shirt again.

The elderly man looked around furtively. \"Uh..sir!\" he called, searching for the dean. \"Sir...?\"

The dean was standing in dumbfounded silence in the doorway. Gohan put on the shades again and walked past him; he carried the man and his belongings to the window. \"You get out of my classroom,\" he growled quietly. \"And don\'t let me catch you anywhere near here again; if you even threaten one of my students again, I will kill you.\" He opened the window and heaved the man outside.

The dean stared at Gohan in shock. After a moment he found his voice. \"Er...Son-san...are you sure you\'re feeling all right?\" he asked hesitantly.

\"Hai, I\'m fine,\" Gohan replied. \"I want you to take note to file a complaint on my behalf about that man. If anyone needs a reason, they can come down here and take a look at the injuries he inflicted on my students.\"

\"Certainly, Son-san,\" the dean said. He hesitated, then spoke again. \"I was meaning to ask...the secretary mentioned something, but I thought she was just babbling again...is that a tail?\"

Gohan looked behind himself at the furry appendage that was calming back down to lazy swings. He wrapped it around his waist and looked back at the dean. \"Yes, it is,\" he said simply.

The dean swallowed and backed toward the door. \"All right, then,\" he said hurriedly. \"I\'ll leave you to your teaching.\" He turned and quickly left.

Gohan turned back to his classroom to find his students staring at him in shocked silence. Gohan tried to ignore their stares and opened his lesson book. \"Let me just check what I had planned for tonight\'s lesson,\" he said. He was bluffing to buy time; he knew exactly what he had planned for that night, and it was making him nervous. \"Why did I have to choose this activity for a full moon night?\" he groaned inwardly. \"Because it is a full moon,\" he reminded himself. \"There\'s no better time to study the moon from Earth than during a full moon; how were you supposed to know your tail would grow back?\"

\"Well,\" he said. He closed his lesson book and straightened up. \"It looks like tonight was the night I had planned a field study. We\'ll be taking two of the telescopes outside with your notebooks and studying the moon and it\'s appearance from Earth.\"

There was a bit of murmuring and rustling as the students put their books away and took out their notebooks and pencils. Gohan picked up two telescopes from the front of the room and headed out the door. \"We\'ll go out through the back entrance and meet together in the field behind the parking lot,\" he said.

*

Vegeta paced about in the large cavern he and the others were standing in. He couldn\'t believe he didn\'t realize the idiot was missing before now. \"Where the hell would Radditz have gone off to?\" he raged. \"I thought I sent him ahead with the rest of you!\"

\"Actually, Vegeta-sama,\" Bardock said hesitantly, \"I haven\'t seen him since I started talking to Kakarott at that woman\'s castle.\"

\"Just terrific,\" Vegeta stormed.

\"Hold on, Vegeta-sama,\" Gokou said. He felt about with his ki. \"I think I found him.\"

Vegeta silently felt about as well. \"He\'s just now returning?\" he muttered.

\"I\'ll go get him,\" Gokou said, putting two fingers to his forehead.

\"Wait!\" Vegeta said. \"I want to find out what he was up to. These caves all interconnect to this cavern via underground tunnels. I\'ll come up on the back side of his and wait for him. He\'s up to something, or he would have come back with the rest of us.\"

\"I\'m going with you!\" Gokou declared.

\"Whatever,\" Vegeta snapped. \"Just stay quiet.\"

He started through one of the tunnels. Gokou was right on his heels. After several minutes of walking, they walked into a darkened edge of a cave cap capsule house sat not far away.

The two of them could hear Radditz talking to someone inside. His voice was indistinct because of the closed door. Vegeta walked up to it and carefully opened it. Radditz was no where to be seen, so he entered.

They crept through the house and found Radditz in one of the back bedrooms. \"Well, you\'d better be worth the trouble,\" he was muttering. \"I\'m in over my head already because of you. The others are bound to notice I\'m not with them any more...\" he fussed about the room a bit, dragging out bed clothes and pillows. \"Here,\" he said quickly. He tossed them at someone on the bed. \"No go to sleep. I need to figure out a way to hide you.\"

Vegeta walked into the room. \"Just who are you planning on hiding?\" he demanded.

Radditz froze. Then, in one smooth motion, he swung some blankets over the bed and spun around to face Vegeta. \"Vegeta-sama!\" he cried.

\"Don\'t play dumb with me!\" Vegeta snarled. \"I know you better than that. Who were you talking to?\"

Radditz gulped and backed up, trying to stay between Vegeta and the bed. \"I...\" he started.

Vegeta strode past him and tore the blankets from the bed. Bright, emerald green eyes peered up from beneath long red locks of hair as a toddler girl looked up at him.

\"Kuso,\" Vegeta cursed under his breath. \"Radditz, what the hell is she doing here?\"

Radditz took a deep breath. \"I\'m keeping her,\" he said.

\"What?!\" Vegeta demanded. \"Absolutely not! I don\'t want any more involvement with that woman than is necessary! Does she even know you have this child?\"

Radditz looked offended. \"Of course she does,\" he replied. \"She said the child needed parents to adopt her. So I adopted her.\"

Vegeta turned several shades of red. \"Why?\" he asked finally.

Radditz looked at his feet. \"I don\'t know,\" he said. \"I just felt compelled to take her. And, she\'s attached to me already anyway.\"

Vegeta closed his eyes and counted inwardly, trying to keep his temper. \"Fine,\" he said at at last. \"Then you can explain her presence to the others. Now follow us.\" He gestured for Gokou to lead the way and they went back through the tunnel they had come in from. Radditz clutched the child tightly to his chest as he followed them.

*

Gohan looked up at the night sky. The radiant full moon was shining brightly, but his glasses seemed to be doing the trick. He could feel t oft of an instinctual tug inside him at the sight, but he wasn\'t transforming.

\"If you look at the north east quadrant of the moon, you\'ll see that Mare Serenitatis is clearly visible, and to the immediate south east of that, Mare Tranquilitatis. These are two of the most noticeable features of the full moon, aside from Oceanus Procellarum, which is the dominant feature of the west half of the moon.\" Gohan pointed in general directions with his fingers as he spoke.

Behind him, a couple of the students were goofing off and joking with each other. \"Do you have any idea what he\'s talking about?\" one asked.

The other shook his head. \"Un uh.\" he responded. \"I can\'t see crap. The moon\'s the moon, and that\'s it. I don\'t know how he sees anything with those sungls ons on, anyway.\"

\"Dare you to take them of hof him,\" his friend said.

\"Are you kidding?\" the second guy replied. \"After the way he almost put that sub through the wall? I\'m not messing with him. If you\'re so tough, you do it.\"

\"Fine, I will,\" the first guy said. He got up and walked over to where Gohan was standing, helping another student with her lunar maps.

\"Say, Sensei,\" he said. \"I think you could see better without these.\" As he said it, he plucked the dark glasses off of Gohan\'s face.

Gohan\'s hands automatically flew to his eyes, and he spun around, facing away from the moon. \"Stay calm, Gohan,\" he thought. \"They\'re just playing an innocent joke, they don\'t know the trouble it could cause.\" He felt out the boy\'s ki and turned slightly in his direction. He kept his eyes covered with one of his hands. \"Yanchako,\" he said patiently. \"It\'s important that I wear those.\" He held his free hand outstretched to the boy.

\"Why do you need sunglasses at night?\" Yanchako asked. \"How can you even see with them on? I can barely see without anything on my eyes.\"

Gohan exhaled slowly, trying to keep his temper. \"I can explain it later,\" he said carefully. \"Please just hand them back to me.\"

One of the girls in the class spoke up. \"Oh, come on, Yanchako,\" she said. \"If Son-san said he needs them for a reason, then give them back to him.\"

\"You\'re such a mama\'s girl, Michi,\" Yanchako replied.

Gohan heard Michi stride over to Yanchako. \"Come on,\" she demanded, \"you\'re wasting class time. Just give them back\" She reached to take them from him.

Yanchako side-stepped and Michi dove after him. Gohan heard the sounds of their scuffle and peered carefully around his fingers at them, just in time to see Yanchako give the glasses a toss. Michi dove after them and caught her foot on a rock, catching the glasses and falling at the same time.

\"No!\" Gohan cried. He dove forward to catch her and they both tumbled over. As he got to his knees and brushed himself off, Michi got to her hands and knees as well. Gohan saw that she had lost her grip on the glasses; they\'d gone skittering across the dusty field ahead of the two of them. He saw something else ahead of him that made him quiver in panic - the full moon.

\"Oh, no!\" he cried. He backed up and tried to scramble away, but he already felt the moonlight taking affect on him. He fumbled shakily in his pocket and pulled out a compact cell phone. He tossed it to Michi and fell backward onto his elbows. \"Number 3 on the speed dial,\" he gasped. \"My brother...quickly!\" His breath was quickly becoming ragged.

\"Sensei, what\'s wrong?\" Michi gasped. She rushed to his side.

Gohan felt his jaw already tightening with the transformation. \"No...no time...\" he ground out. \"Quickly...call...and get away!\" He screamed as the transformation continued, causing him to grow in size and tufts of hair began to appear across his body.

Michi scrambled away, frantically dialing on the phone as she did so. She saw her classmates backing away in horror and turned to see Gohan transformed into some kind of were-ape creature and growing ever larger by the second.

The phone rang. \"Please, someone answer!\" she whispered.

*

There was tense silence in the cave as the group stared at Radditz and the small child, waiting for the tall saiya-jin to answer Vegeta\'s question. The stillness was shattered by a sudden, sharp ringing sound. Everyone looked around.

\"Gomen,\" Goten said, \"it\'s my cell phone.\" He pulled the phone out of his pocket.

Vegeta angrily snatched it away from him. \"Give that to me,\" he demanded. He flipped it open. Goten was about to protest, when Vegeta snapped into the phone, \"What do you want?\"

The saiya-jin no ou listened carefully as the panicked girl on the other end spoke. Finally he cut in. \"Ikkene,\" he swore at himself. \"Just get away from him and give him room,\" he snapped. \"We\'ll take care of it.\" He clicked the phone shut and threw it back at Goten.

Vegeta spun around and faced Bulma. \"How many more of those glasses do you have done?\" he demanded.

\"Just one,\" she said. \"I had it in the works while the girls were playing with theirs. It\'s not tested for resistance, yet,\" she said.

\"It doesn\'t matter, we need it now,\" he said. He took out the glasses that Bra had given him earlier while Bulma dug for the other ones. He tossed them to Gokou.

\"Gohan is transforming,\" he said shortly. \"Use your instantaneous movement to get us there. I\'ll try to get him under control; you\'ll need to run crowd control.\" Bulma handed him the barely-finished glasses and he grasped Gokou\'s shoulder.

Gokou centered on Gohan\'s ki; he was shocked to feel it growing so rapidly, but he didn\'t have time to worry about it. He and Vegeta disappeared.

They appeared in front of a group of terrified college students. Before them, a fully-grown Oozaru Gohan shrieked in rage and pounded his chest. Scraps of tattered clothing littered the ground at his feet. \"Take care of them, Kakarott!\" Vegeta said as he launched into the air.

Gokou turned to the group. \"Ok, kids, let\'s calm down now...\" he said.

Up in the air, Vegeta shouted at Gohan to get his attention. The oozaru turned angry eyes at the saiya-jin no ou. He bellowed an angry challenge and waved huge, solid ape fists in the air.

\"Gohan, get a hold of yourself, dammit!\" Vegeta shouted. \"This is not the time or the place for this!\"

Oozaru Gohan just roared in rage again and turned away from him. Vegeta cursed in frustration and fisted his hands. He dove back down to the ground. \"Kakarott!\" he called.

Gokou turned to Vegeta. \"Hai, Vegeta-sama?\" he asked.

\"I\'m never going to keep his attention like this,\" he said. \"I have to transform.\" He took his glasses off and tossed them to Gokou. \"Hold onto these,\" he said.

\"But Vegeta-sama -\" Gokou protested.

\"Don\'t worry about it, Kakarott; I can control myself, remember? You just keep things under control down here.\" So saying, Vegeta turned and faced the moon with open arms.

\"Everyone get back!\" Gokou ordered. \"Give him room!\"

\"You mean he\'s going to turn into one of those things too?\" a female voice cried. Even as she said it, however, Vegeta\'s body was expanding, growing, building, fleshing out into oozaru form.

Vegeta tilted his head back in ecstasy. \"Oh, yes,\" he thought. \"I\'d forgotten how good it feels...the feeling of power...this incredible strength...\" he savored the adrenaline and ki rushing through his body with the transformation.

His armor and body suit stretched to fit his ever-expanding frame. He was grateful that Bulma had been able to replicate the nature of the armor and clothing he\'d worn before, it came in handy at times like this. The material stretched to snugly fit every muscle and every curve on his body. The armor expanded likewise, giving his oozaru form a tall, imposing appearance.

Vegeta stretched and flexed his muscles and hands as he finished transforming, once again getting accustomed to his oozaru form. He remembered a day when this was second nature to him; now it felt new and fresh once again. Then, he remembered himself, and turned his attention back to Gohan.

Gohan had noticed his transformation and was half-turned, watching Oozaru Vegeta curiously. He examined him briefly then roared out a challenge.

Vegeta slapped him hard across the face. \"Get a hold of yourself,\" he snapped. His deep, gravely voice boomed out across the field and college grounds.

Gohan swung at him and Vegeta caught his arm at the wrist. They struggled with each other, Gohan trying to topple Vegeta over and Vegeta trying to keep them both from toppling over. Their feet came dangerously close to both people and buildings as they slid and regripped on the ground.

\"Gohan, this is not the place for us to be fighting!\" Vegeta shouted. \"Are you trying to kill all of those people down there? You do realize that your father is down there, along with that class you teach!\" He sincerely hoped that appealing to the human half of Gohan would work.

Gohan hesitated. His eyes swept briefly over the people at his feet. He saw the terrified stares from the students, and his father looking up at him with worry through the dark lenses of his glasses. More people were beginning to gather and gawk at the two oozaru standing there. A light of recognition showed in his eyes, and he dropped his arms.

\"Well, it\'s about time,\" Vegeta said. \"Hn, maybe there\'s hope for you yet. It\'s usually more difficult for an adult saiya-jin to learn control than one who learns from childhood.\"

Gohan opened his mouth as if to reply, but all that came out was an animalistic roar. He frowned in surprise; he waved his hands in frustration when he found that he couldn\'t make the words come.

\"You\'ll have to learn that, too,\" Vegeta said, a bit more patiently. \"It takes time to learn to speak in this form; it\'s not exactly suited to socializing, it\'s for mindless violence and destruction.\" He grinned mischievously at Gohan.

Gohan ran a large, ape-like palm over his face. He glanced about and found an open area of field to sit in. He rested there for a moment, but the quiet was broken by wailing police sirens that appeared on the scene. The red and blue lights of the squad cars flashed brightly in dark night, and the sound of their sirens rebounded off the buildings nearby.

Gohan turned angry eyes on the squad cars and instinctively growled at them. He got to his feet and roared in anger, looming threateningly over the police vehicles.

Vegeta dove to intercept him. \"Kakarott!\" he shouted. \"Get rid of those police cars! Those sirens will drive him out of control again!\"

Gokou ran forward to the nearest police officer, who was just stepping out of his car. \"You guys have to get out of here!\" he said. \"You\'re going to make things worse!\"

The officer looked him over skeptically. \"We have panicked complaints coming into the station,\" he replied. \"We have to get those creatures out of here.\" He started forward toward the two oozaru.

Gokou blocked his path. \"If you get those cars and sirens out of here, there won\'t be a problem,\" he said. \"Just clear everyone out of the area and tell everyone to stop making noise.\"

The officer stopped. \"How do you know?\" he demanded. \"Just who are you, anyway?\" He reached to take the glasses off of Gokou\'s face.

Gokou grabbed his hand. \"I wouldn\'t, unless you want another oozaru on your hands,\" he said. \"I\'m saiya-jin too, and it\'s the light of the full moon that makes us transform like that. These glasses are all that\'s keeping me from transforming.\"

The officer froze, then slowly backed away. \"You\'re saying those two beasts are saiya-jin? The same saiya-jin the papers have been talking about?\"

Gokou sighed with frustration. \"Yes,\" he said. \"All saiya-jin with tails will transform when they see the full moon. This wasn\'t supposed to happen; something must have happened to my son\'s glasses. It\'s under control now, though, our king is taking care of it. Now please get those cars out of here.\"

Suddenly, another uniformed man pushed his way forward. \"What is going on here?\" he demanded. \"What\'s the hold up?\"

\"Chief,\" the officer replied, \"this man knows about those things. He said we have to get the cars away from here, because the sirens are going to make things worse.\"

Almost as if on cue, Gohan roared loudly over the crowd. Vegeta was struggling to hold him back as he tried to move forward and destroy the vehicles.

The police chief turned to Gokou. \"Sir,\" he said. \"Step out of the way and let us take care of this; that thing is a danger to everyone around here.\"

Gokou was getting angry. \"That \"thing\" is my son,\" he seethed. \"And I won\'t have you people driving him into a rage like this. If you don\'t leave now, I\'ll make you leave!\"

The senior officer frowned. He gestured to the officer behind him. \"Officer, arrest this man, he\'s obstructing an officer.\"

The officer nodded and stepped forward to comply. Gokou easily avoided him and swung his arm around, firing a razor-like ki blast through the lights on the squad cars. He then fired a series of small, rapid blasts, taking out the sirens as well.

Vegeta and Gohan watched the exploding lights from above. \"Argh, Kakarott, that\'s the last thing we need,\" he growled under his breath. He felt Gohan struggle again and tightened his grip on the other oozaru. He glared at the crowd below him. \"I\'ll give all of you thirty seconds to clear out!\" he shouted. \"If you value your lives, you\'ll leave now! After the thirty seconds are up I will release him, and you don\'t want to be in the path of an angry oozaru!\"

Some of the crowd started to scatter. The police backed up a bit, keeping a wary eye on Vegeta and Gohan.

The police chief saw his men backing up. \"Stand your ground!\" he ordered. \"If these beasts start to attack, open fire!\"

\"It\'s your funeral!\" Vegeta roared. \"Your thirty seconds are up! You\'ve had fair warning!\" He released Gohan.

Gohan, realizing he was free, swung his furry brown arms around him wildly. He angrily thrashed out at the police cars below him, toppling or crushing them, and his fists flew out to all sides, hitting buildings, cement and other objects unfortunate enough to be in his way.

The police officers below him opened fire, their rifles cracking loudly as bullets zipped through the air at Gohan. Several hit the thick skin of his legs and arms, barely even penetrating, but a couple hit him squarely in the face and lodged in the skin there. As small trickles of blood ran down his face, Gohan screamed in rage and fired a huge ki blast from his mouth directly at them.

Gokou dove out of the way and flew back to where Gohan\'s students were huddled in a frightened group. \"This way!\" he called to them. He lead them a short distance away, where they were relatively safe but Gokou could still keep an eye on Gohan and Vegeta.

\"What\'s going on?\" one young woman cried. \"They\'re not going to kill Sensei are they?\"

\"Hardly,\" Gokou sneered. \"But if they keep it up, they certainly won\'t survive the night. Any of them who are still alive after that blast will drop their weapons and run, if they\'re smart.\"

Gokou watched as Vegeta started struggling with Gohan again, trying to get him back under control. He turned back to the group of students. \"Vegeta-sama\'s going to have to fight him to get him under control this time, I\'m sure of it,\" Gokou said. \"Gohan will be in oozaru form until sunrise; you can go home if you\'d like.\"

\"No way,\" another young woman said. \"I want to be sure Son-san is all right.\" Many of the other students echoed her sentiments.

Gokou smiled. \"Wow, he must be a pretty great teacher to get such loyalty!\" he said. \"Most people would have run and hid by now.\" His smile faded. \"It\'ll be dangerous staying here, though. I hope you understand that.\"

The students nodded. \"We know,\" one of the guys in the class replied. \"He was awesome even before he transformed. We never realized that he was any different than us until tonight, though. He didn\'t have a tail before, for one thing.\"

Gokou nodded. \"Saiya-jin aren\'t that different from humans at first glance, and Gohan has the advantage of being half human. It\'s only when something like this happens that you see the saiya-jin side of him.\"

\"Is it true what they\'re saying?\" one of the students asked. \"Are saiya-jin really here to take over the planet?\"

Gokou laughed. \"That\'s silly,\" he said. \"If we wanted to take over the planet we\'d have done it a long time ago.\" His statement was punctuated by a small explosion as one of Vegeta\'s ki blasts connected with Gohan\'s shoulder.

The students looked at him warily. \"Well, what about the connection with Capsule Corp,\" one of them prodded. \"Capsule Corp is one of the top industries in the world. If saiya-jin are running it now-\"

Gokou waved his hands. \"Bulma\'s still running it,\" he assured them. \"Vegeta has no interest in the company whatsoever, he just fell for her good looks.\" He winked at the students.

\"I heard that, Kakarott!\" Vegeta roared. \"You just keep your third-class mouth shut down there! I don\'t need details of my personal life spread all over the country!\"

Gokou laughed and scratched the back of his head. \"Gomen, Vegeta-sama!\" he called.

Gohan was looking between the two of them curiously. He seemed to be calming down and regaining his composure.

Vegeta turned back to Gohan. \"Now sit down before you hurt yourself or anyone else!\" he snapped.

Gohan hung his head and sat dejectedly in the empty field. He landed with a thunderous crash that shook the surrounding landscape.

Vegeta stood in front of him and eyed him warily, not entirely sure that Gohan had complete control over himself yet. He looked up at the sky and sighed. \"Well, I\'m not even going to try to get you back to the valley like this,\" he said. \"You\'ll end up destroying most of the city. We\'re just going to have to wait until morning.\"

*

In the cavern, Goten, Trunks, Pan, and Bra were sitting together, concentrating closely on what was happening between Gohan and Vegeta. \"They\'re quiet now,\" Trunks said. \"I wonder what happened.\"

\"I think Gohan got a hold of himself,\" Goten said. \"His ki feels calmer and more controlled now.\" He thought for a minute. \"I wish we knew what happened,\" he said. \"Dad let loose some awesome ki a little bit ago too.\"

Vegeta\'s father spoke up. \"How do you know what\'s happening, anyway?\" he asked.

Trunks looked over at him. \"We can feel their ki, Ojiisan,\" he said. \"We know where they are and what they\'re doing by how their ki is moving.\"

Bulma walked in just then, carrying a portable television. \"But, for us normal people, we have television,\" she said.

Trunks rolled his eyes and Bra giggled.

\"I\'m sure it\'s all over the news,\" Bulma said. She turned on the television and flipped through the channels until she found a news station. A reporter suddenly came on the screen, broadcasting from a news desk.

\"We\'re back, with live coverage of the events taking place at the college,\" he was saying. \"While we\'re still not sure how this incident started or when it will end, we\'ll continue to broadcast live video from the scene.\" The screen cut away to another image, that of a camera panning across a scene that looked like a war zone. Barely recognizable remains of police vehicles were scattered across a street, and uniformed bodies were lying amidst them. Many of them appeared scorched or burned. Bits of rubble crumbled off of damaged buildings nearby. As the camera panned around, the two oozaru loomed into view. Gohan was sitting on the ground looking at his feet; Vegeta stood beside him, his arms crossed in front of his chest, looking bored.

\"Oh, my kami-sama!\" Trunks exclaimed. \"Is that Otousan?\"

Bulma nodded. \"It\'s been so long since I\'ve seen a transformed saiya-jin...and I\'ve never seen one with clothes on...but that\'s definitely the armor he was wearing. The other one must be Gohan.\"

\"Where\'s Gokou?\" ChiChi cried. She crowded in front of the television set. \"Why isn\'t he there?\"

\"He\'s fine, \'Kaasan, I can still feel his ki,\" Goten said. \"He probably didn\'t want or need to transform.\"

As he spoke, the camera panned around again, and they spotted a familiar figure with spiky black hair standing on the ground near a group of people. He appeared to be laughing and talking animatedly with them.

\"What\'s he doing?\" ChiChi asked.

\"It looks like he\'s talking with those people,\" Bulma said. She peered closer at the screen. \"They don\'t look scared,\" she commented. \"I wonder why not?\"

The newscaster\'s voice suddenly broke in. \"It appears that the action has settled down for a while,\" he said. \"We\'re not certain as to what these creatures\' motives are, but right now they appear to be resting...\" He went on to describe the previous events of the evening and the current state that things were in.

Bulma turned off the television. \"Well, it looks like it\'s over for the night,\" she said. \"I wonder why Vegeta doesn\'t bring him back here?\"

Bardock snorted. \"Are you kidding?\" he said. \"Two oozaru trying to walk through a populated city? It\'s like asking to level the place. If Vegeta-sama is so concerned about the welfare of those people in that city that he\'d go to stop Gohan, then he\'s not going to try to walk him out of the city.\"

\"So what do we do now?\" Radditz demanded. \"Just sit here?\"

The group was silent for a moment, mulling over the situation. Bulma suddenly spoke up. \"Well, without Vegeta here we haven\'t much to discuss,\" she said. \"I think everyone should be able to return to their houses, since all of the caves are interconnected to this one. The moon will set in a few hours, and it will be safe to move around again outside as well.\"

\"Hai, Bulma-sama,\" Goten said. He stood up and brushed himself off. \"That sounds like a good idea.\"

Bulma was taken aback by the formal title, but she quickly remember that she was considered their queen in their minds now. She nodded at him, then started toward the tunnel to her own house. She turned back to Vegeta\'s parents and Gokou\'s parents. \"We have a guest room,\" she said. \"You are more than welcome to stay there until the moon sets and you\'re able to explore more freely.\"

\"Thank you,\" the elder Vegeta said. \"We\'ll accept your offer.\"

*

Piccolo sat with his eyes closed, listening to the falling water in front of him. He tried to concentrate on other things, but his mind kept wandering back to Gohan\'s incredibly high ki. \"I know he\'s transformed, that\'s the only explanation,\" he thought. \"And I can sense that Vegeta\'s transformed too.\" He opened his eyes and groaned in frustration. \"I should be there to help him.\"

He glanced over at the infant sleeping beside him. \"It\'s your fault I can\'t leave,\" he thought. \"I can\'t take the chance of you waking up and transforming too.\" He stared at the brown tail that trailed behind the child. He picked it up and ran it through his hands, and wrapped his fist around it, ready to pull the appendage completely off. Then he hesitated.

\"She\'ll find out about it, I know she will,\" he thought. \"But why does that bother me? She shouldn\'t worry me like this, she\'s just a human woman. Even with exceptional ki strength for a human, she\'s still a human.\" But the thought nagged at him. There was something else, something from long ago that he felt he should be remembering, but he didn\'t know what. He let go of the tail. \"I\'ll let it go, for now. Gohan seems to be under control. And he probably doesn\'t want my help anyway.\" Piccolo sighed and closed his eyes again. It was going to be a long night.

*

Vegeta felt the first rays of the sun before they actually appeared over the horizon. His face looked in the direction they would soon be emanating from. \"Gohan,\" he said gruffly. \"The sun\'s about to rise. Look in that direction.\"

Gohan looked toward the east just as the first rays of the sun hit the horizon. The two oozaru squinted their eyes from the glare; then, suddenly, their bodies began to shrink and their features returned to normal. Gohan, now completely nude, collapsed tiredly next to Vegeta.

Several of his students rushed forward. \"Sensei!\" they cried. \"Are you all right?\" They stared worriedly at the bleeding marks on his face, arms and legs.

\"It\'s nothing that won\'t heal,\" Vegeta said shortly.

Gohan groaned a little and turned his eyes away from the sunlight. \"Ugh, I just want to sleep,\" he complained.

\"Baka,\" Vegeta spat. \"Get up. We have to get moving.\"

Gokou walked up to him. \"Gohan always falls asleep after he transforms, Vegeta,\" he said. He picked Gohan up and held him in his arms. \"I\'ll carry him home.\"

\"You\'re sure he\'ll be all right?\" one of the students asked.

\"Yeah, no problem,\" Gokou said. \"He\'ll be as good as new again tonight.\"

Vegeta took off into the air, and Gokou followed him. They landed in the floor of the valley and looked around. The others were milling about randomly, obviously killing time.

Trunks was the first to notice their arrival. \"Otousan!\" he called.

Vegeta walked past him brusquely. \"That was a perfectly good waste of a night,\" he snapped. \"I\'m going to sleep. Make sure no one blows anything up or kills any one before I get up.\"

Trunks looked a little taken aback. \"Hai, Otousan,\" he replied.