Ch. 10: Gohan's Training (2)

"Thank you, Doctor Brief, for fixing me. I feel like a new robot!" Mr. Robot told Doctor Brief, sitting up, testing out his new body.

"You practically are. I pretty much replaced everything. Had you been damaged any worse, not even I would have been able to put you back together." the doctor told him. Most of his components had been incredibly old, worn out, or damaged. Honestly, it was surprising that the CPU had still been in good shape after all the wear and tear on the old thing.

"Thanks, Dr. Brief. Mr. Robot here helped my brother quite a bit, so I wanted to return the favor." I told him. That's right, I had pulled the robot out from the collapsed cave and brought it back to Capsule Corp for Dr. Brief to fix. In the original series, the robot had simply died, but I figured that it'd make an excellent lab assistant for Bulma in the future, especially since he had placed its CPU in an entirely new body.

...

I'd been watching over Gohan for quite a while now. He'd been through quite a bit, and by this point he was notably stronger than the Gohan in the show had been. I think something had changed inside of him when he jumped out of the cave, which he hadn't done in the show. Now, he was more focused, and a little bit reckless compared to the Gohan from the show. 

Ultimately, Gohan's end goal hadn't changed, though. After learning that he was on an island, Gohan had created a boat. Today, he set sail, even though he didn't know how to swim.

...

I spent most of my days either telepathically chatting with Shay (who was starting to lose it, being away from me this long. Every day, she got a bit needier), or sparring with Piccolo. When I sparred with Piccolo, I held myself back just enough that he'd always beat me, but he probably knew that I wasn't using my full strength, because he'd then get moody and disappear to meditate or fight himself for a few days. Today, though, I did neither. 

While Raditz and dad had gotten to King Kai's according to Shay's schedule, I'd also managed to pinpoint Vegeta and Nappa's energy signatures shortly after their visit to Arlia. Finding Arlia hadn't been hard, since according to Supreme Kai, there weren't too many worlds in the Seventh Universe that were occupied with sentient life.

Vegeta had attempted to destroy Arlia once they had finished inadvertently saving it, but I'd pulled a trick pretty similar to the Moon trick and tossed Arlia into the far reaches of the Core's Universe. Even if they developed high-end space travel, Arlians wouldn't be able to reach another civilized planet from their new spot.

I'd probably put it back eventually, once I didn't have to hide my power, but I didn't want Supreme Kai to get suspicious yet, so Arlia had to disappear somehow. Luckily, Arlia had medieval level technology, so they wouldn't develop space travel for quite a while. 

...

Meanwhile, on Earth, Krillin and Yamcha had joined Tien and Chiaotzu on Korin's tower for training. Since they hadn't needed to find Tien and Chiaotzu, the only one they'd needed to look for was Yamcha, which gave them more time to climb the tower. Now, they were almost ready to move from Korin's training to Kami's training.

...

On King Kai's world...

"Stupid monkey!"

"Hey Bubbles! Come on!" Goku and Raditz still hadn't caught the monkey.

"You have to admit, this is great entertainment. They're just monkeying around!" King Kai joked to Shay as they watched the two brothers.

"No."

"You're no fun." King Kai pouted.

...

"Finished! I did it! I'm going home." Gohan pushed his newly made boat into the water, only to look back. During his time on the island, he'd found an unlikely friend in a certain tiger. Mr. Tiger was clearly sad to see him go, so Gohan tried to cheer him up a little.

"Don't worry, Mr. Tiger. I'll come back. I just need to go see my mom and sister first, okay?" It didn't seem to do much for Mr. Tiger's sadness, but Gohan would see him again someday.

"And stroke... and stroke..." Gohan used his paddles until he found a wind current. After he did, it was fairly similar to the windsurfing that he had done a few days ago. He felt like he was going at a pretty good pace.

"Gohan's leaving the island, huh..." In the original show, Piccolo had gone looking for Gohan, and he thought about doing it here, too, but he could sense that Gohan was still being watched by his sister, who was roughly as strong as Piccolo was, so he continued his training, knowing that Gohan was in safe hands.

"Oh no! A storm!" Gohan's boat had sailed right into the middle of a nasty storm. It tossed him around to the point where he couldn't even stand.

"I can't go back now! Just in case, I better eat this food while I still can. Gohan started stuffing his face, but then he realized another problem.

"I'm taking on water! Oh no! Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. Boy, I wish I could swim!" He desperately bailed out water, but it wasn't enough. It was just a matter of time before the boat tipped over and he was hanging on by a thread. Unbeknownst to Gohan, he wasn't actually in any real danger. I was watching him through the storm the whole time.

It was a rough night for Gohan, that's for sure. In the end, Gohan kept a death grip on the sinking pieces of his ship as the sea raged around him. He lost track of the time as the sea repeatedly swallowed him, only to spit him right back out as if he was on some sort of hellish amusement park ride of doom.

Meanwhile, I just watched from above, ready to save him at a moment's notice.