Ch. 168: Goku Comes Home

"BOOM!" Just as Pigero left to go get the hidden Legacies, including Cargo, who we'd need to heal Vegeta after the beating I'd given him, a ball of fire fell from the sky at terminal velocity before landing in a crater right in front of us. None of us were surprised, though. As the smoke from the landing cleared, a white and black spaceship was soon visible. It was Goku's. 

"Dad!" As the door opened, the first one to react was Gohan, who zipped off faster than the eye could follow and immediately tackled Goku as he walked out the door of the ship.

"Oof! Gohan, you got so big! And strong!" Despite what Goku said, catching Gohan's full-speed charge didn't make him budge a single inch. Instead, he simply swung Gohan into the air playfully. 

"Daddy!" Gohan cried into our father's shoulder as Goku stopped spinning him. 

"Hey, Hanna. C'mere." Locking eyes with me, standing behind Gohan with my arms crossed awkwardly, Goku beckoned me over with the hand that wasn't holding Gohan. After a moment's hesitation, I joined Gohan, quickly hugging Goku before pulling back.

"Hi, dad." I greeted.

"Thanks for showing them where I'd land, Shay." Goku thanked my dragon, who was standing behind him.

"How'd you know that? You were in space." Raditz immediately asked my dad. I was kind of worried about that, too. He'd not known anything about Trunks's foreknowledge in the canon, which suggested that he'd learned something troublesome from Raika.

'Shay... Why did we send him to Raika?' I muttered telepathically. 

'Meh. Long as he can't sense our telepathy, who cares?' She telepathically replied, giving an almost imperceptible shrug. I decided to agree with her. Raika wasn't stupid. He wouldn't have taught Goku anything about the Core Girls or the fact that I was their leader, so worst case scenario would be if Goku'd learned how to sense divine energy, and that honestly wouldn't be a big deal either. As long as my power was sealed, there wasn't a person in the universe who could tell that I was stronger than I appeared to be... My extremely refined control was harder to hide, but as long I wasn't pushing myself as far beyond my limits as I'd done against Frieza right before he'd killed me, it wasn't likely to be a problem either.

"While I was away, I learned a few pretty cool techniques. I used one of them to spy on you guys while I was in flight." Goku explained.

"Remote viewing?" Krillin asked.

"Something like that..." Goku said with a sly grin, "First things first, someone should really heal Vegeta... Hanna, you really did a number on him. I'm so proud of you, my little Super Saiyan." With that, he ruffled my hair and put Gohan on the ground before walking over to Vegeta.

"You really saw everything, huh?" I muttered to myself as he kneeled over Vegeta and placed his hand on the half-conscious Saiyan's chest. 

"Yeah. I wanna hear that story later. Right now... Here you go, Vegeta." Slowly, Goku's energy began flowing into Vegeta's body from his hand, and Vegeta's wounds began healing at a visible rate. It wasn't as effective as Dende and Cargo's healing mastery, but it was still something that the original Goku had never been able to do.

"Whoa! You healed him, like Dende and Cargo!" Yamcha exclaimed.

"That's definitely new..." Piccolo noted.

"After I barely escaped Namek, I ended up meeting this guy who taught me something called Spirit Control." Goku explained.

"Spirit Control?" Tien asked.

"Basically, I can move my soul now, sort of. It's hard to explain... All of the energy in your body comes from your soul, so I just kind of redirected his energy to fix his injuries. I can also use it to leave my body behind and 'go' places in soul form. That's how I saw Hanna beat Frieza." Goku explained. 

"You can leave your body?" Krillin asked.

"Yeah, but I'm honestly not very good at it..." Goku replied, scratching the back of his head, "I can't do it for very long, because my body doesn't remember to breathe while my soul's gone, though."

"That's still pretty cool, man." Yamcha said. 

"Nah. What's cool is the last thing that I learned how to do." Goku replied to Yamcha with a sly smirk. 

"And what's that? Did you figure out how to turn into a Great Ape without using your tail or something?" Nappa asked.

Goku laughed at that, "No." And then he disappeared for a moment, reappearing with Master Roshi's glasses on his face. "Way better than that, eh!?" 

"Wait, are those...!?" Krillin immediately recognized Roshi's glasses.

"Yup!"

"But Roshi's island is on the other side of the planet!" Krillin exclaimed.

"Yeah. It's called Instant Transmission. Pretty cool, right!? Basically, I turn my whole body into light for a moment, then just kind of slip through space. I need someone's energy to reference, though." Goku explained. 

"Teach me that!" I told him, sparkles in my eyes. It was set now. I wanted to be able to use Instant Transmission without giving myself away. With three years to practice, that was finally a possibility.

Naturally, Goku laughed at that. "I knew you'd wanna learn it. Sure, Hanna. It's not easy, though. In fact, it might end up being pretty dangerous."

"Well, you've got three years to teach her." Shay finally decided to speak up.

...

Shay explained all of it to everyone present, right then and there. She didn't tell anyone about Cell, or the fact that there were going to be more than just 17 and 18, but the more she talked, the graver everyone's expressions got. Finally, she was done.

"So... you're saying that two stupid strong, murderous androids are going to attack the Earth in three years, kill all of us, and then go on to carve a path of unprecedented destruction through the civilized world?" Nappa summed up once she'd finished. There was no point in telling Goku about his future heart disease. Timeline changes had rendered that unnecessary, so we'd decided to just immunize Goku against it now and let him join the original fight.

"Exactly. Good luck. Try not to die, but I guess I don't really care..." With that, Shay disappeared, leaving a group of shocked Z-fighters in the middle of the desert. She even slyly reclaimed Goku's spaceship as she left.