Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ A Saiyan Homecoming ❯ The Great Council ( Chapter 10 )

A/N: See, I told you it wouldn't take so long this time, and it didn't, despite the fact that this is probably the fourth draft of this chapter. I don't know for sure, I haven't counted, but it's done. I'm also introducing a lot of things that are going to seem confusing. Don't worry about this chapter, just hang with me until the next one. I'm trying to avoid redundancy. Thanks go out to the ever-so-helpful Maria Cline and Lisse, for simply putting up with me, let alone sounding-board duties. Next story on my focus is Amazon & Saiyan: Consequences, so it might be a few weeks before I can get the next chapter out.

Disclaimer: It's a big one this time. I don't own DBZ. I do, however, own assorted gods and goddesses, as well as Octavia (Amazon & Saiyan: Consequences) and both the versions Son Gohan within. The Creation Angels, namely Kyuushi and Gorgandus belong to Maria Cline from her story Normal Friends From Strange Places, and saiyanarmor!Bra and Cami belong to Lisse and hail from Second Chance and A Road Less Traveled. All are used with full permission. Please don't use any of them without permission.

Mailing List/Discussion Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nadialist

Now that the housekeeping is done with, enjoy!

A Saiyan Homecoming

by Nadia Rose

nadiarose3@hotmail.com

Chapter Ten: The Great Council

Miracles happened every day. There was a Goddess in charge of miracles; her name was, appropriately, Miracle. She was faintly humanoid in appearance, if you ignored the fact that she a.) glowed, b.) had wings, and c.) was just too perfect to be real. She was Miracle after all, and she'd been very busy.

For the first time in Earth's recorded history-its mythical history even-the creatures that governed the Heavens, Hell, and All That Was were gathering together in one place. That alone proved the very extent of Miracle's powers. It was too much to ask that the meeting that was going to take place would be free of arguments, actual fights, and magical blows that would twist the fate of the Multiverse for years to come. Not even Miracle was that good.

The designated meeting area was the traditional one, the Neverending Nebula, which as its name suggested, never actually ended. During these meetings the gods liked to go as deep into the nebula as they possibly could to avoid eavesdroppers, as long as they weren't too far away from the cappuccino machine. Shin stood on his podium of swirling light and watched all the gods that overlooked everything as they streamed in from all sides of the Neverending Nebula (yet another one of those things Shin didn't bother to ask about) to take their places in the Nebula, which obediently formed itself into amphitheater-style seating to accommodate them.

Shin sighed and shuffled his feet slightly. There were a lot of gods, and his feet were starting to ache.

The major gods alone numbered more than the collective evil tyrants of the Multiverse, and the minors were more plentiful than stars in the sky. In other words, there were a lot of gods.

They came in pairs too, in one of the Multiverse's odd inbuilt system of checks and balances, for each god there was an opposite somewhere to check that power. The Goddess of Miracles' counterpart was the God of Mechanics, who was frantically reasoning with her that the probability of this meeting turning out well was in negative numbers. It was a good thing Miracle had the patience of, well, a goddess. Somewhere to Shin's left, the God of Subordination was yelling at his counterpart, the Goddess of Free Will, who had decided the prime vantage spot for this meeting would be the ceiling. The ceiling also had easy access to the cappuccino machine.

Shin's attention was caught soon after by a pair of twin Nameks down below-the God of Fusion and the Goddess of Fission-who only became a typical asexual Namek when they fused. Those two were quite the pair while not actually a pair; they were two halves of a whole. While the Gods poured in, the Kais were returning from their trip to the beverage station. The Four Directional Kais overlooked the living world while the Grand Kai, who was shamelessly flirting with the angel at his shoulder, overlooked the warriors of Heaven.

Behind them came perhaps the most powerful of them all next to Shin, probably even more powerful. The four surviving Angels of Creation chatted amongst themselves before taking their places up high, overlooking the proceedings. They would take little part in the actual discussion, but would listen and offer suggestions if needed in Shin's absence.

The room fell into silence with the clashing of Gorgandus' metal wings, and Kyuushi cast a scornful glance at a handful of minor gods who had ignored the signal.

The Supreme Ruler of Everything took a deep breath and began to speak.

"We would like to thank you for coming today," his quiet voice carried out across the sea of faces watching him. "You have all been informed by either Proclamation or memo that we have chosen our successor."

Quiet. They knew this well; Shin suspected they were already plotting against him.

"His name is Son Gohan, and he is a Halfling Saiyan from the planet Earth."

Murmuring.

Shin raised his voice to carry over it, a remarkable fact given the natural qualities of his voice and the sheer number of people he had to overwhelm. There were advantages to being Supreme Kai. "Do not let his race sway your opinions of him; Son Gohan is a man of integrity. He is not a typical modern Saiyan."

More murmuring, but Shin ignored it.

"You will find copies of his individual attributes and accomplishments beneath your seats," he continued conversationally. "Son Gohan is our chosen successor; after 15 years of strict training here in the Other Dimensions, he has proven himself worthy to begin the basic tests. Your planning and tests are of your own choosing; by tradition we cannot interfere with their execution, so it is best if you test him to your satisfaction."

Shin looked out at the sea of faces again, watching the varying reactions across the crowd. "Madam Chairwoman," he spoke softly to the woman standing by the door, "The podium is yours."

The Chairwoman, or the chosen arbitrator and voice of reason when things got hot and heavy, neatly climbed the podium to stand next to him and face the crowd. "Thank you Supreme Kai," her dark head bobbed in a token show of respect. "Now would you do me a favor?"

"Yes, Madame?"

"Get off my podium," she replied evenly, ready to get to work, "and take all the mortals, servants, Knights, and non-gods with you."

Shin nodded to her, and glanced out at the crowd, fixing his eyes on the handful of people who fit that category and leaving them unspoken summons.

The chair was less dramatic. She pointed to each individually. "You! Out!"

There was a squawk of protest from, not surprisingly, the Goddess of Free Will. "My cappuccino!" The woman wailed, clutching at an almost empty-cup. "I stayed up all night repairing a universe after a certain idiot," she glared pointedly at her rather sinister counterpart, "got through playing in it. If I'm going to stay up for this, I need caffeine!"

Her cry was echoed and supported by a great many gods, and Shin could see the gears in the Chair's head grinding. He knew that she herself had a great fondness for some strange beverage called cola, and it too was being served at the cappuccino machine. "Fine," she amended. "The girls working refreshments can stay. The rest of you, OUT!" She paused, and bobbed her head again at him in an afterthought. "Supreme Kai."

Shin smiled thinly, nodded at the mass of gods, and led the handful of mortals out just as calm as he had been when he'd entered. Inside, however, he was smirking triumphantly. For all their secrecy, he'd still outsmarted them. It was mandatory that while the Supreme Kai was allowed to choose and train his own successor the gods themselves approved or rejected that candidate without his help. They had become grumpy and discontent, too used to the liberties they were able to take now that there was only one Supreme Kai and not several. Shin suspected that Gohan's tests were going to be designed for failure, so he'd broken a few rules himself and planted a few of his own people in the Neverending Nebula.

At the cappuccino machine, two young female demi-Saiyans sporting halos continued to prepare the vital beverage for the caffeine-addicted gods. They also kept their ears on alert.

* * * * * * * * * *

The little purple being known as Kaoishin dropped into his conformable desk chair, eyeing the spattering of creatures that were draped across various fixtures in his office. His Knights. Like CEOs had interns, professors graduate assistants, and football teams waterboys, Shin had his Knights. They ranged from all over the Multiverse and were from all versions within it, but they answered to Shin and Shin alone. They were his information and message network, his eyes and ears, and if he needed it, brute strength. They were indispensable. They were also damn annoying.

He didn't want to know how they'd gotten that horse up five flights of stairs.

Ignoring the monstrous four-legged beast standing where his couch had been that morning, the Kaoishin turned his gaze to his most trusted Knights, who were all from Earth. Different Earths of course, or else he wouldn't have a man named Son Gohan in his office while his apprentice Son Gohan had just recently gone home. But he did have a Son Gohan in his office who looked nothing like the other; the horse now serving as a couch was his horse, and the red-haired woman perched on the windowsill was his grandmother.

Who happened to be graphically promising Grand Kai all matter of rather…excruciating punishments if he ever tried groping her again.

"Octavia," he reprimanded patiently, "I don't think we need to hear about how you're going to replace his brain with his spleen in quite that much detail."

He was met by a pair of glowing golden eyes as the Amazon Queen turned up her nose at him. "I could have done worse," she replied, fuming. "That…that man is an abomination to the Kais. He's worse than Roshi, and I had to practically beat him into the ground to keep his hands off me-I'm married to one of his students!"

Gohan looked up from plaiting his steed's mane to his fuming grandmother. "It's just the Grand Kai. When you get as old as he is, you're bound to be a little eccentric."

"Try senile, Gohan," Octavia snapped back, still vexed.

Gohan shrugged and went back to his braiding. He'd been around Amazons a lot more than Shin had, and knew when not to pick a fight. Shin generally followed his lead in when dealing with Octavia, and made a mental note not to use her to send messages to the Grand Kai again for a while. He didn't think Octavia was strong enough to kill a Kai-and he wasn't intending on finding out soon.

Said woman propped her booted feet up on the windowsill again, frustrations apparently forgotten. "I've been asked to check up on something," she told him, pulling her long hair loose from its bun so she could braid it. "It appears that Piccolo's found himself a way back into the living the world."

Still working on his horse, Gohan grumbled. "That was not my fault."

Octavia lifted an eyebrow. "It was your doing?"

Gohan looked pointedly down at his horse's mane, pulling the coarse hair into tight braids. "I was there. I didn't say I did it."

Octavia planted a hand on one hip and managed to glare swords at her grandson. "A person is restored to life against all the powers of the gods and you were there? You've got explaining to do, Gohan."

The male Knight shrugged. "I was depositing a few of those orcs back into hell when the ogres tried to get Yemma's counterpart out of her cell for the meeting. She wasn't out long, but it was long enough to send a handful of people back to the living world."

Shin sighed. He should have known. Yemma's duty was to sort souls into their proper place in the afterlife; his counterpart's was the exact opposite-she put souls from the Other Dimensions back into the living one. They tended to keep her contained, because given free reign, there would have been a lot more ghosts and resurrections than there already were. It wasn't a good thing to upset the flow of the dead into the Next Dimensions. Things got sticky when it did. "How many did she manage to put back this time?"

"Couple of hundred," Gohan murmured. "Only about ten with bodies, though."

Shin cocked an eyebrow. "Do we know who those ten bodies are yet?"

Gohan shook his head.

"And why aren't you chasing them down and putting them back where they belong?"

Gohan narrowed his eyes and looked at him, flipping his ponytail over one shoulder. "I'm not allowed in the living world. I'm not that kind of Angel."

What passed as Shin's smile touched his lips. "No, you're not. You're a Knight, and you do what I need you to."

The Knight's of Heaven's answering grin spelt trouble in a big way.

Before anything more could be said, however, the door burst open and Shin's eyes and ears walked in. Or rather, one of them walked in. The other was nowhere in sight.

Bra Briefs, Saiyan armor and halo included, stomped beneath the horse's neck and swayed to a halt in front of Shin's desk. Although she'd been barely four when a bomb had killed her, her body in the afterlife was appropriately that of an eighteen-year-old. She had the personality of someone at least five times that age. Bra was always right, no matter who you were.

Giving her boss the patented Vegeta-Brief's-gaze-of-superiority look, she opened her mouth, and promptly changed all of Shin's plans. "We have a problem."

Shin cocked an eyebrow at her. "Where's Cami?"

Cami Son, who was, in a rather twisted sense, related to everyone in the room but Shin, was nowhere to be seen. Considering she was as tall as Bra and probably twice as loud, this was nothing short of a miracle.

"She's part of the problem," Bra explained quickly. "Cami, you can come out now."

"No I can't!" A tiny voice called back faintly. "I can't believe they did that!"

Bra rolled her eyes. "Cami, they caught us! What did you expect? A pat on the head and a second chance? They're gods for Kami's sake!"

"I wasn't expecting this!" The tiny voice wailed back.

On the other side of the horse, Gohan's eyes were darting around. Cami was his partner, and he was usually able to tell where she was at within a range of about five realms, but this had him confused. He knew she was close, probably in the room judging from her ki, but nowhere in sight. "Cami?" He spoke softly. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? What's wrong?" The tiny voice got louder. "I'll tell you what's wrong!" Something zipped out from behind Bra and hurtled towards the male demi-Saiyan. "I'm small, I'm eleven, and I look like TINKERBELL!"

A tiny little girl floated in front of Gohan's nose, all of six-inches tall. The bright purple hair proclaimed her to be none other than the mysteriously hiding Knight, Son Cami. Just shrunk. And younger. Instead of the roughly twenty-year old she had been, her body was now twelve at the most. To go along with her new body, tiny glittering purple wings had been affixed to her back, and the drab tunic, tights and boot combo she normally wore had been replaced by something entirely too frilly for even Shin's taste.

Gohan, much to his credit, was able to contain his laughter. Of course, Shin didn't think he'd ever heard this Gohan laugh. The tall Knight merely stuck out his hand and let his now-tiny partner rest in it before she took a nosedive. "Who did this to you?"

"The God of Cruel and Unusual Punishment," Cami sniffed, unaware that big crystalline tears were welling in her eyes. "He turned me into a fairy!"

The tall Saiyan's face set. If there was one thing that nobody did, it was mess with Gohan's family. He couldn't stand to see any of them in pain, even if they weren't really related to him, which was the case with Cami. The two shared the same surname, and the same father even, but came from two completely different universes. "Do you want me to kill him for you?"

"You idiot!" Cami bellowed, standing in his palm with a melodic twinkling and a burst of glitter. "If you kill him, he can't undo me once my punishment is over!"

"Sorry, sorry," Gohan mumbled, eyeing his partner. "What am I supposed to do with you now? You can't exactly fight like that-and Phantom," he patted the horse with his free hand, "Is going to be very tempted to stomp on you."

"Gohan," Octavia remarked from the windowsill, "I suggest you get a pocket."

Bra dissolved into giggles.

Unofficial law of the Multiverse: If there was one thing the Knights were it was their own self-contained sideshow. Shin really ought to start selling tickets; he'd make a small fortune.

However appealing that thought was, he had more important things to do. The gods didn't punish someone, especially one of his people, that badly without a reason. He eyed Bra, who was idly polishing her halo while Cami vehemently insisted she wasn't living in anybody's pocket, let alone Gohan's. "You said you were caught?"

Bra nodded, her amusement falling away like lead off a cliff. "Yes." Her eyes drifted back towards Cami. "They caught her trying to scribble down a note on a napkin, then the enforcers got involved and," she gestured at the little demi-Saiyan pixie, "Poof! Fairy-Princess Cami."

She sighed and plopped down on his desk, a very good indication that this was going to take a while. "What they're planning to do-I think they must have broken every other law in the book." She shook her head. "They're…they're going to use people that are traditionally off limits in the testing."

Cami, who was now perched on Gohan's ear, nodded in agreement. "Yes." She pursed lips that looked suspiciously shiny-like they'd been glittered. "They," she paused for a moment.

"They what," Shin questioned, seeing that Bra was no closer to speaking.

The two girls exchanged glances.

"They're going to use the Majin," Bra explained shortly.

Shin closed his eyes. The situation was worse than he thought; he'd have to start taking countermeasures, and immediately. It shouldn't have been this bad. At all. He was going to have to break a lot of rules but the gods, in using the Majin itself, had already broken them. And when things in the Other Dimensions got bad the rules became agonizingly simple: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

He glanced up at Bra. "You're staying here with me." He glanced at the others, who were waiting grimly for their orders. "Gohan, take Cami and start chasing down those spirits and bodies. Start on my apprentice's world, because with our luck, they pretty much ended up there."

His dark gaze swiveled to the Amazon Queen, who was idly relacing her boots. "Octavia, I want you to keep an eye out for things. I'm not sure what's going on with Gohan down there, but I know that there've been heavenly hands interfering in it. Just see what's going on for me, and then give Gohan a hand."

The Queen nodded.

Gohan swung up on his horse and Cami scrambled to his shoulder, making sure she got a good grip in his long hair. He glanced over at his grandmother. "Need a lift?"

Octavia finished tying her boots before she walked over to the horse and leapt up behind Gohan with a graceful spring. As soon as all three were settled, Cami gave him an impish grin from her perch. "We'll be back later. Don't wait up!"

With a cluck and a slap of reins, Gohan spurred the horse into bounding towards the window, where it disappeared in a column of light. Destination: the Earth of the Kai-Elect, one Son Gohan.

Shin sat back in his chair and eyed the girl who was still making like a paperweight on his desk. "All right Bra," he sighed, "I need to tell you everything you heard, and who said what, if you can remember that much."

The demi-Saiyan sniffed. "Of course I can. I do have a photographic memory." She slithered off his desk to get comfortable in an armchair, where she promptly began to spill a tale that had previously existed only in the Supreme Kai's nightmares.

* * * * * * * * *

While Shin was having major epiphanies over the state of affairs in Heaven, the group of warriors and friends clustered together in Orange Star General were also having epiphanies of a much more pleasant nature. Thanks to some miracle that probably started with a certain green god, Bulma's Legal Department managed to get the transfer paperwork done in record time and the string of ambulances had arrived to transport the problematic patients back to the Capsule Corps hospital. Of course there was the small problem of getting them through the human sea of reporters and bystanders clustered around the hospital, but a quick call to the local National Guard took care of that. Juuhachi had offered, but Bulma didn't need any more lawsuits to deal with.

Their little section of hospital was filled to bursting with officials; doctors, nurses, administration and even a few of Videl's colleagues, who had mastered the art of intimidating the weak-of-character as easily as well as she did. Barden was perched on the window, eyeing the big green man who had somehow managed to knock his Dad out of those horrible banana hallucinations. Gohan was slowly falling into a deeper sleep, which was doing wonders for everybody's minds-and ears.

Bulma was trying to orchestrate the whole event, making sure everyone got the right place, but there was so much hubbub even her voice was insignificant. She settled for storming downstairs to peek out at the ambulances and calling her father to check up on Bra.

Up in the hall Videl was waiting for the Doctors to approve Pan's release, which seemed to be taking a bit longer than it had for Goten. The paramedics stood beside her, gurney at ready, to begin another mad dash out to the string of waiting ambulances. After a few minutes the nurse led Pan, now back in her familiar red gi, was ushered out to the gurney. The nurse helped her lie down, and patted her shoulder. "We'll contact you with those test results, Miss…err…Girl."

Pan smiled, ignoring the admiring looks of the male paramedic. "Thank you," she murmured in reply.

The nurse smiled again, pulled the sheet up over Pan's head, and motioned for the paramedics to start their run through the gauntlet.

Videl narrowed her eyes at the nurse. "Test?"

"Oh, nothing major," the nurse replied as the elevator doors swung shut on the gurney. "We just picked up a little anomaly in her blood and wanted to take a closer look at it."

Internally, Videl began to swear in such a fashion that even Marron, who had a mouth like a sailor's, would have been impressed. After all these years she wasn't sure how different a Saiyan's or demi-Saiyan's blood was from that of a normal human, but the last thing she needed was to have some unwitting doctor stumble across it. Externally, she plastered a smile at the nurse and began to search for Bulma, who could still scare any normal human out of anything. "Shall we get on with the next?"

And so the others were catalogued and sent on, although the number of people in the hallway didn't decrease in the slightest, until only Trunks and Vegeta were left. This posed a small problem as Vegeta could only be moved with great difficulty. Videl happily enlisted Krillin, Yamcha, and Ubuu to help her out.

A woman with malt-colored hair and a rumpled lab coat sidled up to the wall and peered at the charts for several long minutes, taking a few notes on a pad she dug out of a pocket before going to help one of the nurses pick up the pieces of a mug that she'd just dropped to the floor. Apparently the fact that the Prince had just promised mass-homicide if he heard another word about his infernal cast bothered her.

Smiling cheerfully at the terrified nurse, she carried the ceramic shards to the nearest trashcan and ducked into the elevator. They'd gotten the funny man onto the gurney-the main show was over.

A few minutes later Bulma sighed in relief as the last of the ambulances disappeared down the road in the general direction of Western Capitol. The horror of the past several hours was over. She could go home, get some sleep, and decide what to tell the press in the morning.

Or at least that's what she thought.

Five ambulances left Orange Star General. Only three made it all the way to Capsule Corps.

TBC….

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