Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Home is where the heart is ❯ Prologue

Disclaimer: I don't own DB, DBZ, DB GT, DB (insert letter combination here) at all. So don't sue.

Yep, another different reality romance . I seem to be fixated on them, but I don't complain *grins*

Rating will go up in a few chapters.

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There had been a time in my life when I thought I was going insane.

My name's Kate. I had grown up in a relatively small town, not big enough to claim to have any kind of entertainment activity or meaning to speak of, and not small enough that everybody knew everyody else. It was an average boring smalltown, and as soon as I could I left it behind. And not only the town, but also the country and the continent to start studying at a university on the other side of the globe.

There's a saying, 'Home is where the heart is'. The problem was I didn't know where mine was. I had hated the place where I came from, true, but I didn't feel at home where I ended up.

My tendency not to restrain myself and openly speak my opinion didn't make me any friends in the new location. Most of the people there were affronted by my attitude, and the few who weren't didn't dare say it, and were probably quite taken aback. I didn't mind that much, I preferred people to like me how I was, and not the mask I would have forcibly put on to fit in.

But nevertheless, I felt lonely.

That's why I really had been convinced I was going nuts when I started to hear the voice. I thought that maybe my admittedly lack of regular free time interaction with other people made me imagine things that weren't really there. It really scared me; I've always had a healthy imagination, but never to the extent of inventing people.

After a few days I steeled myself and went to a horribly expensive 45 minutes session at a counsellor/psychologist woman, only to be told I should get some spare time activity and should meet other people, and why didn't I join their group session once a week, I'd get a discount since I was a student…

Very helpful. I didn't go there again.

I decided to deal with that weird situation on my own, after all, if I had thought it up, couldn't I just make it go away again? So when the voice came back again, as it had several time on a daily basis, I answered.
I remember the first conversation clearly. I had been in the middle of a short bout of self-pity, wondering whether I'd always be alone, remembering the unsatisfying relationships I had been in before.
' I would never leave you unfulfilled. Never wanting.' said the voice in my head, and I bolted upward in surprise.
'Who are you?' I yelled mentally, feeling a bit freaked out. I got the impression of a stunned silence.
'Are you there?' came the voice back, tentatively. I snorted loudly
'Yeeeees….' I tried to transmit dripping sarcasm to… wherever my conversation partner was. 'Where else? Now please tell me: Who are you? Are you a figment of my own imagination, did I make you up? If yes, could you please go away?' I felt extremely weird, taking with myself wasn't something I did on a regular basis, at least not mentally.
'I'm not made up' came the indignant voice. 'I'm Epin. And I didn't choose to have someone else in my head.'
"In your head?!" I asked aloud and slapped a hand over my mouth. The walls were very thin in the house I lived in. 'Listen, you are in my head. And I didn't want that either!' I growled back. Again silence.
'All right.' the voice grumbled. 'So we are in each other's head. Great.'

That first conversation had been the beginning. Not a very smooth one, but a beginning. It was as if that conversation had opened some sort of gate and information between us flowed more freely.
As the weeks went by I lost my belief of the voice being an imagination. It was too strange, too …not-me to be something I made up. It was an entire independent personality.

His name was Epin. He belonged to a species called Saiyans, humanoid but with tails. I received some other memories from him, random ones, not making any sense individually - that's why I won't go into any details - , but in a greater context they did, like a giant puzzle you don't know the final picture before you finished most of it.

I knew that I was either mentally ill on a serious level or that it was indeed real. I couldn't tell which possibility was the correct one; on one side I didn't show any symptoms of a mental disease outside of hearing a disembodied voice, but on the other side I couldn't see how it could be real. Though after some time I leaned toward the latter.
I know it doesn't make any sense like I write it down. But I honestly can't explain it differently. If you ever have the experience of talking to someone inside your head you somehow know is real, you know what I mean.

As time went by we started to get more comfortable with each other, even slightly attracted, much to my occasional extreme embarrassment. I remember one time when I was ripped back to the present by the face of my teacher hovering inches before my own flushed one, asking testily where the hell I was with my thoughts. I was mortified, I could hardly tell him the truth, that I had been in a weird mental smooching session or whatever.

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The warriors flying through the air and exchanging blows and destructive energy beams moved fluently, giving to a possible unsuspecting onlooker the impression of an intricate dance, studied to perfection. Only it wasn't. It was a rather serious sparring session between warriors, more or less equal in power and agility , testing each other's strength, trying out new moves to outmatch the others. Every lapse in concentration would result be critical.

One of the blurring silhouettes found that out the hard way, pausing in his movements and not defending himself against the oncoming barrage of blows. The attackers barely managed to divert them, the complex dance coming to a halt.
"What the hell's wrong with you?!" yelled one at the person still hovering frozen on the spot.

"N.. nothing. I'm going in" mumbled the one addressed, shaking himself out of his trance and descending rapidly to the ground.
The remaining warrior watched him go and shook their heads. "It's getting worse" one said, and his comrades only nodded, before starting their all-around attack anew.

He touched down slowly, deep in thought and moved towards the door of the large building.

"Epin." a harsh voice stated. Get in. I think we should talk." Epin's head shot up and his face reddened. "Yes, Prince Vegeta" he murmured, embarrassed that his prince had seen his lacking performance.
He followed his ruler, milddle-length spiky hair swaying behind him, and took the seat indicated by Vegeta when they reached the main room.

Vegeta scrutinized him for a while, frowning. "What the hell is going on?" he finally asked. "You were making good progress for some weeks, and suddenly you leave yourself wide open for the simplest attacks. If Bricriu hadn't managed to deflect his blow you'd be a mass of shattered bones. This isn't you. So tell me…" he fixed the squirming warrior with a hard stare, "what is wrong with you?"

Epin sighed deeply, knowing that this time he wouldn't get away. He had to explain, and it made him uncomfortable. True, he admired and trusted his prince, but to openly discuss his so-called problem felt weird. But there was no way out, so he started to talk. He told Vegeta about the strange connection with a girl somewhere else, the very first feeling that there was somebody else and him reacting g to it. The surprise when an answer came back, their conversations and how they started to know each other.

"Interesting." muttered Vegeta, a strange light gleaming in his eyes. "Tell me more, that can't be everything. It still doesn't explain why you're zoning out so often lately."
"Well… we… "stuttered Epin, unsure how to go on.

"Let me guess", came a new voice, and he looked up to see his prince's mate and the owner of the large property come into the room, combing her blue hair with her fingers. "You two became used to each other, and your trains of thought started to interact? Like in an intimate manner?"
Epin flushed deep red. How did she know? He shot a look at Vegeta and was startled to see the prince's complexion had darkened somehow.

"Y.. Yes" he stuttered, trying not to think about the fact that he was about to lay open his private thoughts not only to his prince but also to the one being technically the princess of his species. "It.. it was like a kind of role playing. On started to have a thought or a picture, and the other reacted to it, and the first one reacted again to that reaction and….well.." He didn't know how to proceed, but it wasn't necessary.

"Oh goodie." sighed Bulma and looked at him with sympathy.
"How do you know that?" Epin couldn't stop himself from asking.
"Well…" Bulma grinned at her mate who had turned his head away, seemingly not interested "I remember we had the same thing…"
"The sam…." Epin clamped his jaw shut. He did not want to envision that. But wait a minute… "but that can't be possible!" he practically yelled, agitated.
Bulma snorted wryly and muttered "I'm having this weird deja-vu feeling…", causing her mate to give her an indignant glare. Louder, she said "I know, I know. But tell me, do you know where she is?" Epin could only shake his head. "Not nearby, that's all I know."
"Damn" murmured Bulma, while Vegeta lifted on eyebrow in surprise. "But you know her energy signature?"
Yes," Epin said.

"Okay, I need to take some tests. Come with me." Bulma said and without waiting for the young Saiyan to follow she exited the room. Epin shared a look with his prince and blinked perplexed before hurrying to catch up with his host.

Bulma had managed to extract the necessary information out of Epin's memories and brainwaves before his condition got worse. Her experiment was based on a complex theory about each individual having its own energy pattern. In this case the main goal was to pinpoint the energy signature and provide a kind of one-way gateway, guiding it to CC. It acted as a kind of beacon, only discernable to the person with that energy signature. The most tricky part wasn't bringing the person to the exact location where the gateway was anchored. It was the fact that it had to be triggered from the other side, by that person. Bulma had no means of getting a message with instructions across, and she could only hope that the girl would know what to do instinctively.
Bulma didn't know whether it would work at all, she hadn't had the chance to try it our before, but it was worth a try.

Her satisfaction was enormous when it turned out the gateway worked according to expectations, and they moved it to the back of the main room where it wouldn't be in the way, but where they'd still notice at once when someone got through.

Now all they could do was wait. If Bulma's and Vegeta's suspicion about the nature of Epin's 'illness' were correct they wouldn't have long to wait. .

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About three months after I first felt or heard him in my head things started to get strange. His thoughts became erratic, unfocused, and I became scared. I felt close to the voice and the owner of it, and I was more worried than I wanted to admit. And when I one day felt him slip away, gradually but completely, I unconsciously knew I had to act.
I slumped down the floor next to my computer table where I had been standing, scrambling to my feet again and started running, down the stairs, out of the house to a place that somehow called to me but that I didn't know.
But I knew if I wanted to help I had to get there, soon.

After some minutes of running through streets, alleys, into the park and through brush and wood I saw a weird distortion in the air next to a bush. Feeling that this was my only chance I leapt at it and instinctively braced myself for the crash into the thick shrubs behind.

This was insane. Here I was, throwing myself into the vegetation of some local park, in the middle of the night, out of an inner urge to help someone I never met before in person. I desperately hoped I wasn't crazy, I only wanted to get to… to that other place. I closed my eyes when I saw the bush getting nearer, and something inside me twisted.

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So, what do you think? Please review and tell me your opinion, I'd really appreciate it. :-)

For those of you who wonder about the Saiyan's name - I like it a lot and decided to use it for that character. Any resemblance with the guy of the same name that had appeared in another story are purely incidental. They only share the name. The fact that Epin was 'given' to me doesn't have anything to do with it. Absolutely not at all. ;-)