Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Wish For The Past ❯ 700 Review Special ( Chapter 35 )

Ossu! Once again, I finally got motivated enough to do a Review Special. SEVEN HUNDRED? Good Kami, I never thought the story would be this popular! Eeesh... Anyway, I'm going to do this a little differently than the 200 Review Special. A lot of people have been asking me (through AIM, e-mail, and reviews) "What the heck is going on in the present?!" You want to know about Present (or Mirai, whatever) Goku, Bulma, Chi-Chi, Vegeta, Gohan, etc.? Well, that's what this Review Special will be! A peek into the goings-on of the people in the Present (Future?) time line. Nothing big, 'cause there really isn't that much going on in their lives right now.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the 700 Review Special!

Disclaimer: Why are humans so fascinated by their own reflections? I believe that it is because you are the only person you can't see. Not with your own eyes, anyway. How much information about a person do you receive by what you see when you look at them, at their faces, and observe their expressions? Unable to gain this information about yourself in the same way, you must rely on what you see in the mirror to gain those insights that are so easily obtained about others but impossible to discover about yourself otherwise. Just as the eyes are the windows of the soul in another person, the mirror is like the window to your own soul, and so you can't help but gaze in wonder and fascination at your own reflected image.

Wow. That's deep. Or at least a lot deeper than I usually allow my thoughts to run. ^_^ Anyway, I couldn't think of a witty disclaimer, so I just decided to give you one of my (yes, it IS mine) deeper thoughts. I own the philosophical musings, not DBZ.

(A/N: The first half of this Review Special is a normal, albeit short, chapter and everything that happens in it will actually apply to the story.)

(Time: One week after Trunks ran away. He has just barely wished himself into the past.)

Sitting in the living room of Capsule Corporation were Goku, Chi-Chi, Gohan, Bulma, and Vegeta, all wearing faces revealing various levels of anxiety, worry, and grief. Vegeta tried to hide his emotions, but it one knew what to look for, it was evident that the loss of his son had hit him just as hard as the others. A heavy silence filled the air, nearly suffocating in its intensity.

Finally... "So... Trunks took the space ship and a large amount of food with him," Gohan stated for what was probably the hundredth time since they had discovered the demi-saiyan's absence only a few days before. They had actually noticed he was gone when Bulma and Vegeta had woken up the morning after Goku had gone to Hell to look for Goten, but at the time it hadn't seemed like a big deal. They'd figure that he had probably gone off to mope somewhere about not being allowed to go to Hell with Goku. Trunks was a big boy, he could take care of himself. It wasn't until Bulma had happened to find that the space ship was missing, which had happened the second day of Trunks's absence, that they'd managed to figure out that he had run away. "He probably went to New Namek to collect the dragonballs there."

Vegeta snarled. "If you don't quit stating the obvious, brat, I'll-"

"Calm down, Vegeta," Bulma snapped at her husband. "Threatening Gohan isn't going to get us anywhere." The Saiya-jin no Ouji glared at his mate but closed his mouth anyway, opting to stare sullenly off into space. "Anyway, Goku, I know you said that Trunks is suppressing his ki so you can't get a lock on him and bring him back home with your Instant Transmission, but maybe you could just go to New Namek and wait for him to get there. If my calculations are correct, that ship's modifications should make it fast enough to get there by tomorrow afternoon, our time."

His face visibly brightening, Goku leapt to his feet. "Hey, that's a great idea, Bulma! In fact, why don't I go there right now and get a head start on gathering the dragonballs?" He grinned in that goofy way that only he and his family could manage. "Do you have a Dragon Radar I could borrow?"

"Sorry, Son-kun, I don't," Bulma grumbled, scowling darkly. "I only had the two radars to begin with. Goten had the original, and Trunks took off with the spare. I could probably rig up another one, but it'll take a couple of hours." She stood up abruptly and stalked off towards her lab, eager to do something to get her mind off the situation and possibly be of some use for a change.

Two hours later, the blue haired genius emerged from her work room with a triumphant smirk on her face. "When I first made the Dragon Radar, it took me days just to put it together correctly, not even counting the time it took to make the plans! But, being the brilliant, beautiful genius that I am, it only took me two hours to build a new one from scratch!" She flipped her hair over her shoulder and laughed cockily, then handed the radar over to Goku. "Now go get those dragonballs, Son Goku!"

Smiling cheerfully, Goku raised two fingers to his forehead and vanished in the blink of an eye.

Figuring that it would take at least a day before her husband would return, Chi-Chi and Gohan started saying their good byes to Bulma, Vegeta, and Dr. Briefs, who had walked in soon after Goku teleported off the planet. Just as the two remaining members of the Son family were about to leave the building, however...

"Er... guys?" Goku said nervously, flickering back into existence with an anxious look on his face. "There's, umm, kinda a problem."

"Well, are you just going to beat around the bush all day, or are you going to tell us?" Chi-Chi asked impatiently, waving her arms in annoyance.

"Well, it's about Trunks." The spiky haired warrior scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "When I got there, the Nameks said that Trunks had already been there and used the dragonballs to wish himself into the past to find Goten. They'd also already used the other two wishes, so the Namek dragonballs are dormant for another Namekian year."

"What?!" Bulma screeched. "But that's not possible! There's no way that ship could be fast enough to have already gotten there!"

"Oh, you mean that old space ship we had sitting in the back yard?" Dr. Briefs asked curiously. "I've been meaning to tell you, dear. I made some rather interesting modifications to that thing a while back, so it's probably a little faster than it was before. Plus there's a karaoke machine, a dish washer, an automatic manicure machine, a new..." He continued on in this vein for a few more minutes, describing all the modifications he'd made to the ship, most of them fairly useless.

"Great," Gohan muttered sarcastically. "So Goten and Trunks are who-knows-where and who-knows-when, without a time machine, and we can't use the dragonballs to bring them back until one of the sets has had a chance to regenerate. What are we going to do now?"

Silence reigned as everyone, excluding the babbling Dr. Briefs, tried to think of a way to rescue Goten and Trunks.

(A/N: Everything up until this point actually happens in the story. However, from this point on, nothing applies to the story line. As the title of this part says, things get weird. None of this actually happens in the story and the characters are purposefully OOS (Out Of Story, kinda like out of character), so don't flame me for it!)

Bulma suddenly crowed triumphantly. "Bulma, you are a genius! Why didn't I think of this before? I know exactly how we can get Trunks and Goten back here!" She twirled around excitedly and even went so far as to grab a startled Vegeta in a big hug. Less than pleased with his mate's behavior, the short prince growled and tried to dislodge himself from the puny female's grip. Not that it mattered, because as soon as he started to struggle, she let go of him and grinned broadly at the three Sons.

"So, how do we get them back?" Goku chirped, literally dancing from one foot to the other.

"Weeeell," Bulma drawled, narrowing her eyes dangerously as she continued to smile. "Who's responsible for this whole mess in the first place?"

"That's easy," Vegeta snorted. "It's that pathetic Kakarot's fault. One, because if he didn't exist, none of this would ever have happened. Two, he's responsible for the existence of his second brat, who dragged my son into this mess."

"Oh be quiet, Vegeta," the petite scientist snapped in annoyance. "Besides, I'm talking about someone else."

"Goten?" Gohan ventured tentatively. After all, Goten was the one who made the wish.

"No."

"The Eternal Dragon?" If not for the Eternal Dragon misinterpreting the wish in the first place, Goten would never have ended up in the past.

"No."

"Dende?" Dende's sense of humor tended to rub off on his creation, making it so you had to be extra careful in making your wishes if you didn't want... unpleasant... results.

"No."

"Awww, c'mon, Bulma, tell us!" Goku pleaded, giving her his best patented Son Puppy Eyes.

"It was..." Pausing dramatically, Bulma let her gaze shift to each person in the room, locking eyes with them momentarily before moving on. "Brenda!"

"Huh? Who's Brenda?" Chi-Chi asked, confusion plainly evident in her voice.

Bulma rolled her eyes. "Don't you remember that red haired girl from the party? She's the author of this story! If we can just get hold of her, we can get her to undo this whole mess and bring our kids back!"

"That would be a fairly decent idea, onna, except for one little detail," Vegeta cut in rudely, folding his arms in an intimidating manner. "You forgot that the blasted onna doesn't even live in this dimension! Just how are we supposed to get our hands on her in the first place?!"

"Just leave that to me," Bulma cackled, heading once more for her lab. Having nothing better to do and since they were curious to see what she had planned, Goku, Gohan, Chi-Chi, and Vegeta all followed her.

Whistling a cheerful tune, Brenda sauntered down the street, happily twirling her Magic Author Pen between her fingers. The wind blew through her long, red-brown hair, causing it to trail behind her like a banner. Dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt, she fit in with the crowd of people that streamed past her in both directions. It was a beautiful sunny day, the perfect kind for going to the park. Which just happened to be where the author was heading. She had just left her readers with a rather evil cliff hanger, although it wasn't the worst she'd done to them, and so she was feeling pretty good.

Suddenly, a smoky gray portal flashed into existence right in front of her and began pulling the teenager into its opaque depths. With a startled yelp, she backpedaled with all her might, but it was in vain. The portal dragged her inexorably forward despite everything she did. In desperation, she even grabbed hold of one of the people passing by in hopes that the other girl could pull her out. The brown haired girl looked startled, then panicked as, instead of being able to rescue Brenda, she only got pulled into the dimensional tunnel along with her!

"WAAAHH!!!" they screamed in unison as everything went gray for several long, terrifying seconds. When the swirling gray cloud vanished, the two girls found themselves in an unfamiliar place, no longer outside, but in a room filled with lots of high tech equipment in it.

Before she had a chance to recover from the shock of suddenly being yanked out of her dimension, Brenda found herself being picked up by the front of her shirt and slammed into a wall hard enough to cause her to see stars. Blinking rapidly, she had just enough time to focus on her attacker before he growled in a menacing tone, "What did you do with my son, brat?!"

"Wha-? Huh?" Brenda finally managed to get a clear view of the man holding her against the wall. He looked eerily familiar, as though she'd met him somewhere. Wait a minute, I have met him! At that 200 Review Special party! "Nani? Vegeta?!"

"Nani?! Vegeta?!? Where!?!" The girl who had unwillingly accompanied the author jerked her head up and looked around the room. Spotting Vegeta, she gave a cry of delight. "AAAHH! Veggie-chan!!"

Vegeta winced as the girl's piercing voice penetrated his sensitive Saiyan ears. "Onna! Do you have to yell so loudly?! And don't call me Veggie-chan!!!"

"Oh, all right," the girl conceded happily. "How 'bout 'Geta, then?"

The proud Saiyan prince's eye began to twitch and he shouted, "NO!!"

Pouting cutely, the girl gave Vegeta her best imitation of the famous Son Puppy Eyes (TM) and said, "Awww.... C'mon! I've waited a good portion of my life to meet you, so I think I should get to call you a few pet names. Pleeeeease, Veggie-poo?" Glancing around the lab curiously, she added, "Oh, and, what are we doing here anyway?"

Before Vegeta could respond angrily, Bulma stepped between the girl and her husband. "Sorry about that, but I don't think you were supposed to come in the first place. We only wanted Brenda, you see," she said, pointing at the girl that Vegeta was still holding against the wall. "Speaking of which... Vegeta, put her down!" The stocky warrior complied, growling low in his throat, only when Bulma added a death glare and a softly muttered threat about a couch and a GR room. "I'm Bulma Briefs, and this is my husband, Vegeta. That's Son Goku and his wife, Son Chi-Chi, and their son, Son Gohan. We already know Brenda, but who are you?"

The girl's eyes widened as far as they would go and she jumped up to her feet, literally glowing with excitement. "WOW!!!!! YEAH! I know who you all are!! This soooooo sooo sooooooo unbelievably, totally, completely, utterly, truly, fantastically AWESOME!..... Oh, hi Brenda. I'm ChibiCasey, by the way. I'm a great fan... of everyone in this room!!!"

"But wait a second, Bulma! Didn't you say you calibrated that machine to make it so that only Brenda could fall through?" Gohan piped up, looking confused.

"Well, that's not quite true, Gohan. Because of a complication in the circuitry that would take too long to explain, only one other person could have fallen through the Dimensional Tunnel. And that someone is the 700th reviewer for Brenda's story, Wish For The Past. I guess that means that ChibiCasey is that person and just happened to be near enough to the Dimensional Tunnel to fall in it." Picking up a little gray box, she smiled at the brown haired girl. "Well, it's only a matter of pressing this little button here and I can send you back to your own dimension. Sorry about the trouble!"

"Hold on one second Bulma..." ChibiCasey said, pausing to take in a huge breath. Once she got a lungful, she screamed, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Don't send me baaaaaaaaack! Not yet! There's way too much for me to do! At least let me see a Dragon Ball before I go!"

"Sorry, kid, but it really messes things up to have more than one person from another dimension here in this world. Gotta send you back!" The cerulean haired genius waved cheerfully and pressed the button on her little gray box, opening another portal to the Real World, which promptly sucked the 700th reviewer inside and vanished. "There, now, let's get back to what we originally intended to do!"

Vegeta once again turned his patented death glare on Brenda. "Now, little onna, where is my son?!"

"Eeep!" Brenda squeaked.

"Hey, Vegeta, you don't have to be so mean," Goku protested. "I bet if we just ask her nicely, she'll give us back our children."

"I am the Prince of all Saiyans! I do not ask!"

"Umm..." Brenda stammered hesitantly. "Could you.... uhh.. put me down? Please?"

"Not until you return Trunks to this time!" Vegeta snapped. "And Goten," he added as an afterthought, almost grudgingly. Probably because, even though he didn't like the boy, he would have to face his mate, Kakarot, Kakarot's baka mate, and Kakarot's other brat if he didn't include Goten in his demands.

"For once, I agree with Vegeta," Chi-Chi chipped in, folding her arms in front of her chest. "You told me you'd bring my baby boy back! That was, what, ten? Twenty chapters ago? Well, where is he?!"

Brenda squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, er... he's still in the past..."

"We know that already, baka onna!" Vegeta glowered harshly at the teenage author. "Now bring him back before I end your pathetic excuse for a life!"

A look of annoyance crossed Brenda's features. "As much as I agree with you about the state of my life, there's not a darn thing I can do about Goten and Trunks right now! So lay off, will ya?!"

"But, you're the author! You can do anything!" Goku chirped, pointing at Brenda's Magic Author Pen. "Hey! That's it! That's the key to your power! All we gotta do to get Goten and Trunks back is use that pen thingy!" With childlike innocence and wonder, Goku snatched the pen from Brenda's hand and pulled the cap off. "Now how does this thing work?"

"Hey! Give that back!" Brenda protested. She would have lunged for it, except that she was still firmly pinned against the wall. She glared angrily at Vegeta. "Do you mind?! Lemme go, you beast!" Surprisingly enough, the Saiyan warrior smirked and complied, releasing his hold on the teenager's shirt and taking a few steps back. "Er... thanks."

Meanwhile, Goku was waving the pen around as he'd seen Brenda do so often. "Okay, pen, I want Goten and Trunks back here," he ordered sternly. When nothing happened, he stared at the thing with puzzlement. "Please?" he added hopefully. After all, please was a magic word. Unfortunately, it apparently wasn't the magic word needed for this pen.

Stalking over to the younger Saiyan, Vegeta grabbed the pen away from him. "Give me that, baka. You're more likely to poke someone's eye out than actually figure out how to work it." He reached over and grabbed a piece of paper from Bulma's desk, then neatly wrote out 'And then Trunks and Goten returned to the Earth of their own timeline.' With a self-satisfied smirk, he capped the pen and waited for the magic to work.

Nothing happened.

"Umm... maybe I forgot to tell you this, but..." Brenda trailed off, grinning insanely. "The Magic Author Pen only works in my dimension, and that particular pen only works for me. Like I said, there's not a thing I can do about Goten and Trunks! Mwahahaha!!!"

"Well, then, that means that you're powerless while you're here," Vegeta stated with a dangerous edge to his voice.

"And if you harm me, Veggie-chan," Brenda shot back, regaining some of her confidence, "then I won't ever finish the story and the two boys will remain forever in the past! So there!" Smirking in a manner very similar to Vegeta's, she walked over and grabbed her pen from the astonished Prince. "And if you even think about accompanying me back to my dimension and using your powers to make me do what you want, keep in mind that when we return to my dimension, I'll have all my mighty author powers back! HAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"Damn it, there's nothing we can do!" Bulma seethed.

"Yup!" Brenda agreed cheerfully. "Now, send me back to my own dimension so I can get back to work on the next chapter! You'll just have to wait until I get around to bringing the boys back on my own, just like everyone else."

With a muttered string of curses, Bulma pressed the button on her gray box, forming another portal to Brenda's dimension. As Brenda stepped towards the swirling gray portal, Chi-Chi spat out a few last minute rants and demands that the teenager bring her baby back right away. Goku cheerfully waved goodbye to the nice young woman, and Gohan rubbed his forehead to ease the headache he was getting. Bulma and Vegeta just glared at the back of the quickly disappearing author.

The portal vanished, and all was as it had been before.

"Great. Now what do we do?" Gohan muttered.

ChibiCasey's lines were written by ChibiCasey herself. Not me.

Remember, while the first half can be considered an actual chapter, the second half of the 700 Review Special has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the story. It's just something silly I wrote up in honor of getting 700 reviews! And speaking of those reviews... Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers, for reading and supporting me in this story. I don't know how far I would have gotten without you guys/girls/whatevers giving me so much encouragement and advice. And, yes, I even thank you flamers who flamed me intelligently. Idiot flamers are a dime a dozen, but the flamer who writes a worthwhile, insightful flame/criticism is a rare creature indeed. Can't say I like getting flames, but I know I prefer intelligent flames over the moronic ones any day!

So ends the 700 Review Special. Ja ne! ^_^