DB Multiverse

Bulma sighed as she stretched...

She was craving cigarette! It had been difficult for many years now to get those precious tobacco tube... Sometimes Trunks brought her some from the other side of the planet... But, surprise surprise... the rascal regularly forgot them.

She tenderly smiled... He was right, it was an extremely bad habit.

Too bad... She was going to make do with a good old cup of tea...

This was becoming a rare commodity too, and her son went to take it directly to the source... all around the world, incurable optimist persisted to maintain a semblance of normal life in spite of the slaughters and massive destructions from the two cyborgs. Those massacres now spread to the entire planet.

Humanity hadn't yet surrendered to the deadly madness that was decimating it with such cruelty.

Bulma was deep in thought as she saw the water boiling. She knew that she and Trunks were privileged. Between the reliable equipment she inherited from her inventor of a father, such as independent generator that enable this kettle or the computer to work, for instance.. And the young Saiyan's formidable mobility.. They managed to have a relatively comfortable life.

Of course, they tried to extend this comfort to the survivors living not too far, or helping as much as they could as much people as it was possible. But their means remained limited... There were so much suffering in this world!

The young woman started... Damn! She had forgotten to pour the simmering water in the teapot.. And now she had to start all over again.

But she stared into space once again at the exact moment she pressed the button of the kettle.

How long had she to wait? This three-hour interval was a torture!

Images, sounds, memories of past fights echoed in her mind... She shivered.. Three hours here.. In how many hours would they have managed to get rid of these two monsters over there?

She had a thin amused smile. 'Here'... 'Over there...' Strange expression to distinguish the two space-time... But it was to be said that it wasn't quite natural either to think of time like this... As a dimension in which you could move...

The mention of this travel brought Trunks' image back to her mind... She imagined him with his friends and his father and this thought brought a wave of extreme feelings in her. The shiver of her son's absence.. The bite of her late lover... The distant warm of her gone friends' smiles... The surreal hope to see that dreadful nightmare coming to an end... And then the fear... The fear of death that roamed as a voracious wolf... The fear of losing what little she had left... The fear of failure of this foolish adventure.

Bulma puller herself together as she repressed another shudder... She definitely needed the comfort of this cup of tea!

Raah... It can't be true! She had missed the boiling point once again... And water was flat again... Too bad.. It'd serve anyway.

She decided eventually to pour the merely warm water in the teapot before sitting back in from of her screen and keyboard.

As she has to wait before knowing what was happening 'over there'... Let's travel back in the 'somewhere else' of Son Gohan... So that she'd forget 'here'... 'here' was really too unpredictable!

Son Gohan was watching again the two monsters, they obviously were about to go at each other's throats... More threatening than ever towards each other, both of them had raised their big arms as they spread their long central blades...

Babidi's voice suddenly rang out, surprising everybody once again.

“Yakon, you're forgetting the mission I enthrusted you with!”

The fighter and the two creatures looked up at the same time to scan the unfathomable darkness all around them... Looking for the sorcerer that they knew was invisible.

“Exactly Master...” Yakon's raspy voice protested. “If I let her take his energy... You won't have any left...”

There was a moment of silence and a growl of reflection. Eventually, Babidi answered.

“Hm... I'll arrange that.”

An inhuman shout tore Son Gohan's eardrums and he had to cover his eyes as he grimaced of pain. Merkit reared up and heavily fell back on the ground on which she frantically struggled for a few seconds.

The moment after, the fury, the panic, the pain that had stirred her seemed to be forgotten... Strangely calm, Merkit had got back up while the capital M-shaped sign decorated now her torso as well!

Obviously obedient, the monster asserted her being at the little gnome's command. “I'm at your order, Master...”

The young earthling now realised the horror of the meaning of this symbol... Those who were sporting it hadn't decided to serve this vile sorcerer on their free will... Actually, it seemed to be 'possessing them', so to say.. He thought about the scene that had happened before the fights... When Babidi had starred at him, seeming to concentrate.. No doubt about it, he had tried to have him in his power too. And Pui-Pui's words came back to his mind: “ … it means that there do exist mere mortals who have never stolen, cheated, raped, tortured or killed by pleasure...”. Would it be possible that he managed to use the negative part that most human had within them?

That individual indeed was a true living nightmare and the necessity to get rid of him fast became more and more urgent.

Son Gohan didn't wait for much longer.

In one moment, he turned off his aura to disappear in the sky through the tick darkness towering above his two opponents. Merkit's strange power was sufficient worry to not run any risk... Coming from a planet without any source of light, it wasn't probable that those creatures knew how to fly... And in what sky? Deprived of his golden aura to detect him.. They would have a hard time finding him. He could hear Yakon's panicked voice down below.

“Come back here you coward! Anyway, you won't be able to go very far!”

Bingo! Son Gohan's hypothesis proved right.. Neither the brother nor his sister were able to join him... Not more than they could detect him.. He remained pensive for a while, thinking of the best course to follow.

“Babidi!” he called.

No answered echoed his yet loud call.

The young Saiyan then extended his hand towards the ground. He shot three blasts and these fire balls got lost in the unfathomable night before he could hear the sound of the shot hitting the ground.

“Idiot! You missed us... You can't see us, but we can perfectly see you!” Merkit's voice rose.

A small grin grew on Son Gohan's lips.

Even if the two monsters really could see him, it didn't matter. The next second, a dozen of bursts of concentrated energy spurted from his forefinger towards the ground.

He didn't need to see them to feel them jump and start in order to dodge the rain of lethal drops that all of a sudden surrounded them.

“I don't need my eyes to see you.” Then he shouted. “Babidi! You bring me back now and I'll explode what is left of your ship!”

Yakon answered first to the fighter's challenge. He was hidden in the dark fold of the obscurity. “Thank you, we enjoyed this meal! You're right, destroy the passage and you'll be stuck here... And you can't stay up there forever!”

“Anyway, you can't see the ground.” Merkit finished.

Son Gohan was surprised at first. 'enjoyed the meal'? Was it possible that they had the power to absorb attacks as they tried with the light of his aura? Well, in the end, it wasn't impossible. After all, it did seem to him that instead of getting away from the path of his shoots, they looked like they've run to them.

Then he smiled... It wasn't going to be hard to fool them!

Extending his right hand, he threw four small energy shots towards the ground. He exactly knew where.. And indeed, he felt the two creatures running to absob the attacks! And so, they now were side by side... Perfect!

The young man started concentrating as he muttered, his hands on his forehead. Then, he motivated himself with a scream and then, extended his hands in front of him.

“Masenkoo!” he shouted.

As planned, the monsters ran. Yakon was the fastest. He opened his big mouth and started absorbing the shot of concentrated energy.. until Gohan concentrated even more the ray, making it thiner. The body of Babidi's slave couldn't resist the density of the attack he had learned from Piccolo and in which he had added a Super Saiyan touch. In once second, he was run through and Merkit, transfixed by surprise, suffered the same fate only a few seconds later.

Too easy! Those monsters were rather easily defeated after all...

Then Gohan felt a pang in his heart. Those creatures weren't really responsible. But he had to get real, humanity couldn't afford two extra nightmares... The 'Vegeta' attitude was the right choice to make, and he had to stick to it, no matter the cost!

After a long moment of silence, it was Babidi himself who called the fighter, confirming that the chosen tactic was the good one. The gnome apparently still was anxious to avoid the destruction of the strange pattern. His voice now betrayed an obvious annoyance.

“You may be very strong, but you're not very clever... You should follow poor Yakon's advice and go back to the ground... If you destroy the way down, you'll be stuck on this lightless planet forever... Only the creature born here can survive in such an environment!”

His henchmen defeated, the gnome had no reason to let him root here, if not to gain time! What could they be planning, he and the great Dabra?

Anyway, it was out of question to let them call the tune! Son Gohan took a deep breath before staking his all.

“It's your last chance Babidi! You've forgotten that I'm a Saiyan. Even if it takes me a lot more of time, I won't have any problem to get back on Earth. I count to three... ONE!”

He let a second pass.. It was a good thing to give the enemy a bit of time to think... Just so he could weigh the pros and cons.. And he could pray that they had no idea of what a Saiyan really was. Then he started to form an energy ball in his palm that was extended towards the ground.

“TWO!”

Son Gohan didn't have to go any further. A split of a second later, the thick darkness vanished as if by magic and the brighting light of the Earth sun blinded him, obliging him to close his eyes.

He needed a few minutes for his eyesight to get used to the light that, for another couple of minutes, he felt was blinding. Then, little by little, the landscape got his colour back. He was in the sky, right above the deep hole that had been the upper part of Babidi's strange space ship once.

However, there weren't the mere creature anywhere around it, the fighter was completely alone.

What did it mean?

That weird gnome had changed his plan?

Another trap? Another opponent even more treacherous?

Or another magic trick? He had to expect everything from a being that was able to transpose one or more being in another world in one second!

What could he do?

The problem remained the same... To destroy what was left of the ship and run the risk of getting but from a wider underground channel... or exposing himself to the perfidy of this weird little being that had clearly had more than one trick up his sleeve?!

After another moment of reflection, Son Gohan lighted his aura again, with his fists clenched, full of renewed determination. Then he directly went at the bottom of the open wide chasm that had taken the place of the upper level of the ripped open ship.

He didn't land on the floor of what was left of the third level... but he extended his hand and directed it downwards.

Right then, as he expected, the middle of the pattern opened to let him go to the lower level. He had noticed a long time ago that the small man was watching any of his move.. More over, he had already proved that he'd rather give ground rather than having what was left of his space ship be damaged.

But it was time to show this stranger that not everything could go the way we would like to! Ignoring his silent invitation, the young Saiyan generated an explosive fire ball. As soon as it hit its target, it smashed to pieces the entire area of entresol that he was standing over.

When the smoke of the explosion had disappear, Son Gohan discovered that, two levels below, there was another round room. It was bigger, cluttered with fragments... On a kind of pedestal sit a strange sphere that the strange horned fighter had brought back in. Right beside it, the hateful greenish gnome was starring at him, his eyes full of hatred. He was under a sort of protective bubble that surrounded him and his precious ball.

Farther away, there was the tall Dabra. No visible wound explained the motionlessness of the impressive giant. They could think that he was asleep. But Son Gohan knew that it wasn't it at all.

What trick could have planned that strange little creature that seemed to want to stab him with his big bulging eyes in the depth of which he could see the evil energy that was fuelling his despicable heart?