CHAPTER FOURTY-FIVE: THE CLOUDS BURST

Goku woke up with a start.  He was having a nightmare of some sort about Gohan...what was it?  He saw Gohan turning into the monster in the moon that had killed Grandpa Gohan, and crushing everyone, everyone, killing Chi-Chi, and Master Roshi, and Bulma, poor Bulma, and Krillin, and Yamcha, and Oolong, and Lunch, and Puar, and Yajirobe, and everyone else, all of Goku’s childhood friends and enemies. He saw the monster Gohan climbing Kami’s tower and killing Kami, dooming Piccolo as well, stopping only to pick Mr. Popo’s bones dry. And throughout all of it, he had heard his father’s laugh. But that made no sense. Even if Gohan had transformed somehow, why would Bardock be enjoying it?

Goku looked over at Chi-Chi, fast asleep, and his fears calmed down. Chi-Chi would never sleep through anything that involved Gohan. But then it hit him again, that uneasy feeling that something was amiss with his son.

Goku quietly crept out of bed, careful not to awaken his sleeping wife, and made his way over to Gohan’s room. He just wanted to see his son, sleeping, dreaming dreams of purple dinosaurs and Piccolo. Goku stopped when he entered his son’s room. His entire world spun on its axis.

Gohan’s bed was empty. The window was open. There were two sets of footprints leading from the house, one of which looked to be made from heavy boots. Like the kind of boots worn with Saiyan armor. Goku looked up and his heart clenched at the next realization. There was a full moon out tonight. Goku had no recollection of ever going Oozarou, neither did he even know what that was, but somehow the fact that the moon was full filled him with dread.

Bardock smiled to him-self as he held Gohan in place, head pointed at the moon. Gohan had long since stopped struggling now, and that heartbeat sound was enveloping the entire surrounding area. It was almost as though the entire forest was alive with it, with the spirit of destruction and carnage, with the spirit of a true Saiyan.

Gohan’s tail twitched sporadically as he looked at the full moon. Hair started to sprout where there should have been none at all. Gohan’s hands opened, revealing large animalistic claws. Bardock was knocked back as Gohan lashed out without warning, knocking his grandfather to the ground. Bardock got up as he saw Gohan turn around and face him, his face now that of a disfigured beast. The Gohan-thing lifted up his head and laughed as the real part of the transformation began. Gohan bulked up considerably, tearing his clothes to shreds. His eyes went a blood red, and his snout started to extend. Slowly he started to grow.

Bardock looked at the boy’s transformation into Oozarou and licked his lips. Not long now. Not long at all. Gohan grew to the size of a small building, losing all physical traces of the boy that he once was. Now he was a towering, destructive ape.

Bardock silently thanked whatever gods there were that even with the 10X power-up given to Oozarou, Gohan was still weaker than he was at his present stage. It was 15,000 vs. 65,000. The Gohan-thing growled as it looked around the landscape, desperately searching for something alive to smash.  Bardock stayed behind it, delaying his transformation until the inevitable happened: until one of his friends or family came.

As Gohan gave up on the search for intelligent life and just started blasting the trees, Bardock realized that it wouldn’t be long now. Not long at all.

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Goku flew over the woods surrounding his house, so frantic that he had no clue that he was going in the wrong direction, when he heard the crash and the roar. The sound was like King Kong using the Empire State Building for a toothpick, and Goku understood. That dream of his was more than just a dream.

He turned and saw the largest ape in the world destroying the forest.  Even from this distance, Goku recognized his son.  His heart broke.

“GOHAN!” he shouted, changing his direction and flying toward his son.

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Piccolo awoke from his meditation with a snap. He had just felt something, something with...Gohan?  Gohan was in danger!!!!  Piccolo snapped of the last bits of tiredness as he stood up and cracked his knuckles and his neck, preparing for what was to come.  In his mind, Piccolo made a silent determination.  Whoever was hurting the boy was going to die.

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Krillin couldn’t sleep. The fates had found it in their will to inflict him with insomnia tonight. Krillin had tried everything to get some much-needed rest, from drinking warm milk to drinking vodka to bashing his head in the hopes that he’d knock himself out. But whoever had decided that he couldn’t sleep had also decided that he was to remain conscious for the entire night. Krillin resented that fact. Count on the unlucky nerd who never got a date to be the group insomniac.

‘I’ll bet that Goku’s sleeping like a log again,’ he thought to himself, and some part of Krillin told him that that was not necessarily true.

Then Krillin felt it. He felt a large power, roughly ten times that of Gohan, rampaging around at this hour of the night. Being driven by a feeling that he could not quite understand, Krillin got dressed in a hurry and flew out into the clear night sky to find out what was happening. His heart nearly stopped when he saw the moon.

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The moon was full, and chaos was about to happen. But, whoever it is predetermines the future had luckily set it so that three very important people would be awake at the time of the Carnage. Whether they were enough to stop it, though, was not necessarily a given.

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