“Gohan, are you sure about this?” Videl asked, looking out the car window with a sigh. “I don’t like the idea of leaving Pan home alone just because you ‘had an odd feeling’.”

Gohan clenched the steering wheel tighter, and gave his wife a sideways glance. “I told you, ever since I was young, I have had a special bond with Piccolo. I know something is wrong. Piccolo is hurt, and I am going to find out what happened.”

They pulled up the long driveway and were able to view the Son house, which sat pleasantly in the afternoon sun, nothing out of place except for the open door, and the laundry line, which was broken and lying in a heap on the ground.

For a moment, Gohan just stared at it in shock, then slammed on the breaks and opened the door, running out of the car while it was still running.

With a sigh, Videl reached over and grabbed the keys out of the ignition, opened her door and followed quickly, running to Gohan’s side. “What is it?”

“She would never just leave a mess like this….The laundry….Something’s wrong.” Gohan said, with worry in his dark eyes. He looked up at the open door of the house, and they both started towards it, when Piccolo and Gokuu stepped out and into the sunlight.

“Tousan!” Gohan cried in surprise. “What are you doing here? What happened?”

Gokuu said nothing, and stared up at the sky with a look of concentration on his face. His hands were clenched at his sides, and he gave no sign that he even noticed Gohan and Videl had shown up.

Piccolo looked over at the laundry line and back to Gohan. “Your mother had a few visitors today. More Saiya-jins.”

He looked puzzled. “Vejiita-san said there are no more Saiya-jins left except for himself and Tousan.”

“Well Vejiita was obviously wrong. I saw them myself. They had tails. There were four of them, and I assume there are more than that. The leader referred to a planet that they reside on: Sukuashi. I think that’s where they have taken ChiChi.” Piccolo told Gohan. It sounded as though he had explained this many times before.

Videl gasped in surprise. “They took ChiChi-san?! Why didn’t you stop them!?”

He thew her a glare and turned back to Gohan. “I tried to hold them off, but they shot with a paralyzing gun, and I couldn’t even move. When I woke up, everyone was gone, including ChiChi.”

Gokuu, who had been silent the entire time, walked past the three of them to the laundry line, and awkwardly began to pick up all the clothes that had fallen. Videl had started to cry, and was holding onto Gohan, crying softly into this chest. Gokuu gave them a pained glance, and started to fix the line that had broken, working slowly and carefully.

“Tousan?” Gohan asked timidly. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and then held up one of ChiChi’s dresses, staring at it for a moment, with an expressionless face. “I don’t want ChiChi to have to worry about the laundry. When she comes back it will be hanging here just like she left it.”

Bulma and Puuaru handed out cups of tea to everyone sitting around the table in the Son house, careful not to break any of ChiChi’s teacups or dirty her kitchen. It was odd being in the Son house without having her bustling about fixing food and cleaning up, all the while keeping up a healthy conversation. It was especially odd for Bulma, who enjoyed chatting with ChiChi while she stood by the stove, or lending her a hand when it came time to serve the meals. The kitchen, and the house, just was not the same without her there to make the room sparkle. Puuaru, who had come with Yamucha almost immeadietly after they had heard the news, had remarked the same thing; that the house felt empty without her there. They had chatted quietly over the stove about everyone’s reactions to ChiChi’s kidnapping, and although Gokuu had called the meeting, both Bulma and Puuaru thought he was acting rather strangely.

He sat at the head of the table, surrounded by Gohan, Kuririn, Yamucha, Piccolo, and Juuhachi-gou, who was daintily sipping at her tea while staring ceiling with her blue eyes narrowed in thought. A very unhappy Vejiita resided in the corner of the room, staring at Piccolo with a scowl.

“You are a liar. They are no Saiya-jins left.” He said in an angry voice, his arms crossed over his chest. “Freezer destroyed the planet. All the Saiya-jins died. When are you going to get it through your thick head?!”

Piccolo pushed away his teacup with disgust, everyone always seemed to forget the fact that he just plain did not consume anything but water. He looked up at Vejiita. “I am telling you what I saw. They had tails. Do Saiya-jins not have tails now? Is that the way you’re going to tell the story? Change it every time so that you are always right?”

“If you are looking for a fight, I am always ready, Namek.” Vejiita uncrossed his arms and clenched his hands at his sides. “It is pure stupidity to start something with me knowing that you cannot win.”

Bulma sighed and placed her hands on her hips. “We aren’t going to get anywhere fighting. This is just like you to try and be macho when we have a problem to solve, Vejiita. Maybe there aren’t any Saiya-jins left, and it’s a good thing too, because I am sick and tired of them!!”

She slammed a cup of tea down in front of Yamucha, spilling a little onto the table and nearly cracking the cup. “And you!” She glared at Piccolo. “Quit egging him on. You know it isn’t going to do you any good.”

Bulma stalked away from the table and stood at the stove, her arms crossed as she and Vejiita glared at each other from across the room. An uneasy silence settled over everyone, and finally Vejiita left the room and went out the front door, slamming it behind him with a bang.

Yamucha frowned as he left, studying his teacup carefully. “Do you think they are going to kill her?”

Piccolo looked at him. “I don’t think so. He didn’t sound as if he wanted to kill her, just take her to wherever they were going.”

Everyone seemed to be pinning the problem on Piccolo, for not being able to save the woman. He was sure that several of them probably thought he had let them take ChiChi on purpose. He wasn’t known for his fondness of the woman, and a group of aliens dead set on taking her away was the perfect opportunity to be rid of her. Of course, that hadn’t been the case. ChiChi may have been a nuisance, but he didn’t wish for anyone to be taken away by a group of unruly Saiya-jins.

“But I doubt they have any intentions of returning her on their own. If we want to get her back, we would have to have to go after her.” He continued, and everyone nodded in agreement.

“Bulma-san, how far away is the planet Sukuashi?” Gohan asked, and pushed his glasses back into place on his nose. Videl had returned home with the car earlier so Pan wouldn’t have to be alone, but she gave him strict orders to find out everything and tell her when he returned. His mother and Videl were so much alike sometimes, it was a wonder they weren’t related by blood. And lately, Videl had become much more overprotective of Pan than usual, almost as bad as ChiChi had been when he was young. She was taking ChiChi’s disappearance pretty hard.

Bulma, who was staring at the door after Vejiita, snapped back to attention and uncrossed her arms. “I’m not sure, Gohan, but if I have never heard of it, it is probably very far away. I asked my father about it before I left Capsule Corp., and he said he had never heard of it either, but then, none of us had ever heard of the planet Namek before either, and we all know that exists. I think there is a strong possibility that it does exist, but there is really no way for us to find it.” She answered.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Kuririn put up a hand and looked at her with confusion. “Do you we even have a way to get into space? The ship we went in before isn’t big enough for all of us to go in. I mean, we could all try and squeeze in, but that would be….” He quickly counted everyone in the room. “At least over ten people, if you count those that aren’t present too.”

Bulma scowled at him. “If I didn’t have a ship, don’t you think I would have said something?! Capsule Corp. has been working on a passenger space ship to take out into space. We’d have to speed up the engine a bit, but it will work. I’m not an idiot.”

He sank down into his chair with a sheepish expression. “Gomen nasi, I just---”

“Whatever.” Bulma dismmissed his excuse with the wave of her hand and glared at him angrily.

“Well now that you have a ship, why don’t you just take it out into space and search. When you get close enough, you’ll be able to feel her ki, right?” Puuaru suggested as she floated over the table, her tail waving behind. She landed at Yamucha’s side and looked down at her friend with concern, giving him a little smile.

“That might work….” Kuririn pondered the idea, and Puuaru nodded at him. “It would take some time to do it though.”

Bulma leaned down and got into his face, narrowing her blue eyes at him. “You idiot! Do you have any idea how big the universe is?! You can’t just run out there all piggly wiggly hoping to run into someone! It would take thousands of years if you did it like that, no matter how fast the space ship was going!”

“Bulma-san has a point.” Gohan agreed. “If we are going to go out there, we at least have to have some direction, and it would be nice to know the exact location.”

“What about charts of galaxies and stars from observatories or radar detections?” Juuhachi-gou added quietly, bringing her ice blue eyes to meet Bulma’s. “When their space ship left our atmosphere, it must have been see by someone through a telescope or on radar. We could find out the direction they were headed and pinpoint where they might be landing.”

Gohan nodded at her, raising his teacup to his mouth. “A good idea, and we may do that anyway, but even if we found out the direction they were heading in, there are so many different planets in space and so many different directions they could go after they were out of viewing range that we may never find them.”

Piccolo grimaced. “Just follow the smell.”

Bulma frowned. “That isn’t very scientific, but judging by most Saiya-jins, I’m sure you’d be able to.” She joked, and took a sip of her tea. “We should at least try Juuhachi-gou’s idea. Perhaps we’ll come up with something. We don’t want to head out into space and find ourselves lost, or on a hostile planet that we know nothing about.”

All eyes turned to the doorway then, as Vejiita stepped through it and back into the house. His expression was still featuring a permanent scowl but he appeared to have calmed down. “How did you discover the location of the planet Namek?” He asked everyone.

Bulma raised her eyebrows at him, and gestured at Gokuu, who had been silent the entire time, with her teacup. “Gokuu’s sensei Kaio-sama told us.”

He scowled even deeper. “You idiots! Why don’t you ask him again?”

Bulma blinked. “That’s actually a very good idea.”

“Of course, baka.” Vejiita turned his back to them, and scowled at the wall. “If you are going to go chasing after Saiya-jins that don’t exist, you might as well have an idea of where you are going.”

Sitting up slightly in his chair, Kuririn put a hand on Gokuu’s arm. “Can you contact Kaio-sama and ask, Gokuu?”

Everyone stared at Gokuu and waited for a response, but nothing came. He sat at the table with a grim expression on his face and his hands clenched tightly around the teacup that said his name in red on the side. Even Vejiita turned his head slightly to see what was happening, as Kuririn shook Gokuu slightly, to snap him out of the trance. Gokuu blinked and looked up at everyone, the grim look still on his handsome face.

“I already asked.”

Bulma set down her teacup and sighed in frustration. “Then why didn’t you tell us?!”

He looked down sheepishly. “I wasn’t really listening to you. I’m sorry.” He smiled again. “But I do know where the planet Sukuashi is. Kaio-sama said it isn’t far from the planet Yadrat that I was on after the fight with Freezer.”

“Why didn’t he tell us there were other Saiya-jins before?” Kuririn asked in a confused tone, rubbing his dark hair in confusion. “You’d think that would be something that he would mention, considering the trouble we’ve had with Saiya-jins before.”

He eyed Vejiita wearily, then looked back down at the table. “I mean….well, you know. If there were other Saiya-jins out there, I think Kaio-sama would have told us when Raditzu first came.”

Gokuu didn’t look up, but just continued to stare at his teacup, speaking in a monotone. “He says that Sukuashi is uninhabited. He didn’t think anyone lived there at all, let alone a bunch of Saiya-jins. The temperature there is always below freezing and snow is always falling, so it’s kind of unfit for any life forms. And besides that, it’s almost unnoticeable in space, so he never really payed any attention to it. If there are Saiya-jins there, then they must have adapted to the cold somehow.”

Gohan looked around the table with determination written all over his face “Well they better be ready to fight. I’m going. Who else is in?”

Bulma immediately spoke up. “I’m in. If you are going in my space ship, I am going with you. You’re going to need someone to pilot it, and someone who knows what they’re doing, because you obviously can’t handle it yourselves.” She closed her eyes and crossed her arms indignantly. “If it weren’t for me on the last trip, you would have been---”

“I’ll go.” Piccolo inturrupted her, silencing the woman with a glare. “You’re going to need someone who has already dealt with them.”

Kuririn looked at Juuhachi-gou, who nodded slowly. “We’re in.” He confirmed, and smiled comfortingly at Gokuu.

Yamucha looked up with a deep sadness written all over his face. “I’ll do anything to help ChiChi.”

Gohan turned around to look at Vejiita, who was still glaring at the wall. “Vejiita?”

He didn’t turn around, but gave a sharp laugh. “I want to be there, just so I can say I told you so.” He glanced back slightly, towards Bulma, as if daring her to disagree. “And Trunks will go too.”

“Tousan?” Gohan asked, studying his father carefully.

Gokuu snapped to attention and nodded sharply at him. “Of course. For ChiChi. Bulma-san, how soon can we leave?”

Bulma thought about it for a moment, a frown marring her pretty face. “I think….It should take about two days if I get to work right away and make all the preparations. The spaceship that I have been working on recently is a passenger ship. I wasn’t sure why I was making it at the time, but now I know. I’ve always been rather psychic that way.”

She tapped her fingers on the surface of the table thoughtfully. “It should hold all of us comfortably, but it will take some time to gather all those supplies that we need.” She nodded. “Hai, two days. We will leave from Capsule Corp. in two days.”

“Two days.” Gokuu repeated, looking down at the deep, swirling darkness of the tea in front of him. “In two days.”

Chapter 4
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