Author's Note: Hello everyone. I'm having a bit of a hot streak coming up with new stories and, being in a DBZ/One Piece mood, I decided to write my first crossover story for fanfiction.

Obviously I'm sure a lot of you are aware of the One Piece/Dragonball Z/Toriko crossover that exists, and after watching it a few times, I was severely disappointed with it. To me, it didn't live up to the expectations that I was hoping for, as I remember reading a lot of other crossover fics written by other people with much better storylines.

I guess I just felt the OVA was too overcrowded, cheesy and bloated with fan service. I mean, the episodes are obviously just a marketing tactic the creators used to peak viewer interests in the manga and the shows, I get it, but honestly, it really compromised the entire experience for me. Not to mention the fact that the animation was lackluster, the tension was nonexistent and the creators put DBZ characters, people more than capable of annihilating entire solar systems, into a universe where other characters clearly could not.

This leads me to believe that either the creators either: dumbed down the DBZ characters to make them fit into the crossover, they forgot that the DBZ characters were super-powered to the point of being Superman-tier, planet destroying monsters, or the DBZ characters just aren't as strong as I originally thought.

Either way, a lot of things happened and now I wrote this story.

Just a heads up, this entire story will focus on Gohan being the main character (since he's my favorite by far), where his story crosses with Luffy's adventures and we'll be following the One Piece story from his perspective, and how his presence in the One Piece universe crosses over and plays into future events. I guess you can call this a One Piece AU fic… with Gohan in it.

I think it'll be pretty entertaining and hopefully you guys will feel the same way.

Hope you enjoy.

A Saiyan Odyssey

Prologue

Pain.

That was the only sensation Gohan could feel right now as he continued to pour every last speck of energy he had left into his Kamehameha wave.

Legs trembling, muscles burning, and bones aching like there was no tomorrow, the young hero of Earth gritted his teeth and fought back against the overwhelming urge to keel over and pass out. If he didn't, not only would it mean the end for him, but the end of everything and everyone he cared about.

"Not yet! I'm not finished yet!" the child screamed in his head, desperately fighting to keep his footing as energy continued to spew out of his palm like an unending torrent. He still had more to give. But if he had any hope of beating the man he was fighting against, he had to time his next move just right. Otherwise it would all be for nothing!

When the abomination known as Cell threatened to blow himself up and take the entire Earth with him, Gohan's father, Goku, jumped in at the last second and sacrificed himself to save his friends and their home from destruction. Gohan, not willing to let his father pay for the mistake he made of not finishing the battle when he had the chance, pleaded with him not to go through with it.

But it was too late.

With one last, heartfelt farewell to his son, Goku teleported the insane android away and perished in a fiery explosion in the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Gohan's cry of anguish echoed across the battlefield, marking the moment of his father's passing and the man's selfless sacrifice.

When the chaos and sadness brought on by the incident finally died down, everybody thought that that was the end of it. The battle had been won and peace had finally been returned to the planet. Upon collecting the broken pieces of their team and helping a grief-stricken Gohan to his feet, the Z-fighters then prepared to head home and fix the damages done to the Earth.

But then, just as they were on the verge of leaving, the unthinkable happened.

Cell returned, stronger than ever, and immediately set about enacting his revenge on the very people who fought and humiliated him. He killed Trunks, striking the time traveler down with a single shot, and then threatened to do the same to everybody else. That was until Gohan stepped forward in a show of unwavering grit and fortitude, determined to defend his friends.

From what he felt, the demi-Saiyan was confident he could defeat the android, even with the monster's newly acquired, Super Perfect state. Thanks to his newfound strength of will and character, backed up by the power of his Ascended Saiyan form, Gohan was no longer afraid to stand up to the fiend. With the courage and resolve left behind by his father, the young warrior intended to put an end to this nightmare once and for all.

Unfortunately the young Saiyan was unable to do anything, as Vegeta, enraged by the loss of his son, charged forward in a blind fury and hit Cell with everything he had. He blasted the android in a fiery onslaught of landscape reducing attacks, all of which were aimed to disintegrate the insect and scatter his ashes to the wind. For one brief, glorious moment, the group believed the prince actually had a shot.

But once again the Z-fighters' hopes were dashed when Cell, unharmed by the Saiyan's impressive display of power, knocked Vegeta down and prepared to finish him off. The killing move he sent at the stricken fighter prompted Gohan to take immediate action; the boy rushing to the man's aid and taking the blast in the back, saving Vegeta from a premature death.

The shot to his shoulder not only knocked a big chunk out of Gohan's arm and rendered it completely useless in the form of a bloody scar, it also took a huge bite out of his energy and any lingering hope the Z-fighters had of defeating the android.

This inevitably boiled down to one final beam struggle between the gutsy Gohan and the mighty Cell where, under the guidance of his father's voice, the demi-Saiyan gathered up whatever nerve and strength he had left in him, and pressed forward with one last, desperate attack, in the form of a single-handed Kamehameha wave.

When both warriors' blasts met in the center of the battlefield, things seemed to be pretty evenly matched, a dome of raging energy forming as their powers clashed in a planet shaking tug of war. That was until Cell started to gradually overwhelm his opponent's blast with his own, feeding more energy into his attack and nearly causing Gohan to buckle under the strain.

"You fool! Don't you realize yet that you're up against the perfect weapon?" the android bellowed arrogantly. With a deafening roar and a thunderclap, Cell's aura intensified as he poured even more energy into his blast, pushing Gohan's back even further.

The android cackled and taunted the boy incessantly, doing everything in his power to make the teen's last remaining moments on Earth as painful as possible.

It was unbearable enough without the man's insults. Nevertheless, Gohan bit and held his position to keep from toppling over and being swept away by the tidal wave of Cell's own blast. He thought things couldn't get any worse. But when he saw his friends Piccolo, Krillin, Yamcha and Tien jump in to attack Cell from behind, his eyes widened in shock.

"Please guys! Not too close! Be careful!"

"Gohan! They can take care of themselves! Focus your energy son!" Goku coached telepathically from the netherworld, keeping his boy's head in the game.

"I-I'm trying, dad!" Gohan shouted back, turning his attention back to his attack. He kept up the pace, not wanting to burn himself out too early and not willing to lose out either. However, when he saw Cell power up and knock his friends away, the young Saiyan warrior's eyes widened in horror. "He hurt them! HE HURT THEM! RAAAAAAAAAAAHH!" With a roar of effort, Gohan poured more energy into his attack, briefly overtaking Cell's and coming close to knocking the android off his feet.

The android struggled to hold his position as he skidded along the floor. But a quick power up and a thrust of his hands quickly put him back in the game.

"I won't let this child defeat me! Not again!" Cell growled above the deafening storm of destructive energy clashing in the center. "Both you and your precious planet are finished!"

Piccolo, struggling to his feet after being knocked down by the bug's aura, spoke up above the winds rushing over the desert. "No, Gohan. I won't let you die all alone out there. Because kid, you're the first person to show me what… it means to have a friend." A smile graced his lips as he stood up and fired another blast at Cell's back, hitting the android square in the spine and putting him under more pressure.

Following the Namekian's example, Krillin also stepped up, "D-Don't know why I'm getting up again. It'll be much easier to keel over. I know back in the day… I never would have done this." The bald fighter grinned as he set his sights on their ridiculously strong opponent. "Guess I only have Goku and Gohan to blame. Those two really changed me for keeps." He then gave one last, good-natured chuckle, as his last prevailing thoughts turned to his friends and Android 18. "And you know, some day… I'll get them for that." Taking a stand directly beside Piccolo, Krillin brought both his hands up and, with a gutsy yell of his own, launched a blast at the android's shoulder.

Seconds later the two warriors were joined by Tien and Yamcha, the two humans yelling out as they fired two golden blasts at the android, who visibly balked under their combined assault.

"Surpassing Goku has been my goal ever since I became a martial artist! Without him, there's no way I would have come this far! And how did I repay him? I stood there and watched him die! I will not make the same mistake with his son!" Tien thought resolutely, yelling out as he pushed more power into his beam.

Yamcha did so too, the scar-faced warrior digging his feet into the ground as another spurt of energy gushed out of his hands to drill into Cell's spine. "Goku! I hope you know how great a kid you've got! Like father and son, right?" the man chuckled in his head as his eyes shone with determination, "Well I won't let you down!"

While Cell increased his expulsion of energy in an effort to fend off his attackers in the rear, Gohan pushed back to take advantage of the situation, the situation escalating by the second.

Feeling his son's hesitation, Goku yelled in encouragement, "GOHAN! RAISE IT HIGHER! YOU CAN WIN THIS ONE!" He sensed the boy respond and, as energy continued to rush out from both combatants, the Earth started to shake.

The attacks from behind beginning to irritate and distract him, a furious and unwavering Cell shook his head and reeled forward. "RAAAAH! NO CHANCE! YOU WORMS HAVE NO CHANCE!" the android roared at the top of his lungs. Then, with one final burst of power, the android fired off his aura in the opposite direction, hitting the four attackers behind him with the equivalent of a solar storm.

Piccolo, Krillin, Tien and Yamcha desperately held their ground, continuing to blast Cell in the back through the hurricane of golden energy hitting them in the face. At first it looked they were going to succeed. But as it turned out, their opponent was not going to be taken down so easily. Out of nowhere, another surge of energy was sent rocketing towards them, knocking the group of heroes off their feet and sending them flying into the distance. The ground they were standing on was literally ripped apart by the shockwave, rubble and debris hurtling into the sky like confetti.

Watching the terrifying development from Otherworld, a nervous King Kai suddenly looked up in panic when he sensed the clear sign of impending disaster. "Oh no! The Earth is going to blow!" he exclaimed, putting an alarmed look on Goku's face.

The man couldn't have been any more on the mark.

Due to the amount of energy being expelled by the two powerful warriors clashing on its surface, the Earth was slowly starting to fall apart. The tectonic plates holding the lithosphere together cracked and parted, the landscape around the battlefield splintered into dozens of enormous chasms, one of which almost swallowed up Hercule Satan and his crew, and mountains ranges across the entire planet began to erupt. The atmosphere also started to suffer under the growing pressure, a cyclone forming directly over the warring duo and threatening to rip the Earth asunder.

With the end of the planet fast approaching, Gohan, feeling his opponent feed more power to his blast, started to slide backwards under the forces tearing around him.

Regaining consciousness where they landed a full mile away from the battlefield, Piccolo and the other defenders of Earth looked up, disappointment and defeat reflected in their eyes.

"G-Gohan!" the Namekian shouted.

"We… tried," Tien coughed from his spot, hands gripping the dirt in frustration.

Groaning as his own consciousness threatened to give out, Krillin choked out an apology of his own, "We're all sorry, Goku. We all… did our best to be heroes like you, but…"

"We're just… not enough," Yamcha finished.

Their words of sorrow and dismay were drowned out by Gohan's beam struggle a full kilometer away. As Cell's blast gradually began to overwhelm his, the boy heard his father speak to him from the other side, his silhouette appearing behind his in a last spurt of encouragement.

"Release it, Gohan! Unleash everything you've got! All the pain he's caused… all the people he's hurt… TAKE IT… AND MAKE IT YOUR POWEEEEER!" the Saiyan father shouted.

Feeling victory was well within his grasp, the manic Cell shot a menacing grin towards his foe before yelling at the top of his lungs, "SAY GOODBYYYEEEEE!" The man then laughed as he gave the last of his energy into his attack, which began to rip into the planet and swallow Gohan's whole. As the countryside shook and burned, it seemed like it was all over, and the Earth would meet its end in a raging, blue inferno.

However, just as Cell was about to finish his foe off, without warning, a golden sphere of energy suddenly appeared in the sky and shot towards the android in a blur. The android barely had enough time to look up in shock when the attack struck him with the force of a comet, causing his entire body to lurch forward, his legs to buckle, and his control over his blast to shudder. Groaning in pain, Cell looked up to see where the hell that had attack had come from and saw to his disbelief a conscious Vegeta, assumed in his Super Saiyan form, hovering safely overhead with his hand extended.

The android looked in disbelief, "VEGETA!"

Spotting the opening, Goku bellowed, "NOW'S YOUR CHAAAAAAAAAAANCE!"

Gohan saw it too and, at his father's instruction, the boy leant forward and, with a mighty roar of rage and effort, unleashed all of the remaining ki he had left into his blast. "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" His energy tore down the length of his beam in an unending flood to collide with Cell's, his attack effortlessly swallowing up the android's blast and engulfing the monster in a tidal wave of power.

As the inferno of the blast ripped through his entire body like lightning, the stunned android barely had enough time to look down the length of the attack to see his opponent marching towards him, energy continuing to spill out of his palm in an unrelenting river of death. When the ground beneath the two warriors began to disintegrate and Gohan directed the brunt of his attack safely towards the heavens, Cell felt every fiber of his being begin to crumble and burn inside the roaring tsunami of blue fire. The android screamed in terror and agony as his body was literally ripped to pieces, before one last spurt from Gohan's attack swept him up and sent his disintegrating form down the length of his beam.

"I-I AM… PERFEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECT!" the android cried out one last time, moments before his body crumbled into nothing and every last cell making up his form dissipated.

But the attack didn't stop there. After swallowing up Cell, the massive beam tore a path straight up into space and across the solar system, ripping a hole through Earth's atmosphere all the way into the cosmos.

With so much power concentrated around a single point, it wouldn't surprise anyone if it ripped a hole through the fabric of reality.

Amidst the twisting energy of his attack leaving his body and the surface of the planet itself, Gohan, feeling the last of his ki dissipate, closed his eyes and allowed the sweet embrace of sleep claim him. When his consciousness became filled with a blinding white light, the boy swore he heard his father's voice speak to him one last time.

As hazy as it was, Gohan was able to hear him loud and clear, and it put a big smile on his face.

"Gohan… I'm so proud of you…"

OOO

Feeling his energy levels hit rock bottom, the young Saiyan hero released his hold on his Super Saiyan 2 form and, unable to maintain his position any longer, fell out of the sky. What followed after that was a full minute of free fall, during which time all the child was able to see and feel was the pull of gravity, the cold rush of wind against his body, and the sight of cloud masses darting past him. These sensations indicated that during his final desperate spurt against his opponent, he'd somehow managed to ascend into the Earth's atmosphere above the cloud layer.

This didn't strike him as odd in the slightest, not only because he'd intentionally directed his blast away from the planet and its inhabitants, but also because he was too drained of energy to fully comprehend his current situation.

Gohan just let himself fall and, several seconds after bursting through the cloud cover towards the planet below, his battered body finally crashed into solid ground. When the dust settled moments later, it revealed the eleven year old child lying sprawled out in a crater of his own making, his purple gi in tatters, his body covered in cuts and bruises, and a whopping big smile on his face.

Unable to move, with the only feeling being a dull numbness flooding through his body, all the teenager could do was pant and gasp exhaustedly, a pained chuckle leaving his lips with every second exhale.

"I… I did it…" Gohan exclaimed in a hoarse voice, his eyes opening to stare up into the cool blue sky above, "I did it…" He was overjoyed, no… thrilled… that he'd finally defeated Cell and put an end to their nightmare for good.

His muscles were stinging, his arm was shot and rendered temporarily useless, and he was completely devoid of ki, sure… but that was the price he'd been willing to pay to win. And now, with the Earth's most dangerous threat down for the count, Gohan could finally kick back and catch his breath. All that was left for him to do now was lie there, in the middle of the scorching desert, and wait for his friends to come pick him up.

However, thanks to being so completely out of it, not only was Gohan unable to register to the fact that his friends were nowhere in sight, but he was no longer in the desert where the Cell Games had taken place.

Not even close.

Unbeknownst to the young Saiyan, his broken down and battered body had ended up crash-landing in a small clearing on a large island, a tropical forest covering every inch of it except its beach, and an enormous rocky mountain situated in its center. Palm, fig and kapok trees dominated the entire landmass and, due to the isolated nature of the island, it meant that the place was completely devoid of civilization.

Well… human civilization anyway.

As Gohan lay in the middle of the forest, eyes closed and chest heaving, the canopy around him suddenly began to stir and, over the next couple of minutes, a series of shadows emerged from the undergrowth. Filling the branches and vines encircling the area, a clan of ring-tailed lemurs took up positions around the clearing, where they could see the demi-Saiyan sprawled out in a shallow pit.

Having been drawn to the sound of an explosion, the group of wary animals kept their distance as they watched this strange creature lying at the bottom of the crater pant and chuckle. They watched him. Their curious, yellow eyes fixed firmly on the strange, hairless mammal, wondering if it was dangerous or not.

When they assessed he wasn't, a handful of the braver lemurs leapt down from the trees and came in for a closer look. Soon enough, about twelve of the furry black and white critters were sitting around Gohan's landing spot, where a couple of them began prodding and poking at his body. One lemur in particular, an adolescent male, hopped onto Gohan's chest and peered directly down at the boy's face.

Registering to the feeling of the animal perched on his sternum, Gohan looked up at it. Vision blurry and his other senses malfunctioning, the demi-Saiyan completely ignored the series of yellow eyes staring at him and, cracking a happy smile, spoke in a croaky voice.

"Hey Piccolo… Krillin… I did it… we won…" Gohan murmured, before letting his head drop and his eyes droop. "We won. Time to… go to sleep." With that, the child's head lulled to the side and he lost consciousness.

The little lemur on Gohan's chest blinked, unable to understand what the boy had said. Instead of scampering away and rejoining the rest of the clan, the little critter perched on the boy's chest decided to curl up on his stomach and sleep as well, along with the other lemurs that'd gathered around the Saiyan.

Obviously it would be a while before the teen regained consciousness. Until then, the animals surrounding the young hero would watch over him and hopefully make sure he made it through the night…

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Author's note: And that's the first chapter. Gohan's battle ends in a win, but something unexpected has taken place. lol