Author's note: I implore you all to give me suggestions about improving my writing. I can't improve if I don't know what's not working for the readers, thank you!

Chapter 1: A Window In Motion

The sheets were still moist with the salty sweat of Gohan's nightmare. Half an hour had passed. The images that had at one point in the night burned into his subconscious like a voracious wildfire were now reduced to a splattering of colors. He noticed the crack in the ceiling had gotten large and fuzzy like an old tennis ball.

A whisper came from the window. Gohan sat up slowly. A soft breeze blew into the room and for a moment relieved it of its stale atmosphere. He walked over to the window and peered out. There was no one. The whisper had come from the trees and the wind, from the rustling leaves and the nocturnal animals of the forest. The whisper had come to him from a memory. It was like he was back there again.

"No Dad, don't do it!"

Goku smiled. He didn't turn back to his son.

"You were great Gohan, now it's my turn," he said.

"Dad, it's my fault, if only I had listened to you and killed Cell when I..."

"Gohan, it's ok. You are much braver than I ever was at your age."

The blinding flash from his father's technique was the marker of Gohan's eternal failure. For four years it haunted his sleep. Normal people closed their eyes from the brightness of the world, but for him it meant seeing the light that ended his father's life. He took away that heartwarming smile from his mother, from his younger brother, and from the world that needed it the most.

Gohan walked back to his unkempt bed and reached underneath it. After a moment of shuffling around with his hand, he brought out a wooden box the size of a pillow and placed it on the mattress. A golden glow emanated from the gaps. He would do it tonight.

Without allowing another second to pass, he walked back to the window and launched himself into the air. The stars glazed the world below him in a haunting glow. Trees, hills, houses, and roads passed underneath Gohan as he flew towards the area he would summon the great dragon.

"There," he whispered.

Gohan had flown for barely an hour, yet had covered nearly a thousand miles to reach his destination.

The area was covered by a layer of impenetrable darkness. Boulders the size of skyscrapers lay in every direction like toppled dominoes. Green vegetation had returned to the area after four years, covering much of the damage caused by the battle, though no amount of greenery could ever hide the massive scar left behind by Cell.

Gohan landed on one of the building-sized boulders. The stars were still glistening in the sky, spurning him with winks. He took out the seven golden orbs and placed them side by side in a hexagonal pattern. The dragonballs glowed like before, but now they emitted a humming that reverberated not only in his physical ears, but deep within his spiritual psyche.

"Shenron, I summon you!" Gohan screamed.

A blistering bolt of golden lightning erupted from the collection of dragonballs. Gohan held his ground as the air around him crackled with ancient power and blackness overtook the starlit sky. The green aura of the great dragon Shenron became the only source of light in the otherwise darkened world.

"Speak," Shenron ordered.

"Shenron, do you see this great scar in the world?" Gohan asked, pointing to the valley.

"What of it?" Shenron responded.

"It is here that I fought the monster Cell. In my wicked arrogance I allowed him to wound the world with its evil. I allowed him to kill my father," Gohan explained.

"What does this have to do with my summoning? Give me your wish or allow me to return to my slumber," it said.

"I am not strong enough to control this power, the power that could obliterate everything I love. The power that could elevate my ego so much that it caused my own father to sacrifice his life to save the world, to save me, from my own screw up. I'm weak," Gohan said. Tears trickled down his cheeks. He clenched his fists and punched the ground as even now his weakness showed. The boulder cracked.

"I need no explanation of your intent, I only require your wish, mortal," the dragon beckoned, clearly annoyed.

"I want you to take away the power that caused this," Gohan said, "I wish for you to remove it from me!"

The great dragon Shenron mused over Gohan's odd request. It would be no stretch of the truth to say that most people who summoned him asked for great power, not to take it away.

"Your power is not ordinary. If I remove that power, it has to go somewhere. If left unchecked, it will do a thousand times more damage than what caused that canyon," Shenron revealed.

"Fine," Gohan responded, "then I ask for my wishes to be successive. Take this power from me, and then when it is ripped from my body, send it away from this Universe."

"It shall be done."

A flash of light erupted from the dragon's eyes and Gohan's entire body was lit on fire. A golden fog spewed out of his every orifice and condensed. He gagged and fell to his knees as the last of the fog exited his throat. He looked up and gaped. A massive, shapeless cloud of electric mist or aura floated just above him, threatening to overtake the entire area. At first it seemed like an inanimate entity, but Gohan began to feel a malicious consciousness from it. It wanted to hurt him.

The golden aura began to stir. Another flash of light from Shenron's eyes went off and suddenly a great black nothingness appeared next to the fog. Gohan gazed at it for a moment. Shenron had summoned some kind of portal, a tear in the spacetime continuum of their universe.

The portal whistled like a dangerously overloaded teapot. Gohan looked at the fog and for a moment thought it was afraid, but clearly there was no way a lifeless aura of energy could express such human emotion.

A moment passed between Gohan's thoughts when suddenly a dozen arms punched through the portal and grabbed onto the fog. Gohan could not have mistaken it this time. The fog had screamed.

Multiple hands emerged from the lengths of each arm, producing hundreds of hands that grasped and clawed onto the fog. The fog fought back viciously, letting loose its own variation of limbs and clutched onto any solid object it could. A long tentacle-like extension shot at Gohan like an arrow. Horrified, he sprang into the air. He was two feet above the boulder when he felt the full force of gravity stop him. The wish was granted. Gohan was unable to fly.

The fog's tentacle wrapped around Gohan's leg and pulled him towards it. He watched in horror as the fog itself was wrapped in countless hands, halfway into the black portal. It's going to take me with it. Gohan thought.

"No way!" Gohan screamed as he braced himself.

With his hand extended, Gohan unleashed a massive amount of energy from his core and directed all of its vicious power at the bizarre creatures. Nothing emerged. There was no more power left in him, having been taken all away by his own wish.

Golden dust soon enveloped Gohan's senses, suffocating him and burning his skin. Then, complete darkness._

The rain was heavy on Gohan's face. He tried opening his eyes, but they felt glued together. His body was cold and numb. His hands compulsively grabbed at anything they could, but found only hard lumps of clay dirt and grass.

Rain washed into his eyes and opened them for him, as if the Universe had taken pity. The sky burned into Gohan's retinas and he wished they were closed again. The gray clouds acted like a magnifying glass, amplifying the Sun's brightness tenfold.

"Hey, are you ok? Hey?"

The voice echoed in Gohan's skull like a rusty chainsaw. He lifted his head and turned towards the voice. Crouching inches from him was a girl who looked no more than ten years old.

"Lovely," Gohan responded.

He bent his arms and lifted himself up. It was harder than he thought. Not only did every muscle in his body ache with unknown injuries, but the mud's suction strength threaten to keep him down forever.

"Here, let me help," the girl said.

She grabbed Gohan's hand and pulled his body towards her. He sat upright and rotated his shoulders as if he were restarting the cogs of an old, unused clock.

"Thank you," Gohan said. She smiled.

"How'd you end all the way up here, and in the rain?" the girl asked.

She placed her hand over her eyes and scanned the area, as if she'd find Gohan's origin.

"Uh, I fell off a cliff I think," Gohan said. The strength in his muscles began to return.

"Oh, poor you. I'll take you to the village," she said.

Gohan thought for a moment. He hadn't remembered a village near the Cell Games' area.

"Thank you, but I think I'll just head to the city and find my way home," he said.

"Oh no, you can't travel the roads!" the girl responded. Her voice was full of concern and, perhaps, a hint of fear.

"It's ok," Gohan said.

He smiled at her. She had a childish face with brown eyes and red hair. Her clothes, however, were tattered and seemingly medieval.

"No, I'm serious!" she replied, her voice now stern, "the roads are crawling with Goro's bandits!"

Gohan stood up. His legs felt a bit wobbly, but otherwise fine. He stretched his arms high into the air and yawned.

"I'm not worried about bandits," he said reassuringly, "I'm Gohan, by the way."

"Well, um, nice to meet you then, Gohan. I'm–"

"Izumi!"

An old woman came hustling from a nearby bush and descended on them like a raging moose.

"What in the world are you –" she started.

The old woman caught sight of Gohan, who was still in mid-stretch. He gave her a silly grin.

"Izumi! Come here now!" the old woman screamed.

She grabbed a massive knife from her waist and charged at Gohan. He jumped back to avoid the rusty blade from plunging into his stomach. His body smacked into a slimy, hard surface. Gohan reeled in pain and slide down the tree he unknowingly backed into.

"Grandma!" Izumi yelled.

"Izumi! Come here now!" the old woman commanded.

"Ouch," Gohan moaned. The pain throbbed intensely in his back.

"Grandma! I found this boy on the ground! He was probably hurt by the bandits," Izumi said.

"Think, girl! He probably is a bandit," her grandmother said.

Gohan stood back up. The tree hurt more than it should have. Normally he would have torn through a tree like paper. That must have meant, then, that the wished worked. Was his powers really gone?

He lifted his hand up towards the sky. Izumi and her grandmother watched in cautious curiosity as Gohan tightened his arm and screamed. A look of utter terror crossed the grandmother's face as Gohan continued to scream into the sky like a crazy hermit. Nothing happened at all.

"Hah!" he laughed.

Gohan dropped his arm and looked over at his audience. The grandmother and girl were both staring at him as if he had just kicked a baby squirrel.

"Don't worry, I'm not a bandit," he said quickly, wondering as to how odd he must have looked a second ago. "I can't hurt you, I'm completely powerless."

Izumi and her grandmother were utterly confused at Gohan's genuine grin. After a few more seconds of awkwardness, the grandmother took Izumi's hand and started to walk away.

"Grandma!" Izumi pleaded.

"Quiet, girl. When we get back I'm going to make you clean all the pig pens!" the grandmother said.

Gohan waved anxiously at them. When the two were finally out of sight he began searching his surroundings. He looked above the treeline and saw steep cliffs overhanging the forest.

"Wow, I must have fallen from there," Gohan said. "Funny, this place looks completely different at night."

A scream exploded throughout the forest, temporarily shocking Gohan into a defensive position. The scream came from the direction Izumi and her grandmother walked off to. Instinctively Gohan rushed to the source of the terrible sound.

He blazed a trail through thick brush and naked tree branches, getting scratched up like a wolf's fresh kill.

"Worthless, just a kid and an old lady, and I thought we hit the jackpot."

Gohan watched from a distance as a rugged man dropped someone to the ground. The person was lifeless, and he could make out what looked like a deep gash on her head. It was the grandmother from before.

A group of men, all armed with swords, stood around the grandmother's body. A man near the one who had just dropped her held a girl by the arm. It was Izumi.

"Damn, guess we'll have to go through the trouble of finding some real women in the village," the man said.

"What am I going to do with this one?" the other asked.

"Kill her. She's worthless, and I doubt any of us want to screw a little kid, right?"

The group of men laughed.

"Hey!" Gohan screamed.

Immediately the men turned towards Gohan, drawing their swords. Gohan continued to run, determining in his mind as quickly as a supercomputer his plan of attack. He prepared to lunge into the nearest man when a rapid rustling of leaves from above him caught his attention.

A streak of shadowy blurs shot past the trees and into the group of men. Gohan stopped. He looked at the swordsmen. They were all pierced with several black knives and star-shaped projectiles. Blood dripped from them like sweat.

"Who–" said the man who had killed the grandmother.

"A real woman has appeared! What are all you tough men going to do about it?"

Gohan dived into a bush and hid. He looked up towards the tree tops and saw a trio of individuals standing on a high branch. They were only teens, all of whom couldn't have been older than him.

"Bastard shinobi–" the man said.

He dropped his sword and collapsed. The other men followed suit, falling onto the unforgiven forest floor.

"You sure have a way with men, Ino."

"Shut up Chouji!"