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May 3rd, Age 768

“And if you look over here, you can see my newest invention—I call it the Sunlight Generator!” proclaimed Bulma as she directed Gohan’s attention to a cylinder-shaped device about the size of a couch. “Simulations I’ve run have proven the light emitted by this machine will be 100% more beneficial to plant life than our actual sun!”

“Wow! It creates sunlight? That’ll be really useful to farmers everywhere!” Gohan replied as his intelligent eyes surveyed the apparatus with a high level of interest. As someone who loved research and learning new things, it was always a pleasure to get to see what Bulma was developing next.

It was another normal, peaceful day on planet Earth. One year after Cell’s defeat, life had never been quieter. While doing some daily training, Gohan’s mother had asked him to take his baby brother Goten over to the Capsule Corporation for another playdate with Trunks. The spiky-haired 12-year-old happily obliged; not bothering to change out of his purple gi beforehand. When he arrived, Trunks’ mother offered to give the preteen a quick tour of her lab and current projects before he left; an offer he quickly accepted. Thus was how Gohan found himself following behind the turquoise-haired lady; respectfully listening to all her technobabble as they moved from one invention to the next.

“Right here you’ll notice I’ve almost completed my Self-Replenishing Water Bottle.” The female scientist motioned to a seemingly normal-looking, plastic bottle. “Just a few more adjustments and I’m positive the liquid won’t taste like pig urine by the fourth refill!”

Gohan smiled and chuckled softly; recalling when Bulma had asked Yamcha to test the water bottle a few weeks ago. Just as they were about to head towards the next creation, the brunet boy’s black eyes fell upon a fairly large object in the center of the lab. He assumed it was large, but it was difficult to even make out its general shape while it was concealed under that white sheet. “Hey, Bulma, what’s that over there?”

“Hmm?” The woman turned back to the athletic child and followed his gesturing to the shrouded mass. Her blue orbs narrowed as she looked upon it with indifference. “Oh, that? Just the Time Machine I’ve been working on.”

“Oh…wait, what?!” Gohan’s jaw dropped and he went from looking at the hidden Time Machine to Bulma, and then back to the large time travelling device. The creation of sunlight and water was quite interesting, but a construct that breached the fabric of space and time was something else entirely! Why did Bulma seem so uninterested with it? “You mean…like the one Trunks used to come here from the future?”

“The very same!” the 34-year-old approached the lofty vehicle with Gohan and scanned it over while putting her hands on her hips. “When I found out the future me made one, I wanted to try and create one in ¼ the time it took her! Transcend my future self and all that!” With a sigh, the light-haired woman scratched the back of her head and scowled at the thick cloth blanketed over her Time Machine. “I just wish Trunks had left behind some blueprints or a sample of some kind. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t—“

“Bulma dearie, could you come help me in the kitchen for a moment?” came the voice of Mrs. Brief over a loudspeaker; her voice startling the lab’s two occupants who looked to the ceiling where the loud voice was coming from. “The kids made quite the mess in here!”

“Geez…” Bulma groused as she face palmed and shook her head. “I asked her politely to look after Trunks and Goten! I really hope they didn’t get into the refrigerator again.” The blue-eyed wife of Vegeta smiled down at Gohan. “Wait right here, okay? I shouldn’t be gone too long. When I get back, I’ll show you the Laser Knife 2000!” With a wave, the Brief ran out of the lab through a large, metal door that slammed shut behind her. She hadn’t told Gohan not to touch anything due to the fact she was very trusting of the boy and was confident he knew better.

All that said, the first thing the unsupervised Gohan did was grab the cloth draped over the Time Machine with both hands and yank it clean off. His eyes lit up with fascination as an egg-shaped vehicle, outfitted with four legs and four boosters, was unveiled to him. Its color scheme was slightly different than that of Future Trunks’; sporting a more grayish frame as opposed to green and yellow. For several seconds, the black-haired Z Fighter silently ogled the tall Time Machine; his mind buzzing with all the possibilities this invention of Bulma’s could give him. Truth be told, Gohan had found himself really missing Goku lately. The last 12 months helped heal the wound in his heart left by his deceased father, but it wasn’t quite there yet. He still cried himself to sleep some nights thinking of the selfless, Saiyan warrior. With this machine, however…he could see him again! He could travel back in time a couple years and his dad would still be alive and kicking!

“I could take it for a spin, meet with dad, and be back mere seconds from now! Bulma would never even know!” The more he thought about it, the more he liked this idea! What could possibly go wrong? “It’s not like I can change the future or anything!” As Gohan recalled what Trunks had told him about the Time Machine creating alternate timelines, the half-Saiyan’s round orbs fell upon a small remote control sitting on a pedestal next to the dome-fitted vehicle. Taking the device into his hands, Gohan examined its simple structure—only a handful of buttons decorated its surface. When the youth pressed his index finger against the largest of these circular buttons, a sound from the time travelling mechanism attracted his eyes and he observed the vehicle’s glass roof lifting up to allow entry. Grinning from ear to ear, Gohan levitated off the lab’s cold floor and carefully maneuvered himself into the cockpit. Once seated, the bright young man dropped the remote onto the vehicle’s floor and marveled at the Time Machine’s far more complex control panel. A myriad of buttons, levers, and gauges were spread out in front of him; all of various colors and sizes. Such a layout would scare away an ordinary child, but Gohan had the brains to match his brawn! After about a dozen seconds of Gohan’s pupils dancing around in his head, taking in all the information laid out before him, the preteen possessed a fairly decent idea on how to operate the Time Machine.

“I better hurry up and get this thing moving before Bulma gets back.” Gohan reminded himself as he pushed a button on the console and the glass dome above his head lowered back into place. With the pull of a red-tipped lever, the craft hummed to life and the dashboard beneath his chin lit up like a miniature carnival at night. “Let’s see…I think if I twist this here and then flick this little nub there…” Upon doing this, the young martial artist felt other contraptions spring to life under him and the entire vehicle vibrated faintly around him. “Alright! I’m…90% sure I set the Time Machine to take me back two years! All I have to do now is press this button and I’ll get to see dad again!” A gleeful Gohan hovered his pointer finger over a large, red button in the middle of the blinking, flashing control panel. He took a brief moment to go over what he was about to attempt one last time in his head before ultimately confirming he couldn’t let this opportunity slip through his fingers. Upon ramming his long digit into the bright knob, the Time Machine awoke fully and started radiating a luminescent glow around itself. Gohan had mere seconds to gawk at the illumination outside the glass barrier before he and his stolen means of transportation blinked out of existence.

“U-unreal.” whispered the spiky-haired boy as he whipped his head around and analyzed the spiraling vortex he was zipping through all of a sudden. All he could make out beyond the transparent dome was a maelstrom of greens and blacks; continuously shifting between a thousand different patterns every second. A small part of Gohan wanted to leave the capsule and venture out into the surreal void, but a larger part of him kindly pointed out that was a really stupid idea. Then again, committing grand theft Time Machine might not have been the wisest thing to do, as the young half-human hybrid was about to find out.

The first sign of trouble came when every bulb decorating the dashboard in front of the seated Gohan turned red; basking him in an ominous, vermilion glow. A blaring alarm attacked the young male’s ears as the lights flashed repetitively. One of the small screens built into the console displayed a worrying “ERROR” message. “W-what’s going on?! Did I do something wrong?” A panicking Gohan pressed a few buttons and skimmed through some information that scrolled down the black display. “T-there’s not enough power?! Why—?” As if things weren’t bad enough, the wall of text Gohan was reading disappeared and in its place appeared about half a dozen pop-up boxes; each one with its own warning message. Not only did this Time Machine not have adequate power, but there were numerous other problems popping up all throughout the system! He had hopped into a faulty Time Machine; maybe he should have paid more attention to what Bulma was saying!

A desperate and sweating Gohan let his fingers dance upon the Time Machine’s controls; randomly pushing buttons and flipping switches while hoping of some sort of response. If he was lucky, Bulma had installed some sort of failsafe that would send the machine back in case of an emergency such as this. Unfortunately, the youth was the polar opposite of lucky. A violent discharge of electricity pushed him back into his seat and gave him quite the painful shock. Gohan brushed it off, but the equipment in front of him delivered another powerful zap immediately afterwards. This time, the pain didn’t just last a split second; several streams of hot plasma connected the young Z Fighter to the device’s controls. He sat there, howling in agony as the Time Machine seemed to sap his strength to fill its energy source—it was using him like a living battery! Thanks to the half-Saiyan child’s abundance of latent power, the energy reserves fueling his transport were quickly filled to 100%...but it didn’t stop there. The Time Machine proceeded to overcharge itself, resulting in a few gauges blowing up in Gohan’s face! The machine’s onboard computer was affected as well—the voltage coursing through its wires corrupted all the data within it. Millions of lines of complex algorithms became an imbroglio that, through the miracle of science, forced the Time Machine to carry out phenomena it was never designed for. Beneath this hectic computing, the target date Gohan had entered earlier was overwritten and lost as well. The Time Machine sifted through random periods between fifteen minutes ago and fifteen centuries, before ultimately settling on…

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May 3rd, Age 753

Goku smiled cheerfully as he made his way through some dense woods. Both of his hands patted his stomach contently now that it was filled with the delicious flesh of a boar. Stopping amidst some sunrays filtering in from a gap in the tree canopies above, the youthful martial artist glanced around and uttered, “Which way did I come from again? Umm…” As the Saiyan scratched his scalp and struggled to pick a direction, his ears twitched as they picked up a strange sound from the sky aloft. Goku craned his neck back and rubbernecked into the sun; using one hand to shield his eyes from the bright sphere of fire. He could make out something falling toward him; something small and getting closer by the second. “What’s—?”

THWACK!

The undeveloped warrior never finished his sentence. He couldn’t even remember what it was he wanted to say after the plummeting object gave him a nice, discolored bump on his forehead. Goku voiced a wail as he hunched down and slapped his hands over his sore noggin. The mysterious object that had collided with his face plunged to the ground nearby and rolled for a bit across the nature riddled floor of the forest. As soon as the stinging subsided, Goku turned to look at the diminutive thingamajig among some sticks and rocks and his face distorted into an infuriated scowl.

Inside the Time Machine, Gohan hissed with aching and picked himself up; using the seat he had once been sitting in as leverage. Everything had happened so quickly—the vehicle had finally ceased blasting him with electricity, only to start spiraling irregularly and tossing him around the cockpit like a ragdoll. It had hurt a lot more than it should have; he felt weak like a long fight had drained him of his strength. When the time traveling construct finally came to a full stop, it had settled on its side. Gohan was now standing on the glass dome, amazed it had not so much as cracked during the critical failures and the crash landing. It was pretty much the only thing that had remained unscathed; the dashboard was in shabbiness and sporting gaping, sparking holes. While the Z Warrior hadn’t noticed it yet, the Time Machine was also missing two of its legs and one engine.

“Damn…this isn’t good.” murmured Gohan as he rubbed his sleeveless, lightly bruised arm and took a gander at the damage. There was no way he was piloting this thing back home…unless he was still in his own timeline, in which case the only thing he had to worry about was getting an earful from Bulma and his mother. If he had succeeded in traveling back two years, then he could only hope the bluenette of this time could help him repair the Time Machine…else he’d be waiting a year for Trunks to pay them a visit. “Oh man. I hope the button that opens the pod is still here.” Gohan was just beginning to look for it when everything around him trembled. He almost lost his balanced and slammed his mug into the glass barrier surrounding him, but managed to steady himself just as another earthshaking THOOM shook his world again. The concerned preteen peered out into the outside and realized something was amiss straightaway. Judging by the vegetation everywhere, he had not ended up inside Bulma’s lab as intended, but this was not his most immediate cause for concern. Slowly ambling toward him was a creature of skyscraping stature; each footfall from those blue-clad feet pounding the ground with audible force. A speechless Gohan pressed his hands and face up against the Time Machine’s roof and gazed upward as the lofty giant came to a stop directly above him. This towering silhouette was so massive he appeared to blot out the sun, but the perceptive Gohan knew better. The enormous trees and fallen leaves around him were telltale signs—the entire world was gigantic, meaning Gohan was puny! That thick trunk of wood that this looming titan had unknowingly stepped on and was now gradually crumpling beneath his weight? That was a twig!

“What are you?” boomed the colossus as he bent his knees and reached down to grab the object that had smashed into his cranium.

“W-why? H-how?!” the half-Saiyan gibbered to himself; too paralyzed with fear to do anything to stop the enormous being from enveloping his thick, strong fingers around the pod and lifting it off the ground like it weighed nothing. From between two of the giant’s digits, the tiny Gohan watched his expansive body pass by. From what he could make out, the godlike humanoid was clad in orange and it was only after passing a pitch-black belt tied around the goliath’s waist that Gohan recognized the thin, sleeveless garment as a gi much like the one he wore. Something about the clothing struck the youth as familiar, but he wouldn’t figure out why until the giant finished raising the metallic transport up to his boyish face. Gohan’s pupils dilated and filled with recollection—this was a mug he knew all too well! It bore a striking resemblance to his own, but it was that hairdo that gave the truth away. “D-d-dad?!” It was Goku…as a kid!

“Hmmmm…” the gargantuan Goku raised an eyebrow as he cupped the warm, hard doohickey between his hands. He had not yet noticed the mini-person trapped within as he rotated the shrunken Time Machine around and examined every inch of its alien appearance. Inside, Gohan stretched out his arms and legs to prevent himself from going on another tumble within the confined compartment. As his stomach got lurched around as if he had suddenly been tossed into a washing machine, Gohan stared out at Goku and observed the boy’s puzzled countenance.

“Heh…I really messed up.” the time traveler informed himself, but did so with a hint of a smile. He had gone back in time far more than he had planned and he was fully aware of the bind that put him in, but he couldn’t help but be amused by the cute face of the boy that would one day become his dad. “He can’t be more than 8-years-old! Haha!” Little did Gohan know, however, that this version of Goku was at the ripe age of sixteen! Thanks to a pure Saiyan’s stunted growth, the teenage Goku lacked the height and muscle definition of his future son. That wasn’t to say he didn’t have any—few youngsters matching Goku’s size could claim to have arms or a chest as thick and strong as his. It’s just…well…Gohan sported the same physique when he was seven.

As if the universe wanted to remind the pubescent of the sticky situation he had gotten himself into, one of the miniature vehicle’s remaining engines blew up while Goku was prodding it and startled him. “Ack! The monster breathed fire at me!” exclaimed the monkey boy as he checked the lightly scorched skin on his index finger. Suddenly, Goku’s black eyes narrowed into a vindictive glare pointed in Gohan’s direction. Before the younger Saiyan could even acknowledge this change of demeanor, Goku had clasped the toy-sized Time Machine between his palms and began squeezing! Gohan fell back into the seat of the now upright vehicle and whirled his head around as he listened to the Time Machine groan under the giant boy’s strength.

“What are you doing?!” shouted the 12-year-old fighter, though the older male could not hear him. Bulma had designed the Time Machine to be fairly sturdy, but it was nothing the otherworldly teenager couldn’t demolish. Goku clenched his teeth as his biceps bulged with raw power and veins pushed against his skin. The sound of screeching steel and other, even more resilient metals sprang forth from the “monster” in Goku’s hands as it slowly compressed. Dread suffused across the child’s face as the machine’s few remaining controls short-circuited and exploded one after the other. The colossal 16-year-old winced as the vehicle’s final two thrusters spontaneously combusted, but he mistook this as the smaller “creature” attempting to defend itself and didn’t let it dissuade him. “I’ve gotta get out of here! He’s destroying the Time Machine!” As the walls surrounding him bent and warped from the unstoppable pressure, Gohan looked up to see the glass dome overhead begin cracking. However, at the rate it was going, it would only shatter in unison with his bones when Goku caught them between his meaty palms! “No choice! I’m gonna be crushed at this rate!” Looking serious like anyone at death’s door would, the black-haired Z Fighter thrust his right arm up and fired a ki blast through the ceiling of his derelict craft. Moving fast, Gohan flew through the freshly melted hole mere seconds before Goku’s oversized, sweaty palms met and squashed the Time Machine into flattened scrap. Hovering in front of the giant, Gohan could only watch with a horrorstruck visage as his gargantuan father ground his appendages together with muffled cricks and cracks to ensure the violent little beast was good and dead. “Alright, Gohan, keep it together! This may look bad, but at least it can’t get any worse!”

Looking up from the joined hands, Gohan noticed his father’s enormous past self now had his black eyes focused on him. The extraterrestrial teen blinked in silent uncertainty while his mouth remained stuck in a perfect O shape. Just when it looked like the spiky-haired hero was going to say something, his youthful and underdeveloped form suddenly went rigid. The shrunken form of his son watched with a confused stare as the giant seemed to have a seizure in front of him. The hairs on his head and those on the monkey tail behind him (which Gohan was only just now spotting) stuck up straight like the needles on a cactus. Tiny flickers of electricity crackled around Goku’s hands; it would appear the titan was getting electrocuted by the Time Machine’s busted remnants!

“D-dad…I mean…Goku! Are you okay?!” Gohan screamed, but it didn’t look like the older brunet was capable of responding to him. Judging by the way his face tensed and his muscles spasmed, Gohan could only assume the poor kid was in a lot of anguish. “Oh man…don’t die! That’s the last thing I need right now!”

Unbeknownst to the tinier Saiyan, Goku wasn’t in any pain whatsoever. As a matter of fact, he had never felt healthier! He could feel an incredible amount of power coursing up through his arms—so much more than his small, infantile brain could comprehend. When the young man opened his mouth and started to yell, it was due to pure exhilaration! The very instant the first note escaped Goku’s gaping orifice his entire form pulsated within an aura of ki and released a shockwave of invisible force. Gohan was swatted aside like a fly; cast head over heels in the opposite direction. He managed to halt himself after a few rotations and lock his sights on his bellowing dad; fists clenched at the ready. “What was that?!” The half-human watched, mystified, as the giant’s body pulsated again, but no blast of energy was released this time. Instead, Goku’s figure seemed to bulge outward instead! The straining of his gi could just barely be heard over his roaring as it stretched to contain a pair of prominent, defined pecs that had suddenly come into existence. Eventually the gi could not contain the rapidly swelling torso and tore at the shoulders and neckline; the shredded cotton peeling away to reveal Goku’s unnaturally developing stomach. Six bricks of impenetrable, solid muscle formed before Gohan’s very eyes; jutting out of his gut with enough prominence one could grate cheese on them! Had Goku’s uniform possessed sleeves, they surely would have been destroyed as well when the youth’s arms nearly doubled in size! His twin biceps became far more toned and sizeable; raw, muscular strength pouring into them with no concept of the word “limitation”. Goku finally separated his hands and allowed the shattered glass and metal of the Time Machine to fall back to the ground, but it was too late; the power was already inside him. The Saiyan warrior flexed his two bowling ball sized biceps and his piercing screaming became an almost animalistic snarl.

“What’s…happening to me?!” Goku grunted, for the only answer he could come up with was “nothing bad”. Gohan cleared his throat with a gulp as he craned his head back and witnessed the already enormous Goku grow until his size surpassed that of a fully matured man. To support the teen’s new, hulking weight, the born warrior’s legs underwent an equally impressive transformation. His thigh and calf muscles exploded with growth; nearly tearing his orange pants to shreds! The sound of ripping fabric emanated from Goku’s feet just before they outgrew his shoes and socks. Ten thick, newly freed toes wiggled as that unfortunate twig from earlier turned to sawdust under the adolescent alien’s mindboggling heft. Finally, just when Gohan thought his dad was going to turn into a Great Ape or a Super Saiyan, the aura of bright ki faded and Goku ceased his growth spurt. His senses no longer inundated by the surge of foreign power, the black-haired youth stopped his growling and gave his new body his full, undivided attention. Taking his left hand and gliding his fingers down the physiognomy of his transformed upper body, Goku mumbled, “Whooooa.” as he reached his six-pack and flicked the fleshy armor that now protected his belly. While Goku was preoccupied with his right bicep muscle—using his left hand to caress the hillock of smooth muscle—his future son inconspicuously turned around and tried to sneak away. Something told him he didn’t want to be a puny bug next to a brawny, young Goku. Before he could get even another inch between them, however…

“Hey! Stop right there!” As if the voice was the unquestionable voice of God, Gohan froze in midair while a look of terror swept across his face. The young Z Fighter turned himself around just as Goku took a single, quaking step closer to him. Gohan found his vision utterly dominated by a wall of hardy, peach-colored flesh. Taking his sights skyward, the younger male made out his youthful father’s childlike visage behind a set of round, swollen pecs. The teen’s chin was touching his taut chest as two black, stern eyes scrutinized the flying bug boy just below them. “I heard you speaking! Tell me what your mommy did to me, tiny fly monster!”

“F-fly monster? Mommy?!” Gohan repeated as he took his baffled form and floated back a few inches so the behemoth’s face was more easily seeable. Those black, pejorative orbs of Goku’s remained locked on him; prepared to smack his petty little body out of the air at a moment’s notice.

“Yeah! You came out of that savage critter, so you must be its baby! So…” The pubescent Goku struck a double bicep pose. Gohan could actually hear the sound of the boy’s skin stretch as those melons of inhuman strength took shape. “...you must know something about this! Speak up, little one!”

Gohan was at a lost. Obviously Goku would not know who he was, but for his own father to think he was some sort of insectoid…it was demoralizing! Now the spiky-haired teenager wanted him to explain why he looked like a steroid user? Gohan didn’t have the foggiest clue! First and foremost, he had to set his meathead of a parent straight—he wouldn’t be mistaken for a Time Machine’s offspring! “Listen, you’re really confused! I’m not—“

“Me? Confused? Do I look perfectly normal to you?” the pureblooded Saiyan retorted, completely misinterpreting his shrunken kin’s words. “Look! I have breasts like Bulma now!” As Goku bounced his pectoral muscles to emphasize his point, Gohan grumbled in frustration and attempted to hastily rectify the misunderstanding. Goku, however, was too captivated in the dance he was making his inflated chest muscles do and he failed to pay any attention to the earthling’s squeaky clarification. When the jiggling of his man tits offered no more amusement, Goku returned his attention to Gohan once more and resumed speaking. Gohan had been right in the middle of revealing his identity to his colossal father when the giant interjected and did nothing to suggest the younger brunet’s significant statements had been heard. “Do you need a closer look? Let me give you a hand!”

Gohan didn’t know what Goku meant by his words and he didn’t want to know, but unfortunately the larger man had no desire to offer him a choice. Faster than the Lilliputian could react, Goku snatched him out of the air with only his thumb and index finger. Gohan struggled with all his might, but numerous factors made all the strength in that toned body of his scant compared to the power two of Goku’s fingers could exert. Before his little catch even knew what was happening, the muscular extraterrestrial carried him to his left arm and pushed him against the relaxed bicep. A lone thumb was all it took to completely subdue the talented fighter and pin him flush with the unwrinkled, unyielding surface of Goku’s muscle. As the powerful, godly boy slowly dragged Gohan down the length of the robust hillock, the poor child’s nose was assaulted by the manly stench of a healthy, highly active teenager. Eventually Goku used that inexorable, bulbous digit of his to tuck the weaker male into the gap where the upper and lower portions of his limb joined. Retracting his thumb, the smiling Saiyan pointed his fist toward the treetops above; flexing just enough to close his elbow pit and trap Gohan between two walls of lightly sweating skin.

Such…incredible strength! Gohan whimpered in his thoughts; unable to speak with his mouth pressed against the adamant-like toughness of Goku’s boulder of a bicep. He did his best to wiggle free, but he was trapped plain and simple. His chiseled pecs certainly looked impressive the way they gleamed with sweat and distended to the point Gohan’s purple gi was barely concealing them, but this was all merely for show. In truth he was out of his league—he could barely breathe in this musky, constricted environment!

“Well? Do you understand now? It’s bigger than it was before!” Goku exclaimed as he eyed the weird, purple, talking monster secured between his upright forearm and bulging bicep. He sneered down at the thing when it made no responses, unaware Gohan’s mouth was too busy kissing the curved muscle to form words. Unfortunately for the younger boy, no answers meant no freedom!

I’ve gotta…power up! Gohan had no other options; Goku’s arm wasn’t budging otherwise. Gritting his teeth, Gohan concentrated his anger until a golden, fiery aura enveloped his form. After this, all it would take was a snap of power to turn his hair a radiant yellow and his eyes a stoic greenish-blue. He was, thus, visibly dumbfounded when he suddenly powered down instead and the aura of light dissipated as quickly as it had been summoned. I-I can’t turn into a Super Saiyan! W-why?! Goku’s eldest child had only one hypothesis. The Time Machine must have drained even more of his power than he had realized! What’s more, all that power…was inside his teenage dad now! This indomitable vigor that was quashing the life out of him, it was all his power! He had given it to Goku—all wrapped up in a Time Machine shaped gift bag. Growing more desperate with each revelation, Gohan mustered up all the strength he had to twist his body around and get his face into a position that he may call for help. He opened his mouth and…

“Hmm…do you need me to flex more? I’m not really putting much strength into it.” With that said, Goku dug his nails into his palm, tightened his fist further, and contracted his bicep until the hill of blood, flesh, and muscle was pushed to its very peak. It was at this precise moment that Gohan realized he wasn’t getting out of this situation alive. Any trace of free space within the martial artist’s cubital fossa disappeared and the pressure that had been bulldozing Gohan increased tenfold. Those strong and sinewy limbs Gohan had put so much training and exercise into snapped like tinder in a trash compactor. The distressed cry the Saiyan/human hybrid had wished to make became a high-pitched, quiet shriek drowned out with the crunching of his sturdy skeleton. The rest of Gohan’s proud body, the body belonging to someone who had achieved Super Saiyan 2 and more, quickly failed him. There was such an unbelievable lack of resistance that one might think the youth had given up. Soon Gohan’s head was the only thing not devastated by Goku hearty flex. It looked almost comical the way it was being squashed between two protruding, popped blood vessels; mouth ajar and eyeballs rolled into the back of his skull.

I never thought…I’d be killed like this. Gohan thought with his collapsing brain as he felt two trails of warm blood leak out of his nostrils. It was like he was a small, weak insect trapped in the collision of two inescapable, celestial bodies. At least I’ll…get to see dad now. It didn’t take long for Gohan to see the error in that statement. No…dad’s…not dead…yet. He’s the one… He had almost forgotten what, and who, was flattening him. All he could see with his blurry, fading vision was blood, sweat, and walls of pale white. If it hadn’t been for the distinctive odor of male Saiyan, there would have been nothing to identify this death machine as anything alive and sapient. Am I gonna be…trapped in another timeline’s Other World? N-no…! His friends back home…they have to be able to do something! They could use the Dragon Balls to wish him back! Return him to life…return him to his normal time…that was all in the Eternal Dragon’s power…right?

Right?

*crunch*

“Huh?” Upon hearing, and feeling, something crunch like a walnut, Goku relaxed his arm and outstretched it to reveal Gohan’s new appearance: a gooey paste spread redly across the teenager’s husky bicep. Save for a few traces of black hair and dark purple cloth, there were no clues to remind Goku of the pintsized monster’s original shape. He was nothing but a gob of viscera, brains, and bone shards now. “Oopsie! Didn’t mean to smush it.” Goku’s tone of voice wasn’t very apologetic, but why would it be? As far as he was concerned, he did everyone a favor by ridding the world of an insect monster before it could grow up into a fire-breathing menace! Using the very same thumb that had guided Gohan to his ignoble doom, Goku wiped his carmine remains off his arm with just a few dabs. He followed up by rubbing his thumb against his index finger until not even a fleck of evidence lingered.

“22nd World Martial Arts Tournament, here I come!” Goku announced as he thrust his pumped up, tree trunk of an arm into the sky and tromped onward in search of the forest’s edge. His weighty footfalls seemed to send tremors throughout the woods as they carried his herculean frame forward. “I can’t wait to see the look on everyone’s faces when they see the new and improved Goku!”

Description
May 3rd, Age 768

“And if you look over here, you can see my newest invention—I call it the Sunlight Generator!” proclaimed Bulma as she directed Gohan’s attention to a cylinder-shaped device about the size of a couch. “Simulations I’ve run have proven the light emitted by this machine will be 100% more beneficial to plant life than our actual sun!”

“Wow! It creates sunlight? That’ll be really useful to farmers everywhere!” Gohan replied as his intelligent eyes surveyed the apparatus with a high level of interest. As someone who loved research and learning new things, it was always a pleasure to get to see what Bulma was developing next.

It was another normal, peaceful day on planet Earth. One year after Cell’s defeat, life had never been quieter. While doing some daily training, Gohan’s mother had asked him to take his baby brother Goten over to the Capsule Corporation for another playdate with Trunks. The spiky-haired 12-year-old happily obliged; not bothering to change out of his purple gi beforehand. When he arrived, Trunks’ mother offered to give the preteen a quick tour of her lab and current projects before he left; an offer he quickly accepted. Thus was how Gohan found himself following behind the turquoise-haired lady; respectfully listening to all her technobabble as they moved from one invention to the next.

“Right here you’ll notice I’ve almost completed my Self-Replenishing Water Bottle.” The female scientist motioned to a seemingly normal-looking, plastic bottle. “Just a few more adjustments and I’m positive the liquid won’t taste like pig urine by the fourth refill!”

Gohan smiled and chuckled softly; recalling when Bulma had asked Yamcha to test the water bottle a few weeks ago. Just as they were about to head towards the next creation, the brunet boy’s black eyes fell upon a fairly large object in the center of the lab. He assumed it was large, but it was difficult to even make out its general shape while it was concealed under that white sheet. “Hey, Bulma, what’s that over there?”

“Hmm?” The woman turned back to the athletic child and followed his gesturing to the shrouded mass. Her blue orbs narrowed as she looked upon it with indifference. “Oh, that? Just the Time Machine I’ve been working on.”

“Oh…wait, what?!” Gohan’s jaw dropped and he went from looking at the hidden Time Machine to Bulma, and then back to the large time travelling device. The creation of sunlight and water was quite interesting, but a construct that breached the fabric of space and time was something else entirely! Why did Bulma seem so uninterested with it? “You mean…like the one Trunks used to come here from the future?”

“The very same!” the 34-year-old approached the lofty vehicle with Gohan and scanned it over while putting her hands on her hips. “When I found out the future me made one, I wanted to try and create one in ¼ the time it took her! Transcend my future self and all that!” With a sigh, the light-haired woman scratched the back of her head and scowled at the thick cloth blanketed over her Time Machine. “I just wish Trunks had left behind some blueprints or a sample of some kind. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t—“

“Bulma dearie, could you come help me in the kitchen for a moment?” came the voice of Mrs. Brief over a loudspeaker; her voice startling the lab’s two occupants who looked to the ceiling where the loud voice was coming from. “The kids made quite the mess in here!”

“Geez…” Bulma groused as she face palmed and shook her head. “I asked her politely to look after Trunks and Goten! I really hope they didn’t get into the refrigerator again.” The blue-eyed wife of Vegeta smiled down at Gohan. “Wait right here, okay? I shouldn’t be gone too long. When I get back, I’ll show you the Laser Knife 2000!” With a wave, the Brief ran out of the lab through a large, metal door that slammed shut behind her. She hadn’t told Gohan not to touch anything due to the fact she was very trusting of the boy and was confident he knew better.

All that said, the first thing the unsupervised Gohan did was grab the cloth draped over the Time Machine with both hands and yank it clean off. His eyes lit up with fascination as an egg-shaped vehicle, outfitted with four legs and four boosters, was unveiled to him. Its color scheme was slightly different than that of Future Trunks’; sporting a more grayish frame as opposed to green and yellow. For several seconds, the black-haired Z Fighter silently ogled the tall Time Machine; his mind buzzing with all the possibilities this invention of Bulma’s could give him. Truth be told, Gohan had found himself really missing Goku lately. The last 12 months helped heal the wound in his heart left by his deceased father, but it wasn’t quite there yet. He still cried himself to sleep some nights thinking of the selfless, Saiyan warrior. With this machine, however…he could see him again! He could travel back in time a couple years and his dad would still be alive and kicking!

“I could take it for a spin, meet with dad, and be back mere seconds from now! Bulma would never even know!” The more he thought about it, the more he liked this idea! What could possibly go wrong? “It’s not like I can change the future or anything!” As Gohan recalled what Trunks had told him about the Time Machine creating alternate timelines, the half-Saiyan’s round orbs fell upon a small remote control sitting on a pedestal next to the dome-fitted vehicle. Taking the device into his hands, Gohan examined its simple structure—only a handful of buttons decorated its surface. When the youth pressed his index finger against the largest of these circular buttons, a sound from the time travelling mechanism attracted his eyes and he observed the vehicle’s glass roof lifting up to allow entry. Grinning from ear to ear, Gohan levitated off the lab’s cold floor and carefully maneuvered himself into the cockpit. Once seated, the bright young man dropped the remote onto the vehicle’s floor and marveled at the Time Machine’s far more complex control panel. A myriad of buttons, levers, and gauges were spread out in front of him; all of various colors and sizes. Such a layout would scare away an ordinary child, but Gohan had the brains to match his brawn! After about a dozen seconds of Gohan’s pupils dancing around in his head, taking in all the information laid out before him, the preteen possessed a fairly decent idea on how to operate the Time Machine.

“I better hurry up and get this thing moving before Bulma gets back.” Gohan reminded himself as he pushed a button on the console and the glass dome above his head lowered back into place. With the pull of a red-tipped lever, the craft hummed to life and the dashboard beneath his chin lit up like a miniature carnival at night. “Let’s see…I think if I twist this here and then flick this little nub there…” Upon doing this, the young martial artist felt other contraptions spring to life under him and the entire vehicle vibrated faintly around him. “Alright! I’m…90% sure I set the Time Machine to take me back two years! All I have to do now is press this button and I’ll get to see dad again!” A gleeful Gohan hovered his pointer finger over a large, red button in the middle of the blinking, flashing control panel. He took a brief moment to go over what he was about to attempt one last time in his head before ultimately confirming he couldn’t let this opportunity slip through his fingers. Upon ramming his long digit into the bright knob, the Time Machine awoke fully and started radiating a luminescent glow around itself. Gohan had mere seconds to gawk at the illumination outside the glass barrier before he and his stolen means of transportation blinked out of existence.

“U-unreal.” whispered the spiky-haired boy as he whipped his head around and analyzed the spiraling vortex he was zipping through all of a sudden. All he could make out beyond the transparent dome was a maelstrom of greens and blacks; continuously shifting between a thousand different patterns every second. A small part of Gohan wanted to leave the capsule and venture out into the surreal void, but a larger part of him kindly pointed out that was a really stupid idea. Then again, committing grand theft Time Machine might not have been the wisest thing to do, as the young half-human hybrid was about to find out.

The first sign of trouble came when every bulb decorating the dashboard in front of the seated Gohan turned red; basking him in an ominous, vermilion glow. A blaring alarm attacked the young male’s ears as the lights flashed repetitively. One of the small screens built into the console displayed a worrying “ERROR” message. “W-what’s going on?! Did I do something wrong?” A panicking Gohan pressed a few buttons and skimmed through some information that scrolled down the black display. “T-there’s not enough power?! Why—?” As if things weren’t bad enough, the wall of text Gohan was reading disappeared and in its place appeared about half a dozen pop-up boxes; each one with its own warning message. Not only did this Time Machine not have adequate power, but there were numerous other problems popping up all throughout the system! He had hopped into a faulty Time Machine; maybe he should have paid more attention to what Bulma was saying!

A desperate and sweating Gohan let his fingers dance upon the Time Machine’s controls; randomly pushing buttons and flipping switches while hoping of some sort of response. If he was lucky, Bulma had installed some sort of failsafe that would send the machine back in case of an emergency such as this. Unfortunately, the youth was the polar opposite of lucky. A violent discharge of electricity pushed him back into his seat and gave him quite the painful shock. Gohan brushed it off, but the equipment in front of him delivered another powerful zap immediately afterwards. This time, the pain didn’t just last a split second; several streams of hot plasma connected the young Z Fighter to the device’s controls. He sat there, howling in agony as the Time Machine seemed to sap his strength to fill its energy source—it was using him like a living battery! Thanks to the half-Saiyan child’s abundance of latent power, the energy reserves fueling his transport were quickly filled to 100%...but it didn’t stop there. The Time Machine proceeded to overcharge itself, resulting in a few gauges blowing up in Gohan’s face! The machine’s onboard computer was affected as well—the voltage coursing through its wires corrupted all the data within it. Millions of lines of complex algorithms became an imbroglio that, through the miracle of science, forced the Time Machine to carry out phenomena it was never designed for. Beneath this hectic computing, the target date Gohan had entered earlier was overwritten and lost as well. The Time Machine sifted through random periods between fifteen minutes ago and fifteen centuries, before ultimately settling on…

================================================================

May 3rd, Age 753

Goku smiled cheerfully as he made his way through some dense woods. Both of his hands patted his stomach contently now that it was filled with the delicious flesh of a boar. Stopping amidst some sunrays filtering in from a gap in the tree canopies above, the youthful martial artist glanced around and uttered, “Which way did I come from again? Umm…” As the Saiyan scratched his scalp and struggled to pick a direction, his ears twitched as they picked up a strange sound from the sky aloft. Goku craned his neck back and rubbernecked into the sun; using one hand to shield his eyes from the bright sphere of fire. He could make out something falling toward him; something small and getting closer by the second. “What’s—?”

THWACK!

The undeveloped warrior never finished his sentence. He couldn’t even remember what it was he wanted to say after the plummeting object gave him a nice, discolored bump on his forehead. Goku voiced a wail as he hunched down and slapped his hands over his sore noggin. The mysterious object that had collided with his face plunged to the ground nearby and rolled for a bit across the nature riddled floor of the forest. As soon as the stinging subsided, Goku turned to look at the diminutive thingamajig among some sticks and rocks and his face distorted into an infuriated scowl.

Inside the Time Machine, Gohan hissed with aching and picked himself up; using the seat he had once been sitting in as leverage. Everything had happened so quickly—the vehicle had finally ceased blasting him with electricity, only to start spiraling irregularly and tossing him around the cockpit like a ragdoll. It had hurt a lot more than it should have; he felt weak like a long fight had drained him of his strength. When the time traveling construct finally came to a full stop, it had settled on its side. Gohan was now standing on the glass dome, amazed it had not so much as cracked during the critical failures and the crash landing. It was pretty much the only thing that had remained unscathed; the dashboard was in shabbiness and sporting gaping, sparking holes. While the Z Warrior hadn’t noticed it yet, the Time Machine was also missing two of its legs and one engine.

“Damn…this isn’t good.” murmured Gohan as he rubbed his sleeveless, lightly bruised arm and took a gander at the damage. There was no way he was piloting this thing back home…unless he was still in his own timeline, in which case the only thing he had to worry about was getting an earful from Bulma and his mother. If he had succeeded in traveling back two years, then he could only hope the bluenette of this time could help him repair the Time Machine…else he’d be waiting a year for Trunks to pay them a visit. “Oh man. I hope the button that opens the pod is still here.” Gohan was just beginning to look for it when everything around him trembled. He almost lost his balanced and slammed his mug into the glass barrier surrounding him, but managed to steady himself just as another earthshaking THOOM shook his world again. The concerned preteen peered out into the outside and realized something was amiss straightaway. Judging by the vegetation everywhere, he had not ended up inside Bulma’s lab as intended, but this was not his most immediate cause for concern. Slowly ambling toward him was a creature of skyscraping stature; each footfall from those blue-clad feet pounding the ground with audible force. A speechless Gohan pressed his hands and face up against the Time Machine’s roof and gazed upward as the lofty giant came to a stop directly above him. This towering silhouette was so massive he appeared to blot out the sun, but the perceptive Gohan knew better. The enormous trees and fallen leaves around him were telltale signs—the entire world was gigantic, meaning Gohan was puny! That thick trunk of wood that this looming titan had unknowingly stepped on and was now gradually crumpling beneath his weight? That was a twig!

“What are you?” boomed the colossus as he bent his knees and reached down to grab the object that had smashed into his cranium.

“W-why? H-how?!” the half-Saiyan gibbered to himself; too paralyzed with fear to do anything to stop the enormous being from enveloping his thick, strong fingers around the pod and lifting it off the ground like it weighed nothing. From between two of the giant’s digits, the tiny Gohan watched his expansive body pass by. From what he could make out, the godlike humanoid was clad in orange and it was only after passing a pitch-black belt tied around the goliath’s waist that Gohan recognized the thin, sleeveless garment as a gi much like the one he wore. Something about the clothing struck the youth as familiar, but he wouldn’t figure out why until the giant finished raising the metallic transport up to his boyish face. Gohan’s pupils dilated and filled with recollection—this was a mug he knew all too well! It bore a striking resemblance to his own, but it was that hairdo that gave the truth away. “D-d-dad?!” It was Goku…as a kid!

“Hmmmm…” the gargantuan Goku raised an eyebrow as he cupped the warm, hard doohickey between his hands. He had not yet noticed the mini-person trapped within as he rotated the shrunken Time Machine around and examined every inch of its alien appearance. Inside, Gohan stretched out his arms and legs to prevent himself from going on another tumble within the confined compartment. As his stomach got lurched around as if he had suddenly been tossed into a washing machine, Gohan stared out at Goku and observed the boy’s puzzled countenance.

“Heh…I really messed up.” the time traveler informed himself, but did so with a hint of a smile. He had gone back in time far more than he had planned and he was fully aware of the bind that put him in, but he couldn’t help but be amused by the cute face of the boy that would one day become his dad. “He can’t be more than 8-years-old! Haha!” Little did Gohan know, however, that this version of Goku was at the ripe age of sixteen! Thanks to a pure Saiyan’s stunted growth, the teenage Goku lacked the height and muscle definition of his future son. That wasn’t to say he didn’t have any—few youngsters matching Goku’s size could claim to have arms or a chest as thick and strong as his. It’s just…well…Gohan sported the same physique when he was seven.

As if the universe wanted to remind the pubescent of the sticky situation he had gotten himself into, one of the miniature vehicle’s remaining engines blew up while Goku was prodding it and startled him. “Ack! The monster breathed fire at me!” exclaimed the monkey boy as he checked the lightly scorched skin on his index finger. Suddenly, Goku’s black eyes narrowed into a vindictive glare pointed in Gohan’s direction. Before the younger Saiyan could even acknowledge this change of demeanor, Goku had clasped the toy-sized Time Machine between his palms and began squeezing! Gohan fell back into the seat of the now upright vehicle and whirled his head around as he listened to the Time Machine groan under the giant boy’s strength.

“What are you doing?!” shouted the 12-year-old fighter, though the older male could not hear him. Bulma had designed the Time Machine to be fairly sturdy, but it was nothing the otherworldly teenager couldn’t demolish. Goku clenched his teeth as his biceps bulged with raw power and veins pushed against his skin. The sound of screeching steel and other, even more resilient metals sprang forth from the “monster” in Goku’s hands as it slowly compressed. Dread suffused across the child’s face as the machine’s few remaining controls short-circuited and exploded one after the other. The colossal 16-year-old winced as the vehicle’s final two thrusters spontaneously combusted, but he mistook this as the smaller “creature” attempting to defend itself and didn’t let it dissuade him. “I’ve gotta get out of here! He’s destroying the Time Machine!” As the walls surrounding him bent and warped from the unstoppable pressure, Gohan looked up to see the glass dome overhead begin cracking. However, at the rate it was going, it would only shatter in unison with his bones when Goku caught them between his meaty palms! “No choice! I’m gonna be crushed at this rate!” Looking serious like anyone at death’s door would, the black-haired Z Fighter thrust his right arm up and fired a ki blast through the ceiling of his derelict craft. Moving fast, Gohan flew through the freshly melted hole mere seconds before Goku’s oversized, sweaty palms met and squashed the Time Machine into flattened scrap. Hovering in front of the giant, Gohan could only watch with a horrorstruck visage as his gargantuan father ground his appendages together with muffled cricks and cracks to ensure the violent little beast was good and dead. “Alright, Gohan, keep it together! This may look bad, but at least it can’t get any worse!”

Looking up from the joined hands, Gohan noticed his father’s enormous past self now had his black eyes focused on him. The extraterrestrial teen blinked in silent uncertainty while his mouth remained stuck in a perfect O shape. Just when it looked like the spiky-haired hero was going to say something, his youthful and underdeveloped form suddenly went rigid. The shrunken form of his son watched with a confused stare as the giant seemed to have a seizure in front of him. The hairs on his head and those on the monkey tail behind him (which Gohan was only just now spotting) stuck up straight like the needles on a cactus. Tiny flickers of electricity crackled around Goku’s hands; it would appear the titan was getting electrocuted by the Time Machine’s busted remnants!

“D-dad…I mean…Goku! Are you okay?!” Gohan screamed, but it didn’t look like the older brunet was capable of responding to him. Judging by the way his face tensed and his muscles spasmed, Gohan could only assume the poor kid was in a lot of anguish. “Oh man…don’t die! That’s the last thing I need right now!”

Unbeknownst to the tinier Saiyan, Goku wasn’t in any pain whatsoever. As a matter of fact, he had never felt healthier! He could feel an incredible amount of power coursing up through his arms—so much more than his small, infantile brain could comprehend. When the young man opened his mouth and started to yell, it was due to pure exhilaration! The very instant the first note escaped Goku’s gaping orifice his entire form pulsated within an aura of ki and released a shockwave of invisible force. Gohan was swatted aside like a fly; cast head over heels in the opposite direction. He managed to halt himself after a few rotations and lock his sights on his bellowing dad; fists clenched at the ready. “What was that?!” The half-human watched, mystified, as the giant’s body pulsated again, but no blast of energy was released this time. Instead, Goku’s figure seemed to bulge outward instead! The straining of his gi could just barely be heard over his roaring as it stretched to contain a pair of prominent, defined pecs that had suddenly come into existence. Eventually the gi could not contain the rapidly swelling torso and tore at the shoulders and neckline; the shredded cotton peeling away to reveal Goku’s unnaturally developing stomach. Six bricks of impenetrable, solid muscle formed before Gohan’s very eyes; jutting out of his gut with enough prominence one could grate cheese on them! Had Goku’s uniform possessed sleeves, they surely would have been destroyed as well when the youth’s arms nearly doubled in size! His twin biceps became far more toned and sizeable; raw, muscular strength pouring into them with no concept of the word “limitation”. Goku finally separated his hands and allowed the shattered glass and metal of the Time Machine to fall back to the ground, but it was too late; the power was already inside him. The Saiyan warrior flexed his two bowling ball sized biceps and his piercing screaming became an almost animalistic snarl.

“What’s…happening to me?!” Goku grunted, for the only answer he could come up with was “nothing bad”. Gohan cleared his throat with a gulp as he craned his head back and witnessed the already enormous Goku grow until his size surpassed that of a fully matured man. To support the teen’s new, hulking weight, the born warrior’s legs underwent an equally impressive transformation. His thigh and calf muscles exploded with growth; nearly tearing his orange pants to shreds! The sound of ripping fabric emanated from Goku’s feet just before they outgrew his shoes and socks. Ten thick, newly freed toes wiggled as that unfortunate twig from earlier turned to sawdust under the adolescent alien’s mindboggling heft. Finally, just when Gohan thought his dad was going to turn into a Great Ape or a Super Saiyan, the aura of bright ki faded and Goku ceased his growth spurt. His senses no longer inundated by the surge of foreign power, the black-haired youth stopped his growling and gave his new body his full, undivided attention. Taking his left hand and gliding his fingers down the physiognomy of his transformed upper body, Goku mumbled, “Whooooa.” as he reached his six-pack and flicked the fleshy armor that now protected his belly. While Goku was preoccupied with his right bicep muscle—using his left hand to caress the hillock of smooth muscle—his future son inconspicuously turned around and tried to sneak away. Something told him he didn’t want to be a puny bug next to a brawny, young Goku. Before he could get even another inch between them, however…

“Hey! Stop right there!” As if the voice was the unquestionable voice of God, Gohan froze in midair while a look of terror swept across his face. The young Z Fighter turned himself around just as Goku took a single, quaking step closer to him. Gohan found his vision utterly dominated by a wall of hardy, peach-colored flesh. Taking his sights skyward, the younger male made out his youthful father’s childlike visage behind a set of round, swollen pecs. The teen’s chin was touching his taut chest as two black, stern eyes scrutinized the flying bug boy just below them. “I heard you speaking! Tell me what your mommy did to me, tiny fly monster!”

“F-fly monster? Mommy?!” Gohan repeated as he took his baffled form and floated back a few inches so the behemoth’s face was more easily seeable. Those black, pejorative orbs of Goku’s remained locked on him; prepared to smack his petty little body out of the air at a moment’s notice.

“Yeah! You came out of that savage critter, so you must be its baby! So…” The pubescent Goku struck a double bicep pose. Gohan could actually hear the sound of the boy’s skin stretch as those melons of inhuman strength took shape. “...you must know something about this! Speak up, little one!”

Gohan was at a lost. Obviously Goku would not know who he was, but for his own father to think he was some sort of insectoid…it was demoralizing! Now the spiky-haired teenager wanted him to explain why he looked like a steroid user? Gohan didn’t have the foggiest clue! First and foremost, he had to set his meathead of a parent straight—he wouldn’t be mistaken for a Time Machine’s offspring! “Listen, you’re really confused! I’m not—“

“Me? Confused? Do I look perfectly normal to you?” the pureblooded Saiyan retorted, completely misinterpreting his shrunken kin’s words. “Look! I have breasts like Bulma now!” As Goku bounced his pectoral muscles to emphasize his point, Gohan grumbled in frustration and attempted to hastily rectify the misunderstanding. Goku, however, was too captivated in the dance he was making his inflated chest muscles do and he failed to pay any attention to the earthling’s squeaky clarification. When the jiggling of his man tits offered no more amusement, Goku returned his attention to Gohan once more and resumed speaking. Gohan had been right in the middle of revealing his identity to his colossal father when the giant interjected and did nothing to suggest the younger brunet’s significant statements had been heard. “Do you need a closer look? Let me give you a hand!”

Gohan didn’t know what Goku meant by his words and he didn’t want to know, but unfortunately the larger man had no desire to offer him a choice. Faster than the Lilliputian could react, Goku snatched him out of the air with only his thumb and index finger. Gohan struggled with all his might, but numerous factors made all the strength in that toned body of his scant compared to the power two of Goku’s fingers could exert. Before his little catch even knew what was happening, the muscular extraterrestrial carried him to his left arm and pushed him against the relaxed bicep. A lone thumb was all it took to completely subdue the talented fighter and pin him flush with the unwrinkled, unyielding surface of Goku’s muscle. As the powerful, godly boy slowly dragged Gohan down the length of the robust hillock, the poor child’s nose was assaulted by the manly stench of a healthy, highly active teenager. Eventually Goku used that inexorable, bulbous digit of his to tuck the weaker male into the gap where the upper and lower portions of his limb joined. Retracting his thumb, the smiling Saiyan pointed his fist toward the treetops above; flexing just enough to close his elbow pit and trap Gohan between two walls of lightly sweating skin.

Such…incredible strength! Gohan whimpered in his thoughts; unable to speak with his mouth pressed against the adamant-like toughness of Goku’s boulder of a bicep. He did his best to wiggle free, but he was trapped plain and simple. His chiseled pecs certainly looked impressive the way they gleamed with sweat and distended to the point Gohan’s purple gi was barely concealing them, but this was all merely for show. In truth he was out of his league—he could barely breathe in this musky, constricted environment!

“Well? Do you understand now? It’s bigger than it was before!” Goku exclaimed as he eyed the weird, purple, talking monster secured between his upright forearm and bulging bicep. He sneered down at the thing when it made no responses, unaware Gohan’s mouth was too busy kissing the curved muscle to form words. Unfortunately for the younger boy, no answers meant no freedom!

I’ve gotta…power up! Gohan had no other options; Goku’s arm wasn’t budging otherwise. Gritting his teeth, Gohan concentrated his anger until a golden, fiery aura enveloped his form. After this, all it would take was a snap of power to turn his hair a radiant yellow and his eyes a stoic greenish-blue. He was, thus, visibly dumbfounded when he suddenly powered down instead and the aura of light dissipated as quickly as it had been summoned. I-I can’t turn into a Super Saiyan! W-why?! Goku’s eldest child had only one hypothesis. The Time Machine must have drained even more of his power than he had realized! What’s more, all that power…was inside his teenage dad now! This indomitable vigor that was quashing the life out of him, it was all his power! He had given it to Goku—all wrapped up in a Time Machine shaped gift bag. Growing more desperate with each revelation, Gohan mustered up all the strength he had to twist his body around and get his face into a position that he may call for help. He opened his mouth and…

“Hmm…do you need me to flex more? I’m not really putting much strength into it.” With that said, Goku dug his nails into his palm, tightened his fist further, and contracted his bicep until the hill of blood, flesh, and muscle was pushed to its very peak. It was at this precise moment that Gohan realized he wasn’t getting out of this situation alive. Any trace of free space within the martial artist’s cubital fossa disappeared and the pressure that had been bulldozing Gohan increased tenfold. Those strong and sinewy limbs Gohan had put so much training and exercise into snapped like tinder in a trash compactor. The distressed cry the Saiyan/human hybrid had wished to make became a high-pitched, quiet shriek drowned out with the crunching of his sturdy skeleton. The rest of Gohan’s proud body, the body belonging to someone who had achieved Super Saiyan 2 and more, quickly failed him. There was such an unbelievable lack of resistance that one might think the youth had given up. Soon Gohan’s head was the only thing not devastated by Goku hearty flex. It looked almost comical the way it was being squashed between two protruding, popped blood vessels; mouth ajar and eyeballs rolled into the back of his skull.

I never thought…I’d be killed like this. Gohan thought with his collapsing brain as he felt two trails of warm blood leak out of his nostrils. It was like he was a small, weak insect trapped in the collision of two inescapable, celestial bodies. At least I’ll…get to see dad now. It didn’t take long for Gohan to see the error in that statement. No…dad’s…not dead…yet. He’s the one… He had almost forgotten what, and who, was flattening him. All he could see with his blurry, fading vision was blood, sweat, and walls of pale white. If it hadn’t been for the distinctive odor of male Saiyan, there would have been nothing to identify this death machine as anything alive and sapient. Am I gonna be…trapped in another timeline’s Other World? N-no…! His friends back home…they have to be able to do something! They could use the Dragon Balls to wish him back! Return him to life…return him to his normal time…that was all in the Eternal Dragon’s power…right?

Right?

*crunch*

“Huh?” Upon hearing, and feeling, something crunch like a walnut, Goku relaxed his arm and outstretched it to reveal Gohan’s new appearance: a gooey paste spread redly across the teenager’s husky bicep. Save for a few traces of black hair and dark purple cloth, there were no clues to remind Goku of the pintsized monster’s original shape. He was nothing but a gob of viscera, brains, and bone shards now. “Oopsie! Didn’t mean to smush it.” Goku’s tone of voice wasn’t very apologetic, but why would it be? As far as he was concerned, he did everyone a favor by ridding the world of an insect monster before it could grow up into a fire-breathing menace! Using the very same thumb that had guided Gohan to his ignoble doom, Goku wiped his carmine remains off his arm with just a few dabs. He followed up by rubbing his thumb against his index finger until not even a fleck of evidence lingered.

“22nd World Martial Arts Tournament, here I come!” Goku announced as he thrust his pumped up, tree trunk of an arm into the sky and tromped onward in search of the forest’s edge. His weighty footfalls seemed to send tremors throughout the woods as they carried his herculean frame forward. “I can’t wait to see the look on everyone’s faces when they see the new and improved Goku!”