Chapter 17

:Launch into Outer Space

Disclaimer: I Do Not Own Dragon Ball Z. All rights are owned by their respective owners,Toei, Toriyama, etc. This is purely a fanfictional work done by a simple fan done for fun. I do no get profit from this in any way.

Gohan finished telling Trunks about the plan to bring back his father Goku. "Well Trunks? Are you in?" asked Gohan. "Are you kidding? A chance to bring back Goku? You can count me in for sure." said Trunks giving a thumbs up. "Good, good then it's all settled. I'll fly over to the Lookout to get the coordinates from Dende later today. It should take me about a week to prep the ship, so be ready when we meet back here when I'm done. Are we all agreed?" said Bulma and everyone nodded their heads in agreement. "Ok, I guess there's nothing more to discuss. so if you don't mind, me and Videl will take our leave." said Gohan. Both Gohan and Videl then said their goodbyes and left the table. While they were making their way through the hallway to the door, a certain picture on the wall caught Videl's eye. Though it was only for a moment, Videl saw a picture of Vegeta in pink shirt and not looking like he was enjoying himself. Videl mentally giggled at the picture as she walked by. Gohan and Videl then walked out the door to the outside and flew out into the air, heading for home.

On their flight home, Gohan suddenly noticed that Videl was giggling. "Videl? What's so funny?" asked Gohan, puzzled at her laughter. "It's just, I was thinking about something I saw in the hallway while we were leaving Capsule Corp." said Videl with a smile on her face. "So? What was it?" asked Gohan. "*Giggles* It was a picture of Vegeta in a pink shirt and he didn't look too happy in it." Videl said in between giggles. "Hahaha! Oh man, I remember that. I still can't believe Bulma actually managed to get him to wear that thing. Vegeta looked like he was ready to bust a vein! He's probably gotten rid of that thing for good by now. It's too bad, I would've liked to have seen him in that thing again just to see the look on his face. Hahahah..." Gohan off-handedly said with a laugh. However, what Gohan had said sparked an idea in Videl's head. "You know what Gohan? You've just given me a really funny idea." said Videl with a mischievous smile on her face. "Huh?" Gohan said, confused. "What do you say we give the Prince of all Attitudes a little slice of humble pie?" Videl said with a sly smile. "What do you have in mind?" Gohan asked with his own mischievous grin, having caught Videl's meaning and agreeing with it. Videl flew right next to Gohan and whispered her 'plan' in Gohan's ear. When she finished, Gohan looked at her in shock at how devious she could be. "Well? What do you think?" anxiously asked Videl. The look on Gohan's face morphed into the most mischievous grin anyone had ever seen Gohan do. "Let's do this." Gohan simply said with a grin. "Great! I think I've got all the stuff we'll need for 'the plan' at my house. I'll include the 'items' in my luggage for our little trip. Once we're in space we'll hit him when the moment is right. Okay?" explained Videl. "Okay, but for now we concentrate on your training. Since we still don't know exactly when Bulma will be finished preping the ship, I'll have to increase your training regiment a bit." said Gohan. Videl nodded in agreement as they then put on an extra burst of speed as they headed off for Gohan's house. Once they arrived back at Gohan's house, they gave Chi-Chi all the details about who would be joining them on the trip to New Namek. It took a lot of convincing, but they managed to finally get Chi-Chi to relent on Gohan's studies and allow him to train Videl full-time for the next week.

Over the course of the next week, Gohan pushed Videl extra hard in their training sessions so as to make sure she finished her basic training before she even attempted the gravity training she was likely to endure while on the space flight. "*pant*pant*pant* So? *pant* What does the teacher think of the student?" Videl playfully asked as she held herself up with her hands on her knees trying to catch her breath. They had just completed their final day of training and the sun was setting. "Well, you don't have complete control over your power yet, you still need to work on flying at high speeds, your energy blasts need more control, your speed is still way too slow and..." Gohan said as he began to absentmindedly rounding off each of her shortcomings with his fingers. At first, Videl was annoyed at Gohan's obliviousness to what she'd meant, but as he continued to check off the 'items' on his 'list', Videl's anger steadily rose. Finally, she could take it no more and she threw a rock as fast and as hard as she could straight at Gohan's face. Gohan easily dodged by tilting his head to the side but the event left him with look of confusion on his face.

Gohan honestly didn't get what he'd done to make her so upset. "You didn't have to be so negative Gohan." Videl said in a dangerous tone with her body fixed in the pitcher's release position, her eyes closed with the right eye twitching and a vein visible on her forehead. Gohan quickly got the message as to what he'd done wrong. He put his arms up in a mock defense and chuckled. "Heheheh... Alright, alright, I'm impressed okay? You've managed to master all of the basics from energy sense to super speed in only a month of training. You even mastered my Masenko blast! It took me at least four months to learn all that you've learned in your training. But then again you're twice as old as I was when I started training, plus your prior martial arts training and the unleashing of your Saiyan DNA made things much much easier for you." Gohan complimented. Videl felt a little deflated by the fact that her fast learning was more attributed to her circumstances instead of her talent, but she took the compliment for what it was meant and smiled. "I'm glad you see it that way. I can't wait for what the training in space will give me! Anyway it's getting late, I should get going. I'll see you tommorrow, alright?" Videl said as she waved goodbye as she floated away.

The next morning, Videl began packing her things in her suitcase for her upcoming journey. A knock came at the door, Videl opened it to reveal the head butler standing at the door with a plastic bag hanging on his sleeve. "Excuse me Miss Videl, but I have the items you requested." said the butler. "Thank you Jervis. Just put them there in my suitcase." said Videl while pointing to said suitcase on her bed. "Excuse me Miss Videl, but may I inquire as to were you intend to go with these items?" asked Jervis the butler. "If you must know, I'm going on a trip to somewhere very far away and these 'items' are for a prank I'm going to do on a very specific someone while I'm there." said Videl as she grabbed the bag and put it in her suitcase. "Am I to inform the master of your departure?" asked Jervis. It was a mostly rhetorical question since he already surmised that she wasn't going out with her father's permission, but he simply asked so that she could officially tell him. "No! My father is not to be informed! You're going to keep this to yourself until I'm well away. I'll leave a note for my father on my bed telling him about my plans, but he shouldn't find out until it's too late. But until that time you are to say nothing. Understood!" Videl said with a dangerous glare. The butler bowed down and left the room with sweat going down his face. Videl soon packed up her stuff, left a note on her bed, flew out the window and headed for Capsule Corp.

Videl arrived at Capsule Corp. and found that the spaceship was parked outside on the lawn. Gohan, Chi-Chi, Bulma, Vegeta and Future Trunks were outside, getting ready to leave and all of their friends from the Z-Warriors were there to see them off. Videl landed amongst the small the small group of heroes and was quickly introduced to Yamcha, Tien, Chiaotzu and Krillin. After the introductions were made, the six would-be travellers started boarding the ship. Gohan stayed behind for a minute to talk to Piccolo. "Do you really think you'll be okay with all of us gone?" Gohan asked, more from concern for a friend than about the Earth's safety. "Don't worry about it Gohan. We should be able to hold the fort while you're away even if something does happen." said Piccolo with one of his rare but caring smiles. "Yeah! The Earth is in good hands! Don't you worry, if anything comes our way we'll handle it no problem!" Yamcha said with a thumbs up from behind Piccolo, which earned him an annoyed side glance from the namekian. Gohan chuckled a bit and then started climbing up the stairs to board, all the while glancing back at his friends and waving goodbye.

Meanwhile, at the Satan family mansion, the 'great' Hercule Satan had started to become a little bit worried when his daughter didn't show up for breakfast like she usually did. After waiting a little while, Hercule finally decided to check out her room to see if there was something wrong. Once he got to the door to his daughter's room, he pressed himself against the door and began to gently knock on it. "OOOOhhhhh... Viiiiiiiiddddeeeelllllll... OOOhhh Sweet Pea... You didn't come down to breakfast this morning. Is... there... something... wrong?" said Hercule as he trailed off as the door slowly creeked open by itself and revealed the room to be empty. Hercule quickly went into the room and frantically looked around the room as he went into his full 'overprotective father overreacting panic mode' mode.

Jervis the Head Butler just happened to be passing bye Videl's room when he saw his master overreacting inside. "I take it that Master Satan has found out that young Miss Videl has left the house." said Jervis in his usual dry monotone fashion. Hercule immediately snapped his head around and looked at Jervis with an angry look on his face. Then, practically in the blink of an eye Hercule had Jervis pinned up against the wall with one of his forearms up against Jervis' throat. "WHAT DO YOU KNOW JERVIS!? Do yo you know where my precious little girl went to? You know something Jervis! TELL ME NOW!" yelled out Hercule right in the Head Butler's face as his mind was racing and jumping to conclusions. Fortunately, Jervis decided to talk before Hercule's head got too filled up with conspiracy theories. "I brought up a bag of some peculiar items to her in her room earlier this morning. I found that she was packing some suitcases and she said that she was leaving on a trip. She did not want the master to know about it since she knew you would not let her. She did not tell me where she was going or for how long but she said that she left a letter for you on her bed." Jervis said nervously as he pointed towards the bed in the room across. Hercule immediately dropped Jervis off the hook so-to-speak and headed to aforementioned letter on the bed. He opened the letter and it read...

~Dear Daddy~

By the time you read this, I will more then likely be gone. I've volunteered for a secret mission into space that will last for a few months. I'm sorry I had to keep this from you, but I know you would never have let me go if I'd told you. They need my help more than you need me by your side. Don't worry daddy, I'm in the best possible hands and you've trained me well. I'll be just fine.

~Love Videl~

"INTO SPACE? NO WAY! I ain't lettin my daughter go into someplace as dangerous as space!" Hercule raged as he crumpled the letter in his hand. Jervis had managed to scury off before he could get caught in Hurricane Hercule's rampage. Without anyone to serve as his temporary punching bag, Hercule immediately decided to look around the room to find clues as to where she might have gone. While Hercule Satan wasn't the strongest or the sharpest tool in the shed, he was smart enough when he needed to be. (A/N: Mr. Satan just gets out of too many sticky situations for him to be stupid. In my opinion he's probably one of the smarter characters on the show, not to mention the luckiest. He's the only character never to die once throughout DBZ and GT, that should speak for itself. He may be the weakest character and the king of the comedy reliefs but he's got to be smart in order to stay alive that long. It would make sense that he's smart enough to have a decent 'detective mode' right?)

Hercule noticed a small piece of paper next to the phone with something scribbled on it. {Capsule Corp. 8:30 AM} It was the time and place of their departure. Videl had written it down when Bulma had called to tell her when exactly they were launching and in her haste she'd forgotten to get rid of it. It was all Hercule needed to know in order to deduce that she'd gone to Capsule Corp. Hercule quickly ran outside, shoved the driver out of his personal limo air-car and stepped on the gas peddle. Driving like a madman, he made his way down the highways towards Capsule Corp. and hopefully get to his daughter's location in time to stop her.

Bulma, Vegeta, Future Trunks, Gohan, Videl and Chi-Chi were strapped down in six of the nine seats in the cockpit with Bulma at the front end, handling the controls, readying to launch the ship. The cockpit looked like a downsized version of the one on Frieza's ship only with more controls in front and eight seats in two columns with a ninth in front for the pilot. "Is everybody ready?" asked Bulma as she looked back at her passengers. All of them acknowledged with a single nod except for Vegeta who replied. "Oh just get on with it!" with his trademark scowl and arms crossed look. Bulma just whipped her head forward with a knowing smirk and pushed the controls forward. The ship began to rumble as it started lifting off.

Meanwhile, a white limo air-car crashed through the white picket fence and stopped right next to the launching spaceship. Hercule rapidly came out acting like a lunatic while frantically yelling at the top of his lungs for the ship to stop. Inside the the cockpit, Videl quickly noticed her father's antics as everyone else soon did. "Oh no! It's my father! Quick! Make this thing go faster!" Videl said as she leaned out forward in her seat. Bulma and all the others shared similar apprehensions as to dealing with Hercule Satan but unfortunately, Bulma was already making the ship go as fast as it could. Soon enough, the strange looking ship slowly began to lift off the ground, causing the earth to quake and causing Hercule to stumble and land on his butt. The spaceship got above the heights of the city buildings which caused many nearby civilians in the city to stare up in wonder. The ship then suddenly flew forward at a tremendous speed in the direction of the sunrise. Piccolo and the other Z-Fighters looked on and waved as their friends went off into space and their next adventure...

Author's Final Thoughts: And so this brings an end to the first part of this story. It took me about a year and a halve to write this down. And now our heroes are going off in a space adventure to New Namek. I hope you like that silly little scene with Hercule Satan. I hope you find that this is a good enough send off for the next part. Now off to New Namek!