AN: OK yeah this is a little confusing maybe - sorry... but I am writing all of this basically on the fly still lol. Thanks so much for any reviews or encouragement to keep me at it I might actually finish one day.

Two Hours Ago (pt.1)

ChiChi gritted her teeth as she ran. The undulating and wild hills had flattened into what appeared to be endless farmland. Flatter terrain, but new obstacles presented themselves in the way of muddy rice fields, fences to hurdle and herds of animals to avoid getting caught up in. She cursed as she jumped yet another barbed wire fence upon which the cuff of her pants snagged and tore and the top of her foot sliced a bit, and again as she momentarily lamented the absence of her shoes which she'd lost miles back in the hills.

She'd almost mastered bukujutsu before she had to leave the Lookout. As it was, she was only able to manage a slow hover for a few moments and she couldn't quite yet match her timing to go over something like a fence that way while running at breakneck speed. And she could run so much faster now, the landscape blurred past at such a rate, add to that her hair which had fallen out of its usual neat bun whipping around, it was a wonder she even saw the fences.

She had begged Kami for yet another day in his daft training room that seemed to stretch time on forever or else simply stop it, but he'd insisted she risked damaging her mind. She snapped at him that months climbing Korrin's tower and weeks at what felt like playing games to attain his flask had probably already done that. She'd raised her voice enough to send his usually calm assistant running for cover as she accused him of not having a clue of what was at stake. He assured her he did, that she might not have even another day to spare if she wanted to reach her son before the arrival.

Her frustration with training that ended too soon and Kami himself had distracted her more than enough. Of course he knew what was coming, or a taste of it wouldn't have been in the surreal room Popo had first shown her into. She'd seen the kind of people that would inevitably arrive, what Goku might have been. And for all his godliness Kami, nor the dragonballs would be able to stop them coming. "The die has been cast," was all he could grimly say on the subject. But Kami couldn't know what she'd meant, that her overriding concern was for her child. Could he? Not when the closest thing he had to a son was Ma Junior.

Ma Junior, Piccolo incarnate... she was steadily getting a more acute sense of his ki occasionally flaring, then being drawn in so low she almost lost it. She'd never lost her sense of where Gohan was though, not from the very moment she'd come out of unconsciousness in the shambles of her kitchen and known for sure he'd been taken. Now finally, finally! she could make out the shadow of what must be dense woods on the horizon, and she knew he was there.

She forced all distraction from her mind but one thought and pressed on even faster.

"I'm coming baby..."

Tenshinhan could be quite the taskmaster. Ranchi had assumed as much years ago watching his own training. Now the assumption had been confirmed several times over. Nonetheless she still could not manage the split form technique.

What she hadn't assumed or even been able to imagine, as close as she had ever been to him, was that at some point he'd been the kind of person who would kill without any reason besides profit and loyalty to Crane Master. No longer. Her inability to perform the technique beyond stopping it after Kushami completed it eventually frustrated him enough to let that side of himself show through on more than one occasion.

"Why!? If Kushami can manage to focus enough to do this within no more than a few weeks, there is no reason you can't have made such progress within several months beyond that you choose not to. I cannot give you what you refuse to accept!" He raised his voice enough to startle her. She fell out of fighting stance and retreated a few steps. He glanced toward Chaoutzu but only got a slowly raised eyebrow in return.

"There's lots of things Kushami does that I don't?..."

"Or won't."

And there it was. He said this quietly, solidly... with a resolved calm that was entirely different from what she most knew from him.

"Again!"

He came at her with a jab aimed at eye level before she could even slip back into stance. She barely missed being permanently blinded but went sailing through the air and landed hard, the sharp throbbing pain of a welt rising on her cheek.

He was at her side in an instant, helping her up. Chaoutzu appeared a millisecond later with a bucket of ice. Ten examined the bruise before tearing off his shirt to wrap ice in it with an urgent violence that even sent Chaoutzu back a pace. He looked horrified at what he'd done, of course, but there was an uncharacteristic sense of panic as well.

"I could've broken..." He pressed the ice to her cheek and looked away, pained. Not apologetic, but regretful nonetheless.

"I... I can't do this anymore." The old, familiar resolve returned. He gently guided her hand to hold the ice pack and then abruptly turned and headed toward their capsule house on the edge of the low knoll they'd chosen as training grounds. A forlorn breeze whistled through the tall blades of grass as she watched his retreat.

Chaoutzu hovered at her elbow again. She couldn't bear to turn and even look at him.

"I'm sorry..." her voice cracked a little. "I can't, I just..."

"You are both fighting fear above everything else. It is impeding progress," he intoned flatly.

She realized he was right. There had been a point just a week past that she thought she had finally got a handle on initiating split form, but she'd had nothing to show for it but an absolute blank space in her memory and Ten's insistence that she double her efforts. Beyond that, neither he nor Chaotzu would speak of what must have been a failure, but Ten's demeanor had taken this troubling turn after that.

Her thoughts were suddenly broken by a feeling as if clouds had drifted in front of the sun. The breeze tugged at the grass again, but the sky remained clear. What...? She focused on the feeling as best she could if only to claim control of it. Not unlike the wind, it seemed as if the sense of darkness only coaxed her. It took a moment before she knew for sure what it was.

She dropped the ice pack and looked to the sky, eyes frantically scanning but seeing nothing... not yet.

"It's too late though."

She looked at Chaotzu then, if only to emphasize her abrupt and grim declaration. He finally appeared to be surfacing from his weeks-long half trance as he saw the sense of defeat clouding her features, even as the feeling minutely crept up just a little stronger on her as each second passed.

"I'm not sensing...?" He looked up as if perhaps his eyes would show what he wasn't picking up on. He felt a twinge of something... maybe? Surely it was very, very far away if it was anything?

She slowly shook her head, resigned. "It... It's happening. Today."