Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ A Saiyan Homecoming ❯ The Singing Saiyan ( Chapter 8 )

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A Saiyan Homecoming

Chapter 7: The Singing Saiyan

There were a lot of frightening things in the universe: Pompous Androids named Cell, giant red-eyed Apes intent on destroying planets, a big pink blob who could turn demons into cookies without effort, and nurses armed with hypothermic needles. Gohan had faced down all of these and lived to tell the tale. But this time, he was starting to wonder if he was ever going to walk away from this one. Son Chichi had arrived, and she was angrier than he had ever seen her.

On the bed beside him, Goten had finally succumbed to the blessed retreat of unconsciousness, and had been rescued from their mother's wrath. Gohan hadn't been so lucky.

His mother stood at the foot of his bed, fists planted on her hips, and continued to lecture, as she had for the past ten minutes. "What were you thinking, attacking Vegeta in downtown Satan City? Are you mad?"

Her eyes bore a hole through his skull, into his brain, and activated his flight-or-flight reflex. Unfortunately, Gohan knew Videl was perched out in the hallway with a Saiyan-sized tranquilizer gun at her fingertips. He'd never make it two steps past the doorway. Of course, then he'd be unconscious and wouldn't be able to hear her rant; but then Videl would be even more upset than she already was.

A strangled noise escaped from his throat, but was quickly muffled when her glare intensified. Dende, she was still scary!

"And to think you did it in front of Barden! What kind of man will he be with you setting such bad examples for him? It's not like he has any other decent male role-models around!"

Gohan opened his mouth, effectively erasing any chance he had of getting away with less than an hour of a very loud reprimand. "I didn't do anything but protect myself…Vegeta started it!"

"SON GOHAN," his mother began to wind up for the kill, "You're forty-one years old and you still sound like a two-year-old!"

"Fifty-six," Gohan mumbled.

"DON'T INTERRUPT ME!" Chichi roared, forgetting she was in a hospital filled to bursting with injured and sick people, who were currently being jolted out of their healing states by a sound Vegeta had once described as 'banshee.' "Honestly, you'd think two years training with the Supreme Kai would have improved your manners!"

"Fifteen years," Gohan corrected again.

"What?" Chichi paused, temporarily distracted from her tirade. "Fifteen years?" She stared at Gohan for a second, then abruptly spun on her heel and marched through the partially open door, leaving a painful silence in her wake.

Gohan sighed, thankful she was gone, and sank back into the flattened brick the hospital liked to call a pillow. He had just closed his eyes when Chichi came back, tugging on the arm of a nurse who was practically quaking with trepidation. "I think he hit his head too hard," Chichi was telling the girl, who looked nearly dead on her feet. "His sense of time is distorted."

Gohan held his breath.

"I think he needs a CAT-scan to make sure that that short pain-in-the-ass in the next room didn't scramble his brains." Abruptly his mother sat down in one of the architectural-engineering rejects better known as a chair and began to cry, much to the poor nurse's confusion. "My poor baby," she sobbed. "He used to be so smart-but all of this fighting is going to get the better of him one of these days and then I'll just have Goten…and he's just as bad as his father!"

This last statement bought a fresh round of tears, and the Nurse shot Gohan a frantic glance.

"It'll be ok," he murmured quietly. "Mom just gets a little emotional when she's stressed." He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "She'll be fine in a few minutes."

The nurse glanced at the almost hysterical woman, back at Gohan, then shrugged. She crossed the room to stand next to him. "You feel ok?" Before he could answer she jabbed a thermometer into his mouth. "Don't talk," she ordered briskly, going to the end of his bed to look at the chart. After a few seconds she withdrew the thermometer, and after noting that his temperature was nothing to worry about, high-tailed it from the room.

Gohan swung his legs out of bed and staggered over to his mother. "C'mon, Mom," he pleaded quietly, "don't cry. It was just a little brawl, and everybody's gonna be fine. We've been through worse."

Chichi swallowed her tears and gave him another death-glare. "Son Gohan! You get your tail back in bed right now," she ordered. "You're not going to get any better if you don't get some rest!"

"But Mom," Gohan whined.

"No buts!" Chichi snarled back, grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him back towards the gurney. "Bed!"

Gohan grumbled a bit, but he knew when it was better not to continue to fight, and trudged back to his bed, angrily throwing his head back into the pillows. He wouldn't ever disobey his mother, but that didn't mean he had to like obeying her. Listening was just a better way to keep his sanity; and it involved a lot less pain.

He had just closed his eyes again when he was once again disturbed, this time, by the sounds of screams from the next room. Pan's screams. Gohan was out of the bed in a heartbeat, skidding across the tiled floor on his bare feet to the next room, his mother like quicksilver on his heels.

Gohan didn't even pause once he reached his daughter's room, simply plowed through the congregation of doctors and nurses to see what was going on with Pan.

She was flat on her back on some sort of table, golden hair dangling off the edge. Juuhachi was sitting on her chest, a hand planted firmly on each of Pan's shoulders as she pinned the girl to the table. Krillin and Yamcha each clung to one of her ankles as if their lives depended on it, and Videl stood at their daughter's head, some sort of bottle in hand. "All right Pan," she soothed, looking more distressed than Pan did. "We're going to have to do it again."

"It won't do any good," Pan replied in a tense voice. "My energy levels are too high. The stuff gets vaporized before it can even get to my eyes."

Videl sighed. "Panny, we have to do something. This will help."

Pan snorted. "I'd rather just go blind, thanks."

Gohan decided it was time to make his presence known. He stepped up to his daughter, laying his hand on her wrist. "Pan," he whispered gently. "Pan, listen closely. You can relax without transforming. Just enough so the solution won't burn you. Just listen to my voice."

He had learned many things while he was training with the Supreme Kai, including a collection of very bizarre but effective meditation techniques. One, which leaned suspiciously towards hypnotism, could be inducted by an outsider, and Gohan had learned the words. Unfortunately, those words had to be sung.

Laying Pan's hand across his cast, a fashionable black, he began tracing patterns across the back of her hand. [Pan,] he growled in Saiyago, [I want you to imagine that there is a barrier around your eyes-an energy barrier. When I start, visualize your energy draining out of that barrier, around it, away from your eyes. Do you understand?]

Juuhachi and the others were giving him questioning looks, but he didn't care. It was easiest to communicate with a Saiyan on a level that every Saiyan learned by instinct, their own language.

Gohan sighed, preparing to destroy the few strands of dignity he had lest. Filling his lungs with air, he opened his mouth and did something that gave everyone present blackmail material for eternity. Son Gohan, the upcoming Supreme-Kai elect, began to sing.

It wasn't that Gohan had a voice that could burst eardrums-but it wasn't professional quality either. Videl had once called it pleasant, but Gohan was sure she was just being nice to him. He thought he sounded more like a fusion between a howling cat and an opera singer with laryngitis. In this case however, it wasn't the sound of the voice that was important, just the words, so he continued to sing.

In all honesty, he wasn't sure exactly what he was singing about, but he had heard the words so many times that he didn't need to know the meaning, only that they worked. He thought it might have been an epic tale of a Hippogriff named Anastasia.

Somewhere up in the next dimension the woman who currently held the title of the Muse of Epic Poetry covered two of her sisters with the nectar she'd been drinking as someone down below absolutely slaughtered the Ballad of Qui-gon Jinn by implying that one of his ancestors had had relations with various kitchen appliances.

Behind Gohan, Krillin had a more dignified reaction. He began to laugh. It wasn't a mocking, jeering laugh that he used when poking fun at another's discomfort, but the deep belly laugh that he saved for when he was truly amused; the very same deep belly laugh that happened to be absolutely contagious.

Beside him, Yamcha began to chuckle. After a moment or two, Juuhachi began to smirk, which was the closest thing she had ever gotten to a true laugh in Gohan's presence. Gohan shot at a pleading glance at his wife, only to be met with tired eyes that were dancing with humor. Great. Now even his own mate was against him.

He jutted his chin out defiantly and continued to sing to his daughter, who, he noticed with no little glee, was starting to relax. At least he wasn't grinding his dignity into oblivion for nothing. He continued with his song, ignoring the snickers of those around him, concentrating solely on his daughter.

When she was relaxed enough, he looked up at his mate. "Try it again," he ordered softly, still continuing to rub patterns across his daughter's knuckles.

Videl snapped out of her shock and upended the bottle, carefully flooding her daughter's now black eyes. After a few seconds she looked up and nodded at her husband. "Done!"

Gohan immediately stopped singing and snapped the fingers of his good hand in front of Pan's face to pull her out of it. Unfortunately, he'd failed to consider the fact that snapping her out of the trance would bring her back up to full power. The quarter-saiyan let out a soft howl of pain as the liquid her mother had just deposited into her eyes turned into steam and burnt the sensitive tissues. She slid right out of the still-stunned Juuhachi's grip and sat up. Right into Gohan's hand. There was a loud crack, and Gohan suddenly became aware that the wrist on his good arm was now broken.

Videl and everyone else in the room winced, while he stared at the hand which now dangled numbly from an arm that felt like it was one fire. One of the doctors in the crowd, a particularly brave man, stepped forward and touched Gohan's shoulder. "This way sir," he murmured. "We'll get that set and cast for you right away."

Pan's eyes flickered back up to green as she stared at her father. [I'm so sorry,] she cried in Saiyago, her features aligned in an expression as close to guilt that a Super-Saiyan could get.

Gohan's face softened, and he unwrapped his tail and brushed it across her hand comfortingly. [It's just broken,] he replied through gritted teeth. [I'll have matching set of casts now. Nothing permanent.]

Pan's green eyes fixed on her father's face. [At least Saiyans heal quickly,] she tried to reason.

Gohan forced a smile as the doctor, now joined by a few nurses, increased their efforts to usher him away so they could get his arm set as quickly as possible. Chichi added her voice to the others, and Gohan gave in. Rising to his feet, he allowed the medical personnel hovering around him to lead him away to another room, leaving the others staring after him in various expressions of shock or amusement.

As soon as the door closed after them the room erupted into laughter again.

Gohan ground his teeth from more than pain. Oh yes. As soon as he got out of this mess he was going to go find the Sprite of Circumstance and have a nice long talk about who had ordered all of this to occur. His suspicions immediately implicated a purple-skinned deity who had become his latest sensei, but Gohan didn't want to jump to conclusions.

At least not until he'd had a chance to do some interrogation….Saiyan style.

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