Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Garrulous and Gritless ❯ I, 16: Gohan ( Chapter 16 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

NOTE: This chapter isn't what I thought it was going to be (serves me right for thinking I knew what would happen for once), but that's not to say I don't like how it turned out.

Oh yeah, and I've done a little bit of art that's somewhat related to this story (just a picture of Bulma and Raditz). You can find a link to it on my profile. I might have to try to do a little art of this chapter, too, if I have time...

...


When I wake up, my head hurts—real, real bad. My head and my neck.

My eyes are blurry but they get clear pretty quick after I rub them off a little bit.

Aw.

Oh no.

I get cold when I see him standing over me.

"Hello," Raditz says to me. "Bratling."

"My name is Gohan," I tell him. I'm still afraid of him, but less afraid because last time he did this everybody helped save me and even I did a lot of it, and I'm a lot stronger now, and I think if I really really had to I could run away from him fast enough to get help. Piccolo says I'm very strong. He says I'm doing a good job with learning about how to make my feelings my strength instead of my weakness and I think he's talking about the times where sometimes when I would get mad I'd accidentally break things but now I can kind of make sure I don't do something I'm not supposed to and sort of put my anger in a different direction.

"Not a very good name," he says. Meanie. "'Bratling' will have to do until I can think of something more suitable for a Saiyan." I can see him staring at my tail. He doesn't have one anymore. He's not going to try to take my tail from me, is he?

"Take me back to the others. Take me back to my friends!" I tell him. "Take me back to Piccolo!"

"I will," he says, tilting his head in a way that makes me nervous. "And don't worry; I'm sure your so-called master is keeping track of you right now. Speaking of which," he leans in, "can you do that, as well?"

"Do what?" I ask. Keep track of me?

"Pinpoint your senses on someone. I thought Kakarrot was bullshitting me when he made such comments but I get the feeling all the fighters here can do it," he says.

I don't know if I should lie to him or not, but I'm not really that good of a liar, so maybe it would be a bad idea. "I sort of can," I tell him.

Raditz crouches down and looks me over. Before I can push his arm away he pulls the tie out of my hair, that was keeping it in a ponytail in back so it wouldn't get in my face. My hair has gotten pretty long since I started training out here. How long has it been? Almost a year, I'm pretty sure, since Piccolo first took me away. I should go visit Mommy again, and she could tell me down to the minute how long I've been gone. She would probably tell me that I need a haircut, too. "Better," he says, I guess about my hair. "Now, tell me how you do it."

"How I...how I sense people?" I ask.

"Yes," he says. "You teach me that and I'll tell you more about being a Saiyan."

"But I don't want to be a Saiyan!" I tell him, shaking my head. It feels weird, with my hair all loose.

"But you are one," he narrows his eyes at me, "or at least enough of one for me."

"For you?" This guy isn't making any sense. I...I don't know what's going on. Last time, he was a lot meaner about it. He started yelling at me a bunch, and so I got really nervous and I hit him, and then he hit me, and then Piccolo showed up and then Yamcha showed up and then all the others did. Raditz had told me, when he was yelling at me, about that they needed another person to help them kill everybody on this one planet, and I told him, no way. So I don't know why he came back, but now he's acting nicer.

"You're my brother's son," he says, "and it don't matter how much I hate Kakarrot's guts, it don't mean that I hate yours, though I'd say I'd be perfectly justified in it." He narrows his eyes again. "You're nothing like a Saiyan whelp. But maybe we can fix that. At the very least, you're strong."

"I don't need to be fixed," I tell him. "I'm just fine! And after this I'm going back to studying, anyway! I," I pause, because, I don't know, I mean, I'm pretty sure I am—I actually kind of like learning this fighting stuff, I mean, because it's like studying too, you know? Except that you practice it with your body instead of a pencil, "I, I think so, at least."

"You think?" he raises up one eyebrow.

"Yeah!" I say. "Anyway, you better leave me alone or else me and Piccolo and everybody else will beat you up again."

He grins a little bit, and it's way scarier than when my daddy grins. It reminds me a little of something, though, the way the tiny bits of sunlight coming down through the trees that go over the top of this clear little area in the forest catch onto his teeth. It kind of makes me think of...how scary I used to think Piccolo was. "No, they won't," he says, "not so long as I don't do anything to you."

"How do you know?" I ask. Okay, I know I said how I kind of like learning about fighting, but the thing is, actually doing it when something really bad could happen is still scary. But that's okay, right? I mean, even the others get scared, and I'm only a little kid! (That's what they always say, when Piccolo starts saying how I need to work harder.) So I really hope...I really hope I don't have to fight him all by myself.

"Ah, right, you were unconscious," he says. Okay, so I guess that's why my head hurts; he knocked me out. "After I exchanged a few words with your friend Piccolo, he seemed to believe you would come to no harm."

No way Piccolo would do that to me! Then again, maybe this is like the time he made that big dinosaur chase me around. Maybe...maybe it's a test. "Am I supposed to fight you?" I ask. Oh, shucks, I shouldn't have said that, since like Piccolo said, surprise is important and I could've caught him off-guard if I just went for it. But still...what if he wasn't gonna? That wouldn't be fair at all.

Raditz's grin gets bigger. "Well, not unless you demand it." He seems a little nervous—maybe he feels about the same about fighting me as I do about fighting him. But that would be silly, wouldn't it? "Is it so wrong that I should want to have a civil conversation with my nephew?"

"N-no," I say.

"So are you going to tell me how you can sense people?" he asks.

"I," I start, "I could, but it's a little bit tough to explain...but...but then you're just gonna tell your friends about it and then it'll be harder to fight them, so I shouldn't! What if it was my fault if Daddy died again, or if Piccolo died, or—"

"The Namekian won't die," he says. I guess he's talking about Piccolo when he says 'Namekian.' "Not until I have my tail back, at least."

Huh? Well...I dunno if I should even ask him what he means.

"Come on," he glances around, "you can tell me."

"But—" I start to try to say something about like what I said before, because he could still kill everybody else, right?

"Look," he lowers his voice, glancing around again, "just..." And then he stops talking, and breathes out real heavily. "Damn," he says, "how'd my family turn out to be so fucked up?"

Which seems like a weird thing to say when you think about all the stuff Daddy told me about him, about what a mean guy he is, and all the stuff I've seen him do. I'd say he's the one that's messed up. Right?

He looks at me for a while, taking a few more deep breaths that are so deep I can see his chest going up and down. Then he starts talking, I guess maybe to himself. "Vegeta's so damned hung up on being a prince, so damned hung up on who's stronger than him and who ain't, acts like he's gotta be different than me or he'll get mistaken for a commoner, as if it matters now. Blueblood never knew the kinda life he would've had as a real Saiyan. Too young. Nappa, the fool, follows him around like he knows what's best. Every second he starts being who he's supposed to be, Vegeta reins him back in again. Then Kakarrot, shit...and now you."

So I guess he was talking to me. But I can't make very much sense of it, since I dunno who he's talking about. Or what he's talking about.

He stands up and starts walking away. "Get over here, kid," he looks back and jerks his chin in the direction he was walking. I follow him, 'cause...if Piccolo really does think he's not gonna hurt me, well...I guess I can try to believe that. I follow right behind him, right behind his big long hair that's so long that even though he's way taller than me, I'm taller than where his hair ends. We stop at this big old puddle that looks like it coulda been from where a stream used to go. All of a sudden, he grabs the back of my collar and holds me so that I'm facing over the puddle, and he crouches down and looks into it too. "Look at that," he tells me, kind of quietly. "Who do you think you are?"

In the reflection from the puddle, I can see that now that my hair is out of that ponytail, it looks a lot like his—a whole lot like his. From the way my tail is in the air behind me, if I didn't know that he didn't have a tail right now and I just saw what I see in the puddle, I wouldn't know if it was his or mine. His eyes are squintier than mine normally, but right now, with him looking in too, he seems surprised, and his eyes almost make me think of my Daddy's.

It makes me feel...weird...to see us like that. I feel like the big balloon inside of me, full of me not liking him because of all the awful stuff he did, is more like how balloons get when they're a little too old, kind of squishy. I feel like it's different now than it was before, where any second the balloon could have puffed up and pressed on my insides and made me really mad, like now the balloon's so squishy it couldn't get like that again, not all the way. I want to say something to him but I don't know what it is, so my mouth ends up sort of half-open as I keep staring at us in the water.

"Ain't many of us left," he says, quiet. "Fucking meteor shower." He lets go of me and I slip and fall into the puddle.


I dunno exactly what he's talking about, though it sounds a little bit familiar. "Huh?" I say.

"That's how our planet was destroyed. The planet I came from, the planet your father came from, the planet your grandfather came from," he tells me. "Almost everyone died."

"What was my grandpa like?" I ask. I can't help it; Mommy says her daddy is my grandpa, so I guess if my daddy had a daddy he'd be my grandpa too. And my daddy's daddy is...Raditz's daddy.

"Didn't see him often," he grunts. "But that's how it always was for us, for us Saiyans. Always off fighting. But it ain't as if seeing family less means you care for 'em less. It was just the way things were."

Sort of like how my daddy's gone now, but I still love him, I guess. "Okay," I say. "But what was he like?"

"About like any other guy," Raditz says. Well, that doesn't tell me much! I kind of want to say that, but it seems like it would be a bad idea. He said he wouldn't hurt me, but I probably shouldn't do anything too bad just in case. "So he was like you?" I ask, since that's kind of close but sounds less mean.

Raditz shrugs. "Tough to say, since he had something I don't got and I can't be sure if he was better or worse for it."

"What is it?" I take off my shirt so I can wring out all the water from when I fell into the puddle. It's a little messy, but I guess Piccolo can give me a new one next time I see him. I don't know how, but he can somehow zap clothes onto people. He gets mad when I ask about it.

"A son," he says, and kicks the puddle a bit. "Well, two, counting Kakarrot, but it ain't as if he ever got a chance to know him."

"Do you wish you had a son?" I ask him.

"Like I said," he speaks again, "I ain't sure if he was better or worse for having me around, but whatever it was, I reckon it'd be the same way for me. Anyway," Raditz kicks the puddle again, "it may be that I already have offspring somewhere in the universe I'll never know about."

Huh? "How?" I ask, and he just gives me this mean look, the same face Mommy made when I asked her once if I could eat dessert before dinner instead of after, like I'm supposed to already know the answer. I don't like the feeling when somebody thinks I should know something and I don't.

"If they're out there," he keeps going, so I guess he's not gonna answer my question, "I'm not so sure I wanna see 'em." Now he's looking at me again, instead of at his boots.

"Why not?" I ask. That doesn't make any sense at all...I mean, how could he have children and not even know it, and how could he ever not want to see them? He really is a mean person. He just mumbles really quietly, though, something about pain. Maybe he's afraid that they'll be strong and hurt him when they find out how mean he is.

"Shit," he finally says loud enough that I can hear, "but you're just a kid; what do you know?"

I think there might be one really good way to answer that. "I know how to sense the energy coming off of things," I tell him, and he smirks.

I dunno what's going on, but I think I almost feel like being nice to Raditz. Maybe that's what Daddy would want—he always talked about how important it is to forgive people. But how could I forgive somebody for killing Daddy? Well, maybe I can't. Maybe that's impossible.

But what if Raditz is right, and there really is a Saiyan living inside me? He would want me to help him. Maybe Raditz is like Piccolo, maybe everybody's scared but he's not gonna do anything. I heard Tenshinhan saying how Piccolo used to do evil things, back before he was this Piccolo, whatever that means. I heard it's his fault Kuririn, who is my daddy's best friend, died once. But now Daddy is friends with Piccolo.

"Guess so," he says. "Then just for your peace of mind," he starts turning away, stuffing his hands into the pockets of the shorts he must've got from Bulma, "I'll wait 'til I'm nice and far away before I start killing my dinner," he looks like he's trying to decide on a direction, or maybe like he just wants to look at me out of the corner of his eye without seeming like that's what he's doing, "so you can't feel it." He sounds like he's joking, but also like he'd rather not be.

I wonder if he means catching rabbits to eat like I do. "Wait," I say.

I hope this is the right thing to do.

"I'll tell you how."

Converting /tmp/phpnyBfiO to /dev/stdout