Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Garrulous and Gritless ❯ I, 17: Raditz ( Chapter 17 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: ShiningMoon 
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action / Comedy / Drama / Psychological / Romance | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 01.19.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.7K | Visits: 266 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action / Comedy / Drama / Psychological / Romance | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 01.19.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.7K | Visits: 266 | Status: Completed
NOTE: Eep, I hope this chapter is okay. Lots of introspection.
@_@ We'll see, anyway. Hope you enjoy it! (And by the way, I swear it'll only be...er...not that many more chapters...until some serious divergence happens...I promise...just...er...thanks for your patience; first person POV is making this story go more slowly than I had anticipated, which is both good and bad. At least the chapters are pretty short?)
...
"Fuck," I say as soon as I wake up, due to the nature of how that waking up happens—I just rolled off my bed. I'm still blaming my tail for this one. If I had the damn thing there, rather than just feeling like I do, it woulda stopped me. I'm glad I got up now, anyhow, because I've got this sensation hovering around me like some important shit is going down today, the sort of thing I ought not miss.
Bulma's way-too-happy mother opens the door at the sound of me falling off the bed, supposedly to check and make sure I'm okay. Well, I doubt that's really it. Somehow she figured out there's some weird-ass thing between me and her daughter and now she has the idea in her head that if she checks on me often enough, she'll get proof, or god knows what else she might be looking for. Seems way too happy to be feeding the guy who woulda slaughtered everyone on the planet short of those damned injuries that kept me in bed for long enough for that woman to start fuzzying me up too much.
Speaking of those injuries, it occurs to me that it's been nearly a year since I got here. I would have expected Vegeta and Nappa to arrive by now, but for all I know, they're farther off—and if this 'Kami' is right guess it'll still be a while yet—long enough that maybe I can get my tail back with those dragonballs and not have to worry about dealing with Vegeta and Nappa on the matter (god knows they'd come up with something else they'd think would be more important than my tail to use this so-called "wish" on). I sure as hell don't want to have to try to pick a fight with 'em, because I know I'd lose, and losing to Vegeta means dying, which I don't like one bit.
All I have to do until then is figure out what to do with this woman. Maybe it'd be less risky if I kill her right now—now that I know where the radar is and where the balls are and all that shit. Doubt I'd enjoy it as much as I wish I could say I would, but, hell, it's better than doing something stupid if she weakens me too much. Of course, alongside that comes the real distinct problem that all her friends would come beat me up, and even if they couldn't win, one of 'em would go wish Kakarrot back with the balls and then if they all gang up on me I likely couldn't hold out.
But I could always just try to keep a fair distance away from her, not that that worked before.
At least it'll be easier if she continues to not fuck me. I know it's not that she don't want to—trust me, she does, I can tell—but these Earthlings seem to get themselves way too mixed up in sticky things like, whatsit, morals. She feels all bad for that Yamcha kid. About the second I think we might do it, she gets all teary-eyed and rambles about how he's working so hard to try to keep her safe from the very thing trying to figure out how the hell her belt works. Of course she assumes I'm lying when I say it ain't me she has to worry about, but Nappa and Vegeta, but I guess given how much time I've been spending thinking about how and when I'm gonna do the inevitable (everybody here is gonna die and given all the shit she's done for me I can at least be nice about it to her), her fears ain't so unfounded.
That aside, I've got a suspicion sneaking up on me that she's holding out wanting to see what Kakarrot's like when he comes back. Now, from what I've seen, I doubt she'd do a damn thing about it even if her wildest dreams come true, whatever the hell those may be, but I'm not about to try to figure out women, most especially ones from this planet. All I know is, she's got the hots for me but ain't following through.
Thinking about offing Bulma is making me nervous about this whole ordeal so I think about some of the better things that'll come when we clear this planet—the smell of burning, the rings of distant screaming in the city I just left for a little while to come back to finish off later, showing anybody who thinks they're worth anything on this planet the kind of death that they deserve for thinking bullshit like that.
If I kill her first, maybe all that other stuff will make me forget about it, anyway.
My knees are starting to feel weird and I can only assume it's because I haven't had a good breakfast yet, so I pull on whatever is lying around. Oh, look, Miss Way-Too-Excited-To-Catch-Me-In-The-Act-With-Her-Daughter left me a basket of clean clothes by the door. There are perks to being stuck here, if few.
I ain't exactly expecting to find Bulma in the kitchen when I head over there, namely because she had another one of her little breakdowns last night. This is how it went down: after a pretty damn satisfying sparring match with my way-stronger-than-he-should-be nephew, I went back to test out her healing-tank-in-progress. It ain't perfect, but it sure as hell is better than old-fashioned recovery. It was only a couple weeks ago she got this model running but she's still working on the solution shit that they pump in there. So it took a while longer than it shoulda, and didn't totally heal everything, but it helped.
She was there to let me out of it last night, in case something went wrong, and I got out all well and good and everything, and, naturally, she just stands there staring at my naked ass. (Can't blame her, really.) I tell her she's welcome to it, she rolls her eyes at me and hands me a towel and tells me to hurry up because after she cleans up my mess she's off to keep working on building this spaceship she's making. I see my opening and tell her a couple hours won't hurt the ship's feelings, and she starts snapping at me 'til she realizes the time frame I used and I can't hold back a grin—I admit it, Nappa taught me that one.
So while she looks all dazed about the hours instead of minutes thing I start mumbling about how I'll make it through and start pulling on some of the shorts she made to be like the old ones from my uniform. Seeing her chances dwindling fast, she tells me to wait for a second while she thinks about it, and I act all patient, and she keeps getting a little closer, and then I'm sucking her tongue into my teeth and then bam—something or another I do makes her think of that stupid punk and she pulls back and starts ranting about me killing Kakarrot, and Yamcha trying so hard and all this other shit. I say something or another that she would have me believe is stupid, and then she storms off like she ain't gonna make it out of range for me to hear her cry if she don't walk fast enough.
I'd be more pissed about it except that it happens about every other week. I'm pretty sure she's just stringing me along, but, hell, I fall for it every time. Don't ask me why—even if I knew the answer, I wouldn't tell you. It's just a little closer every time and then she starts realizing shit that any sane person woulda thought about, oh, I don't know, probably at least a few seconds before deciding that making out with the kinda guy who's picked his teeth with the bones of more peoples than she can imagine, at least a quarter of which look a hell of a lot like her own, is a good idea.
Then, normally, she goes back and locks herself in her lab for a while (hours, days) and then comes out and acts like nothing ever happened. Honest to god, the past half year feels like the same two weeks over and over again. The only thing to help mark time has been the kind of stuff she's come back out talking about—and, of course, the dragonballs. But we finished getting those some time ago. By the time it came to finding the last one, she was just looking for reasons to bring me along. I ain't complaining, because at least one of those times involved some sort of rule about wearing only very small pieces of cloth when going in the water, but I gotta admit that half the reason I went in the first place was that I was sure she'd corner me in some cave and yank my pants down. Yeah, most everybody I've seen knows better than to tease a Saiyan like she does, but I guess I ain't been keeping up my end of the bargain, what with that I haven't killed her yet to drive the idea home.
But I'll save thinking about killing her for later. There's something else important going on today, and it ain't until I actually get into the kitchen and see Bulma there that it occurs to me what that thing is.
She's got the bag with the dragonballs laid out, and Kakarrot's brat is standing there beside her, looking at 'em as they glow. The Namekian is on the other side of the room, looking at me with eyes like he knows shit I don't. Soon's I walk in the brat looks worried, I gather because it also just occurred to him again that I'm the reason his father's gotta be wished back to life or whatever in the first place. "Remember," I tell him, 'cause I'd best get it over with now, "I ain't gonna kill him yet."
"Right," he says, "the tail."
"And good morning to you, too," Bulma says, and she looks a little pissed, but not as bad as she oughtta from how she was acting last night. Great, she's just gonna act, once again, like we weren't sucking face twelve hours ago. That is, this is her normal type of pissed, not her special-reserved-just-for-me type of pissed. I do not like that I am somehow disappointed to realize this. "We're wishing Son back today," she finally says. "I'm surprised you remembered."
Well, I didn't, but she don't need to know. I shrug.
"I can't promise he won't kill you the second he sees you," she says.
The whelp seems like he wants to say something, but like he don't know what—I can tell, he thinks his precious daddy would never do a thing like that, but at the same time, I'm sure he don't like thinking about that number I played on Kakarrot when I killed him—maybe he even hopes it's gonna happen, that Kakarrot will up and kill me. Well, I ain't ready to die.
"Also," she adds, "you know I won't stop him, since he has a damn good reason to want to."
Aw, well don't that just give me the warm fuzzies. We've both been thinking about the other meeting a violent, awful death this morning.
I don't think she knows what she wants to do with me—given that I'm the other side or whatever, especially once Nappa and Vegeta show up to show Kakarrot he ain't such hot shit. (Incidentally, I've gotten pretty strong myself in these past months. Traveling in space you hardly got any time to train, and if you get assigned a handful of easy missions in a row, all far away from each other, it's easy to go far too long without enough physical exertion to improve. Vegeta figures Freeza assigns at least his stuff real personal with just that in mind, and maybe even Nappa's and mine, 'cause the Saiyans give him shivers. But since Kakarrot's brat decided he could put up with me he's been pretty useful—for instance, I can close my eyes and still know if the Namekian is moving toward me to try to punch my lights out—not to mention that we sparred now and again, and I really hate admitting I got shown what-for by a half-Saiyan whelp, but I did. Maybe I'm still stronger than Kakarrot—we'll see.)
"Well then, what are you waiting for?" I say. Waiting makes me nervous—gotta spend all that effort trying to think up reasons Kakarrot won't do what I would, and kill me then and there.
"Don't try anything funny," Bulma packs the balls up into the bag again and starts walking out the door. "Kill Son again and you will die a very painful death." The Namekian chortles a little, and I wonder if he might know what she's talking about, or if he's just been warned enough times, or what. The brat seems to agree with Bulma. Well, whatever. I wasn't gonna. Still, imagining how Bulma would follow through on this 'very painful death' is intriguing—I feel a little like throwing up, a little like boning her on the spot. It ain't that I wanna die, but imagining her being that powerful is kind of...well, anyway.
...
You know, in my time I've seen some pretty crazy shit. These dragonballs are not the craziest shit I've ever seen. But they're up there. Most especially the way that the second Bulma sets 'em all together outside and shouts to some invisible dragon, the sky is like some doomsday omen (and me? I know doomsday), all boiling and dark and lashing out at everything in it. As the light that comes off the balls flashes more and more brightly, I see why we came outside—out explodes this gigantic dragon, practically endless. When he starts talking in a booming, rumbling voice, you get the distinct impression he brought the big dark clouds just to scare the shit out of you.
Everybody seems at least a little surprised, but I'd wager the brat has never seen this thing before, given the way his legs shake. He scoots a little closer to the Namekian. Bulma, she steps forward and crosses her arms. "We want to bring Son Goku back to life!" she shouts up to him, and before I can tell what's going on, the dragon is gone and the balls are turning to stone, floating up into the air, flying off in all directions.
Well, that was fucking weird.
But I don't see Kakarrot anywhere. "Where is he?" I ask.
"I think Kami has to go get him," Bulma says, looking up at the quickly lightening sky and tapping her chin while she thinks, "and then he has to travel back here. So I guess it might take a little whi—"
"Hey, guys!" I hear his godawful voice from a ways behind me, and I try the whelp's trick and stretch my senses out and—
Damn.
Well, fuck, I don't even need to test it out to tell, my little brother can officially kick my ass.
For now.
But you know what?
I'm gonna do something about it. I ain't some helpless thing. 'Cause for now, Bulma likes me enough to let me use the healing tank, and I think I can keep it that way.
And then it don't matter so much what she thinks, 'cause I've got a plan, and if Kakarrot of all people can get that much stronger, I sure as hell can.
Maybe he ain't strong enough to beat Vegeta and Nappa—maybe he is. I remember he could do that thing where his power shoots up all of a sudden, and now that the whelp has explained to me what he knows, I think I get it. And, hell, if this is only a fraction of his power, I suspect there ain't no way for me to know until he lets it all loose—and even then, I'd have to have the scouter to measure it against what I know Vegeta's is.
Aw, but hell, there's no way he can beat Vegeta, anyhow. It's at least a little comforting to know he'll meet his end soon enough, even if it ain't me who does it.
It'll be a while before I can really work on my plan, I guess, if the stuff Bulma's told me while we were looking for the balls is true. In the meantime, I guess the best thing I can do is make sure she gets that healing tank done. And the ship—or, at the very least, my pod.
But now that Kakarrot's done hugging his son and giving the Namekian the biggest damn grin I've ever seen, and even pulling Bulma up into a hug (makes my hairs stand on end when she gives him a big old hug back; must be pretty noticeable, because the Namekian looks at me).
Then he turns to me and his shiny soft-as-his-planet eyes ice over. He keeps speaking to the others. "Thanks for taking care of Gohan, Piccolo," he says. "I can tell you've both gotten a lot stronger since I died, especially Gohan." Then he says to me: "You have, too."
"Yeah," I say. I guess that Kami guy isn't full of shit, guess he was right thinking that whatever training Kakarrot would get would make him stronger; now I'm here sounding like a wuss because I don't wanna piss Kakarrot off and meet my death because of it.
Kakarrot looks at Bulma, maybe like he's got the suspicion it's her fault I got stronger—I don't know if he's smart enough to make that jump. "He hasn't been causing much trouble?" he asks.
"Not since your..." she says, kind of trailing off, "no, not really."
Well, I guess I might resent her for brushing me off so easily, but I ain't exactly been going out of my way to give her a hard time. After all, just about everything I'm gonna need to get away from here in good shape depends on her finishing the things she wants to get done anyway. I really had no choice but helping her. Kakarrot quirks an eyebrow at me, and then glances at the brat, who shrugs. Kakarrot says, "Has he been bothering you at all, Gohan?"
He shakes his head—good for him, 'cause I suspect anything else might've made my life hell. "We spar sometimes," he says, and Kakarrot seems surprised. He looks at me funny and I stuff my arms over my chest. He looks like he's trying to decide whose side I'm on, narrowing his eyes at me like this requires a real elaborate thought process.
"Do I need to kill a small, fluffy creature to prove I'm still bad?" I ask him. "Don't worry, I ain't planning on going soft like you."
He gives me this look that can't mean anything but that he wants to talk to me later, and yeah, I'll admit it, soon's I realize it I'm freaking the hell out. Dammit, why'd he have to manage to get so strong, so fast? He's gonna corner me, and rip my guts out for being the kind of brother a Saiyan would be proud of.
"You gonna fight on our side?" he asks, and I've never heard him so serious—almost don't recognize his voice behind how dark it is.
Of course, there's the real answer, and then there's the one he wants to hear, that won't get me killed but would sure as hell carve a gaping hole in my pride. I think of Vegeta and Nappa showing up, wondering who'll win—could Kakarrot ever really get strong enough to make Vegeta worried? And if I'm on the wrong side I'm dead for sure. But still—ain't no way Kakarrot could measure up to Vegeta, or probably even Nappa, no matter how much he's holding his power back right now.
I imagine cities burning, getting away from this godforsaken planet and back to what I do best, imagine snapping the humans' weak little bodies.
Imagine leaving this place with my tail back and Kakarrot dead and never thinking of it ever again.
Imagine Nappa crushing the whelp's head in—and maybe it's just his resemblance to me that makes me cringe at the thought, picturing my younger self in his hands.
Imagine Vegeta shoving his fingers into blue hair and blasting her head off.
Damn.
All I can manage is a, "We'll see," and I try to stop thinking before it starts sounding like the truth.
Converting /tmp/phpE8P0vD to /dev/stdout
@_@ We'll see, anyway. Hope you enjoy it! (And by the way, I swear it'll only be...er...not that many more chapters...until some serious divergence happens...I promise...just...er...thanks for your patience; first person POV is making this story go more slowly than I had anticipated, which is both good and bad. At least the chapters are pretty short?)
...
"Fuck," I say as soon as I wake up, due to the nature of how that waking up happens—I just rolled off my bed. I'm still blaming my tail for this one. If I had the damn thing there, rather than just feeling like I do, it woulda stopped me. I'm glad I got up now, anyhow, because I've got this sensation hovering around me like some important shit is going down today, the sort of thing I ought not miss.
Bulma's way-too-happy mother opens the door at the sound of me falling off the bed, supposedly to check and make sure I'm okay. Well, I doubt that's really it. Somehow she figured out there's some weird-ass thing between me and her daughter and now she has the idea in her head that if she checks on me often enough, she'll get proof, or god knows what else she might be looking for. Seems way too happy to be feeding the guy who woulda slaughtered everyone on the planet short of those damned injuries that kept me in bed for long enough for that woman to start fuzzying me up too much.
Speaking of those injuries, it occurs to me that it's been nearly a year since I got here. I would have expected Vegeta and Nappa to arrive by now, but for all I know, they're farther off—and if this 'Kami' is right guess it'll still be a while yet—long enough that maybe I can get my tail back with those dragonballs and not have to worry about dealing with Vegeta and Nappa on the matter (god knows they'd come up with something else they'd think would be more important than my tail to use this so-called "wish" on). I sure as hell don't want to have to try to pick a fight with 'em, because I know I'd lose, and losing to Vegeta means dying, which I don't like one bit.
All I have to do until then is figure out what to do with this woman. Maybe it'd be less risky if I kill her right now—now that I know where the radar is and where the balls are and all that shit. Doubt I'd enjoy it as much as I wish I could say I would, but, hell, it's better than doing something stupid if she weakens me too much. Of course, alongside that comes the real distinct problem that all her friends would come beat me up, and even if they couldn't win, one of 'em would go wish Kakarrot back with the balls and then if they all gang up on me I likely couldn't hold out.
But I could always just try to keep a fair distance away from her, not that that worked before.
At least it'll be easier if she continues to not fuck me. I know it's not that she don't want to—trust me, she does, I can tell—but these Earthlings seem to get themselves way too mixed up in sticky things like, whatsit, morals. She feels all bad for that Yamcha kid. About the second I think we might do it, she gets all teary-eyed and rambles about how he's working so hard to try to keep her safe from the very thing trying to figure out how the hell her belt works. Of course she assumes I'm lying when I say it ain't me she has to worry about, but Nappa and Vegeta, but I guess given how much time I've been spending thinking about how and when I'm gonna do the inevitable (everybody here is gonna die and given all the shit she's done for me I can at least be nice about it to her), her fears ain't so unfounded.
That aside, I've got a suspicion sneaking up on me that she's holding out wanting to see what Kakarrot's like when he comes back. Now, from what I've seen, I doubt she'd do a damn thing about it even if her wildest dreams come true, whatever the hell those may be, but I'm not about to try to figure out women, most especially ones from this planet. All I know is, she's got the hots for me but ain't following through.
Thinking about offing Bulma is making me nervous about this whole ordeal so I think about some of the better things that'll come when we clear this planet—the smell of burning, the rings of distant screaming in the city I just left for a little while to come back to finish off later, showing anybody who thinks they're worth anything on this planet the kind of death that they deserve for thinking bullshit like that.
If I kill her first, maybe all that other stuff will make me forget about it, anyway.
My knees are starting to feel weird and I can only assume it's because I haven't had a good breakfast yet, so I pull on whatever is lying around. Oh, look, Miss Way-Too-Excited-To-Catch-Me-In-The-Act-With-Her-Daughter left me a basket of clean clothes by the door. There are perks to being stuck here, if few.
I ain't exactly expecting to find Bulma in the kitchen when I head over there, namely because she had another one of her little breakdowns last night. This is how it went down: after a pretty damn satisfying sparring match with my way-stronger-than-he-should-be nephew, I went back to test out her healing-tank-in-progress. It ain't perfect, but it sure as hell is better than old-fashioned recovery. It was only a couple weeks ago she got this model running but she's still working on the solution shit that they pump in there. So it took a while longer than it shoulda, and didn't totally heal everything, but it helped.
She was there to let me out of it last night, in case something went wrong, and I got out all well and good and everything, and, naturally, she just stands there staring at my naked ass. (Can't blame her, really.) I tell her she's welcome to it, she rolls her eyes at me and hands me a towel and tells me to hurry up because after she cleans up my mess she's off to keep working on building this spaceship she's making. I see my opening and tell her a couple hours won't hurt the ship's feelings, and she starts snapping at me 'til she realizes the time frame I used and I can't hold back a grin—I admit it, Nappa taught me that one.
So while she looks all dazed about the hours instead of minutes thing I start mumbling about how I'll make it through and start pulling on some of the shorts she made to be like the old ones from my uniform. Seeing her chances dwindling fast, she tells me to wait for a second while she thinks about it, and I act all patient, and she keeps getting a little closer, and then I'm sucking her tongue into my teeth and then bam—something or another I do makes her think of that stupid punk and she pulls back and starts ranting about me killing Kakarrot, and Yamcha trying so hard and all this other shit. I say something or another that she would have me believe is stupid, and then she storms off like she ain't gonna make it out of range for me to hear her cry if she don't walk fast enough.
I'd be more pissed about it except that it happens about every other week. I'm pretty sure she's just stringing me along, but, hell, I fall for it every time. Don't ask me why—even if I knew the answer, I wouldn't tell you. It's just a little closer every time and then she starts realizing shit that any sane person woulda thought about, oh, I don't know, probably at least a few seconds before deciding that making out with the kinda guy who's picked his teeth with the bones of more peoples than she can imagine, at least a quarter of which look a hell of a lot like her own, is a good idea.
Then, normally, she goes back and locks herself in her lab for a while (hours, days) and then comes out and acts like nothing ever happened. Honest to god, the past half year feels like the same two weeks over and over again. The only thing to help mark time has been the kind of stuff she's come back out talking about—and, of course, the dragonballs. But we finished getting those some time ago. By the time it came to finding the last one, she was just looking for reasons to bring me along. I ain't complaining, because at least one of those times involved some sort of rule about wearing only very small pieces of cloth when going in the water, but I gotta admit that half the reason I went in the first place was that I was sure she'd corner me in some cave and yank my pants down. Yeah, most everybody I've seen knows better than to tease a Saiyan like she does, but I guess I ain't been keeping up my end of the bargain, what with that I haven't killed her yet to drive the idea home.
But I'll save thinking about killing her for later. There's something else important going on today, and it ain't until I actually get into the kitchen and see Bulma there that it occurs to me what that thing is.
She's got the bag with the dragonballs laid out, and Kakarrot's brat is standing there beside her, looking at 'em as they glow. The Namekian is on the other side of the room, looking at me with eyes like he knows shit I don't. Soon's I walk in the brat looks worried, I gather because it also just occurred to him again that I'm the reason his father's gotta be wished back to life or whatever in the first place. "Remember," I tell him, 'cause I'd best get it over with now, "I ain't gonna kill him yet."
"Right," he says, "the tail."
"And good morning to you, too," Bulma says, and she looks a little pissed, but not as bad as she oughtta from how she was acting last night. Great, she's just gonna act, once again, like we weren't sucking face twelve hours ago. That is, this is her normal type of pissed, not her special-reserved-just-for-me type of pissed. I do not like that I am somehow disappointed to realize this. "We're wishing Son back today," she finally says. "I'm surprised you remembered."
Well, I didn't, but she don't need to know. I shrug.
"I can't promise he won't kill you the second he sees you," she says.
The whelp seems like he wants to say something, but like he don't know what—I can tell, he thinks his precious daddy would never do a thing like that, but at the same time, I'm sure he don't like thinking about that number I played on Kakarrot when I killed him—maybe he even hopes it's gonna happen, that Kakarrot will up and kill me. Well, I ain't ready to die.
"Also," she adds, "you know I won't stop him, since he has a damn good reason to want to."
Aw, well don't that just give me the warm fuzzies. We've both been thinking about the other meeting a violent, awful death this morning.
I don't think she knows what she wants to do with me—given that I'm the other side or whatever, especially once Nappa and Vegeta show up to show Kakarrot he ain't such hot shit. (Incidentally, I've gotten pretty strong myself in these past months. Traveling in space you hardly got any time to train, and if you get assigned a handful of easy missions in a row, all far away from each other, it's easy to go far too long without enough physical exertion to improve. Vegeta figures Freeza assigns at least his stuff real personal with just that in mind, and maybe even Nappa's and mine, 'cause the Saiyans give him shivers. But since Kakarrot's brat decided he could put up with me he's been pretty useful—for instance, I can close my eyes and still know if the Namekian is moving toward me to try to punch my lights out—not to mention that we sparred now and again, and I really hate admitting I got shown what-for by a half-Saiyan whelp, but I did. Maybe I'm still stronger than Kakarrot—we'll see.)
"Well then, what are you waiting for?" I say. Waiting makes me nervous—gotta spend all that effort trying to think up reasons Kakarrot won't do what I would, and kill me then and there.
"Don't try anything funny," Bulma packs the balls up into the bag again and starts walking out the door. "Kill Son again and you will die a very painful death." The Namekian chortles a little, and I wonder if he might know what she's talking about, or if he's just been warned enough times, or what. The brat seems to agree with Bulma. Well, whatever. I wasn't gonna. Still, imagining how Bulma would follow through on this 'very painful death' is intriguing—I feel a little like throwing up, a little like boning her on the spot. It ain't that I wanna die, but imagining her being that powerful is kind of...well, anyway.
...
You know, in my time I've seen some pretty crazy shit. These dragonballs are not the craziest shit I've ever seen. But they're up there. Most especially the way that the second Bulma sets 'em all together outside and shouts to some invisible dragon, the sky is like some doomsday omen (and me? I know doomsday), all boiling and dark and lashing out at everything in it. As the light that comes off the balls flashes more and more brightly, I see why we came outside—out explodes this gigantic dragon, practically endless. When he starts talking in a booming, rumbling voice, you get the distinct impression he brought the big dark clouds just to scare the shit out of you.
Everybody seems at least a little surprised, but I'd wager the brat has never seen this thing before, given the way his legs shake. He scoots a little closer to the Namekian. Bulma, she steps forward and crosses her arms. "We want to bring Son Goku back to life!" she shouts up to him, and before I can tell what's going on, the dragon is gone and the balls are turning to stone, floating up into the air, flying off in all directions.
Well, that was fucking weird.
But I don't see Kakarrot anywhere. "Where is he?" I ask.
"I think Kami has to go get him," Bulma says, looking up at the quickly lightening sky and tapping her chin while she thinks, "and then he has to travel back here. So I guess it might take a little whi—"
"Hey, guys!" I hear his godawful voice from a ways behind me, and I try the whelp's trick and stretch my senses out and—
Damn.
Well, fuck, I don't even need to test it out to tell, my little brother can officially kick my ass.
For now.
But you know what?
I'm gonna do something about it. I ain't some helpless thing. 'Cause for now, Bulma likes me enough to let me use the healing tank, and I think I can keep it that way.
And then it don't matter so much what she thinks, 'cause I've got a plan, and if Kakarrot of all people can get that much stronger, I sure as hell can.
Maybe he ain't strong enough to beat Vegeta and Nappa—maybe he is. I remember he could do that thing where his power shoots up all of a sudden, and now that the whelp has explained to me what he knows, I think I get it. And, hell, if this is only a fraction of his power, I suspect there ain't no way for me to know until he lets it all loose—and even then, I'd have to have the scouter to measure it against what I know Vegeta's is.
Aw, but hell, there's no way he can beat Vegeta, anyhow. It's at least a little comforting to know he'll meet his end soon enough, even if it ain't me who does it.
It'll be a while before I can really work on my plan, I guess, if the stuff Bulma's told me while we were looking for the balls is true. In the meantime, I guess the best thing I can do is make sure she gets that healing tank done. And the ship—or, at the very least, my pod.
But now that Kakarrot's done hugging his son and giving the Namekian the biggest damn grin I've ever seen, and even pulling Bulma up into a hug (makes my hairs stand on end when she gives him a big old hug back; must be pretty noticeable, because the Namekian looks at me).
Then he turns to me and his shiny soft-as-his-planet eyes ice over. He keeps speaking to the others. "Thanks for taking care of Gohan, Piccolo," he says. "I can tell you've both gotten a lot stronger since I died, especially Gohan." Then he says to me: "You have, too."
"Yeah," I say. I guess that Kami guy isn't full of shit, guess he was right thinking that whatever training Kakarrot would get would make him stronger; now I'm here sounding like a wuss because I don't wanna piss Kakarrot off and meet my death because of it.
Kakarrot looks at Bulma, maybe like he's got the suspicion it's her fault I got stronger—I don't know if he's smart enough to make that jump. "He hasn't been causing much trouble?" he asks.
"Not since your..." she says, kind of trailing off, "no, not really."
Well, I guess I might resent her for brushing me off so easily, but I ain't exactly been going out of my way to give her a hard time. After all, just about everything I'm gonna need to get away from here in good shape depends on her finishing the things she wants to get done anyway. I really had no choice but helping her. Kakarrot quirks an eyebrow at me, and then glances at the brat, who shrugs. Kakarrot says, "Has he been bothering you at all, Gohan?"
He shakes his head—good for him, 'cause I suspect anything else might've made my life hell. "We spar sometimes," he says, and Kakarrot seems surprised. He looks at me funny and I stuff my arms over my chest. He looks like he's trying to decide whose side I'm on, narrowing his eyes at me like this requires a real elaborate thought process.
"Do I need to kill a small, fluffy creature to prove I'm still bad?" I ask him. "Don't worry, I ain't planning on going soft like you."
He gives me this look that can't mean anything but that he wants to talk to me later, and yeah, I'll admit it, soon's I realize it I'm freaking the hell out. Dammit, why'd he have to manage to get so strong, so fast? He's gonna corner me, and rip my guts out for being the kind of brother a Saiyan would be proud of.
"You gonna fight on our side?" he asks, and I've never heard him so serious—almost don't recognize his voice behind how dark it is.
Of course, there's the real answer, and then there's the one he wants to hear, that won't get me killed but would sure as hell carve a gaping hole in my pride. I think of Vegeta and Nappa showing up, wondering who'll win—could Kakarrot ever really get strong enough to make Vegeta worried? And if I'm on the wrong side I'm dead for sure. But still—ain't no way Kakarrot could measure up to Vegeta, or probably even Nappa, no matter how much he's holding his power back right now.
I imagine cities burning, getting away from this godforsaken planet and back to what I do best, imagine snapping the humans' weak little bodies.
Imagine leaving this place with my tail back and Kakarrot dead and never thinking of it ever again.
Imagine Nappa crushing the whelp's head in—and maybe it's just his resemblance to me that makes me cringe at the thought, picturing my younger self in his hands.
Imagine Vegeta shoving his fingers into blue hair and blasting her head off.
Damn.
All I can manage is a, "We'll see," and I try to stop thinking before it starts sounding like the truth.
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