Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Keeping in the Family ❯ Up! Grows the Youngest Saiyan ( Chapter 3 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Ms Videl Son 
"Shit..."...the cavalry didn't make it in time...puberty strikes early.
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Romance | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 09.13.2005 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.0K | Visits: 284 | Status: Work In Progress
"Shit..."...the cavalry didn't make it in time...puberty strikes early.
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Romance | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 09.13.2005 | Pages: 4 | Words: 5.0K | Visits: 284 | Status: Work In Progress
Title: Keeping in the Family
Disclaimer: ...Yeah, because this would ever happen.
Rating: PG-13 ( T ), for angst, violence, lust and a young Saiyan hybrid learning the value of naughty words.
Summary: “If ‘Nii-san won’t marry you, will you marry me instead?” With a misplaced wish on the dragonballs, this could turn into a problem. [Post-Buu, GV – but which G?]
Have fun guessing?
(For reference, all words in emboldened italics are significant of a flashback.)
~*~
Chapter Three: Up! Grows the Youngest Saiyan
Trunks stared at his best friend in utter horror for a long minute as the sky behind him cleared, the darkness carried away with the now petrified dragonballs to the far ends of the Earth.
“G-Goten...,” Trunks choked on his tongue. The violet-topped halfling was, for the first time since the Earth’s destruction, at a loss for snappy word play. “What did you do?”
“It worked? Trunks-kun, did it work?”
“I...wha...of course it worked, idiot!” Trunks shouted, finding his wind. Goten twirled in place, admiring the changes bestowed by the Eternal Dragon.
“Cool!”
If it had seemed like a bright idea at the time, Trunks would have punched his playmate in the face. As it was, Trunks valued the use of both hands. “Not cool! What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“I’m gonna go find ‘Nee-chan! She’ll marry me now!”
“No!” Trunks sputtered quickly. This was going to be hard enough to hide as it was, there was no need to show it off in public.
“Why not?”
“Because...aw, geeze, I’m going to get in so much trouble for this,” Trunks pinched the bridge of his nose in imitation of his mothers “thinking” stance.
“Trunks-kun, I wanna go marry ‘Nee-chan.”
“No!” Trunks shouted again, gathering his bearings. He crossed his arms over his chest firmly, shadowing his mother further. “You’re not going anywhere until we figure out how to fix this, mister!”
“But I don’t want to fix it! I wanna marry ‘Nee-chan!”
Damn, so single-minded. Trunks figured this had to be because he couldn’t fit more than one idea into his brain at a time. “You can’t marry Videl ‘Nee-chan.”
“Why not?”
“Cause she’s gonna marry Gohan-san, that’s why!”
“She is not!”
“Is too!”
“Is not! ‘Nii-san doesn’t want to marry ‘Nee-chan! He said so!”
The older halfling snorted with laughter. “That’s cause he’s a weak dork that doesn’t know what he wants. Otou-san said so.”
“You’re wrong, Trunks-kun! I am going to marry ‘Nee-chan!”
Trunks covered his head with his arms as Goten leapt into the air, stirring up a tornado of dust. “Wait – Goten!” he called after his friend, coughing as he accidentally inhaled some of the debris. Trunks squinted his watering eyes to the west where Goten was no more than a glowing golden dot on the horizon. “Great! This is just great!” he lamented, tossing his arms up in grand dramatic gesture. “I’m going to get in sooo much trouble for this!”
With another burst of golden chi, the half-human prince found himself once again chasing after his mutated subject.
~*~
“Shit!” Gohan stopped abruptly in midair as the atmosphere cleared, the dark smog of magic receding into the distance. He watched as it collected at one point to the east and, with an intense flare of light, imploded.
Peeking above the visor of his arm, Gohan further witnessed the implosion separate into seven identical fragments and scatter in seven opposite directions. He dodged one of the pieces as it flew past his head by a slim margin.
“Shit!” he cursed again. “They’ve already made their wishes.”
The demi-Saiyan investigator focused on the spot at which the Eternal Dragon had recently hovered. Two familiar chi signatures lingered there, each rising and falling in flux.
“Huh?” the newest development boggled the eldest hybrid. “What are they doing over there?”
The wind returned, confiding softly to Gohan no useful information. The same sweet, hollow nothings of pleasant weather and frosted drinks.
Gohan raised his chi slightly, prepared to continue on his mission with a cloudy understanding of the proceedings, but paused again. The chi signature most familiar to him spiked, as if aroused in battle.
Suddenly, it no longer seemed so familiar.
Of course, familiar or non, Gohan was about to meet it head on. It approached him with a speed that nearly matched his own and a fervor that heavily outranked his.
“Shit...”
~*~
Videl didn’t stop as the sun bloomed in the sky above her, restored to its lofty throne after the short-lived coup. She couldn’t even pause to spare the sudden change one of her usual wide-eyed responses, in far too much a hurry to find Gohan. If she were to ever catch up with her classmates superior speed and stealth, Videl would have to pull out all the stops and remain focused on her goal.
Oh, but Satan Videl wouldn’t be left behind. No this time. Not again.
This time, she would catch that super son of a bitch before he got himself killed again. No way she would be left behind again, waiting for him to prove his family and friends wrong by coming back alive. She had promised herself that, from the resolution of the Majin Buu episode on, she would stick to Son Gohan’s side as if conjoined by cement. For better or worse, in thickness or in stealth (as he was prone to both), till death do they part, Videl would never leave Gohan’s side. Never.
Now, if only he would stop trying to ditch her, the plan could work.
“I’m going to find you, Son Gohan! You can’t hide forever,” she declared, straining to release more of her chi like he had taught her. By expelling it in short, closely timed bursts, one could propel themselves forward at a greater rate. By increasing the intensity of the bursts, one could turn it up another notch.
Videl approached the speed of sound as she followed Gohan’s trail. Though she couldn’t detect chi with accuracy or at a distance, she could feel lingering traces of large amounts of it by simply passing her body through it. It was like following a river to the ocean in a boat. Eventually, by following the current, one would be led to the source. Judging by the heat of the chi she followed, Gohan wasn’t too far ahead of her...not by human versus Saiyan standards, anyway. Probably only a few more miles up ahead.
“Eureka!” Videl grinned, feeling the electrical current of Gohan’s life energy spark along her skin, leaving behind trails of goose bumps. Two figures, hovering above the ground, and, presumably, arguing, were within her sight. “Got him!”
~*~
“No, I won’t move out of the way!” Gohan snarled, tensed in fighting stance as he blocked his newest adversary’s way. “What the hell did you do, Goten?” He was far beyond watching his language in front of his somewhat younger brother.
Goten puckered his lower lip in his patented “don’t you love me anymore?” pout. “Me ‘n Trunks-kun got the dragonballs,” he explained without elaboration.
Gohan roved his eyes over his brother’s body. “I can see that.”
The only proof that the scantily clad young adult floating before Gohan was, in fact, Son Goten was his chi signature. And his Super Saiyan status, can’t forget that. Goten was now approximately six feet, give or take, from head to toe and fully...developed, if the torn remnants of the young hybrids training gi was any indication. The last few scraps clung to his hips and crotch by bulging seams, the only part of the former outfit that hadn’t shredded under the strain of the worlds fastest growth spurt.
Beneath a jutting spike of hair that, like all of his fathers native race, defied gravity, Son Goten the quasi-adult glared at his older brother with something close to irritation. “‘Nii-san, I want to go find ‘Nee-chan! Let me go.”
“Goten, why did you do...this?” Gohan gestured helplessly at Goten’s body. Goten looked down at himself as if Gohan were implying that something had gone wrong with the transformation. Finely chiseled muscles...higher power reading...large endowment...nope, all seemed to be in order.
“To marry ‘Nee-chan!” Goten sighed with exasperation as if this motive were the most obvious in the world. “Remember...?”
“If ‘Nii-san won’t marry you, will you marry me instead?”
The dinner table maintained its painful silence, attentions divided between the well-meaning child and his commitment-reluctant older brother. Videl, sparing Gohan from her glare for a few precious moments, blinked at Goten, all expression and blood drained from her face.
“Ah...that’s alright, Goten,” she finally spoke, a tentative smile twitching on her lips. “I don’t need to marry anybody.”
“But I want to marry you, ‘Nee-chan!” the child hybrid insisted with an eager grin.
“That’s really sweet, Goten, but...ah...”
Goten’s face fell at a slow, heart-wrenching pace. “You don’t want to marry me, ‘Nee-chan?” he sniffled. A single, enormous tear rolled down his cheek.
The initial stupefied lock down of logic melted away, guilt filling Videl’s heart like molten lead. “It’s not like that, Goten,” Videl placated softly, abandoning her chair to kneel next to the child. She wiped the tear away, absorbing it into the bare skin of her palm, and leaned in with meaningful eyes. “I just don’t think that you would really want to marry an old lady like me.”
“You’re not old, ‘Nee-chan! You’re pretty and...erm...not wrinkly at all!” his mother always loved it when he told her that. “Besides, even if you were, I’d still want to marry you,” he proclaimed, undeterred by reasoning.
Videl stroked the wet smear on his cheek with her thumb, a humoring smile on her lips. “Goten, do you even know what marriage is for?”
“Yeah, ‘Tou-san explained it to me,” one member of the party groaned, another looked politely cowed. “It’s when you live with a girl in the same house for the rest of your life,” he explained, proudly reciting his fathers assessment verbatim. “It’s not food,” he added. [1]
“Well...close,” Videl agreed, pressing her lips together to prevent her laughter from leaking out. “But there’s more to it than that, Goten.”
“Like what?”
“Well...you have to love the person you’re married to. More than anyone else in the entire world,” Videl finished, satisfied with her G-rated definition of marital relations.
Goten leapt up onto the seat of his chair, “But I do love you, ‘Nee-chan! More than anyone!” he proclaimed, staring directly into Videl’s eyes with adamant conviction.
Chi-Chi began chewing on her tongue.
“Oh, I’m sure that you love your family a lot more than me, Goten,” Videl inched away from Chi-Chi. “Besides, I’m talking about a different kind of love.”
“Different how?”
“Just...different, Goten. You won’t know what it feels like until you experience it.”
“I know I love you lots, ‘Nee-chan. And ‘Kaa-san says that ‘Nii-san needs to marry you quick or you’ll get away!” Goten wailed, throwing himself at Videl. He latched onto Videl’s neck as he lowered his voice to a whimper, “I don’t want you to go away, ‘Nee-chan, so marry me instead! You can sleep in my bed every night and I’ll share all of my toys with you!” there was desperation in his tears now.
Videl cradled the sobbing Goten, much as she had earlier in the day, stroking fingers through his thick spikes as his tears soaked into her shirt. The young boy clung to her as if she would slip away from him at any moment, leaving him with negative one family member yet again in his young life. Videl had witnessed this child cry over everything from a broken toy to a scrape that wouldn’t even have hurt a lesser child, but she had only witnessed him cry like this one other time. On the lookout, during a short session in which training had been suspended, when Gohan was still presumed dead.
“Please marry me, ‘Nee-chan!” the little boy sobbed. Chi-Chi restrained herself across the room, one arm reaching out to her youngest child. “‘Nii-san doesn’t want to marry you, so marry me instead! I don’t want you to go away because of ‘Nii-san again!”
Gohan squirmed, the thick material of his gi rustling against the wallpaper.
Unnoticed by the rest of the kitchen, Videl’s eyes took a darker sheen. “Shh...Goten, I won’t go away...shh...”
Goten slackened his grip on her neck and buried his face in Videl’s bosom, finding the spot closest to her body that he could possibly fit into. “Why don’t you want to marry me, ‘Nee-chan...?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Goten, it’s that I can’t.”
Without abandoning his position, Goten sniffled, “Why not?”
“Because I’m too old for you. You don’t want an old lady like me, even if I’m not all wrinkled yet,” she smiled into Goten’s spikes. “Besides, you’re too young to get married. You’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with the person you’re married to. If you were to marry them now, that would be a LONG time.”
Goten tilted his head back to look at Videl, keeping his nose and mouth in her chest. “What if I were older, ‘Nee-chan? Could I marry you then?”
Wiping away the last few drying tears with the back of her hand, Videl rubbed her nose against Goten’s playfully. “If you were older, Goten, of course I would marry you!”
“...So me and Trunks-kun found all the dragonballs and I wished to be old enough to marry ‘Nee-chan,” Goten explained with a grin that seemed far less innocent in his new form. “Now she won’t have to go away because you don’t want to!”
Gohan felt as if all the blood had drained from his body as his younger brother explained his motives for skipping puberty. He had lost a significant fraction of his life in order to steal his older brothers girlfriend. (Technicalities be damned for the moment.)
“So I’m gonna go find ‘Nee-chan!” Goten proclaimed, seeming to have declared the matter settled. He flared his energy to a golden hue, all the faster to reach Videl with, and disappeared from the view of the naked human eye.
But not Gohan’s. Without even being forced into his Mystic form, Gohan blocked the path of his singularly minded younger brother. “I don’t think so, Goten.”
Goten, his new teenage hormones now coupled with Saiyan battle instinct, glared with nothing short of annoyance. “She said she would marry me if I were old enough. I’m old enough now, so let me go find her, ‘Nii-san!”
“There’s more to it than age, Goten!” Gohan snapped, forcing his own hackles back down. “You can’t just marry a girl because you’re old enough to do it.”
“But she said she would!” Goten countered, attempting once again to push past his brother. Gohan pushed back, sending a confounded Goten sprawling backwards.
“Goten, you’re coming with me,” Gohan commanded. “Maybe Bulma-san can find a way to fix this mess before anyone else finds out.”
“No!” the once youngest Saiyan rebelled, flashing his golden aura in threat to attack. “I want to marry ‘Nee-chan! You said you didn’t want to, so I’m going to instead before you make her go away again!”
“I didn’t make anyone go away!” Gohan dropped into a fighting stance, still deigning to remain in his natural form.
“Yes, you did! You made her cry and she went away and didn’t come back until I went to find her!” Goten yelled, his aura expanding with his rage. “You made her go away! I won’t let you again!”
This time far too quick for Gohan to block, Goten charged – now aiming for his older brothers torso. His thick skull, hardened by genetic disposition, connected with Gohan’s abdomen and both brothers were sent crashing into the Earth below.
They collided with the ground, Gohan first, with a minor explosion. They were further depressed into the Earths crust as the loose soil and rock fell away from the impact, concaving into a crater roughly the size of Orange Star Highs football field. The teenage adversaries didn’t linger long enough to reach the lowest point of the crater, however, and bounded away from each other as the ground finished crumbling. They squared off from opposite edges of the depression, waiting for the other to move next.
Though it would have been nearly impossible for the untrained eye to follow, Goten moved first, leaping into the air above the crater. Gohan met him in the center, showing superior speed by arriving at the meeting point first without Goten’s head start. The brothers became a colorful smear as they, presumably, fought each other in bare handed combat. Only three beings on Earth – possibly four – could determine the movements for sure.
Much to his shock and horror, Gohan was the first to lose control of the situation and was sent crashing back to Earth, this time skidding along the ground superficially. After two impacts and a stabilizing handspring, he was back on his feet, spitting a mouthful of blood into the crater to his left.
Goten, who had been trained by Vegeta not to waste any opportunity, was upon his dearest elder brother before he could even regain his proper fighting stance. Gohan blocked the punch thrown, countered the kick that followed, but missed the second fist aiming for his skull.
“Augh!” he cried, dropping into their initial crater after a short, unintended flight. He hit the ground midway down and rolled the rest of the way, settling in the pits lowest point.
Goten hovered above him, gathering energy between his cupped palms. “Ka...”
Gohan struggled to sit up, wincing and holding his rib cage tenderly.
“...Me...”
Damnit, didn’t that Majin Buu thing count as training...?
“...Ha...”
The eldest Son child was at the mercy of his younger brother, years before expected. Goten’s power was increasing rapidly and the ball of chi between his hands was humming as it waited impatiently to be released.
“...Me...”
Gohan finally managed to stand and, knowing that he was too late to move out of the path of the beam, held his arms crossed in front of him to block it. He squinted his eyes shut and prayed as he waited for the inevitable impact.
“...Ha – !”
“HAA!”
The final syllable of the incantation became a strangled yelp and the collection of Goten’s chi dissipated into the atmosphere, lost. A short distance away there was another explosion, far smaller than the one Goten would have caused, and a cloud of dust passed over the rim of the crater.
Gohan squinted through the miasma and caught sight of a short, glowing silhouette. The gold ate away at the dusty cloud, chasing it away from the small body. “Trunks-kun!” Gohan shouted, never happier to see the spoiled son of his fathers greatest rival.
The now youngest Super Saiyan held his arms poised in chi release, golden flames licking at his small, muscular body. He relaxed his stance but didn’t lower his arms as he turned to Gohan, pleading with his eyes, “I swear! I didn’t know he was going to wish for that!”
Gohan lowered his arms, now scowling at the irresponsible child. “What were you doing gathering the dragonballs anyway? They’re not to be played around with, for reasons like this!” he pointed in the vague direction that Goten had hurtled in. Gohan was livid and his aura sparked to externalize it. “Now Goten has missed out on half of his life and I don’t even know if we can fix it!”
Trunks flinched, his hands now hanging down by his sides. “I’m sorry, Gohan-san...”
Gohan, removing the hand from his cracked ribs, tangled his fingers in his hair with a sigh of exasperation. “Alright...,” he acknowledged, not quite ready to accept apologies. “What did you wish for? Not for Videl-san to grow younger, I hope,” his stomach clenched as he realized he hadn’t been with Videl when the second wish had been made.
Trunks averted his eyes, digging at invisible ground with his toe. “I...wished for the Gravitron to be fixed before ‘Kaa-san or Otou-san noticed.”
A trembling laugh fell from Gohan’s lips. No more catastrophic wishes, that was good. “Alright, let’s collect Goten and go to Capsule Corps. Maybe Bulma-san can think of something...”
The Saiyan prince flinched again, but deigned not to argue. Oh, boy, was he ever going to be in trouble for this...
“Sure, Gohan-san,” he agreed. “‘Kaa-san is going to be so – ”
“– HA!”
With a silent expression of surprise, Trunks was sent flying away from the crater by a white-hot beam of chi.
“Trunks-kun!” Gohan shouted in horror as the young Saiyan was shoved out of his line of sight.
“That was no fair, Trunks-kun!” the deep, offended voice of Son Goten accused, still poised on the edge of the pit behind Gohan in attack stance. “You sneaked up on me!”
The young princeling lay in a useless heap yards away at the base of an inconvenient rock formation with a steady stream of blood leaking from his forehead. His breathing was heavy, yet steady, but he hardly seemed in condition to get back up, possibly for a few days.
“Trunks-kun?” Goten called, his golden eyebrows coming apart as the tension of his expression dissipated. His heart fluttered with guilt as Trunks didn’t respond with one of his usual offended barbs. “Trunks-ku – ”
A heavy force connected with his jaw and Goten was sent reeling backwards, mystified.
“Goten,” the low, graveled voice of a highly irritated Mystic Gohan growled. “That’s enough! You’re coming with me, now!”
Despite the guilt he felt over inflicting Trunks potentially life-threatening injuries, Goten was undeterred from his stubborn act of rebellion against Gohan. “No!”
“Goten,” Gohan warned again, his voice steadily dropping in octaves. “Come with me now or I’ll have to take you by force. Either way, we’re going to Capsule Corps.”
Goten dropped his hand from his chin and crouched low. “Make me.”
Gohan, standing upright, said, “Fine,” and disappeared.
Goten barely managed to ward off his older brothers attack, catching the first punch in his own fist. Then the second. The two siblings faced off, forcing against each others hands with chi-fortified strength.
“I’m...going to...marry...’Nee-chan!” Goten increased his energy and his body glowed brilliantly under its own power. Gohan increased his Mystic chi, forcing against Goten only as hard as he forced back. Sparks and ripples of energy spawned from their stalemate of conjoined hands as the Son brothers transcended sibling rivalry.
Calm as he ever was, Gohan retorted, “Over my dead body.”
~*~
Word Bank:
(None today. Go buy a dictionary.)
Footnotes:
[1] Dragonball reference, for those of us (such as myself) who spent years ignoring the history that took place before the start of Z. Early in dragonball, Goku meets Chi-Chi while on an errand for the Ox King (Gyu-Mao) and, after successfully bringing Master Roshi (Muten Roshi) to Mount Frying Pan to put out the huge forest fire that prevented the royalty from even getting to their own castle, Gyu-Mao offered Goku his daughters hand in marriage. Up until the 23rd Budokai, when he meets up with Chi-Chi again as combatants, he is under the impression that marriage is something edible. Chi-Chi, insulted that Goku doesn’t even remember his own fiancee, explains the concept to him and, after being assured that Chi-Chi would cook for him for the rest of his life, agrees to marry her after all. (They are, supposedly, married immediately after the tournament, approximately five years before the start of DBZ.) And that, my friends, is the...erm...romantic history behind Goku and Chi-Chi. Boy, I’ll bet the wedding night was a surprise...(He probably learned that marriage could, occasionally, be edible, though ^_~ )
Authors Note: Moved to college...homework...lazy...bringing an old fic back to life..so many other horrible excuses...forgiveness? ^^; Expect the next chapter to be slow in coming too. I just don’t have as much time to work on frivolous excuses for writing...as much as I love it. I’ll do my best to get it out this month, tho.
Someone mentioned the Super Saiyan versus Mystic transformation thing in one of their reviews...honestly, I don’t know for certain how the entire thing works. According to some, Gohan loses his ability to turn Super Saiyan after gaining his Mystic transformation from the Kai’s. I don’t know if this is ever directly stated in the series, myself, because I stopped watching after the entire scenario got too stupid to bear any longer, but I don’t really see why he wouldn’t be able to use his Saiyan powers. I mean, sure, he would naturally opt for his strongest form in battle, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he can’t access his weaker transformations when attempting to hold back, right? Well, just to be safe, I’ll stick to the Mystic/SS rules for now (it doesn’t really impact my later plans for his power anyway). Thanks for the concern, btw! Don’t want to mess it up in the third chapter, now do we?
I’m almost totally rewriting “Irony” for a new friend of mine and, once I’m finished with it, I’m considering posting it again. Some of y’all might remember it from a couple years ago before I took it down so, if you do, let me know what you think. If you don’t, just wait and see if a new fic appears on my list sometime (fairly) soon.
Not my best chapter ever, but I hope it’ll get better from here. I cut a small part out of the end because, not only was it not coming out the way I’d hoped, but it didn’t flow particularly well with the rest of the chapter. Not to worry, though. I’ll do something similar with it at the beginning of next chapter...promise. Anyway, I cut the last part out at the end and decided to leave the rest as-is. Still, not my best work ever...alas. Tell me what YOU think ^^
I considered doing something different with the plot while y’all were guessing, but that would have meant revamping the entire story and cutting out some of the romance. Being a big fan of romance myself, I didn’t particularly want to do that. If anyone wants to know what else I was considering, though, leave a note in your review and I’ll fit it into the authors notes next chapter. (HINT HINT HINT)
MVS
Next Chapter: Someone else’s turn to catch the blame ball...Professional help is needed...solutions are put on hold...and who’s going to tell Chi-Chi?
Disclaimer: ...Yeah, because this would ever happen.
Rating: PG-13 ( T ), for angst, violence, lust and a young Saiyan hybrid learning the value of naughty words.
Summary: “If ‘Nii-san won’t marry you, will you marry me instead?” With a misplaced wish on the dragonballs, this could turn into a problem. [Post-Buu, GV – but which G?]
Have fun guessing?
(For reference, all words in emboldened italics are significant of a flashback.)
~*~
Chapter Three: Up! Grows the Youngest Saiyan
Trunks stared at his best friend in utter horror for a long minute as the sky behind him cleared, the darkness carried away with the now petrified dragonballs to the far ends of the Earth.
“G-Goten...,” Trunks choked on his tongue. The violet-topped halfling was, for the first time since the Earth’s destruction, at a loss for snappy word play. “What did you do?”
“It worked? Trunks-kun, did it work?”
“I...wha...of course it worked, idiot!” Trunks shouted, finding his wind. Goten twirled in place, admiring the changes bestowed by the Eternal Dragon.
“Cool!”
If it had seemed like a bright idea at the time, Trunks would have punched his playmate in the face. As it was, Trunks valued the use of both hands. “Not cool! What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“I’m gonna go find ‘Nee-chan! She’ll marry me now!”
“No!” Trunks sputtered quickly. This was going to be hard enough to hide as it was, there was no need to show it off in public.
“Why not?”
“Because...aw, geeze, I’m going to get in so much trouble for this,” Trunks pinched the bridge of his nose in imitation of his mothers “thinking” stance.
“Trunks-kun, I wanna go marry ‘Nee-chan.”
“No!” Trunks shouted again, gathering his bearings. He crossed his arms over his chest firmly, shadowing his mother further. “You’re not going anywhere until we figure out how to fix this, mister!”
“But I don’t want to fix it! I wanna marry ‘Nee-chan!”
Damn, so single-minded. Trunks figured this had to be because he couldn’t fit more than one idea into his brain at a time. “You can’t marry Videl ‘Nee-chan.”
“Why not?”
“Cause she’s gonna marry Gohan-san, that’s why!”
“She is not!”
“Is too!”
“Is not! ‘Nii-san doesn’t want to marry ‘Nee-chan! He said so!”
The older halfling snorted with laughter. “That’s cause he’s a weak dork that doesn’t know what he wants. Otou-san said so.”
“You’re wrong, Trunks-kun! I am going to marry ‘Nee-chan!”
Trunks covered his head with his arms as Goten leapt into the air, stirring up a tornado of dust. “Wait – Goten!” he called after his friend, coughing as he accidentally inhaled some of the debris. Trunks squinted his watering eyes to the west where Goten was no more than a glowing golden dot on the horizon. “Great! This is just great!” he lamented, tossing his arms up in grand dramatic gesture. “I’m going to get in sooo much trouble for this!”
With another burst of golden chi, the half-human prince found himself once again chasing after his mutated subject.
~*~
“Shit!” Gohan stopped abruptly in midair as the atmosphere cleared, the dark smog of magic receding into the distance. He watched as it collected at one point to the east and, with an intense flare of light, imploded.
Peeking above the visor of his arm, Gohan further witnessed the implosion separate into seven identical fragments and scatter in seven opposite directions. He dodged one of the pieces as it flew past his head by a slim margin.
“Shit!” he cursed again. “They’ve already made their wishes.”
The demi-Saiyan investigator focused on the spot at which the Eternal Dragon had recently hovered. Two familiar chi signatures lingered there, each rising and falling in flux.
“Huh?” the newest development boggled the eldest hybrid. “What are they doing over there?”
The wind returned, confiding softly to Gohan no useful information. The same sweet, hollow nothings of pleasant weather and frosted drinks.
Gohan raised his chi slightly, prepared to continue on his mission with a cloudy understanding of the proceedings, but paused again. The chi signature most familiar to him spiked, as if aroused in battle.
Suddenly, it no longer seemed so familiar.
Of course, familiar or non, Gohan was about to meet it head on. It approached him with a speed that nearly matched his own and a fervor that heavily outranked his.
“Shit...”
~*~
Videl didn’t stop as the sun bloomed in the sky above her, restored to its lofty throne after the short-lived coup. She couldn’t even pause to spare the sudden change one of her usual wide-eyed responses, in far too much a hurry to find Gohan. If she were to ever catch up with her classmates superior speed and stealth, Videl would have to pull out all the stops and remain focused on her goal.
Oh, but Satan Videl wouldn’t be left behind. No this time. Not again.
This time, she would catch that super son of a bitch before he got himself killed again. No way she would be left behind again, waiting for him to prove his family and friends wrong by coming back alive. She had promised herself that, from the resolution of the Majin Buu episode on, she would stick to Son Gohan’s side as if conjoined by cement. For better or worse, in thickness or in stealth (as he was prone to both), till death do they part, Videl would never leave Gohan’s side. Never.
Now, if only he would stop trying to ditch her, the plan could work.
“I’m going to find you, Son Gohan! You can’t hide forever,” she declared, straining to release more of her chi like he had taught her. By expelling it in short, closely timed bursts, one could propel themselves forward at a greater rate. By increasing the intensity of the bursts, one could turn it up another notch.
Videl approached the speed of sound as she followed Gohan’s trail. Though she couldn’t detect chi with accuracy or at a distance, she could feel lingering traces of large amounts of it by simply passing her body through it. It was like following a river to the ocean in a boat. Eventually, by following the current, one would be led to the source. Judging by the heat of the chi she followed, Gohan wasn’t too far ahead of her...not by human versus Saiyan standards, anyway. Probably only a few more miles up ahead.
“Eureka!” Videl grinned, feeling the electrical current of Gohan’s life energy spark along her skin, leaving behind trails of goose bumps. Two figures, hovering above the ground, and, presumably, arguing, were within her sight. “Got him!”
~*~
“No, I won’t move out of the way!” Gohan snarled, tensed in fighting stance as he blocked his newest adversary’s way. “What the hell did you do, Goten?” He was far beyond watching his language in front of his somewhat younger brother.
Goten puckered his lower lip in his patented “don’t you love me anymore?” pout. “Me ‘n Trunks-kun got the dragonballs,” he explained without elaboration.
Gohan roved his eyes over his brother’s body. “I can see that.”
The only proof that the scantily clad young adult floating before Gohan was, in fact, Son Goten was his chi signature. And his Super Saiyan status, can’t forget that. Goten was now approximately six feet, give or take, from head to toe and fully...developed, if the torn remnants of the young hybrids training gi was any indication. The last few scraps clung to his hips and crotch by bulging seams, the only part of the former outfit that hadn’t shredded under the strain of the worlds fastest growth spurt.
Beneath a jutting spike of hair that, like all of his fathers native race, defied gravity, Son Goten the quasi-adult glared at his older brother with something close to irritation. “‘Nii-san, I want to go find ‘Nee-chan! Let me go.”
“Goten, why did you do...this?” Gohan gestured helplessly at Goten’s body. Goten looked down at himself as if Gohan were implying that something had gone wrong with the transformation. Finely chiseled muscles...higher power reading...large endowment...nope, all seemed to be in order.
“To marry ‘Nee-chan!” Goten sighed with exasperation as if this motive were the most obvious in the world. “Remember...?”
“If ‘Nii-san won’t marry you, will you marry me instead?”
The dinner table maintained its painful silence, attentions divided between the well-meaning child and his commitment-reluctant older brother. Videl, sparing Gohan from her glare for a few precious moments, blinked at Goten, all expression and blood drained from her face.
“Ah...that’s alright, Goten,” she finally spoke, a tentative smile twitching on her lips. “I don’t need to marry anybody.”
“But I want to marry you, ‘Nee-chan!” the child hybrid insisted with an eager grin.
“That’s really sweet, Goten, but...ah...”
Goten’s face fell at a slow, heart-wrenching pace. “You don’t want to marry me, ‘Nee-chan?” he sniffled. A single, enormous tear rolled down his cheek.
The initial stupefied lock down of logic melted away, guilt filling Videl’s heart like molten lead. “It’s not like that, Goten,” Videl placated softly, abandoning her chair to kneel next to the child. She wiped the tear away, absorbing it into the bare skin of her palm, and leaned in with meaningful eyes. “I just don’t think that you would really want to marry an old lady like me.”
“You’re not old, ‘Nee-chan! You’re pretty and...erm...not wrinkly at all!” his mother always loved it when he told her that. “Besides, even if you were, I’d still want to marry you,” he proclaimed, undeterred by reasoning.
Videl stroked the wet smear on his cheek with her thumb, a humoring smile on her lips. “Goten, do you even know what marriage is for?”
“Yeah, ‘Tou-san explained it to me,” one member of the party groaned, another looked politely cowed. “It’s when you live with a girl in the same house for the rest of your life,” he explained, proudly reciting his fathers assessment verbatim. “It’s not food,” he added. [1]
“Well...close,” Videl agreed, pressing her lips together to prevent her laughter from leaking out. “But there’s more to it than that, Goten.”
“Like what?”
“Well...you have to love the person you’re married to. More than anyone else in the entire world,” Videl finished, satisfied with her G-rated definition of marital relations.
Goten leapt up onto the seat of his chair, “But I do love you, ‘Nee-chan! More than anyone!” he proclaimed, staring directly into Videl’s eyes with adamant conviction.
Chi-Chi began chewing on her tongue.
“Oh, I’m sure that you love your family a lot more than me, Goten,” Videl inched away from Chi-Chi. “Besides, I’m talking about a different kind of love.”
“Different how?”
“Just...different, Goten. You won’t know what it feels like until you experience it.”
“I know I love you lots, ‘Nee-chan. And ‘Kaa-san says that ‘Nii-san needs to marry you quick or you’ll get away!” Goten wailed, throwing himself at Videl. He latched onto Videl’s neck as he lowered his voice to a whimper, “I don’t want you to go away, ‘Nee-chan, so marry me instead! You can sleep in my bed every night and I’ll share all of my toys with you!” there was desperation in his tears now.
Videl cradled the sobbing Goten, much as she had earlier in the day, stroking fingers through his thick spikes as his tears soaked into her shirt. The young boy clung to her as if she would slip away from him at any moment, leaving him with negative one family member yet again in his young life. Videl had witnessed this child cry over everything from a broken toy to a scrape that wouldn’t even have hurt a lesser child, but she had only witnessed him cry like this one other time. On the lookout, during a short session in which training had been suspended, when Gohan was still presumed dead.
“Please marry me, ‘Nee-chan!” the little boy sobbed. Chi-Chi restrained herself across the room, one arm reaching out to her youngest child. “‘Nii-san doesn’t want to marry you, so marry me instead! I don’t want you to go away because of ‘Nii-san again!”
Gohan squirmed, the thick material of his gi rustling against the wallpaper.
Unnoticed by the rest of the kitchen, Videl’s eyes took a darker sheen. “Shh...Goten, I won’t go away...shh...”
Goten slackened his grip on her neck and buried his face in Videl’s bosom, finding the spot closest to her body that he could possibly fit into. “Why don’t you want to marry me, ‘Nee-chan...?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Goten, it’s that I can’t.”
Without abandoning his position, Goten sniffled, “Why not?”
“Because I’m too old for you. You don’t want an old lady like me, even if I’m not all wrinkled yet,” she smiled into Goten’s spikes. “Besides, you’re too young to get married. You’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with the person you’re married to. If you were to marry them now, that would be a LONG time.”
Goten tilted his head back to look at Videl, keeping his nose and mouth in her chest. “What if I were older, ‘Nee-chan? Could I marry you then?”
Wiping away the last few drying tears with the back of her hand, Videl rubbed her nose against Goten’s playfully. “If you were older, Goten, of course I would marry you!”
“...So me and Trunks-kun found all the dragonballs and I wished to be old enough to marry ‘Nee-chan,” Goten explained with a grin that seemed far less innocent in his new form. “Now she won’t have to go away because you don’t want to!”
Gohan felt as if all the blood had drained from his body as his younger brother explained his motives for skipping puberty. He had lost a significant fraction of his life in order to steal his older brothers girlfriend. (Technicalities be damned for the moment.)
“So I’m gonna go find ‘Nee-chan!” Goten proclaimed, seeming to have declared the matter settled. He flared his energy to a golden hue, all the faster to reach Videl with, and disappeared from the view of the naked human eye.
But not Gohan’s. Without even being forced into his Mystic form, Gohan blocked the path of his singularly minded younger brother. “I don’t think so, Goten.”
Goten, his new teenage hormones now coupled with Saiyan battle instinct, glared with nothing short of annoyance. “She said she would marry me if I were old enough. I’m old enough now, so let me go find her, ‘Nii-san!”
“There’s more to it than age, Goten!” Gohan snapped, forcing his own hackles back down. “You can’t just marry a girl because you’re old enough to do it.”
“But she said she would!” Goten countered, attempting once again to push past his brother. Gohan pushed back, sending a confounded Goten sprawling backwards.
“Goten, you’re coming with me,” Gohan commanded. “Maybe Bulma-san can find a way to fix this mess before anyone else finds out.”
“No!” the once youngest Saiyan rebelled, flashing his golden aura in threat to attack. “I want to marry ‘Nee-chan! You said you didn’t want to, so I’m going to instead before you make her go away again!”
“I didn’t make anyone go away!” Gohan dropped into a fighting stance, still deigning to remain in his natural form.
“Yes, you did! You made her cry and she went away and didn’t come back until I went to find her!” Goten yelled, his aura expanding with his rage. “You made her go away! I won’t let you again!”
This time far too quick for Gohan to block, Goten charged – now aiming for his older brothers torso. His thick skull, hardened by genetic disposition, connected with Gohan’s abdomen and both brothers were sent crashing into the Earth below.
They collided with the ground, Gohan first, with a minor explosion. They were further depressed into the Earths crust as the loose soil and rock fell away from the impact, concaving into a crater roughly the size of Orange Star Highs football field. The teenage adversaries didn’t linger long enough to reach the lowest point of the crater, however, and bounded away from each other as the ground finished crumbling. They squared off from opposite edges of the depression, waiting for the other to move next.
Though it would have been nearly impossible for the untrained eye to follow, Goten moved first, leaping into the air above the crater. Gohan met him in the center, showing superior speed by arriving at the meeting point first without Goten’s head start. The brothers became a colorful smear as they, presumably, fought each other in bare handed combat. Only three beings on Earth – possibly four – could determine the movements for sure.
Much to his shock and horror, Gohan was the first to lose control of the situation and was sent crashing back to Earth, this time skidding along the ground superficially. After two impacts and a stabilizing handspring, he was back on his feet, spitting a mouthful of blood into the crater to his left.
Goten, who had been trained by Vegeta not to waste any opportunity, was upon his dearest elder brother before he could even regain his proper fighting stance. Gohan blocked the punch thrown, countered the kick that followed, but missed the second fist aiming for his skull.
“Augh!” he cried, dropping into their initial crater after a short, unintended flight. He hit the ground midway down and rolled the rest of the way, settling in the pits lowest point.
Goten hovered above him, gathering energy between his cupped palms. “Ka...”
Gohan struggled to sit up, wincing and holding his rib cage tenderly.
“...Me...”
Damnit, didn’t that Majin Buu thing count as training...?
“...Ha...”
The eldest Son child was at the mercy of his younger brother, years before expected. Goten’s power was increasing rapidly and the ball of chi between his hands was humming as it waited impatiently to be released.
“...Me...”
Gohan finally managed to stand and, knowing that he was too late to move out of the path of the beam, held his arms crossed in front of him to block it. He squinted his eyes shut and prayed as he waited for the inevitable impact.
“...Ha – !”
“HAA!”
The final syllable of the incantation became a strangled yelp and the collection of Goten’s chi dissipated into the atmosphere, lost. A short distance away there was another explosion, far smaller than the one Goten would have caused, and a cloud of dust passed over the rim of the crater.
Gohan squinted through the miasma and caught sight of a short, glowing silhouette. The gold ate away at the dusty cloud, chasing it away from the small body. “Trunks-kun!” Gohan shouted, never happier to see the spoiled son of his fathers greatest rival.
The now youngest Super Saiyan held his arms poised in chi release, golden flames licking at his small, muscular body. He relaxed his stance but didn’t lower his arms as he turned to Gohan, pleading with his eyes, “I swear! I didn’t know he was going to wish for that!”
Gohan lowered his arms, now scowling at the irresponsible child. “What were you doing gathering the dragonballs anyway? They’re not to be played around with, for reasons like this!” he pointed in the vague direction that Goten had hurtled in. Gohan was livid and his aura sparked to externalize it. “Now Goten has missed out on half of his life and I don’t even know if we can fix it!”
Trunks flinched, his hands now hanging down by his sides. “I’m sorry, Gohan-san...”
Gohan, removing the hand from his cracked ribs, tangled his fingers in his hair with a sigh of exasperation. “Alright...,” he acknowledged, not quite ready to accept apologies. “What did you wish for? Not for Videl-san to grow younger, I hope,” his stomach clenched as he realized he hadn’t been with Videl when the second wish had been made.
Trunks averted his eyes, digging at invisible ground with his toe. “I...wished for the Gravitron to be fixed before ‘Kaa-san or Otou-san noticed.”
A trembling laugh fell from Gohan’s lips. No more catastrophic wishes, that was good. “Alright, let’s collect Goten and go to Capsule Corps. Maybe Bulma-san can think of something...”
The Saiyan prince flinched again, but deigned not to argue. Oh, boy, was he ever going to be in trouble for this...
“Sure, Gohan-san,” he agreed. “‘Kaa-san is going to be so – ”
“– HA!”
With a silent expression of surprise, Trunks was sent flying away from the crater by a white-hot beam of chi.
“Trunks-kun!” Gohan shouted in horror as the young Saiyan was shoved out of his line of sight.
“That was no fair, Trunks-kun!” the deep, offended voice of Son Goten accused, still poised on the edge of the pit behind Gohan in attack stance. “You sneaked up on me!”
The young princeling lay in a useless heap yards away at the base of an inconvenient rock formation with a steady stream of blood leaking from his forehead. His breathing was heavy, yet steady, but he hardly seemed in condition to get back up, possibly for a few days.
“Trunks-kun?” Goten called, his golden eyebrows coming apart as the tension of his expression dissipated. His heart fluttered with guilt as Trunks didn’t respond with one of his usual offended barbs. “Trunks-ku – ”
A heavy force connected with his jaw and Goten was sent reeling backwards, mystified.
“Goten,” the low, graveled voice of a highly irritated Mystic Gohan growled. “That’s enough! You’re coming with me, now!”
Despite the guilt he felt over inflicting Trunks potentially life-threatening injuries, Goten was undeterred from his stubborn act of rebellion against Gohan. “No!”
“Goten,” Gohan warned again, his voice steadily dropping in octaves. “Come with me now or I’ll have to take you by force. Either way, we’re going to Capsule Corps.”
Goten dropped his hand from his chin and crouched low. “Make me.”
Gohan, standing upright, said, “Fine,” and disappeared.
Goten barely managed to ward off his older brothers attack, catching the first punch in his own fist. Then the second. The two siblings faced off, forcing against each others hands with chi-fortified strength.
“I’m...going to...marry...’Nee-chan!” Goten increased his energy and his body glowed brilliantly under its own power. Gohan increased his Mystic chi, forcing against Goten only as hard as he forced back. Sparks and ripples of energy spawned from their stalemate of conjoined hands as the Son brothers transcended sibling rivalry.
Calm as he ever was, Gohan retorted, “Over my dead body.”
~*~
Word Bank:
(None today. Go buy a dictionary.)
Footnotes:
[1] Dragonball reference, for those of us (such as myself) who spent years ignoring the history that took place before the start of Z. Early in dragonball, Goku meets Chi-Chi while on an errand for the Ox King (Gyu-Mao) and, after successfully bringing Master Roshi (Muten Roshi) to Mount Frying Pan to put out the huge forest fire that prevented the royalty from even getting to their own castle, Gyu-Mao offered Goku his daughters hand in marriage. Up until the 23rd Budokai, when he meets up with Chi-Chi again as combatants, he is under the impression that marriage is something edible. Chi-Chi, insulted that Goku doesn’t even remember his own fiancee, explains the concept to him and, after being assured that Chi-Chi would cook for him for the rest of his life, agrees to marry her after all. (They are, supposedly, married immediately after the tournament, approximately five years before the start of DBZ.) And that, my friends, is the...erm...romantic history behind Goku and Chi-Chi. Boy, I’ll bet the wedding night was a surprise...(He probably learned that marriage could, occasionally, be edible, though ^_~ )
Authors Note: Moved to college...homework...lazy...bringing an old fic back to life..so many other horrible excuses...forgiveness? ^^; Expect the next chapter to be slow in coming too. I just don’t have as much time to work on frivolous excuses for writing...as much as I love it. I’ll do my best to get it out this month, tho.
Someone mentioned the Super Saiyan versus Mystic transformation thing in one of their reviews...honestly, I don’t know for certain how the entire thing works. According to some, Gohan loses his ability to turn Super Saiyan after gaining his Mystic transformation from the Kai’s. I don’t know if this is ever directly stated in the series, myself, because I stopped watching after the entire scenario got too stupid to bear any longer, but I don’t really see why he wouldn’t be able to use his Saiyan powers. I mean, sure, he would naturally opt for his strongest form in battle, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he can’t access his weaker transformations when attempting to hold back, right? Well, just to be safe, I’ll stick to the Mystic/SS rules for now (it doesn’t really impact my later plans for his power anyway). Thanks for the concern, btw! Don’t want to mess it up in the third chapter, now do we?
I’m almost totally rewriting “Irony” for a new friend of mine and, once I’m finished with it, I’m considering posting it again. Some of y’all might remember it from a couple years ago before I took it down so, if you do, let me know what you think. If you don’t, just wait and see if a new fic appears on my list sometime (fairly) soon.
Not my best chapter ever, but I hope it’ll get better from here. I cut a small part out of the end because, not only was it not coming out the way I’d hoped, but it didn’t flow particularly well with the rest of the chapter. Not to worry, though. I’ll do something similar with it at the beginning of next chapter...promise. Anyway, I cut the last part out at the end and decided to leave the rest as-is. Still, not my best work ever...alas. Tell me what YOU think ^^
I considered doing something different with the plot while y’all were guessing, but that would have meant revamping the entire story and cutting out some of the romance. Being a big fan of romance myself, I didn’t particularly want to do that. If anyone wants to know what else I was considering, though, leave a note in your review and I’ll fit it into the authors notes next chapter. (HINT HINT HINT)
MVS
Next Chapter: Someone else’s turn to catch the blame ball...Professional help is needed...solutions are put on hold...and who’s going to tell Chi-Chi?