Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Sing No Songs ❯ On proper behaviour ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter three

"Shit!"

The train made an abrupt turn that almost caused the fifteen-year-old boy to fall headfirst into the aluminium bowl.

Levi Briefs was standing on one leg, pulling on a pair of frayed jeans. He tore off his white shirt and let it carelessly fall on the bathroom floor. Reaching into a plastic bag, he pulled out a black T-shirt that had the words 'IRON MAIDEN' written in large letters on the back.

With his school uniform in one hand he went back to his compartment and sank down in an empty seat by the window. It felt good to be out of the uniform. He had never liked the school that his parents had sent him to and during this last month he had starting to hate it with a passion. Outside the window the trees rushed by in blinding speed.

Following an impulse, Levi pushed the window open. He leaned his face close to the opening, letting the wind steal his breath for a moment. Then he started pushing his school uniform out the window. He was careful to get every article of clothing: his jacket, the west, and the blue tie too. They tore through the window and disappeared behind the speeding train, just like the trees.

The passenger opposite Levi gave him a short stare. Then he looked away, so that he would not embarrass them both by witnessing the youth's irrational behaviour.

Levi leaned back and tried to relax. Absentmindedly he stroked a knuckle on his right hand. The tiny cut had almost stopped bleeding.

Today he had been in a fight, his first fight ever. He and Will, another boy in the school, had been at odds for years. Being the son of the mightiest president in the world, Will had expected respect and obedience and usually he got it; but not from Levi. After years of enduring the other boy's hostility and overbearing ways, Levi had accepted his challenge for a fight.

Levi could still hear the loud cheering from the boys that had surrounded them as they stood ready in the usual battleground behind the gym. And then the cheers had silenced. A fight they might have cheered, but not this, not a beating. Something like that deserved only silence. At the end Will was bruised and bleeding. One of his eyes had already swollen shut and a disturbing amount of blood was pouring out of his broken nose. The son of the president of the North Continent might have to carry the marks from this fight on his face for the rest of his life. The only mark on Levi was a small cut on his knuckle from one of his opponent's teeth.

Levi would probably have been expelled if any of the boys had told the principal that he was the one that had beaten Will, but no one did. They called it a code of honour. It was not the first beating in the school's history.

Ever since he, nine years old, first had come to the exclusive boarding school, he had only wanted to get away. In the beginning he had missed his family all the time. True, his father and mother worked a lot, but he still used to see them nearly every day. When he was very young he had refused to go to bed before his parents had come home. He had missed his grandmother Bulma too. As a child he had often visited her and she had completely enthralled him with exciting stories about her adventurous youth.

He had soon learned that it was very important in the school who your parents were. All he had to do was to say 'Capsule Corporation', and his place in the hierarchy was decided. Not on the top, but close to it. He was definitely higher up then his roommate, who was the prince of some small island country.

Levi stroked the small cut again. Touching it made it sting. His parents, especially his mother Miranda, had often told him to never hit another person and never to use violence. He could understand this. After all, what kind of parents would want their child to get into fights? Martial arts had also been explicitly forbidden, ever since his mother had seen Vegeta instructing the boy on how to properly make a fist.

The sight of her son's small head attentively bent over Vegeta's fist had made her heart stop in her chest. Lavender-coloured hair, just like his father's, had obscured the boy's face and he seemed even younger than his five years. Vegeta had taken the boy's hand and, folding the fingers, he had formed it into a tiny fist.

"Bend your thumb in like this", he had said gruffly.

This lesson had been on Levi's mind at the fight this morning. The other boy was used to fighting, he had taken boxing lessons and he had used his knowledge frequently in the secluded yard behind the gym. Levi had not been sure that he would win. He had just made a fist and used it.

And he had liked it.

Afterwards, this was what had disturbed him the most. It had felt good to hit the other boy, good in his hands and good in his mind.

Levi shivered, and the passenger opposite him turned away once again.

The call from his aunt telling him to come home could not have come at a better time. Levi felt more at ease the farther away he got from the school.

I'm not going back, he thought. Whatever happens, I'm never going back to that school.

---

The presence of death lay heavily over the people gathered in the large living room. They talked in lowered voices and said very little. The occasional cheerful shriek from the children playing outside did nothing to brighten the mood. The guests had arrived this morning, with sombre faces and with carefully worded questions: 'How is she? How are you feeling? Is there anything I can do to help?'

They had all at some point gone to Bulma's bedroom to stay with her for some time. Levi too, had followed his father to stand helplessly by her bedside. She hardly seemed like she was breathing and it almost felt like an intrusion on her privacy to witness her like this. Trunks tried to come up with something to say, but he could not. Vegeta's silent presence had soon chased them from the room.

---

The TV was turned on but the sound was muted. Disconnected pictures paraded remorselessly in a never-ending stream.

Bra turned away from the flickering screen to face the people in the room. She straightened and cleared her throat. Her eyes were red around the edges, her hair a mess. She might have been the only one in the room right now that could broach the subject of the alien ship without showing disrespect to Bulma.

"I don't understand why they are just sitting there!" she said forcefully. "It's like they're waiting for something."

Bra let her eyes wander expectantly between the seven other persons in the room. Trunks was sitting on the couch next to his wife and their son. At her statement he frowned and shook his head in a bewildered manner. The boyish Goten was curled up in a large stuffed chair with Pan and Videl standing on either side of him. Mother and daughter exchanged questioning stares. Gohan stood by the large panoramic window, with a thoughtful look on his face.

"Perhaps," Gohan said slowly. "Perhaps they actually are waiting for something."

"Splendid," Bra said dryly. "And while they are taking their good time waiting, a lot of things are happening here on Earth."

She already held the remote control in her hand, and she used it to raise the volume on the TV.

The screen was showing large military tanks lumbering along a deserted city street. A disembodied voice that sounded very official, was reporting:

"...evacuation of East City is almost completed. The military forces of the North Continent are now entering the city. An eerie silence hangs over this formerly busy metropolis. A feeling of impending doom..."

Bra suddenly raised the control and turned the TV completely off. She took one step toward the doorway.

"Dad?" she breathed.

Everyone followed her startled gaze to where Vegeta was standing. No one had seen or heard him entering the room. He was dressed entirely in black and was standing in his familiar pose, with his legs wide and his arms crossed over his muscular chest. A ripple of unease went through the group. They found it nearly impossible to meet Vegeta's eyes.

"Well," he said. "Go on."

For a moment no one said anything, but then Gohan lowered his head in a slight nod.

"As we were saying, we have no knowledge of who the aliens are, or what they want."

The eldest Son had changed over the years from shy and nervous to calm and assured. His voice was low and confident, it made people stop and listen.

"As we just heard, the North has taken it upon themselves to send forces to East City, they are obviously preparing for the worst. I have heard reports that they are bringing enough nuclear missiles to destroy the ship a thousand times over. All across Earth the air-force are being armed with the deadliest and most devastating of weapons."

Vegeta gave a brief snort. Gohan paused, but nobody seemed inclined to interrupt him further.

"At the same time," Gohan continued, absentmindedly straightening his glasses. "At the same time the spokesman for the Union of All States is advocating a more peaceful approach. Since the aliens' arrival, continued transmissions have been sent, trying to make contact, but to no avail. About an hour ago I heard that they are preparing a Union space cruiser so that the spokesman might personally meet with the visitors. The situation is most unstable."

"I don't see what the big deal is." Goten suddenly spoke up. He straightened in his chair and fixed his elder brother with a frowning pout.

"It can only go two ways," Goten said. "If the aliens are friends, then everything is alright. If not..."

Goten abruptly raised from the chair where he had been sitting and turned to face the whole room. A wide, carefree grin spread over his open visage, a smile that seemed very inappropriate, considering Bulma lay on her deathbed just down the hallway. His voice rang out, filled with innocent self-assurance.

"If they want to mess with us, then they have come to the wrong planet! Together we have more power then anything in the universe, the gods included!"

The room seemed to darken and grow brighter at the same time. Deep shadows appeared and vanished and a crooked line of electricity ran across the floor, as Goten without warning ascended into super saiyan. His aura was almost blinding, and the sheer force whirling around him made the air move and the doors of the glass cabinet rattle.

"Power down."

No one could help but react to the great manifestation of power in the room. Pan closed her hands into hard fists and light sizzled around her knuckles. Strands of Trunks' light hair were flouting in the air.

"Power down, you idiots!"

Vegeta's angry voice struck down like a whip, causing several of the others to flinch. Immediately Goten released his form and the glowing aura surrounding him vanished.

The power whirling in the room had disappeared, but the air still seemed charged with electricity. Videl patted her hair to make it lay flat on her head.

"Fool." Vegeta gave the youngest of the Son brothers a disdainful stare. Goten visible cowered under the shorter man's scorn.

Vegeta was opening his mouth to say something more, but suddenly his attention appeared to be caught by something outside the room that no one else could detect. His dark eyes saw right through Goten as if he had lost all interest in the demi-saiyan. Then Vegeta turned on his heel and left, his footsteps almost completely silent, giving the stunned group the uneasy impression that he had disappeared like a ghost.

"He's right, you know," Gohan said, taking a deep breath. He seemed determined to pick up the scolding where Vegeta had left off.

"That was a rash and foolish thing to do. If the ship is equipped with ki- sensors there could have been no better way of letting them know we are here."

"Would that be such a bad thing?" Goten said defensively.

"Yes it would, and for a number of reasons. If they know about us, that would most certainly make us involved in whatever happens. In order not to have our hands forced, we should stay inconspicuous for as long as possible."

"I agree," Trunks said. "If the aliens are harmless I would prefer to let things continue just as they have been. I have responsibility for a large corporation. If we are exposed as something different than human, that would make business difficult, to say the least."

"True," his wife Miranda interjected. "Who knows what will happen if things start to heat up."

Levi sat silently on the couch between his parents. He felt shy and a bit uncertain in the presence of the adults, several which were half strangers to him. The whole situation felt like a surrealistic dream.

Since he had arrived home the only exchange that had felt completely normal had been when his father had greeted him with: "Do you have to wear that shirt?" This he had answered with: "But Dad, they're classics." Now Levi wished that he had obeyed his father and changed. He held his forearms self- consciously crossed over his stomach in order to obscure part of the picture on the T-shirt. The image showed a large demon, holding an enormous battle-axe, standing on a pile of dead bodies. The axe, as well as the bodies, was drenched in bright red blood.

The youth's heart was still pounding hard as a reaction from Goten's temporary transformation. Once, when he still had been a small child, he had seen his father undergo the same impressive change. But it was so long ago that he almost had started to believe that it never had happened. Levi forced himself to listen to what Gohan was saying.

"It is not only our own situation that we have to consider," Gohan said. "We should also remember that this is the first opportunity for Earth to establish a relationship with another civilisation. If we get involved right now it could mean that we might sabotage such a relationship."

Gohan paused expectantly and was met with nods and small sounds of agreement.

"It might be wisest to stay out of this as much as possible," he continued. "We'll leave it to the legitimate representatives of the people of Earth to deal with the visitors. Unless, of course, the aliens are hostile and we'll have no choice but to defend the Earth with force."

Again his words were met with a round of nods.

"It's decided, then."

All of a sudden a troubled look crossed Gohan's face. His eyes fastened on the empty doorway that Vegeta recently had occupied. He did not have to say anything; they all knew what he was thinking. Not everyone had agreed not to interfere.

As usual, Vegeta would keep his own counsel.