Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Slayer Mine ❯ Family ( Chapter 13 )

They had gotten all of the women and children out, safe, and had taken them to a shelter whose volunteers were glad to take the much abused and hurting little families into their tender care and understanding.

Giselle stood at the enterance to the shelter, Goten at her side, and bent down to touch the two tow-headed twins Piccolo had carried away from the horror that day, smiling at them. They had lost their mother in the chaos.

The woman had not been able to escape, tied hand and foot as she had been, locked in a distant room awaiting the cruel attentions of the facity's scientists she had not been able to reach the playroom with the others and get out.

Giselle had known the twins when they'd been infants and toddlers.

"Little ones," She said to them, their huge aqua eyes looking up at her as if she were a Goddess of some sort, full of love and awe and a little fear, "I know you've lost much. I'm so sorry. But the nice people here can help you…"

She turned to go, felt an ache in her chest for the little girls who had lost so much…lost their mother as she had once lost her's. She was just as much an orphan and they. She felt an tugging on her gi and looked back. Down. One of the twins was gazing up at her with fear in her eyes.

"Don't go!" She cried, and her twin took up that cry, tugging on her other side, "Please don't leave us!"

Her heart breaking, Giselle bent down and one knee and gathered the children to her, cuddling them close. How could she leave them? She thought and at the same time; How can I do other? I am the Slayer. I have no time for…

But those little hands pulling on her, tugging at her, those cries rending her heart, touched her in ways she never imagined. She could not bring happiness to every child left hurt and alone by that madman, Leander's, schemes, she knew. She picked up both children, balancing them upon her hips and strode into the old, brick-red building.

Goten, uncertain as to what, exactly, Giselle had in mind, followed in her wake, always in awe of her. He knew that he loved her. He had known from the moment she'd emerged from the bathroom, all clean and pretty to help him eat the pizza his mother had bought.

The little girls, afraid that they were about to be left behind, started wailing once more, hurting Giselle's senstive ears.

"Quiet!" She hissed at them between her teeth, "I'm not leaving you! Now settle down and let me figure this out…"

She did not bother to knock on the office door, but burst right in. She looked at the haggered-looking woman in the nun's habit with silver cross dangling upon her matronly bosom, and said; "I wish to take these two with me, Mother…"

The Mother Superior merely took off her glasses and began to wipe them clean with a clothe she had produced from somewhere in her flowing garments. At last she looked at Giselle and then at Goten, finally at the the twins sobbing, but not wailing anymore, clutching to Giselle's gi as if their lives depended on it. And perhaps it did.

"There are procedures, Miss Walker." She said, "And you are too young to adopt anyway…"

"I am taking them with me." Giselle said, her voice low, threatening, "I did not ask your permission…"

"Then, my dear," The woman said, just as calmly, not afraid to meet the Slayer's blazing eyes, "You would be charged with kidnapping."

Giselle struggled within herself for the right thing to do. She went to set the girls on their feet, but they clung to her even tighter than before, as if sensing her wavering. They would not be left behind! She glanced at Goten, silently asking him to help her with this.

"Wait here." He said, feeling horrible for the little twins, if they had to leave them to be raised by the volunteers at an shelter and not a mother and a father… He spun about and raced through the building, not even bothering to wait for the door to swing shut before he took to the air.

Giselle waited and it did not seem to take all that long for Goten to return. He was not alone. She was stilling standing in front of the nun's desk holding the girls when Goten, along with his father, Goku and mother, Chi Chi, walked in. Chi Chi's eyes lit up at the sight of the darling little doll-like girls, so much alike that she looked from one to the other in astonishment.

"They are so precious!" She exclaimed, reaching out to touch one on her rosy cheek, the girl moved away from her touch, but something in her eyes touched Chi Chi's heart and she moved to take the child from Giselle. "Shh…it's all right." She soothed the child, who had pulled away from her at first, a stranger, and then, a deep need within the little girl that would not be ignored caused her to wrap her small arms about Chi Chi and hug her tight.

Being the mother that she was, Chi Chi reacted in the only way she knew how. She held the little one close as a mother would, comforting her. Giselle set her twin down and saw out of the corner of her eye the girl slowly approach Chi Chi, who had smiled and opened her her arms wider to give the other child access to her soft, motherly embrace.

"Where are the papers and stuff?" Goku asked the nun behind the desk, he wanted to make his wife and son happy and if adopting these little girls would do that, than that is just what he would do. Besides, they could afford it, he knew, and they were cute…

"There are procedures…"

"Damn it!" Giselle cried, smashing her fist on the desk, "They've lost their mother and the only home they ever knew! Screw the procedures! Can't you just turn a blind eye, just this once?"

She looked at the young girl storming before her, her anger came from caring so deeply. Then at the man standing, his strong arm about his wife who was engrossed in the children bending down to their level and sighed. She could see that there would probably be no more loving family for the girls than this one.

She ophened a drawer and slide and sheet of paper across to Goku along with a pen; "You must sign this…and then your wife must sign."

"And then…that's all?" He asked, "We can take them home?"

She smiled. The twins, along with the rest of the women and children, had arrived just that morning. There had not been time yet to put their information into the computers. It would be as if they'd never even been there….

"That's it." She said, "You may wish to change their first names, though, just in case…"

Giselle knew what she was referring to. Though the liklihood of any of the madman's cronies surviving Vegeta's onslaught was dim, and the chance that they would come after the girls even dimmer, Giselle did not wish to take any chances. She nodded at Goku; "Change their names. It's for the best."

"Let's go home, kids." Chi Chi, taking each girl by the hand, after she had taken the pen from her husband to put her name next to his childlike scrawl, "I'll bake some nice chocolate cookies for you!"

Sniffing, but happy, the girls held onto their new gaurdian's hands and Giselle saw them glance at each other. She was shocked to hear as well as feel thir little voices in her head.

** We did it, sis! **

** Sure did! Now we have a new home and a new Mommy! **

** Giselle did it! She's the best! **

Giselle smiled and took Goten's hand, following the now slightly larger family outside.

A/N: Full thanks and credit will go to someone who can come up with names for the twins….