The skies are as blue as ever, the same as the yesterday and the day before that and probably tomorrow and forever. At first it was so beautiful, but after days and days of such breathtaking beauty, the emptiness within feels more like a black hole than ever before.
Goku feels so lonely.
He looks out over the horizon and feels a desire welling up within him, the place where it hurts most, to enjoy this beauty with somebody, anybody, and he remembers a time where he felt so contented while admiring something beautiful with the people he liked best but at the same time he doesn't remember and it sucks.
So he waits.
A bespectacled man with long silky black hair, tanned skin and smoky grey eyes complainingly crawls up the mountain, with his lean but muscular companion climbing patiently next to him. He has dark brown hair and extremely long-suffering brown eyes.
"Aaaaahn, what is this, couldn't Heaven have imprisoned him someplace better? All this climbing is giving me backache."
"Hmmm, and where would you have preferred, Kenjin?"
"I don't know, like under the earth? Or deep within a valley? You know, a place where I don't need to go against gravity? All this for my love of science…Daisuke, live up to your name and carry me*?"
Daisuke smiles sweetly in reply, holds Kenjin's head lovingly, and headbutts him. Hard. Kenjin reels over, mock sobbing and rubs his head, accusing his companion of being a lousy friend and an insult to his holy name. Daisuke ignores him.
"I could say the same for you too. If you had come out to exercise more often when I asked you to instead of holing yourself up in labs and dark depressing places you would have been fitter to climb this mountain, just like your name**. No, stop looking at me with teary eyes, I'm not helping you carry your bag either. And if you had asked Heaven nicely whether you could carry out experiments on the heretic we could have avoided climbing up the mountain like a bunch of sneaky heavenly army soldiers."
Kenjin laughs and laughs at the sneaky heavenly army soldiers' comment.
"But isn't it more fun this way?"
Daisuke smiles. Kenjin's laughter is contagious.
"It's more tiring. Look, you're already experiencing seizures from laughing."
Kenjin draws in a deep breath and happily leans on Daisuke. Daisuke takes Kenjin's bag for him, pretending like he never said that he wouldn't.
"Whatever. Anything is worth escaping the boredom of heaven. That bunch of old farts; they need some excitement in their life. I wish I was there 128 years ago, when there was that marvelous rebellion. Can you believe it? Barely more than a century later and everything is back to normal. And they go around saying like it's a good thing. 'Today does not mark the end of our troubles,'" Kenjin mocks, a dead-on imitation of Tentei's speech, "'but it does mark the beginning of the end, the end of the time of the terrible rebellion, and the beginning of a road to peace and prosperity***.' Honestly, why was I so unlucky? I totally don't belong in this era."
Daisuke nods. "Adversity brings people closer to each other, eh?"
Kenjin blinks at Daisuke. "When have I been that much of a lover of people? Heh, you don't know me as well as you think you do, eh Daisuke? It's just that chaos is more stimulating, is all. And come on, only 1821768263 more steps to go!"
"Hello, now what might you be?"
Goku blinks at the two young men standing in front of him.
"Huh?"
Kenjin scratches his head, and turns to Daisuke.
"This wasn't something I was expecting."
"Well, what were you expecting?"
Kenjin huffs at him. "Well, you know, something…"
"More monster-like, less chibi?"
"Who are you guys?"
Kenjin and Daisuke turn to look at Goku. Daisuke leans down and speaks gently.
"Hey, kid, what's your name?"
Goku smiles as if Daisuke had just said that he had a 500-year supply of food, instead of asking for Goku's name. "My name's Goku! What about you, uncle?" Goku frowns a little. "I can't remember anything else other than my name though." Goku looks pleadingly at him. "Uncle, can you take me out of here? There's nobody here and when the white stuff comes it's all cold and quiet. I don't like it."
"Hey kid, I'm not sure if we can do that. But don't worry, okay? Me and my friend, we'll try and talk things over, and see if we can do something." Daisuke feels a surge of longing to ruffle Goku's hair, but the talismans on the cave makes him think twice.
Daisuke gets up and turns to Kenjin. "Hey, so what are you going to do about—"
Kenjin fires a shot at Goku's golden diadem from a gun. Bang bang, he mouths cheerfully.
It doesn't kill Goku, but within a few moments Seiten Taisei emerges, and his aura almost floors both Kenjin and Daisuke. However, the cave keeps him sealed in, and all he can do is hiss and roar in anger, his arm outstretched, trying to claw the guts out of them, but all in vain.
Daisuke sputters and gets himself out of reach from Seiten Taisei's deadly claws. He turns to Kenjin and mutters, "You crazy bugger, don't you ever think clearly before doing something?"
Kenjin barely hears him as he takes out his tape recorder and his research materials. "Oh yes, yes I did, it was while you were talking to him, you know? And mmm, this is fascinating, all that power, but its all scattered and all angry…"
Daisuke sighs as Kenjin enters crazy scientist mode. Not much use talking to him in the next half an hour.
"Hello, this is Kenjin, talking to Subject No. 4529, Seiten Taisei Son Goku, born from a rock on Mount Kaka, brought to Heaven when he was a child and was placed under the care of Konzen Douji, yada yada, please refer to pages 3-5 of notes. Murdered hundreds of heaven dwellers, so on and so forth, refer to pages 7-9 of notes. Was imprisoned on Mt. Gogyo for 500 years for his crime. Now, Seiten Taisei-san, would you please tell us, why are you so angry?"
He gets a scream of animal rage in reply. Kenjin continues talking to the tape recorder.
"Subject seems to be incapable of logical thinking and coherent speech. With the golden diadem on, Seiten Taisei resembles that of a terribly adorable small child. It might be possible that Seiten Taisei, proud of its power, to be sealed away by the gods, could be holding much hatred and anger for what they did. You know what they say, with great power, comes great insanity, hee hee! The resulting liberation from its seal could partially be the reason why it goes berserk. Berserk with the smell of freedom. Is that true, Seiten Taisei-san?"
Kenjin leans forward a bit too much and almost gets his eyeballs ripped out. Daisuke jerks him back just in time. His glasses are not so lucky. Kenjin continues looking at Goku through his mad blurred world.
"Ooh, those were my favourite glasses. Ah, it is alright. I am very forgiving. Anyway, back to topic. For Son Goku to become the next Toushin Taishi, he would need enough power to destroy many monsters, but enough sanity to prevent him from attacking his own people and to be under control. As it is, he has either too much sanity or too much power. Now the problem would be to create a diadem that allows Seiten Taisei's power to mix with Son Goku's personality, but just enough so that it doesn't overpower Son Goku's personality in the process. Of course, this means that Seiten Taisei's bloodthirsty personality will be in conflict with Son Goku's personality, and possibly cause him much mental distress, but ah, who's not crazy nowadays?"
Kenjin switches off his tape recorder, rifles through his immense bag, and takes out a stack of notes and starts chanting from it. Daisuke sees a bright light and the golden diadem appear back on the kid's head. Kenjin collapses on the ground from exhaustion as he feels the divine power being sucked from him. All of a sudden, the roaring monster is replaced by an innocent sleeping child and a quiet sense of pity washes over Daisuke.
"Kenjin."
Kenjin gets up weakly and looks at him. "Yes?"
"Must you do this?"
Kenjin looks at him. "You love kids, don't you. Well, think of it this way, the sooner we can get him out of there, the happier he will be. Look at him; he looks so lonely in there."
Daisuke remains quiet. Kenjin sighs, and says quietly, while sticking an extremely long syringe through the cave bars into Goku's body, "Thank you for coming with me. I really appreciate it. So, please, continue supporting me." He stores Goku's blood in a capsule and keeps it away, and stores it away in his huge bag.
Even when he sees Kenjin do crazy things, sometimes almost evil things, he cannot bring himself to hate him. Daisuke stares at Kenjin, and says quietly, "Then you must prepare yourself for the day I will go against your plans."
Kenjin smiles delightedly. "Absolutely. I'm quite looking forward to it actually…" He hums and proceeds down the mountain, satisfied and happy with today's research, tripping over his own feet blindly many times in the process. Now, to think up psychoLogical teSts which I caN carry out… and oh, don't forget to hiRe a dragon nExt time, or fInd a way to briBe or blackmail Daisuke to carry me…****
Daisuke looks down at the sleeping Goku. "Don't worry, kid, we'll be sure to come back." Daisuke looks around, gathers a few rocks, and spells on the ground, 'Be back soon' and runs down the hill to stop a rolling Kenjin from breaking his neck.
And Goku sleeps, where in dreams he is not alone.
*Daisuke means 'Great Helper'.
**Kenjin means 'Healthy person', literally.
***I'm sorry, but I had to get inspiration from a speech from a person in high power, and Obama was the first person to come to mind. So if some of you found these sentences slightly familiar, I took them from Obama's speech on economic recovery. I honestly don't dislike Obama, I quite like him actually.
****Kenjin's thoughts will be in varying bold, italic and regular font, because he clearly doesn't think like a normal person.
I had written a story with the same idea, but now that I look back at it, it was very poorly developed and there was hardly any plot or thought given to it. I'm hoping in this fic that I'll be able to explore Goku's character more in-depth (such as the reason behind Seiten Taisei's anger. Seriously. WHY is he so angry?) and the situations that would arise or change with Goku's disappearance. 'Would the ikkou be as together as they were, would Sanzo be who he was, would…' and the list continues. Right now a lot of focus is given to the two OC characters, I honestly don't know how it happened, they were just meant to be a catalyst, but for some reason they took over my mind with their nonsense. Hopefully as the fic progresses focus will shift back to the adorable Saiyuki characters.