Can't Help Bleeding Thick
by Moonraker One
A/N: Holy crap, I returned to writing Dragonball Z fics. How long has it been? Wow.
CHAPTER ONE
Stale air thickened by the subtle yet powerful odor of danger—not the kind you felt approaching, the kind you felt inside of you—entered with each hasty breath from the lungs of several potential unwantables of society. The darkness of the night crowded inward, penetrating deep into the hearts of these seven mortal men in such a way as to possess them, in very much a similar manner as a horror movie ghost. Only a full moon shone overhead; all stars found themselves concealed beneath an almost painful cover of overcast. Standing in the presence of literally hundreds of the resting dead (they were in a cemetery, after all) chilled their spines, making them feel as though they'd been shoved into an invisible freezer, that kind of bone-chilling sensation you associated with spiders crawling up your back towards the soft skin of your neck for that fatal bite, only this night the spiders too feared for their lives. A slew of emotions, each person's experience different yet intangibly connected through their unique silent horror within, passed through the hypothalamus regions of each person, and through their vessels into their target cells. The leader of the crew had found that his gun—a nine millimeter police issue baretta stolen from precinct stock—provided him with merely the necessary amount of courage to continue foward.
With a series of sharp, ragged breaths likely to cut the invisible sheath of the night and reveal the cowards for who they really were, he cleared his throat and regarded his rag-tag bunch of misfits. "A-Alright," he stammered, almost immediately composing himself. He cursed his inability to remain calm; power through fear had to be exerted by a confident, unshakable leader lest he find himself staring down the barrel of betrayal pointed by one of his own team. "Let's go and see what the hell is in this damn shrine!" His faux-powerful words guided the rest of the group on, even if against their better judgment.
"B-Boss," a shivering gangmember cried out in a whisper, hoping his crackly voice hinted at his desire to leave this ungodly locale. If that didn't do the trick, his trembling body certainly dropped clues. "Wh-Why don't we just ta-take off? I mean, wh-why can't you tell how creepy this place is!"
The leader merely glared at his teammate, disapproving of his lack of backbone. In reality, he had as much cowardice as his friend but compressed it well. "Because!" he snapped, trying to keep his speech from breaking up as it nearly did on several occasions earlier in the evening. "I'm tired of these little robberies! All we've done is rip off these tiny gas stations and stores, and it don't pay damn enough!" he pointed, with the barrel of his pistol, at the building ahead. "See that?" None could do so clearly. "That's the legendary Son family shrine! All the members of that family are buried there! We're bound to find some awesome stuff to sell in there! Now get a move on, or I'll fucking shoot you!" His words, if nothing else, forced them on.
Moving forward brought into visible sight one of the most recognized structures in the entirety of West City—the legendary Son family shrine. Centuries prior, a hero from outer space had saved the world from evil countless times; now, his remains and personal belongings, as well as those of every member of his family since him, have been laid to rest in a museum-like environment. The old marble building, the very center of the entire cemetery, still possessed grandiose architecture, reminiscent of ancient Greece. The title—Son Family—emblazoned on the top showed how loved these people were in life. In a city devoid, it stood as a symbol (albeit a largely ignored one) of hope.
"We're in business, gentlemen!" Three separate crowbars came into use upon the speaking of the leader. One of the group, Matomaru Shuriochi, shoved the uncurved end into the sealed door, forcing the shrine's entrance open—violating the sanctity of a legendary resting place—with a singular kick to the other end of the bar. He entered the shrine first, taking in the sights—completely oblivious to the fact that the group began to gather behind him.
"Guys, what're you waiting for? Let's gra..." before he could finish his statement, he saw the leader immediately in front of the others, who looked somewhat frightened. Expressions betrayed desire not to be where they stood. Only Matomaru saw the evil conspiring. His street sense kicked in, and he at once realized, like a flash of horror, what was about to happen. "Kodaka, you're not serious."
Kodaka, the leader, looked somewhat surprised. "I'm not?" He brandished his pistol at Matomaru. "Were you when you caught the eye of Namozaki-sama?"
"Kodaka," Matomaru desperately argued, backing towards the posterior end of the room. "I can't help it that he's sent me on more jobs than you! I didn't want the last job, it didn't pay enough!"
Kodaka sneered. "Well, now nothing can stand in the way of me rising to the top!" He squeezed off a single shot.
The horror on Matomaru's face mimicked the way he saw time slow down. Everything faded to shades of red as he stumbled backward and collapsed into a glass case, breaking it and sliding down to a seated position, leaving a streak of blood on the way down. The grandiose chamber, now defiled, saw a series of caskets and the dying frame of Matomaru seated with raspy, weak breaths escaping him in the form of life itself. The name above the casket next to which the now broken glass case stood displayed defiantly the resting place to which Matomaru would have as his temporary home: Son Goku.
"Now you get to rest next to the legend himself!" chortled Kodaka. He regarded his group of gangmembers. "Well? Did I stutter? Let's take shit and leave!" They proceeded to loot the gravesite, save for a final act of vengeance by the leader. The garments of Son Goku—an orange and dark blue martial arts gi—he folded and sat in the lap of Matomaru.
As darkness closed in, the dying teenager felt a pair of hands lift him off the floor.
He found himself in a limitless expanse of black. Whether dead or hallucinating he did not know. Suddenly a force hit him in the chest, taking his breath away. A voice shouted at him, "HOW DARE YOU DEFILE MY FINAL RESTING PLACE?" At once a very muscular figure garbed in the clothing he saw clasped his hands around Matomaru's neck.
"Aaahh!" The shock of it drove him out of the vision and back into reality. He attempted to move but found a tremendous amount of pain waiting for him just to move. A nurse pushed him back down. His eyes scanned the room; it seemed a rather uneventful hospital room. No decorations, just the usual equipment and a television on the ceiling. He looked to his right and saw a familiar figure. "So...Sotoko?"
A plume of brown hair cascading down a curved feminine neck in various directions struck him as a sight for sore eyes. From her soft, comfortable features to her ice-smooth curves, Sotoko Kamanaka inspired lust in many different men in her life (although not of her own choice). She regarded Matomaru with an alchemist's mixture of severe anger and motherly worry. She rubbed his forehead. "You idiot," she said in a comforting voice. "I almost lost you. You've been out for about five days...we thought you'd suffered brain trauma but the docs couldn't find anything."
He coughed. "Five...days?"
She shook her head. "You were shot in the chest, just a few inches from your heart. You're damn lucky you're alive."
"Oh, god," he swore, "I feel like I've been shot out of a cannon."
"You may actually get to leave the hospital tomorrow," she said, smiling. "The doctors are absolutely amazed you recovered this much in this time." She sat back while the nurse explained his condition to him. When they were gone, and she felt they were safe, she leaned in and whispered, "now, this is your prime opportunity to get out, you dumbass. Kodaka almost murdered you and the fact that you're still alive is your chance to get the fuck away from this life."
"No lie, Sotoko," he agreed, surprising her. "I don't care what happened before. I'm distancing myself as far away as possible from the criminal underworld." He leaned his head back. "But right now...I'm so tired..." Within moments of finishing that sentence he fell asleep.
Once more, Matomaru felt his soul falling into something of a bottomless pit. Except this time, he found himself in a very different place from the dull void he almost died in. He saw, out of the darkness, a circle—a tunnel exit, of sorts—emerging, expanding rapidly as he fell towards it. Emerging from the tunnel, he found a grassy plain about to slam into him—although, once he landed, he found there was no slam. That wasn't the extent of the strangeness; the sky shone green and the grass a logic-defiant blue.
"Wh...what are you?!"
He looked for the source of the pained voice. He saw a figure, and wondered if he currently was hallucinating. White skin with no hair, bizarrely misshapen ears, a long tail; this figure certainly couldn't pass as human. Furthermore he (it?) stood only a little under five feet tall. His face contorted in a petrified horror. He seemed cold as a stone against the winter wind. Matomaru recognized the man as a heartless mass murderer—despite not knowing how he could possibly possess such knowledge.
"You want to know, Frieza?" Another voice cried out in anger. Matomaru looked, and could have fallen over; it had been the same man who attacked him in his previous vision, who he recognized from the shrine. His fighting gi sat in tatters from combat. His body, a perfect symbol of masculinity—rock-hard tan skin decorated with Greek god muscles adorned with bodybuilder tone—saw a grand assortment of slight and major wounds both bleeding and not. His hair—a punkish, defiant bundle of spikes pointing in separate directions (strangely golden as opposed to its usual black)—seemed slightly red from blood spilled. This man, was Son Goku, whose final temple he helped ruin. "I am the answer to all who cry out for peace. I am the hope of the innocent. My name is Goku! I am an ally to good! AND A NIGHTMARE TO YOU!" Then, the two power-hungry powerhouses flung themselves at one another. The sheer force seemed ready to tear existence apart.
As abruptly as it had begun, it ended. He found himself once more in a black void, infinitely expansive in all directions. The man he previously saw in combat stood before him—this time with no wounds or tattered clothing—with a somewhat undeterminable expression on his face. "You may have invaded my family's grave, Matomaru, but that's not the thing that astonishes me," Goku said to the youth.
"You're...not angry at me for allowing the vultures in?"
"I might have been at first, but what good comes from holding a grudge?" he took Matomaru by his shoulder and led him on. The blackness gave way to a kaleidoscope of various images, all of which involving Goku and his various journeys throughout his natural life. The youth glanced amazedly at each image before him. "You see, while I saved the Earth from destruction a number of times, evil keeps coming. It never sleeps and it never takes a break."
"So, what is it you're getting at?"
"I may have moved on to my final resting place, Matomaru, but it is your turn now. Put on my old colors and take my power; someone needs to be there for the Earth. This age lacks heroes, and because of it the people are suffering. Hate and crime have skyrocketed."
Matomaru was taken aback. "But Goku! You saw what happened! I was part of the criminal underworld that invaded your resting place! Why trust someone like me, and more importantly," he thought of his next words carefully, "what's in it for me?"
"With my strength, Matomaru, you can accomplish two goals at once: you can make a difference in the world—like you wanted to before you were seduced by evil—and get revenge on those that killed you. Besides, haven't you always wanted to be better than you are?"
He felt weighed down by the hero's words. Goku patted him on the shoulder. "Don't give me your answer now. You'll know what to do when you make your decision." And then he found himself thrust out of the vision and back to reality. When he awoke, he found himself in the back of a car.
"Wha...? Where am I?" He looked in the rear-view mirror in the front seat. "Sotoko? How did I get here?"
"The hospital discharged you, and we got you in my car because you're going to get some rest at my place for a little while," she explained. "Then, you idiot, you're going to find some legitimate means of making money!"
"Driving a hard bargain, Sotoko," he uttered, then fell asleep.