Notes: "Umarete Yokatta" 【生まれてよかった】- 'I'm glad you were born'.

Warnings: Mostly Fluff, Smut (in later chapters), Yaoi/Shounen-ai, Canon Overhaul, Interspecies Romance, Married Life, Expletives, Random Stories

Disclaimer: Dragon Ball/Z/GT/Xenoverse/Super/etc.belong to their respective owners. Dragon Ball Retro, however, is my derivative brainchild, created for my personal pleasure & sublimation. I own nothing except this derivative fanwork which I do not profit from.

Story #20:

"Umarete Yokatta"

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
And if by chance we find each other,
It's beautiful.

-F.S. Perl

"Homecoming"
(How Gohan & Piccolo's daughter Tulip Daimaoh Son and her grandmother Chi-chi meet for the very first time.)

-x-

When Tulip Daimaoh Son was born on Ersatz Earth, Gohan and Piccolo thought that she was a "he".

Sharing a perfect balance of physiological attributes of both parents; one half human-half Super Saiyajin and one Super Namek of a rare hybrid species but both technically male, they simply presumed that they could only have male offspring.

Based on the child's anatomy alone, it was almost impossible to tell at such a young age. Her genitals were Namekian, meaning whatever predominant gender she was meant to have would be hidden beneath a layer of protective skin and would only become visible when needed in her sexual developmental years. Other than that, she had androgynous features like most very young children, long untamed hair echoing Gohan's own when he was a toddler, and was garbed in the traditional *E2 uniform which didn't lean towards male or female appearances but stayed perfectly neutral; purposely designed that way to steer clear of the temptation of unwanted biases.

Tulip had accelerated her growth at will so that even if she was barely two Earth years old when she did it, she could have passed off as a four-year-old, but one of prodigious intelligence beyond her years and already fluent in the Namekian, Earthian, Saiyajin, and Ersatzian languages even before birth. Of course, being exposed to none other than her parents ninety percent of the time led her to unconsciously emulate their manner of speaking, which in spite of their commendable decorum (most of the time), was still heavily comprised of brusque male jargon, especially in situations when tensions were high. And Tulip did speak very much like Gohan and Piccolo, normally calm and calculating, sometimes loud and hysterical and high-pitched, but her manner was always masculine; from her intonation to her choice of words, simply because that was the only way she knew.

Both her parents couldn't be faulted that Tulip herself grew up in *E2 where prejudice of any kind was strictly forbidden; discrimination and restrictions in gender included. The fact that Piccolo was hermaphroditic which made him both her "mother" and "father" at the same time was also nothing out of the ordinary in the said utopia, therefore, she simply didn't think that she needed to be classified and was never oriented on the same grounds of gender differences; a practice only ever given as much emphasis on Earth than in any other sector of the galaxy.

And so, Tulip never knew that by "human standards", she was technically considered female.

-x-

"Tulip-kun! Piccolo-sama!"

Gohan rushed in, mindless with panic and rage. But the moment his foot crossed the threshold of the arena's platform, a wall of solid gravitational energy repels him, throwing him several metres backwards and high up into the air. Pain shot up his spine as his back hit the ground full force but he dismissed it, springing right back to his feet and testily wiping the blood oozing from his nose. He grit his teeth as his violation is instantly registered as a foul and points are automatically docked from his team. The dull ringing in his ears that began when he saw his mate and offspring take a deadly hit just moments ago only seemed to get louder from there.

His barely two-year-old child struggled to stay balanced on wobbly knees as she coughed up and sputtered purple blood; while Piccolo who took the brunt of the concentrated plasma bomb, now lay face down and lifeless on the stage. The longer Gohan watched helpless from the sidelines, the more his irises burned and flooded with luminescent bioelectricity, and with it, the more his power levels spiked.

/Warning: Fighter Gohan Son Jr./

/Energy levels exceeding acceptable limit for non-combatants currently outside the battle platform./

/Power down, now./

"Please, Papa!" Tulip spat out excess blood and saliva. "Don't embarrass us!" was all his child deigned to say, narrowing garnet orbs at her demi-Saiyajin father as she hastily wiped her lips. It snapped Gohan out of mid-ascension more effectively than the AI referee, and his beloved mate and offspring came back into focus through a blurry haze, still locked inside the arena in battle.

Tulip straightened up to all full three feet and two inches of her tiny frame to face their remaining opponents whose menacing faces were already celebrating victory. The tiny Namek-Saiyajin hybrid wasted no time. A ferocious battle cry exploded from her the very next moment which snaps Gohan's fuzzy brain into alertness, his warrior instincts recognizing it only too well as a harbinger of mayhem and destruction. He barely had time to shield his eyes with his arms, as a blinding flash of light followed by a shockwave of immeasurable magnitude expanded outwards from that epicentre, pulsing right through the stage's force field and pushing him back a good several metres, while a huge percentage of the spectators and other fighters on standby were thrown off their seats completely. When the ground had finally stopped rumbling, Gohan looked up again and his jaw fell slack.

Tulip had turned Super Saiyajin.

The hulking opponents who were looming over her only moments ago, now lay felled on the far end of the stage. They didn't look like they were going to get back up again. Gohan gaped at Tulip whose entire body was still bathed in golden light, sparking with unspent energy. He had no idea that their child was a Super Saiyajin, and apparently a terrifyingly strong one at that if the enemies were knocked out from Tulip's transformation alone. He could only imagine how much more powerful that ascension must have been at close-range and without the force field dampening it. A sharp buzzer rang out as digits flashed beneath respective images of the opposing team's faces on the screens overhead, Gohan's eyes automatically sought out Piccolo's own stats flashing beside his and Tulip's images. His Namek had already been motionless on the ground for more than thirty seconds.

"P-Piccolo-sama…" Gohan barely choked out, hot tears prickling his vision as he desperately sought their mental link but not finding it active at all. "H-he's not breathing…!"

"I got this!" Tulip's voice broke through his trance once again, calm and clear despite the raw rage still lacing it. Piccolo was turned over to lie on his back and two tiny hands rested over his chest where a ball of light erupted from the connection, dispersing in a smaller more controlled shockwave. Gohan realized that Tulip had just fired Piccolo's heart with a very precise kiai blast. Almost simultaneously after, his mate sucked in a sharp, raspy intake of air, choking on his first breath after some endless seconds of being technically dead.

By the time Piccolo's coughing fit had subsided, tears were streaming down Gohan's face as he watched his beloved painstakingly get to his feet, his uniform torn in too many places.

"D-don't you two… dare–ever!- scare me like that again!" Piccolo and Tulip flinched.

'Gohan,'Piccolo's weak voice floated up in his mindscape. 'I told you, I'm not that easy to get rid of.'

"Right!" The half Saiyajin scoffed, eyes blazing. "You were fucking dead-! for a fucking-! Whole minute! So fuck you!"

"That's really mature," Piccolo muttered. "Tulip can hear you cussing."

"Sorry," Gohan exhaled. Then he began to heave uncontrollably, eyes brimming with tears all over again. "It's just that- you werefucking dead! A-and, gods. I was so fucking scared…!"

"Ugh!" Tulip crumpled her face. "Could you guys please hold out on your weird lovey-dovey dorkiness, at least until we're back in our private quarters?!" Only then did the two adults become aware of every monitor in the stadium projecting different angles and close-ups of them and how the audiences were hooked to their compelling exchange like a primetime soap opera.

Gohan bit his lip in an effort to contain the tears as his face flushed, but as soon as the force field was deactivated, Piccolo jumped down and grabbed him into his arms, locking on to his lips in a passionate kiss. Tulip groaned as the scene received a deafening standing ovation and she hurriedly teleported herself away.

-x-

It was when they returned to Earth after an unplanned two-year absence that Chi-chi and the rest of the Z-Senshi family had the pleasure of first meeting Gohan and Piccolo's child. And since she was introduced as "Tulip-kun" (using a male suffix), everyone presumed she was a male, and no one questioned it even if some of them could plainly see that her feminine features stood out.

After Gohan and Piccolo alighted from their craft, everyone who had been waiting for them collectively gasped when a third figure emerged to stand between them –a small child that looked to be around four years of age- with shy brown eyes and vibrant green skin. And somehow, everyone already had a very strong inkling of who the child was, although the 'believing' part was another thing.

Chi-chi, who was on the forefront of the assembly, didn't see the child right away because her eyes were on her son and the Namek. She had been waiting for Gohan since the day he left with Piccolo, in what she interpreted as no less than his "rebellious elopement" with the accursed alien. Both her son and the Namek simply disappeared to some godforsaken location of the universe where no one could follow and no one had any clue as to when they'd come back or if they would even come back at all. It took three years, three long years, of waiting and she was more than prepared to go all levels of ballistic on them both for all the suffering they had put her through. Every single day in two of those three years she cried in anger and heartache, which eventually turned into bitterness and depression, and slowly accrued into one massive death cloud of revenge that had almost completely swallowed up her soul.

If she didn't have Goten to ease and comfort her, she was certain she would have lost her sanity and killed things. First of which, would be any seven-foot tall green aliens that happened to fall within her sights.

The aggrieved woman began to stalk forward ready to unleash all of hell's wrath upon the couple, when she finally noticed what everyone else already did. A child whose eyes reminded her so much of Gohan, eyes which were now wide and blinking up at her in unmistakeable fear, tiny hands reaching out to grab onto each of the two grown-ups flanking her and clutching tightly as she recoiled a little.

Chi-chi's heart stuttered in her chest, her feet stopping dead in its tracks.

Gohan knelt down and smiled at his three-year-old. "Tulip-kun, that beautiful and strong woman right there is my mother, and your grandmother, Chi-chi." When Tulip refused to budge and only clutched onto him tighter, he gently prodded. "I'm sure she would love to meet you, so don't be shy, go ahead and greet her."

"B-but-"

Piccolo tugged at Tulip's connected hand, effectively coaxing her to meet his eyes. He grinned down at her, showing a bit of fang. "Listen, darling. Just walk up to her and give her your best smile. I promise, she will love you. No one possibly can't."

The little hybrid looked doubtful but nodded all the same, nervously unhooking herself from both parents to bravely face the small gathering of Earthlings of all shapes and sizes whom Gohan had fondly referred to as her "Z-Senshi" family. Although none of them looked welcoming or even happy to see her at the moment, she steeled her nerves. Even if she practically grew up in the spotlight of one of the grandest stadiums in the whole galaxy packed to the brim with spectators cheering her name all the time- this, here, now, was somehow scarier. These were her Daddy's and Papa's dearest, closest friends, and yet she didn't understand why they all wore what she interpreted to be shocked and quite horror-stricken expressions as they regarded her. Somehow this made showing off her fighting skills in front of a hundred thousand strangers much easier than having to be "likeable" to these people who seemed to have very high expectations of her.

She strived once again to swallow the jitters as she focused on the most important woman of the group first, her grandmother- Grandma Chi-chi… who was still staring at her with an expression that wasn't anything akin to familial recognition at all. Tulip studied the woman curiously, trying to find similarities to her appearance because a quick assessment of them earlier told her that no one in their Earth family looked anything like her or her Daddy Piccolo.

She had green skin like Piccolo but in a lighter somewhat ruddy shade. She had his pointy ears, fangs, and claws –which she rather liked too- his intelligent nose, purple tongue, and too many more features that simply prevented anyone from denying that Piccolo was indeed her parent, which was probably why she gravitated to him a smidgeon more than Gohan. But there was also her unruly hair that was more often than not golden if not jet black, big chestnut-brown eyes that glowed malachite when her hair was gold, her naturally shy and gentle demeanour, and not the least of all, her Saiyajin tail, which though wrapped tightly over her obi at the moment, was all part of the undeniable prevailing evidence of Gohan's genetic contributions.

So as Tulip stared at Chi-chi, she decided then, that the woman did look like her Papa Gohan very much, and this made her take one cautious step forward. (She tried not to notice how that made everyone behind her grandmother seem to freeze up even more.) As she took one more step, she noticed that Chi-chi's unreadable expression was slowly changing. Her hard-set lips began to tremble and eyes that were wild began to soften. By the time she had taken her third step, she thought she saw moisture glistening at the corners of her eyes, but she wasn't sure. Was her Grandma Chi-chi crying? It was then that Tulip saw, how truly similar she looked to her Papa Gohan, and somehow that made her break into a run all of a sudden, to which Chi-chi's arms lifted up towards her with the promise of a warm welcome.

By the time she was right in front of Chi-chi, she was panting a little, more out of trying to calm her surging heartbeat than tiredness, and she snuck one last look at her parents who had been watching her every step. They both smiled at her reassuringly and she gave them a big confident smile of her own, before finally closing the gap and crashing into Chi-chi's arms. The woman was unable to help herself any longer, she enveloped the tiny child completely in a tight hug, hysterical sobs of a mother's joy at being able to embrace her first grandchild crashing down on her like a giant tidal wave. Tulip found her own eyes wet and overflowing for reasons she couldn't understand as she was rained upon with tear-stained kisses and emotional exclamations of joy and love.

By the time Chi-chi had gained enough sense to release the child, everyone else was striving very discreetly to wipe away any evidence of sentimentality from their faces. But a few of them, ironically from the men in the group, ended up bawling and sniffling loudly, some laughing with tears in their eyes, but everyone now all wore warm and welcoming smiles.

Tulip blushed shyly as Chi-chi gently thumbed away the tears from her face before kissing her cheeks again, smiling tenderly as she proceeded to fix her mussed up hair and straighten her clothes that were rumpled from the crushing embrace. But then, Tulip remembered what her parents had taught her, and so she composed herself and stepped back to bow low.

"H-how do you do? My- my name is- T-Tulip Daimaoh Son…" The three-year-old took a deep calming breath, before mustering her best smile and beaming it up at them, at her Papa's mother. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Grandma Chi-chi. Everyone." She was barely able to finish another small bow before she was grabbed again and enveloped in another lung-crushing hug. And all of a sudden, they were all crowding around her with happy greetings and genuine smiles.

Tulip was so relieved that her Papa and Daddy had been right. That they all seemed to like her already, and she actually began to feel then, that she was home.

-x-

After a strenuous afternoon of being introduced properly to everyone over tea and snacks in the Son House's front yard, for the most part running around and being fussed over and sparring with Trunks, Goten, Bra, *Larin, and all the others, Tulip was rather sweaty and dirty, and Chi-chi quickly disappeared into the house to prepare her bath.

Kririn -most of all- was too awestruck to even produce anything more coherent than a few mindless utterances for the first few times Tulip came over to meet him, the reality of Gohan and Piccolo's relationship in the form of one strong, beautiful, and very intelligent Namek-Saiyajin-Human hybrid child still too much for him to process in one sitting. But finally, he was able to gather his wits and Tulip bowed politely at him and Eighteen when he was finally ready for proper introductions.

"Wow," the former monk puffed. "Uhh, i-i-it's a pleasure to meet you too, Tulip. Err, you're tall for a three-year-old."

Tulip chuckled at the man's antics, receiving a good-natured laugh from him in return.

"And aren't you the prettiest little thing!" Eighteen commented pinching her cheek -rather forcefully, but not meant in ill will, with Eighteen just being Eighteen.

"Err, Tulip is a boy, right?" Kririn asked, to which Gohan nodded.

"Really? She sure looks like a fine little lady to me." Eighteen remarked, giving her cheek one last emphatic squeeze before letting her go, to which the well-bred young Ersatzian royalty valiantly strove to maintain the polite smile on her face the whole time (even if she really didn't understand Eighteen's comment).

Tulip ambled up to her Daddy Piccolo right after, to have him nurse the throbbing ache in her cheek.

"Mm," Tulip snuggled into Piccolo's neck as his hand hovered lightly over the spot on her face. "Waaaii, so warm! It feels so much better already. Love, love, Daddy!"

Piccolo merely grunted, "Love, love, darling." And he received a lip smack to his cheek as thanks.

But then they both stopped as they caught sight of Gohan's poorly disguised look of distress.

"What's wrong, Papa?"

"Huh? Oh. It's nothing."

"He doesn't like all the smells of everyone on you," Piccolo answered for his husband.

"On me?" And Tulip made to sniff herself. "Well, I do smell funny, now that you mention it."

"It's not that I don't like it, it just makes me feel uneasy," Gohan said. "And it's not the smells on Tulip, it's the smells on Tulip that's transferring to you."

Tulip looked from her Papa Gohan to her Daddy Piccolo. They were staring at each other intently, wordlessly.

"Ugh. You two are talking about weird adult stuff again, aren't you?"

"Piccolo." They all turned at the unmistakeable voice of Vegeta, who had finally approached after merely quietly observing all this time.

The Saiyajin couldn't help but feel the brat's and the Namek's brand new Ki signatures that were significantly more powerful, and the Ki of their offspring, which was not primed enough at the moment to threaten his base instincts, but still- there was something about the brat's brat that was bothering him.

"Vegeta," Gohan and Piccolo nodded at him.

"I see you got busy," Vegeta couldn't resist saying, smirking as his eyes regarded the bundle in Piccolo's arms.

Tulip blinked down at him.

"Tulip-kun," Gohan began. "This is your granduncle. Vegeta. He's the prince of Saiyajins."

"A real prince?" Tulip's eyes bulged.

Gohan nodded.

"Wow…"

"Oh please, brat." Vegeta dismissed, before turning to Piccolo and Tulip. "Clearly your brat is more Namekian than Saiyajin so I don't see why it should matter who I am, other than as you had so aptly put it, a 'granduncle'."

"Tulip can turn Super," Piccolo made a point to inform him with a cheeky grin. "And probably Oozaru too, since he has a tail," he added smugly, both pokes effectively hitting home base.

"What?!"

"Oh, now, enough of that!"

They all stopped at Chi-chi's arrival, who reached out for Tulip whom Piccolo relinquished easily enough.

"Can't you see the poor dear is exhausted? You two should take a rest as well and get ready for supper while I give Tulip-kun here a bath."

Piccolo, Gohan, and Vegeta indulged in a mini staring showdown for a few more heart-stopping seconds after Chi-chi had left, in which everyone around them tensely held their breaths. Bloomer took that as her cue to break them up, so she casually called her hot-headed Saiyajin over to join her at the snack table in an extra sugary voice, effectively annoying him enough for him to break eye contact. Everyone breathed easy as he turned away from the couple, but not without giving Gohan and Piccolo one final glare that silently promised a more apropos confrontation. If the brat's brat could turn Super, it was a different matter now, one that had everything to do with him!

Gohan narrowed his eyes accusatorily at Piccolo who countered with a smirk.

"He's bound to know about it eventually." When his mate's eyes only narrowed even more, the Namek laughed. "Vegeta will adore our darling, especially after he loses to Tulip, you'll see."

The brunet demi-Saiyajin sighed, following his husband inside. "Somebody's in a happy mood today."

Gohan didn't want to admit it but he was sulky because Piccolo beat him to gloating about Tulip's powers to the haughty Saiyajin. But more than anything, he was getting increasingly agitated by how his scent on his husband had now been completely snuffed out by everyone else's. He had to do something about that, and quick.

-x-

By the time supper was served, all the others had left and it was just the Daimaoh-Son family and Chi-chi at the dinner table. Goten was very excited to see his big brother again and play with Tulip some more, but Chi-chi had already arranged for Bloomer to take him just for that night because she needed to talk with Piccolo and Gohan about many "adult" things.

That night, Tulip enjoyed her first taste of Earth food immensely, having inherited more of Gohan's appetite. Gohan told his mother of everything that had transpired during their absence and tried to explain as best as he could why it happened. The woman wasn't at all surprised to know that her son and his Namek had already been formally wed in another planet, but she insisted that they also have a proper Earth wedding, to which they didn't argue, but couldn't help their cheeks from fast-staining. Gohan knew they had hurt her deeply by unintentionally excluding her and all of the other Z-Senshi from crucial milestones in their life, especially to do with raising Tulip. And so, he and Piccolo were forced to promise to let her plan the wedding and manage Tulip's education among other things.

When dinner was over and Tulip had fallen asleep on the couch after some minutes of being engrossed in a cartoon on television, Chi-chi cleared her throat and requested that Gohan and Piccolo meet her in the living room after they were done with washing and drying the dishes, saying that she had an important announcement to make.

The couple didn't have a clue what Chi-chi was about to "announce", but it was made clear that it was about their child since she walked over to where Tulip was fast asleep and waited for the two parents to follow. Both wondered if it had something to do with the new addition to their child's get-up: A huge red ribbon that now attempted to keep her wild tresses in a neat ponytail. Chi-chi wordlessly waved a piece of paper at Gohan, which the hybrid Saiyajin took and studied for a moment before he gave a startled exclamation, eyes widening.

Piccolo merely raised an eyebrow at him.

"That's right, Gohan-kun," Chi-chi said as she looked from her son to her son-in-law. "Tulip-chan is a girl. Not a boy."

Piccolo turned to Gohan who showed him what was printed on the piece of paper. But the figures and diagrams didn't mean anything to him, so he went ahead and explained.

"It's a DNA test. Humans use this to determine characteristics and qualities of living things, one of those, being gender. And according to this test, Tulip is… more or less a girl… not a boy like we first thought."

Both parents stared at their sleeping "daughter", and for the first time actually took into consideration how feminine she indeed looked.

"I apologize for asking Bloomer-san to go on with the test without your knowledge. I tried to discreetly ask for your permission after I bathed Tulip, but you two were, erm, 'busy' from the noises I gathered outside your door."

At that Gohan and Piccolo coloured ten shades darker. Piccolo face-palmed and Gohan suddenly found his toes wiggling inside his slippers very interesting.

"I certainly hope you two don't subject your daughter's innocent ears –or eyes- to that!"

"Mother!" Gohan squeaked. "Of course not!"

"Well, if she has Piccolo-san's hearing, I wouldn't be too sure."

Piccolo groaned, face still buried in his palm.

"Anyway, that's not why I called you here. I just wanted you to give her more feminine clothes, if that's okay with you since I didn't have any that fits her. Now I know there's still a possibility she'll develop into a hermaphrodite when she grows up, but just like you Piccolo-san who's dominantly male, I think it's safe to say that your lovely child is dominantly female. And I just don't think dressing her as a boy or anything else is going to help her, especially now that you're back on Earth. She'll eventually have to go to school and mingle. I think she would enjoy her life better if she knew what she was and be given a chance to better identify with it."

"Oh, wow…" Gohan still couldn't believe it. He really didn't think it was possible for them to have a girl but now that they did, he was honestly very pleased. "We didn't mean to, Mother. We really thought she was a boy, or… somewhere in the middle…"

"I know, it was an honest mistake," Chi-chi said kindly. She then faced the towering Namek. "Now, would you please give her more appropriate clothing? I've done what I could to tame that mane of hers but I can't sew as fast as you can create clothes. Bloomer-san offered some of Bra-chan's old clothes for the meantime, but I'm afraid they didn't fit Tulip-chan."

Piccolo nodded, pausing for a moment and trying to bring to mind what more "feminine" clothes were supposed to look like. Gohan gripped his arm and closed his eyes, helping to project a clearer image of what clothes they both felt would fit their daughter. When the Namek opened his eyes again, he stretched his hand to hover over Tulip, and a rustle of air and a puff of smoke later, Tulip was dressed in a garnet-violet sleeveless gi top complimented with balloon gi shorts of the same colour, fitted securely around her waist by a red obi. The outfit is completed with white off-the-shoulder puffed-up sleeves which matched the traditional Namekian thick-layered foulard which was snugly wrapped around her neck.

"Oh," Chi-chi clasped her hands together, clearly pleased. "How lovely! Thank you, Piccolo-san."

"My pleasure."

Gohan hugged his husband's arm, gushing like he was five years old again.

"It's perfect, she's so beautiful in it…" Chi-chi murmured as she carefully swept aside stray fringe from Tulip's veiled eyes. "I'm sure she will be very happy when she wakes up."

The proud parents were ushered out of the room soon after that and ordered to get busy 'making her more grandchildren' while their child wasn't around to see or hear it. Gohan and Piccolo obeyed without complaint, although their faces looked ready to combust.

When they had been dismissed, Chi-chi made sure the fireplace gave off just the right warmth to keep the child cosy, before pulling up her rocking chair with her sewing implements on hand. A deep sense of happiness and contentment that she never thought she would find again settling in her heart, as she watched over her precious little angel Tulip-chan sleep.

The End.

Notes:

* Larin – This is Marron, whom I renamed Larin. Why? I find the idea that Kririn named his daughter after his bimbo gold-digger ex-girlfriend just gross. (Why do you do this, Toriyama-sensei?) Yet another of sell-out DBZ's idiotic bandwagons I'd rather not jump into, thank you very much. In my headcanon, I'd like to believe that Kririn loves and respects Eighteen enough not to do such a disgusting thing. Sorry if you happen to be a fan who likes her canon name.

* Snippets from this story are from my yet-to-be-published stories: "Chronicles of the Intergalactic Ersatzian Games" & "The Other Half of My Soul".

Personal A/N: Decided to add these additional miscellaneous notes, more for my own reference than anything. I had a hard time (as you probably gathered from all my initial mistakes) with writing Tulip's neutral gender. She isn't as boyish as kid Trunks but more like how Gohan was when he was a kid (which was quite feminine), and yet, infused with Piccolo's snark. However, she is not at all your typical annoying Japanese girl protagonist like Pan who is an insufferable brat. She has a lot of pride when it comes to her strength, but she doesn't puff herself up, doesn't talk in an overbearing cutesy manner, and she definitely doesn't boss people around or nag. (She is different with her parents, of course, which shows their closeness). If anything, because Gohan himself was raised with impeccable manners (plus she is also technically an Ersatzian princess), she is very respectful and well-mannered towards everyone, regardless of who or what they are (if her beloved parents are threatened, that's an entirely different matter, though.) She's very androgynous, and thanks to Piccolo who also has no biases -as opposed to the overstuffing of boorish machismo he was given in the American dub- the original Japanese Piccolo is actually very sensitive, even gentle, highly cerebral, and even princely in manner which nicely balances with the rest of him. He doesn't talk like a muscle-brain with alpha-male issues (as American dubs often do), that's for sure. So, all these were taken into consideration when I wrote his interactions with his daughter. He's not trying to put on airs like a tough guy dad or expecting Tulip to "man up" even when he thought she was a he. But he is definitely not afraid to show affection towards Tulip either -just as he was with Gohan especially after they became friends! Guh. Okay. End of rant.

My character design/sketch of Tulip-kun can be found on my AO3: works/8319505

(2016/01/24-2017/03/11)