The sky shimmered blue and white above an expanse of green. A golden cloud painted a single faded streak of yellow across the horizon to break up the monotony of it all.
A herd of dinosaurs looked up at it, shrugged, and continued grazing on the green grass beneath the late morning shade of Mount Paozu.
Their shepherd, a grizzled man with lopsided ears, spat out a wad of tobacco with equal nonchalance. It smacked one of his inattentive charges between its two reptilian eyes. The creature shrieked and shook its head violently before honking at its caretaker in annoyance.
"Quit'cher bitchin'," the shepherd muttered, and waved to the tiger hailing him from the little pickup truck put-putting on the highway by the dinosaur pasture. After the morning pleasantries were finished, the shepherd didn't even bother trying to trace the golden arc in the sky with his eyes.
There was nothing inherently interesting about the Son boys so long as nobody thought too hard about them.
OOOOOOOOOO
Orange Star City was changing from a reminder to the mountains of what civilization looked like and into a sprawling metropolis that glorified the Hero Who Saved The World, but it was not quite finished with its transformation.
The urban world had been a propaganda wasteland for two years. Neither Gohan nor Goten could really say if it had ever been much different in the time before that. Besides, they were too preoccupied to worry themselves over the accuracy of Hercule Satan's cast iron likeness or to curse the victory posters plastering over every inch of the city's windows and walls.
To Gohan, the visage of Mr. Satan swimming within the confines of Cell paraphernalia was almost comforting. The man's giant grin and voluminous presence covered over the truth of the Earth's last crisis.
Hercule Satan defeated Cell. Hercule Satan was a hero. Son Goku hadn't been there, didn't need to be there, and therefore wasn't there to die in the name of his son's mistakes. Gohan wanted to be seduced by the fairytale.
Goten just liked to point and laugh at Hercule's afro.
When he realized his big brother was not paying attention to his joy, Goten blew a raspberry from within the baby carrier Gohan had strapped him in and reached up and behind to pull his brother back to reality by the nose.
"Hey! Do that again and I will make you ride on my back and not my front for the ride home," Gohan griped.
Goten babbled something sour and pouted.
In response, Gohan ruffled Goten's hair and looked around for the grocery store. Every window and billboard advertised Mr. Satan's bravery, and, as nice as that was, both boys were in search of something more substantial. Gohan chose a building and walked in. It was a restaurant.
"Welcome!" An old sow wiped her hooves on her apron and greeted them. "Would you boys be looking for one of your parents, or are you eating by yourselves today?"
"Both," thought Gohan, but he stifled his answer in favor of subduing his little brother as the infant reached for the nostrils of their hostess. At that, Goten cried- he was already cranky enough from hunger and Gohan's killjoy attitude was not doing the baby's mood any favors. "We will be eating by ourselves today, ma'am," Gohan decided with a bow.
Goten did not like facing parallel to the floor and threw his hands up to slap his brother in the face with another declaration of upset. Gohan straightened out and shushed him.
It occurred to the older boy that he was clueless about the type of cuisine they offered here, but he honestly did not think it mattered. He could eat anything, and Goten would eat anything.
The hostess led them to a booth near the restrooms. Gohan was grateful. His brother had a tendency to make a mess on his face while at the table and a mess of his pants shortly thereafter.
Once they were seated and Gohan had a chance to peruse the menu, he was tempted to order one of everything. Unfortunately, he was old enough to know that he did not have that freedom. He settled for five entrées for Goten and three for himself.
"You must be very hungry," their waitress, a woman with prematurely greying hair, smiled as she jotted down Gohan's order.
"Please believe me when I tell you that you have no idea," Gohan told her. He took Goten from the baby carrier and bounced the child upon his knee.
When their food came, the waitress enlisted the help of a girl around Gohan's age to help her carry it from the kitchen to the table. Gohan stood in an attempt to help them, but the older woman smiled and laid the food in front of the boys before beckoning for her assistant to do the same. Goten drooled from his seat on his big brother's knee and eyed the meal.
"Thank you," Gohan said. He smiled at the woman. He smiled at the girl, too, and then turned to feed Goten a plate of noodles.
When Goten made it about halfway through the first entrée, Gohan noticed the girl was staring at him.
"Is something wrong?" Gohan asked, halting his brother from inhaling the noodles to give him a sip of water.
"Oh!" She said. "It's nothing. Your brother likes the food?"
Gohan scraped the last of the noodles into his brother's mouth. "I think so," the older boy said. "He will really eat whatever you put in front of him, though, so I cannot ever tell." Gohan gave Goten another sip of water and then introduced the baby to the bowl of beef and vegetables.
The girl continued to gape as Goten downed the rest of his lunch.
Gohan suddenly felt nervous about eating his own. "Excuse me, but could you please bring us some horseradish sauce? I think we may need it," he lied as he wiped off Goten's face.
The girl blinked. Gohan noticed that her eyes were green. It upset him.
She turned away in search of the horseradish while marveling to herself about how someone's hair could be the color of their eyes, and their eyes the color of the deepest reaches of space.
Once he was unsupervised, Gohan snatched up his plate of pork fried rice and began to pack it into his mouth. He was about three mouthfuls in when Goten started to cry and tug at his brother's sleeves. The baby wanted more.
With a sigh, Gohan gave the rest of his plate to Goten. When the little one begged for even more after that, Gohan relented and gave him the next two plates.
The green-eyed girl returned with the horseradish just in time to see Goten polish off the last of eight adult entrées with a burp.
"I guess we didn't need the horseradish after all," Gohan laughed apologetically.
The girl nodded dumbly and reached for the stack of empty plates. "Um, do you want anything else?" She finally managed.
"No, thank you," Gohan lied again to drown out the deep growl of his stomach. "This was plenty." Furtively, he eyed Goten and was relieved to see the baby was dozing off in satisfaction.
"I'll get the check," the girl said as she toted the dirty dishes back to the kitchen.
A sigh escaped Gohan's lips as he leaned back against the seat of the corner booth. He had calculated out exactly how much grocery money today's trip required and exactly how much he could spend on extraneous things beforehand. His stomach growled again. Idly, he wondered how angry his mother would be if he ate all of the groceries before they made their way home.
The girl and the older waitress interrupted Gohan's visions of motherly punishment with the lunch bill. Gohan wondered if, after he paid it, the restaurant would let him eat the paper it was printed on. He squelched the question along with the hollowness in his stomach as he pulled out his wallet, double-checked the written total with the number he had calculated in his head, and paid for the meal.
The waitress, smiling, walked away with the money. The girl stayed put and stared at Gohan with her too-green eyes.
The older boy occupied himself with propping his sleeping little brother into a more comfortable position in an effort to avoid conversation.
It did not work. The girl leaned over to look closer at his face. "Excuse me, but do I know you?"
Gohan wanted to find a poster and hide behind Hercule's obscene grin. "I do not believe so."
"Really?" She said, frowning and looking closer. "I swear I've seen you somewhere before."
"Perhaps you have me confused with someone else," Gohan reasoned. "I am sure many other people around here look like me. Dark hair and dark eyes are not that uncommon." He forced a laugh.
The girl frowned. Gohan looked at her hair to distract him from her unsettling gaze. The color reminded him of Trunks even though it was too dark to be an exact match. "But that's just it- your hair is black. Like, black black. Not blue-black, not dark brown. It's like it shines, but it doesn't shine. I don't know how to explain it." The girl looked down at Goten. "The baby's hair kind of does it, but not as much as yours."
Goten yawned.
"I have never noticed it was any different," Gohan mused. "I just know it sticks out everywhere."
The girl laughed. "Well, I didn't want to say anything about that. After all, my hair looks funny too- it's purple."
Gohan smiled. He did not know what to say to someone who lived a normal life in a normal city. "Do you know where the grocery store is? I cannot tell what is what behind all these pictures of The Earth's Savior."
The girl laughed again and Gohan noticed that her face scrunched together when she did. "It's the biggest building on this road," she said. "If you go out the door and head to the left, you'll find it. It's the one that has the big, blue posters of Mr. Satan endorsing bananas and stuff on it. Say," she said, searching Gohan with her big eyes again, "are you really not from around here?"
"No," Gohan sounded out the word carefully, like it could bite him.
"Where do you live?"
"I'm from the mountains just south of town," he told her.
"That's crazy! Anything you get at the store is gonna go bad before you make it home." She shook her head, and then smiled again. "Do you want to use one of our cold storage capsules? Papa has some extra that this week's meat was shipped in. They are really cool- they can hold anything that can fit into a space about the size of these two tables." The Briefs family was almost as omnipresent as the shadows Mr. Satan cast upon the city walls.
"That is very kind of you, but how would I get it back to you before you need it again?" Gohan wanted to take the offer. It would be much easier and safer to hold both the capsule and Goten in his lap on the Flying Nimbus rather than strap the food onto the golden cloud and fly himself home with Goten attached to his chest.
"I said we had extra," the girl told him. "I will ask papa if you can just have one. She turned to go back into the kitchen before Gohan could even reply. "Papa!" She called.
The older boy started after her, but then remembered the sleeping baby in his lap. Gohan settled for stroking his little brother's hair and examining the color. It looked normal to him.
The girl half-jogged back to the Son boys' table with a little blue capsule clutched in her hand and her dark locks swinging behind her. She laid the pill-shaped device down in front of Gohan. "You hit the button on top and throw it at what you want it to store," she said. "And hey, what is your name?"
Gohan had no sooner opened his mouth to thank her and introduce himself when he felt something warm and heavy fill Goten's place in his lap. A horrible smell followed. "Excuse me," he panicked, grabbing his baby brother and rushing him to the nearby restroom.
The lunch rush had flowed into the restaurant in full by the time Gohan finished cleaning and changing Goten. He took the tiny blue capsule from where it lay waiting on the table and slipped out the door without so much as disturbing the welcome bell.
OOOOOOOOOO
The girl at the restaurant was sure she had seen that boy before. He hid in her thoughts and peeked at her from the edges of her memory.
He had been holding an umbrella. It was as dark as his clothes, as somber as his hair, and as black as his eyes.
But the flowers in his hands had been white.
OOOOOOOOOO
After he and his mother bathed Goten and put the baby to bed, Gohan stared at his reflection in the mirror long and hard.
He had always assumed he was normal; in his heart, he believed he was human. In truth, he barely understood what that even meant.
Gohan wanted to learn, but he was too scared to try and survive the world beneath Mount Paozu for more than a little while at a time. Slowly, his thoughts turned to the purple-haired girl at the restaurant and how much she had scared him.
He cowered between the covers of his world history books and made himself believe that he could learn everything he wanted to know about the planet from inside his bedroom.
His mother approved, and the years passed.