"Use your energy." Piccolo snapped at Gohan.
"I'm trying." Gohan growled stubbornly.
"Don't try, do it." Piccolo snapped. V tried to get a handle on her energy as she shifted it under her, she shoved her self-straight off the ground into the boulder behind her.
"Ow." V groaned getting to her feet.
"Are you okay?" Gohan hurried over to her, V felt weird at the attention.
"Yeah, I'm fine." V rubbed the back of her head and flicked the little stones off her tail.
"Fine, you don't want to learn like this." Piccolo snatched a Gohan and V up and flew them several hundred feet into the air.
"What are you doing?" V asked suspiciously. Gohan gulped "this is how birds learn to fly."
"What, you hold us here until we float?" V asked knowing she was wrong when she said it.
"Something like that." Piccolo dropped both of them. Gohan screamed V gauged how she would have to land to not get hurt, but he flew up pretty high so it was gonna rattle her a bit. V glanced over at Gohan.
"Why aren't you scared?" Gohan screamed wailing.
"It's just pain." V said but looking at Gohan she really didn't want him to feel pain and he didn't even know how to land. Gohan screamed louder as the ground came up. V gathered her energy and surrounded herself in it, she slowed down but didn't stop. Gohan seemed to descend even faster.
"Catch him!" V snapped at Piccolo.
"Catch him yourself." Piccolo just watched from above, Gohan's ki hadn't spiked at all yet.
"I can't." V snapped, her ki increased and she shot herself into another boulder.
"V!" Gohan yelled
"Ouch." She groaned pulling herself out.
"Oh wow, are you okay?" Gohan grabbed V's hand and dragged her out of the rubble.
"Yeah." V rubbed the back of her head and shook the rocks off of her clothes.
"V, what was that?" Piccolo growled hovering over the two. Gohan's energy suddenly cut out and he and Gohan fell to reaming fifty feet to the ground. V and Gohan smashed into the ground creating a small crater.
"You're a bad teacher." V grumbled crawling out from under Gohan.
"Let's go again." Piccolo grabbed them again and carried them up even higher.
"This didn't work good the first time." V glared at him.
"Gohan flew." Piccolo said.
"I did?" Gohan asked looking up at Piccolo
"Yeah, when you thought V might be hurt." Piccolo dropped them "hurt yourself again, V, Gohan's worried about you."
"Not funny." V pouted at him as she tried to gather her energy. Gohan used the energy he had discovered and shifted it from his hand to his feet. It kind of felt like standing on an invisible nimbus. Gohan's descent stopped and he hovered. V barreled downward trying to get her energy balanced.
"V!" Gohan called out wobbling midair as he tried to chase her.
"Don't" V snapped "I can do it." V surrounded herself in a bubble of energy, she froze midair but she couldn't move anywhere.
"You did it!" Gohan cheered.
"No I didn't." V huffed "I' just stopped myself from face planting."
"You're too hard on yourself." Gohan said still smiling "you did it, you're flying!" Gohan clapped for her. V tried to figure out why she felt like smiling when she didn't so what she wanted but one look at Gohan laughing and cheering her on made her heart swell, no one ever cheered for her.
"You did it, alright!" Gohan laughed. Piccolo waited from above, maybe Gohan's absurd behavior would do the trick. Piccolo caught himself smiling at his pupils and quickly settled back into scowl.
"Yeah!" Gohan carried on wobbling midair. V laughed with him, really laughed, she didn't know what it felt like to laugh like this, to be light and happy, but she couldn't even resist it now, Gohan was contagious. Suddenly she looked down and found them far away from the ground.
"I'm flying," V said dumbfounded "I'm really flying!" V hollered throwing her arms into the air, she felt the slight steady pulses of her energy around her and under her, they pushed her up and up and up and Gohan tottered after her like a toddler who just learned to walk.
"I'm doing it, I'm really doing it!" V laughed and spun herself around, she felt her energy in an entirely different way now, it was free, unrestrained.
"Wow, V." Gohan gaped "you're getting it so fast." Gohan steadied himself.
"I did it, Gohan." V threw her arms around Gohan "I did it." Gohan hugged her back and they laughed I like hugs v thought squeezing Gohan. Gohan laughed at her hug, it was so awkward, like she wasn't entirely sure how to do it. Gohan pulled his right arm away from her head so that both his arms weren't on her left side anymore and squeezed her back.
"Enough mushy stuff." Piccolo snapped shooting a low energy wave at them. V pulled Gohan out of the way and scowled at Piccolo for taking that away from her, didn't he know she had been dying to learn to fly since as long as she could remember?
"Now we're going to expedite your flying training by a little dodge ball." Piccolo bounced an energy ball in his hand, he was going to enjoy this.
"What's expedite mean?" V asked, piccolo wanted to throw the energy ball at her mouth.
"To make faster." Gohan chirped happily.
"Okay…" V hesitated at the impatient look on Piccolos face but went on anyway "what's dodgeball?"
"Dodge ball is a game where two or more people have a bunch of balls and they throw them at each other and if you get hit you're out." Gohan answered happily. He had so much to teach his new sister!
"Don't you dare!" Piccolo yelled at V when he saw her mouth opening for another question.
"What do you mean by out?" V asked anyway directing her question to Gohan.
"You lose!" Piccolo yelled throwing the energy ball at V.
"Woah!" V barely dodged the blast.
"I think Piccolo plays it differently." Gohan gulped as an energy ball came toward him. V pushed him down and flipped over the blast only to face plant into the next oncoming blast. Gohan spun out of the way of the next blast and fell into the ground. V tried to concentrate her ki so that she only went up a little but her energy surged and she blasted herself into the ground.
"Okay." V groaned pulling herself out of the hole "that one really hurt." She rubbed her head, she was sure there was going to be a bump later on. Surrounding herself in energy she took to the sky and faced off with the attacks.
Piccolo wasn't going to say he didn't enjoy this, V finally shut up and Gohan was really catching on fast. V wasn't even trying to help Gohan, she was letting him learn himself finally Piccolo grumbled to himself throwing more blasts. V was getting the hang of it too, she needed to learn how to control her energy, something was strange about it, it wasn't a normal energy signal. Piccolo felt her power out, it wasn't the amount of energy she had, it was like an entirely different being, something alien. Piccolo blasted Gohan out of the sky, V finally figured out how to stay level while dodging. She can't even handle her own energy piccolo realized thinking back to how her energy had brought him to his knees. She must feel that on a different scale, its inside, not around her…interesting, if she learns to control that power she could be surpass her old friends.
Not my friends V snapped in his head, he gasped taken aback, she shouldn't have been able to hear him. V glowered at him completely oblivious to the fact that they had spoken with their minds and not their mouths. She doesn't even know Piccolo was getting more and more confused with this girl. Frustrated, he turned up the heat on the blasts, making them stronger and throwing more and more out at them. V adjusted, Gohan struggled through but caught on quick enough it's like he's drawing on some untapped power inside him Piccolo thought if he is, I'll bring it out.
The camp fire was warm, Gohan coughed, bruises and cuts covering every part of him. V sat away from the fire, as usual. She wasn't training this time though, she just sat and watched her brother and her master.
"Why doesn't she sit with us?" Gohan asked Piccolo.
"How should I know?" Piccolo grumbled refusing to leave his meditation to entertain a child.
"But…" Gohan looked at her "but she looks lonely."
"Go bother her and not me then." Piccolo snapped. Gohan got up and went to V. V sat and looked up at the sky he's going to ask me to go away V sighed and stood already walking away.
"Hey, wait." Gohan grabbed her tail to stop her. V paused and turned around.
"Why do you not want to sit with us?" Gohan asked.
"Me not want to?" V stared at him with wide eyes "I do!" she burst out "I do want to sit with you I jus…" V hesitated.
"Just what?" Gohan asked
"Just didn't think…" V sighed and dug her toe into the ground "didn't think you guys wanted me to be with you."
"Why would you think that?" Gohan exclaimed
"Raditz and Nappa never let me sit with them at the fire." V explained
"Well, that's in the past." Gohan assured her "we're family, even Piccolo." Gohan smiled at Piccolo "he's like out big green uncle." Gohan and V laughed at that. Piccolo heard every word and growled.
"Yeah, he's one of the family." Gohan giggled and grabbed V's hand "and so are you, so you should come over with us." Gohan pulled V forward, V followed timidly and sat with Gohan. The fire was warm, the warmest fire she had ever sat by, or maybe it wasn't the fire at all, maybe it was because she had a family now, even sitting out here in the middle of nowhere. She had her brother and her… V cast a sly look at Piccolo "my big green uncle." Piccolo snapped "both of you get to sleep, tomorrow is going to be the hardest days of your life!" Gohan and V flinched at his sudden mood change and curled up beside each other with their backs pressed against one another.
"Big green uncle." V whispered knowing he would hear. Piccolo grumbled big green uncle how ridiculous.
The night went on, Piccolo didn't sleep but as he looked at the two kids sleeping beside him he could help but wonder when he stopped hating them. He didn't hate them, he wasn't training Gohan to be a worthy opponent anymore, or using V to get stronger. He didn't want either of them to die, didn't want to see them get hurt. He didn't realize it until his hand was already over Gohan but he was reaching out to the boy. "Somethings changed." Saying it out loud was different, acknowledging it was different "no matter what happens to you, Gohan, I will always be there to protect you." Piccolo scowled at V, she was the most obnoxious creature he had ever come across, endless questions and back talk, and always questioning everything… he smiled at her "you'll be hard to fool when you grow." Piccolo chortled "I'll be there when you are though." He didn't touch V, she would wake up. Even now he could feel she wasn't truly asleep, not like Gohan was. You two are going to be incredible warriors someday Piccolo was certain of that.
Sorry for the short chapter but I felt this one would be more impactlike this, leading up into Vegeta and Nappa's arrival now, yay :) will V stay loyal to her new family or is their mental control on her too much?
we'll find out soon XD
Thank you all so much who have commented and followed, your comments mean so much to me. I hope I don't disappoint.
Don't forget to check out the Nemekian Saiyan, it's V's time on Namek when she found out about the dragon balls and met her first bestie.