Notes: Sorry this took so long. I blame it entirely on the characters involved... They're all such stubborn fellows...

'Kanbeki' means 'to be complete.'

Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ or its various children. Saab and Ludlu are of my own creation, however.


Yamiji: Chapter Seven
Kanbeki


"There's nothing at the end of this world. No matter how far you go, the same path lies in front of you. How am I able to keep walking like this even though I know that? ...I can hear someone's voice..."
-Wolf's Rain

Beyond, darkness loomed.

It loomed and swelled, enveloping him with welcoming tendrils, and then the door was closed. He stood in the beast's layer.

Bit by bit fractured shafts of daylight tumbled through a ceiling cobwebbed with gleaming iron bars, dull ropes, red silk hanging heavy from rusted chain. Streams of cloth cascaded to a cold granite floor, shattering the apparent immensity of the hall into disorienting glimpses – a gleaming table here, a contorted statue there – but before him in the red-tinged shadows, the path was clear. A single straight shot, the granite floor swept clear. At its end lay steps. Atop the steps a silvered mirror rested, reflecting his lonely figure. Standing between him and his reflection was a man.

Dark hair and dark eyes: familiar traits for any Saiyan, no matter how dilute the blood, but that peculiar shape of the face so similar to his mother's, and that particular curve of the eye just like his father's--

The boy stilled.

"Goten." It was a piece of a child's dream, that voice. So familiar and so distant. At once he was seven again, sand shifting beneath his weight as those dazed eyes looked up at him—

These eyes were not dazed. They were sharp, cunning.

With immense will Goten tore himself from the dream and clenched his fist. "Don't pretend to be him. You aren't him."

A wicked sneer shattered the memory; Son Gohan's face was immediately distorted, revealing the jackal within. Something, somewhere trembled in the back of Goten's mind.

"It's been a while, young hero…"

His fist tightened. The faintest of tremors escaped through pale fingers.

"You've grown. I was wondering when you'd arrive – I expected you, certainly, after our last meeting. You did have that stubborn look about you." The monster smirked thoughtfully. "It took you quite awhile. I was beginning to think you didn't love me anymore."

He snarled. "You aren't him!"

"There, there. Why so furious? The one you look for is long dead."

"Yeah, I know. You killed him. I'm gonna bring him back," Goten replied, layering his voice with the courage of his father's bloodline. The bravery sounded hollow.

"And how do you intend to do that?"

"By killing you."

"Please, try. It's been so long since I've had a decent fight. Not since I defeated your father." He smiled as if lost in reverie.

Goten seizes a step forward with fist raised, foolish as the measure felt. The Majin smiled on, a Cheshire grin.

Muddled shadows parted to his right and abruptly he was pressed against the twisted, cold metal of a misshapen column, a familiar hand curled around his neck.

He squinted into the semi-dark with utter incomprehension. This was too fast, too disorienting – where and why…?

His father stared blankly back.

Past gritted teeth he breathed: "Dad…"

"You see, this is the quandary I face," the beast explained calmly, appearing at Son Goku's shoulder.

"Dad, stop—" His hand gripped his father's wrist but he could not remove the crushing force.

"He's here because he came looking for you. Just some simple observation on my part, a little well-placed interference…"

Another entreaty escaped as a hoarse groan. The bent column sent spirals of pain up his back to couple with the benumbing vice crushing his neck.

"Now you. You're the real question. Why are you so determined, young hero? Why must you pester me so?"

A struggle and a single syllable: "Da—" Goku's grip tightened as Goten's strength crumpled. Panic filtered into the fourteen-year-old's eyes.

"It's fitting, innit? Just like he did to me."

You aren't—

The world darkened.

You aren't him.

((Now, tell me, young hero. Tell me why you're here.))

He… called me…

((He?))

The boy's eyes dimmed.

((He?))

With a snarl the Majin pursued his prey, a mind weak with physical peril. But rather than wallow in the confines of the flesh the mind fled, the prey slipped past, and the Majin was left with the slack form of an unconscious child.

"Stop" was the frustrated command. Goku obeyed.

The Majin scanned furiously about the unseen, the unfelt. ((Where did you go, young hero? And who called you here?))


A hallway.

His first instinct is to feel his throat, still throbbing. His second is to panic. Where…?

It is… a hallway. A normal hallway, something from a generic hotel. Blasé wallpaper, blasé carpet, blasé end table with dusty blasé flowers drooping out of a dime store vase.

Where am I?

I passed out. It's a dream. Or maybe I'm dead? If this is Heaven… it isn't much.

Goten's eyes wander to the left, the right – unadorned walls, not even light fixtures, except for a single cobwebbed dome light tacked onto the ceiling. Behind him is the same scene: an identical end table, an identical flower display, nudged up against an identical wall. But on either side of him are doors…

Doors? More doors?

They are plain, dark oak, fitted with a generic brass knob. But the left door is inset with a small blue gem at eye-level; to the right snarls a curled snake, burnt red into the varnished wood.

He ponders this a minute. What sort of bizarre place…? Unless this is Babidi, Babidi testing him – or maybe he had dreamt even going into space at all, maybe he got hit by a bus and went into a coma, dreaming about actually accepting that quest he had been avoiding half his life.

So, if he was in a coma – which door led to the light at the end of the tunnel?

Oh, fine, he decides with a snort. He grabs the blue-gem's door knob.

But…

In the room there is a child. Lonely as they all are, desperate as they all are, but consumed by fear. Fear of the world beyond the room, for only punishment awaited there, and Juujen could not face punishment once more, already his plan failed, but what plan was that? Punishment, pain allotting more pain. His plan, the unknown plan, the desperate plan, it failed. So he sits and he waits and he fears—

Goten pulls away as if stricken.

It is not the right door.

Only one other choice. His fingers brush the dusty knob:

In the desert desperation looms. Sorrow and a sea of glass. The cinder dims, without its life – without its love – the thrill of fight, the thrill of freedom, that which he has not tasted for eternity. In the desert insanity quivers, the dying fire quivers, Okiri quivers—

Okiri.

Okiri.

The name startles him with its power. Its power lent from a memory: a distant dream, and the wind biting at his face in the arms of a monster-but-not, as words fade away… 'Don't forget us… Don't hate us.'

He stares at the door and the mysteries contained within it. "Okiri. You're… you're the one who called me, aren't you?"

A part of the whole.

The boy steadies himself, twists the knob, and pushes…

"Why so furious? The one you look for is long dead."

Soft grass beneath his feet, but hot sun on his neck. Goten is disoriented by abrupt contrast: the ground is soft but the air is hard, baking wind snapping at his face, summoning sweat to his face.

He opens his eyes before he realizes they had been closed.

A desert: it is as he saw, or foresaw, or maybe it was part of a dream long ago? In the desert, insanity quivers… Beneath his feet is a short-lived strip of grass – the frail blades quickly collapse into unquenchable sand, sand which stretches to the horizon. But at the horizon something odd: he has to squint past the glare. Shards…

Colors fade and blur and leap and collide, sharp corners and smooth curves. It's a sea of shards. Glass shards. Mountains of glass, climbing higher and higher, jagged translucent panes rising in unison towards the stars. Scratching the heavens. It's like a surreal painting, the normal landscape torn apart by the bizarre, the fantastic.

The sea of glass gleams. To his right is a tree, yearning for the heavens with its black and naked limbs, yearning just as everything else is in this barren landscape… He reaches back for the door on instinct, for a comforting touch of that last link to a somewhat sane world, but it is gone. He whirls about with a stricken expression. The door is gone. There is no wall, no door, no snake emblem. Only the brief spat of grass and then more desert, endless desert, until the hot white sky swallows it whole. A faint hopelessness grips him – everywhere, this landscape speaks only of no escape.

"What is this place?" he wonders aloud.

In answer is a harsh 'pop': he spins towards the noise at the ready for monster or Majin or both, but meets only the tree. The tree afire. It crackles and snaps as blue fire seizes first one branch, then another, then another. Where did the fire come from? No answer. No smoke, either – and the spindly branches do not glow red or perish in ash. Although the fire continues to consume, the tree continues to persist, refusing to subside into the inhuman force that has overcome it.

It's kind of metaphorical, he supposes, thinking his mother would be proud of him for thinking analytically. "You may look like your father but that doesn't mean you have to think like him," she had lectured him once. "You could be just as smart as…" And her voice had faded, there. She came back strong. "As smart as Einstein! The next Newton, the next Galileo—"

Metaphorical. Could it be that Gohan put this here? Wherever here is?

"A sea of glass. Okay. Uhm, glass, transparency… Fire, destruction, um…"

"Hell?"

The voice startles him into a quick stumble-step. He falls into a fighting pose, his fists clenched tight, teeth gritted. Just as quickly he is relaxing, falling back with eyes wide. "…Gohan."

And it is Gohan. Just as he remembered, tall and young and tired. Not cold, ruthless eyes and harsh Cheshire grins – a soft, lonely look and cautious stance.

The real Son Gohan cocks his head to the side. "My voice reminds you of an enemy. But my face reminds you of something else? Who is Gohan?"

"No," says Goten faintly. "You aren't, you're… you're Okiri, aren't you?"

"Maybe," his older brother's shadow replies. "The name seems familiar."

"You called for me. Don't you remember? You brought me here!" Goten glances aside, to the burning tree, to the boundless hard-edged sea. "To free you, right? That's why you called me!"

"Called you? I don't even know you," responds Okiri doubtfully.

"You don't remember." Goten's excitement fades.

"It's been so long since anyone came here. I can't remember anyone coming here before…"

"I came to free you," he reiterates. "But…" The idea seems abruptly foolish. He takes a step back. "But I don't even know what you are. Who you are."

Okiri smiles bitterly but says nothing in return.

The adolescent presses a palm to his forehead, forcing a disbelieving laugh past gritted teeth. "I made it all the way here and you don't even remember me…" This imprisoned fragment of Son Gohan does not apologize or offer platitudes: he stands with arms loose at his sides, expression one of impatience. His black gi shimmers faintly as the burning tree's light dances across it. Goten returns with vigor: "You called me here. Why?"

"I can't remember."

"You can't or you won't?" No reply; Goten scowls in frustration. "You must remember something! The tournament, or, ah, Earth? Me, as a kid?"

A blank stare.

"You have to remember home, Okiri! Mom, Dad, Piccolo? Earth! Home!"

"I have no home. Only enemies," Okiri replies vaguely.

"You did! You will! If you'll just tell me how…"

"If I knew how I would not be here!" The sharp retort throws Goten into silence. He pauses in his rush of thoughts to study the older halfbreed's face. The sorrow there pains him. Okiri looks away, as if irritated by his sympathy, and continues: "I am of no use to you. I am only a shadow, a piece of—" His voice falters. "A piece of… I don't know. I can't remember."

Desperation and frustration prick at the corners of Goten's eyes. "You have to remember, Okiri! You saved Mom from Babidi, you made the meadow glow to wake up Dad—You saved us, you saved all of us! You nearly killed yourself to save us! Why don't you remember?"

Okiri seizes him by the shoulders, anger flashing across his features. "Stop. If you keep talking you will call him here. I can't remember while he watches—"

"Are you scared?" Goten pulls away with equal anger, certain the shade refers to Babidi. "Are you a coward, now?"

"Live in this world for eternity. Live without dreams or hopes or memories. Live and tell me, then, that you are not afraid," replies the soul harshly.

The child's anger wilts. "I'm sorry." This passive reply earns a look of surprise from Okiri, as though it is incomprehensible. At once memory burst over him:

(you'd… cry for me?)

The smell of blood and brine, the sound of his brother's labored breathing. He hadn't died then, he isn't dead now… Goten focuses on the halfbreed with galvanized determination. "I promised I wouldn't forget you, and I didn't, even after everyone else had. I might be the only one who can. I'm gonna save you, I just have to figure out how!"

A slight shake of the head: I cannot tell you how.

Goten glances about the desolate, surreal landscape. "Just tell me: Can you be saved?"

"I don't know."

"If I saved you, if I got rid of Babidi, could you be whole again?"

"Whole?" Okiri repeats deftly. Then, softly: "Were we whole?"

"Once. Once you were—everything." Goten struggles with his locked tongue. "To Mom, and to Dad. They loved you. And you did amazing things. You saved a lot of people…" He shakes his head, withdrawing the empty words. "You're a good person, Okiri. Gohan. You don't deserve to be trapped here."

A misty look filters into the elder brother's dark eyes: "We are here because we failed…"

"You're here because you fought. You're still a good person," Goten presses, watching this change with intrigue.

"I fought but…" He frowns, eyes darkening. "But I knew it was for nothing. I knew I would be here, I knew we would lose—"

"For us, you fought for us. You won, too. And we're gonna save you," is the adamant reply.

"You'll save Gohan," Okiri replies staunchly.

"And you. You're a part of Gohan, too—"

"A part. Only a part."

Goten takes pause, confused. "A part of the whole."

"I will always be a part."

"No, Babidi's just broken all of you up, once he's gone you'll be whole—"

A sad smile. "Will I be? No. To be whole, we must be apart. But to be whole—" Confusion, determination. "To be whole. That is what I sought once. Long ago. But then…" The halfbreed rubs his nose, pressing his eyes closed. When he focuses upon Goten his voice is dreamlike, dazed. "You want to know if we can be saved?"

The boy stares at him cautiously. "Yes."

Silence is followed by trance-like words: "…We can. We wait. We have always waited."

A howl of wind shatters the surreal silence. The flames dancing across the tree's bough roar afresh, delighted to be infused with fresh oxygen. A fine haze of grit drifts into the air, to be hurled along, stinging at every bit of exposed skin. A queer whistling noise echoes through the sea of glass.

Okiri turns to him with a morose expression, eyes sharp and keen once more. "I shouldn't have done that. He comes…"

"I can't be here," replies Goten nervously, raising his voice; the wind beating upon him only adds to his feeling of utter exposure. He shields his eyes with an upheld arm. "If he finds me here…"

"Your friend comes for you," replies Okiri. "I felt him. Saab, wasn't it?" With abrupt seriousness he grips the youth's wrist. "Without the gods' mark, we cannot wait forever—"

Something tugs at Goten's consciousness. His form begins to dissolve as his own body, his real body, beckons him.

Okiri hurls his voice over the increasingly furious wind, the sharply stinging sand: "Why I did what I did, why I fought for so long… I didn't do it to save myself. I realize that now. It was for Gohan. He deserves freedom – he deserves to live, to be with good-hearted people like you. Please, save him. That is why I called you here…"

"I will," Goten shouts.

The gale screeches; the adolescent dissolves into swirls of sand. Okiri remains, and whispers to the howling wind: "All of this, for you… Does that make me whole?"

The gale swallows his words, snuffing out the tree's flames.

Retribution descends.

Memories fade.

Okiri is alone in eternity, with the darkness, with the desperation. But he has begun to think he is whole; he clings to the idea doggedly, fearfully, as if it will dissolve as Gohan's little brother had. He guards it against the abrasive sands and his furious master. That one fragile idea…

Does that make me whole?


In that strange place between sleep and waking, he feels the faintest touch of the odd old Kanassan. Before he can be forced into waking he latches on to the presence, and presses his confused thoughts: What does that mean? 'To be whole, we must be apart?'

There is an imperceptible pause as the Kanassan processes these questions. ((…This was the soul of Okiri speaking?))

Yeah, he said… he said he wanted to be whole.

((Three souls cannot share one mind, one personality. Only one can be 'whole'.))

If I defeat Babidi… If I make Gohan whole again…

((These "fragments", Okiri and Juujen. Although they coexisted before, they cannot coexist forever; they were never meant to share Gohan's life…))

If I make Gohan whole, will they die?

((It is impossible to know.))

If I just kill everything that made my brother good…

((You may very well kill all of him…))

Then why should I try?

((Would you rather he remain as he is? Would you rather those two souls remain imprisoned?))

A frustrated grunt was his reply. His eyes were already open, but the Kanassan's last thought lingered: ((Fight well. It will be your last opportunity.))

He groaned and lurched forward. He had been slumped against one of the metal columns. The awkward position drove pins of discomfort down the length of his back.

In the brief disorientation of waking he was startled to find his brother's face abruptly inches from his own; he jerked back, striking his head into the column with a resounding 'pi-ing'. "Back with us, I see," Babidi greeted in his mockingly cheerful tone. Goten eyed the sickening facsimile of his brother with blatant disgust.

After a satisfied nod Babidi straightened, striding the few paces to the steps before taking a demure seat. Goku had disappeared into the shadows; Goten sat in tense discomfort, prepared for an iron grip around his neck at any moment. His host continued his casual speech with irritating calm. "I've been thinking a long time about what to do with you, kiddo. Or should I call you 'little brother'?" Stony silence; Babidi shrugged amiably – or as amiably as the Majin could. Each innocent gesture ran thick with underlying violence. "Yes, there's always the epic final battle, I'm fond of that idea, very dramatic, but I also thought there might be a poetic justice to having dear Dad just snap your neck as soon as you walked in the door. That seemed a bit too quick, though, no fun at all." The briefest distraction; the Majin glances aside, muttering something beneath his breath, before returning with that nauseating Cheshire grin. "You see, the real problem is you're just too much trouble to take on. No offense, but a little punk like you, you're just far more trouble then you're worth, especially for an old man like me." A sardonic grin. "Yes, I may look young…"

He allowed gracious pause for Goten to laugh or at least snicker. Silence was the youth's retort. Another shrug from the parasite. "But alas. So many ways to kill you, and only one opportunity. This requires much consideration." From thin air a pale ivory staff, nearly as tall as Goten, appeared in the magician's hand; perhaps he just pulled it from behind a column. Goten had not been watching closely. He watched now, however, as the staff cut a wide and elegant arc, spinning in his brother's agile stolen fingers. The staff jerked to a stop and struck the stone, a startling, reverberating noise. "For the moment, I thought we might chat. So! Guests first. I see a few burning quandaries in that vacuous mind of yours."

For a long moment it seemed as though Goten would not reply; in fact he was struggling to find a succinct enough question. He settled with a simple one, hissing through clenched teeth: "Why are you doing this?"

"Oh, how creative. Don't they all ask that?" the Majin replied. "I'm flattered. That marks me as a true villain, doesn't it – when the young hero asks that."

"What are we to you?" Goten's voice grew stronger, despite his bruised throat and utter disgust.

"You would waste your precious breath asking that?" He barked laughter, colder than the stone tomb they stood in. "You're strong. Even better, you're a dying race – already dead, really. Who would combat you? The Kai, perhaps, but not everyday beings such as your beloved humans or Ludlu's Celar. The Saiyans, you surviving Saiyans, hold that last power of a bygone era, when the gods fought amongst and against mortals – when those bodies became a conduit of the gods themselves."

The youth stared back, uncomprehending. "Conduits?"

"I'm not keen to offer a history lesson," replied Babidi cheerfully. He leapt to his feet, pacing as he spoke. "You'll have to trust me. It's beside the point. The point being you Saiyans were endowed, allotted one could say, a certain power. And when that capricious brat Freeza killed you all off, that power condensed, to be inherited by you, and more importantly by your brother. You are… relics." He twirled the staff in his fingers, apparently thinking, or was it reminiscing? Goten realized he didn't really know how old this monster was. At last the stolen eyes refocused. "There is also a certain sentimental item your brother was keeping for me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He briefly recalled the sea of glass, the corridor – but also the fingers around his neck, which made him silence the thought.

"Nothing to you." He tapped the staff against Goten's cheek. "Don't have much life left, anyway."

"So why shouldn't I die enlightened?" responded Goten cautiously, searching through his vocabulary for some of those rare high-class words he had gleaned from dry textbooks and Trunks' attempts at the intellectual life.

"Affairs of past millennia don't concern little fools such as yourselves. Even you long-living Saiyans know nothing of a Majin life. I have seen the rise and fall of a thousand empires—"

"But you died," interjected Goten. "You're on borrowed time. You died seven years ago."

"Incorrect. I am quite alive. Despite your own opinions this body is mine. It was meant for me, it was why—" A faint snarl briefly interrupted the Majin's stoicism, and he cut off his own sentence.

Goten's fury had risen in return. "It was never yours. You stole it from him!"

"Cultivated it. I trained him."

"Tortured him."

"Raised him."

"You kept him prisoner then, as you do now!"

Abruptly Babidi ceased to humor him. The staff struck his shoulder, pinning him to the column. Goten gripped the frigid metal with an ineffectual hand. Eyes empty and frigid fixed him immobile. His brother's voice had lost its congeniality. "Now how would you know that, young hero?"

"I guessed," the adolescent lied without consideration. "You can't get rid of him entirely, or—"

"Or what? You think I need that pitiful conscience? That revolting, simpering weakness?" With a final shove which shot pain throughout his right shoulder in brief sparks, the halfbreed stepped away. "You are a foolish young hero. Nothing like your brother or father. I realized that back when you were a child. I had hoped, briefly, that you would grow out of it, developed some insecurity… But alas, no such luck. That's quite alright. You'll make fair practice."

The Majin settled back onto the steps, leaning against a column. Goten watched him warily, but the previous rage seemed to have faded. "Do you find it ironic that Earth would gather such powers?" said Babidi, conversational once again. "Vegeta, your father, both unusually strong. And my father deposited Majin Buu there. He had a theory—"

"I don't care." Goten's voice was cold.

"A theory that Earth possesses a Gate to the Other World," he finished in spite. "You were so curious before."

"Monsters like you ruined my home, and my father. He died for it – twice."

"Three times. Or would you not consider this death?" Babidi smiled, and his guest shuddered in return. The magician plowed onward. "And didn't you ever wonder why? Why it attracted all the good and bad this mortal realm had to offer?"

"No."

"Well. It's minds like that that ruin progress." But Babidi shrugged. "What discussion would you prefer?"

"I don't want to talk to you."

"Alright. I supposed I should kill you, then." The Cheshire grin returned. "But it was a lovely chat, wasn't it?"


Finis