The village of the Kuwabara Tribe was a mess. Huts were burning, trees were tore from the ground or broken at the trucks, their tops resting on the ground as their middles stuck in the air. The natives themselves were tossed about the village, bruised, bloody, and quite possibly had broken bones.
And in the middle of the disaster was Videl, still seething from her revelation in the temple. Fortunately she hadn't thrashed her classmates yet, seeing as they were all huddled together as far from the Satan girl as possible.
"Wow Videl, that was so hot!"
And then Sharpner had to add his two cents.
The dark-haired girl shifted her sights onto the approaching blond jock. It was more of a natural response that her vision began seeing red. It tended to do that when she was thoroughly pissed at the boy or just beyond the threshold of irritation. In other words, the way she usually saw him.
"Come here Videl, show the Sharpenator some of that sexy anger," the blond said as he walked up to the girl, his arms held out as he moved in to hug the girl.
The next thing anyone knew, Sharpner was sent flying into the air, his face mangled by bruises, blood, and missing teeth. The boy stayed in midair until he hit a tree that had the odd luck to be still standing after the previous violence. However, instead of simply hitting the tree, Sharpner went right through it, leaving a Sharpner-sized hole through the tree's truck. He crashed to the ground soon after, a lying heap of injury and pain.
Videl just stood where she was, her right fist held out in front of her, her arm fully extended. Huffing loudly, she turned away from her jock's fallen body and the cowering mass of her classmates.
It was then that her infuriated eyes fell on a very shocked Gohan. He looked like a goldfish, his eyes bulging out of his head, his mouth wide open as he tried to say something about the wreckage around them. Walking up to him, Videl grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled it down, his head coming down to her level. "We're leaving. Now," was all she said before letting go and walking off.
It was several moments later that Gohan came to his senses and tried to get the rest of the class to follow her. It took several minutes before anyone would do so, keeping outside a thirty yard radius of the girl. For that, Videl was grateful. She didn't need some dumb teenager to reignite her anger. She had just had her therapy and just needed to cool off.
Pity anyone that would cause her to need a little more.
The sun was setting on the horizon. That was the bad news. Any minute now, crazed murderers and rapists would appear and start picking off the student body, killing the girls and raping the guys. It was a nightmare unto itself, especially the guys. There was no telling if they would be raped and murdered, or just raped and somehow pass their remaining days a former shell of their selves. Even Videl couldn't fight off every attacker, especially if she was the first one picked off. Not that that would happen, but when you're a teenager far from the safety and comfort of home and haven't been in the outdoors since scout camp, then anything was possible.
At least, that was the way Gohan figured his peers would be thinking. One look at their faces as they grew more and more terrified told him that it was indeed what they were thinking.
Fortunately, Videl had calmed down since the incident the Son boy would refer to as the Kuwabara Massacre. Though angry with anything that would move initially, Gohan confidently felt that if such monsters as the above-mentioned attackers came, she would fight them off. No worry there. Plus, if he had to, he had the ultra-cool Saiyaman costume he could put on and save the day! But that would be a last resort sort of thing. He couldn't just disappear for awhile and reappear as Saiyaman, then disappear and reappear again as Gohan. Too many eyes and a very observant Satan girl were just waiting for that too happen.
Ahhh, so many pressures in the life of a teenaged demi-saiyan.
Yet, there was a more pressing need for him: food. He…was…starving! In fact, he had been forced to the back of the teenaged mass due to people getting freaked out about his vocal hunger pains.
But for every piece of bad news, there was fortunately good news. They had found the highway, albeit a different section of it than the one they had crashed off of. And despite the cars that flew by with their headlights on, none would stop to pick them up. So technically this was a piece of good news with a little bad tied to it. But you had to take what ever good news you could at a time like this. Beggars and choosers and all.
And that was when the teacher-chaperone made himself known for the first time since McDowell's. It was nothing short of amazing how he could disappear and reappear at odd points. "Alright students, I know this looks like a bad situation, but it could always be worse."
"And how could this possibly get any worse?" one of the students asked.
"Well, instead of walking down a highway at dusk with no ride whatsoever, we could be running from a hoard of starving zombies that want nothing more than to run us down and rip open our torsos so they can pry our still beating hearts out and eat them."
"…Thanks Teacher, we really needed to know that."
Gohan dropped his head, feeling the weight of the entire day on his back. Apparently the teacher didn't have any idea how to comfort teenagers outside of their natural environment. Neither did he to be honest, but he was sure that explaining a worst-case scenario wasn't the way to go about comforting them. By the end of the night, he was sure he would have to go about looking for them as they scattered off into the woods out of fear. Yep, that sounded about to be his luck today.
"Now students, I will teacher you the proper way to hitchhike for a ride," the teacher announced. Unfortunately for Gohan, he was too caught up with the fact the teacher had actually used a noun as a verb to hear the rest of the declaration. He wanted to correct the teacher, really he did, but the teacher was too consumed with his sudden lesson plan to care what he said. "Notice how I am facing my body is parallel with the road. My arm closest to the road is held at a ninety degree angle and my hand is balled into a fist. Now, this is the most important part: notice how I have extended my thumb in the direction pointing behind me. Everyone, I want you to do the same thing. We might get lucky and someone will pull over."
And now he was giving hitchhiking lessons. What was next? Really, what was next?
"And ladies! If you got shapely legs, roll up them pants and skirts and show them off! There might be a trucker who hasn't seen a woman in the last three days and he might be desperate."
Okay, he may have asked that question a little too early.
"And remember everyone, when you get a ride, there are some rules you will have to follow. If someone invokes the Unwritten Book of the Road, you will be at their mercies. If they want you to perform oral sex, you will have to take one for the team and do so. Now I don't know about you kids, but I'm going to make sure I get a ride with a woman."
"Umm, Teacher?" a student spoke up meekly. "Why don't we just go to the hotel across the street? Perhaps we can call someone for help."
A mass of heads turning revealed that there was indeed a hotel on the other side of the highway. It was two storied, so there was at least a chance they could get some rooms for themselves. Neon-lighted lights blared out into the growing night, the words "Hideout Hotel" spelt from them.
"What are you an idiot? That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard of," the Teacher said, sounding annoyed. "And I would know a dumb idea when I hear one, I am a teacher." Looking at this flabbergasted group of students, he then looked across the street and then exclaimed "Hey kids! There's a hotel over there! Perhaps we can spend the night and see if can get any help! Who's with me?"
Gohan couldn't decide if he wanted to blink in bewilderment or frown in contempt. He opted for a healthy mix of both, which produced quite an unusual expression. Finally, he went to the default sigh of resignation. It was best to just "go with the flow" as his fellow teenagers would say. At least it was a good idea they would have to follow and not some harebrained scheme.
"Sometimes, I have no idea how he became a teacher," Videl said next to him, causing the Son boy jump. How the heck did she get there? And when? Perhaps Vegeta was right, he was getting soft.
Oh Kami, did he really just agree with Vegeta? Yeah, it was getting late. He needed to get some sleep before he started thinking Roshi was speaking the gospel.
"So um, how are we gonna cross the street?" Gohan asked the smaller girl. "I get the feeling the whole group is gonna try crossing at once, scream at an oncoming car and start running all over the highway like headless chickens."
Videl turned to give the Son boy a skeptical look. "You really think something that idiotic would happen?"
In response, Gohan just returned the girl's look. After a moment, Videl muttered "Kami damn it." Then louder for the Son boy to hear, "I guess we'll have to take control of this whole thing. You stay on this side and I'll cross to the other. We can send them over one at a time."
Gohan nodded his affirmation. "Sounds like a plan."
"Alright everyone, listen up!" Videl shouted, getting everyone's attention. "We're going to cross this street like people with normal sized brains. I'm going to cross first to show you all how to do it the right way. Gohan will stay here and tell you when you can start crossing. We'll be doing this one person at a time so that we don't have a bunch of idiots running around on the highway. Understood?"
"Hey! Who said you were in charge?" the teacher demanded as he stormed to the two. "I'm the oldest person here, so everyone should be listening to me! And I say we all cross the street at once like a giant blob. Nothing can go wrong doing that!"
Videl stared at him for the longest time, then said "Let me guess, you read that out of a textbook, didn't you?"
"What's your point?"
"You do realize that a school textbook doesn't have all the answers to life, right?"
"Hey, if my textbooks are wrong, then I don't want to be right."
"Fine." Turning to the rest of the students, Videl said "Anyone who wants to cross the street the teacher's way and most likely end up getting hit by a car traveling fast enough to leave you as a pancake on the road, you can do it his way. If you want to go one at a time, with a smaller chance of this happening and a greater one of living pain-free, then you can do it my way. Which do you choose?"
Needless to say, the students need for an authority figure telling them the ways of the world urged them to choose the teacher's way. Their more basic instinct that screamed for survival wanted Videl's way. A true conflict of interest.
They ended up choosing Videl's way. Blast that survival instinct!
With the teacher grumbling, Videl and Gohan put their plan into action. It wasn't much of a chore for Videl to cross the highway, always on the lookout for speeding cars. When she arrived on the other side, she motioned for Gohan to begin sending the students over.
Looking both ways, Gohan put his hand on the first student he could find and pushed him forward. Like a wind-up toy, he walked straight ahead, not bothering to look either way in case a car was bearing down on him. Amazingly enough he made it across safely.
It was a repetition of this same occurrence, Gohan pushing someone into the street and they would either do a combination of running or walking across, looking or not looking for oncoming traffic, or they would run back and cling to Gohan as if their life depended on it. Typically, it was the guys that did the last one.
Sighing in irritation, Gohan sent one such student that had ran back screaming. It had been awhile before he could pry him off and send him out into the highway, not exactly paying attention to the traffic this time. Prying off scared jocks was not a fun activity, no matter how comical it could look.
And then Sharpner arrived next to him. "This isn't so hard," he declared as the student in front of him successfully crossed. "Stand back, Mountain Boy, I need no assistance!" With as much confidence as he could boast, the blond boy walked onto the highway, not the least bit worried of the potential dangers around him.
That was until a truck horn blared out of nowhere, causing Sharpner to stop right in front of it, looking at the headlights with a perfect deer-in-the-headlights expression. A loud smack was heard and Sharpner went flipping through the air, landing on the pavement soon after with a thud.
Gohan just blinked at the sight. Was…was Sharpner dead? Was he actually dead? There was no way he could've survived that! Even with his strange ability to shed off wounds that was one thing even he couldn't shake off. It…it…
Oh Kami, did somebody soil themselves?
Looking at the leftover students behind him, Gohan could definitely say that not one, but many of them had soiled their britches. Not that he could blame them, watching someone get plowed into by a truck wasn't an everyday occurrence. It was just that the stench was not very pleasant.
You can trust him on this one.
Turning back to the road, Gohan then witnessed something beyond miraculous. Sharpner's body…it was moving! The Son boy watched as the still form twitched, then an arm slowly raised and dropped. Then the torso was raised, slowly getting back onto its feet. Finally, Gohan heard "I'm okay!"
And then Sharpner got hit by another car.
This time, Gohan cringed by the hit. Okay, maybe Sharpner could withstand high-speed collisions. It didn't change the cringe-inducing scene. It was fortunate that Sharpner wasn't a filler character; otherwise he would've been another government statistic at this point.
"Umm, I think it's someone else's turn to go," Gohan said, motioning for someone to step up.
Instead, the teens that were left ran by the Son boy, rushing over the highway with disregard to anything speeding towards them. Even the teacher was with them, though it shouldn't have been surprising. He had been the one to suggesting send everyone over at once.
Surprisingly, there were only two casualties of that mass hysteria. Two students had the unfortunate luck of running in front a bus and becoming windshield passengers of it. Well, they were filler characters at this point, so it probably wasn't a big loss.
And then Sharpner shouted "I'm okay!" followed by another car hitting him.
To Nameless Reviewer: No worries. I plan on finishing this one. I won't stop until that Completed caption is up.
To SesshyLover: Hopefully the result of violence was up to your liking lol.
Fun Fact: I borrowed the Unwritten Book of the Road from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I guess you can consider this a disclaimer of sorts.
Fun Fact 2: When Videl's giving the students their choice of life and death, I'm sure you noticed how she made one options less desireable and the other more desireable. That's a common marketing trick, puffing up one's product over another. I knew my degree would come in handy somewhere.
