A/N – Hey . . . Long time no see heh-heh . . . . Awww come on! Don't look at me like that. I'm back right? T.T Forgive me? Please?
'Thoughts'
"Words"
"Other Things"
I Don't Own DBZ, DB, Any characters in either of the aforementioned series or anything owned by the Nintendo corporation . . . And I can't remember who owns DragonBall (Z) . . . yeah . . . ON WITH IT!
Chapter 8 – Of Things Remembered
It had taken an hour and a half before Gohan had thoroughly answered every question presented on the screen. The big guy, who acted like he was in charge . . . Archtura or whatever, had left after a short time leaving him with Raul, Gratz and spazz- . . . Sasha. Gohan didn't understand the relevance of several of the questions, but then again they had fed him so he did kind of owe them his cooperation.
Actually it appeared they didn't speak Japanese at all! Several of the questions showed him something and required him to say the name for what it was in Japanese before telling him the name in their language. He would still find it nearly impossible to carry a conversation but he might be able to get the gist of what someone was talking about through their use of nouns . . . . Trying to convey anything else through pictures wouldn't have worked very well anyway.
When he finished the last question, the last of a series of questions about numbers and counting, the screen disappeared unceremoniously while Raul quickly pulled a small chip out of the table and left to parts currently unknown to Gohan. Gratz nodded quietly to Sasha before performing a slight bow in Gohan's direction and following after Raul.
Sasha . . . 'Heh! I didn't forget!' smiled at him for a moment before motioning for him to get up and follow her. Mentally shrugging, Gohan hopped out of the seat and padded lightly after her as they both went for an exit separate from the one used by Gratz and Raul. Gohan walked in what he thought was either a forced or companionable silence a few paces behind Sasha.
Sasha, on the other hand, was somewhat of a nervous wreck. She glanced back covertly at least twice a minute all the while thinking of ways to explain things to the small, yet powerful boy walking behind her. 'How do you explain to a child that everyone he has ever known is long dead and forgotten by all but him?' she sighed and kept walking checking now and again to make sure he hadn't wandered off. The only bright piece of news was that she was given several weeks paid vacation in order to get Gohan acclimated to the new environment and lifestyle, Orders that had been handed down from the highest authority on the ship. She sighed once again 'Well, I can bet he's going to end up throwing around lots of unbound Ki when he ends up understanding what I'm telling him . . . Might as well make our way to the converter.'
They continued walking around the curved hallway for a while longer before they got to a massive opening on the inside curve of the wall. Inside was another elevator; however it was not nearly as clean or attractive as the others around the ship. Bare metal coated with rust was bolted and welded together to form a 30' platform without any ceiling or walls at all. Along the edges were different protuberances to attach bindings to whatever was huge enough to need them. Gohan walked onto the platform and stood in the middle, looking around with mild curiosity. Sasha tapped a large button and also stepped onto the platform.
The ride must have taken a full 20 minutes, even at the speeds they were traveling. When they arrived at the 'bottom' Gohan was half asleep.
The platform shuddered to a grinding halt, effectively waking the young saiyan. The first thing he noticed was that he felt much heavier than usual . . . almost uncomfortably so, he lifted himself to his feet and the feeling almost doubled. He frowned and closed his eyes, using his senses to see if it was affecting his Ki. 'My energy . . . It's like there's a wind blowing it away . . .' He shifted his attention to Sasha to see if she was being affected. 'Hmm . . . Neat trick!' Sasha had lowered her energy levels down to the minimum that would keep her conscious and on top of that was holding it inside her torso so only a very minuscule amount leaked away towards their destination. Her outward appearance changed very little, making her look like maybe she hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before, but otherwise unchanged. It took him a few seconds but he was able to configure something similar and gave a sigh of relief, feeling the drain lessen. There was still about twice as much draining away from him as there was from her but he would worry about perfecting it later.
While Gohan was occupied with keeping the technique going both he and Sasha had started walking towards whatever it was draining their energy. The elevator had emptied out into a hallway, however, the hallway didn't last very long before opening up into a giant room, large enough that Gohan noticed that it was harder to slow down than it was to speed up the closer they got to their apparent destination(1), and with a growing sense of unease, followed after his guide.
Sasha, though, seemed to know exactly where it was she was going. After a few minutes of walking towards the center of the room she turned to the right and started heading towards a nearby building within the room. Even though it wasn't nearly as far away as the machine had been it took them much longer to get there. As if the machine at their backs was trying to tug them towards it. When they got to the building she waved at someone through a large window and a door Gohan hadn't even noticed opened up right in front of them, closing after they had gone through. Sasha and the 'guy in a lab coat' had a short conversation and at the end of it the man just shrugged and gave Gohan a wary look before exiting via a flight of stairs going upward. Sasha gave a sigh of relief and motioned Gohan over with her to go through another, much more obvious, doorway. When they went through she hit a few buttons on the console before continuing into the room.
Gohan didn't pay any attention to this however; his entire focus was on the sight before him. In front of him was a window/screen of impressive size, starting a few centimeters above floor level and looming above his head to a height of at least 15 meters and stretching at least double that; it was awe inspiring to say that least. It was what he saw through said opening, however, that took his breath away and slowly, ever so slowly, began to horrify him. At first all he could see was the inky blackness of space, punctured by the piercing light of the stars as Sasha turned off the lights in the room.
Sasha quickly summoned a ball of Ki in her hand . . . only to watch it disappear before it even fully took form. She gave a thumbs-up to the corner of the room and kept a close eye on Gohan as she casually hit a button on a nearby panel.
Gohan started to lean forward to get a better look at a small brown object near the bottom of the screen when it started to accelerate towards him growing larger and larger by the second until it took up over half the screen. It looked familiar to him . . . much of it was covered in blue and much more of it in sickly gray clouds. Gohan had a stray thought that Japan was going to be hit by a typhoon in a . . . few . . . days. It had taken a while but his brain had caught up with what he saw. It was earth, only so much of it had been destroyed that he had barely been able to discern continents. He was worried but still not quite convinced . . . really, it wasn't until he saw the moon that he believed it. . .
Chichi, his mom, had made him study almost all the time. It was only at his fathers insistence that he was given any time to train at all, so his entire life had been, for the most part, eat, study, eat, train, eat, sleep and repeat. At one point Chichi had gotten it into her head that memorizing the face of the moon that always faced the earth, due to its spin-speed, to the point where he could draw it from memory including at least one hundred of the prominent craters that pock-marked its surface. Once he had finally completed that particular task he had immediately forgotten most of it, deeming it, for the most part, useless. Looking off to the side of this odd window-like screen however, some of that knowledge returned to him and he could no longer deny that the brown, red and grey-blue sphere he was looking at was indeed Earth.
'How could something like this happen?!' His brain was working overdrive, trying to connect dots he hadn't even known existed, to form a picture he couldn't currently understand.
I know Dad got a call a few months before we left . . . he looked worried and had argued with Bulma about something for some time before looking sad and hanging up. He talked to Mom about it for a bit and she looked like she was ready to cry . . . but insisted that she was fine. . . Piccolo was just as severe as always but seemed a little more on edge than he had before. He remembered something Bulma had whispered about the center of an atom . . . except she shortened it and . . . . .
Suddenly and with crystal clarity the situation of almost half a millennia past made itself known to the young demi-saiyajin. He turned to Sasha and nearly screamed his question at her: "Where's my family!?"
She looked as sympathetic as she could, but that didn't help her to understand what it was he was saying. Gohan saw this and began to cry hysterically babbling questions and pleading in a language that it seemed now only he knew. She instantly hugged him close and tried her best to console the last earthling on the loss of his home and everyone he had ever known. Unknowingly, she too shed a few tears in trying to understand what he was going through. Their excess Ki flowing away from their bodies into the walls of the room, they grieved together for the loss of an entire world to its own warmongering.
(1)The Idea is that this machine is so large and has so much energy within it that there is a weak gravitational force being applied to them. This is partially why it's near the bottom of the ship.
A/N – Again I am so very very sorry for the delay/ hiatus. I will try not to do that again but I can't guarantee it . . . I hope that at least you still want to read what it is I write even if you hate me for the waits I put you through.
