Thank you to Lon Wolfgood, Seren McGowan and Lady Lan for the reviews, as well as to anybody who has added the story to their alerts or favourites.

If I were to divide this story up into sections, the previous chapter would be the end of Part One and this would be the beginning of Part Two.

Chapter Ten: That Daredevil Look

"Why do you want to race Goku so badly, anyway?"

Bulma took a drag on her cigarette and watched Vegeta tie up his sneakers. The early cold snap of December had faded into an unseasonably warm January that had everybody shedding their bulky parkas weeks before school was back in session, and they were at an age when, each year, the ritual removal of the obscuring winter gear revealed your friends to be just a little more adult than you remembered them. An age at which you noticed these things and it was both awkward and fluttery nice.

And there was no harm in admitting to oneself that an (sort of almost maybe if he tried to be a bit nicer once in a while) old friend had nice arms when he stretched them all the way out like that. No harm in admitting that he'd filled out a lot through the shoulders and chest since the last time you'd seen him without a winter coat.

"I don't want to race him." He gave the laces a final, violent tug and sat back up. "I want to beat him."

"What a dumb way to start the term."

"I didn't ask for your opinion," he snapped.

"Well I'm giving it anyway." She dropped the cigarette and watched it fall away between the bleachers to fizzle out on the ground, still hard and cold. "Do you know what I think?"

"I don't care what you think." He was audibly grinding his teeth.

"I think you spend so much time trying to be a winner that you don't have any way to define yourself other than your accomplishments." She leant back and smiled smugly.

"What the fuck." His voice dropped down to a low growl and a voice, located strangely low, low, low in her belly, told her he couldn't do that before the holidays. "Have you been taking 'stupid philosophical advice' lessons from Kakarrot? And if you're going to criticise me about how I 'define myself' or any other metaphysical hippie bullshit, maybe you should try developing personality for yourself beyond 'I don't wear pants and I like to tell people I'm a genius'."

"Well," she said, and shrugged. "I am a genius."

He rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the unattended track, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward, lost now to some thought known only to him. Bulma thought about her vow to Oolong and the others, that she could seduce Vegeta. She'd all but forgotten about it, and she knew they wouldn't remember it either, but right now he wasn't wearing a jacket and he must be terribly cold but he looked so determined and she could see his shoulder blades against his t-shirt and wasn't it funny how his hands were brown but his arms were pale where he'd spent all winter outdoors in a jacket and and and impulsively, she reached out and rested her palm on his back, between his shoulders.

The moment was gone, then, and he twisted around to look at her with that same blank look he'd already perfected by the time he'd started at Orange Star, aged eleven. She'd never figured out what that look actually meant.

"There was a bug on your shirt," she told him, after a long silence. "I chased it away."

He stared at her a little longer; she wondered what he was thinking.

"Are you going to move your hand?"

"Yes." A beat, and then she did so. He kept staring. "I'm going to go see if Goku's here."

She bounded down the bleachers and crossed the track to the exit closest to the main school. Her hand felt very warm. She tried not to look back, but then she did.

He wasn't watching her, anyway.

As much as Goku liked winning, this was a lousy way to finish off what had been a great holiday. With his head down between his knees and his chest heaving with exhaustion he offered Vegeta a sweaty hand to shake and a hearty "good race", but the shorter boy turned away as though Goku had hit him.

"I mean it," Goku panted, "I didn't think it'd be that close." He straightened up, hands on his waist as he tried to regulate his breathing. "For a while there I thought you had me. Lucky for me I've got the longer legs, huh?"

"Don't patronise me," Vegeta spat, and Goku knew no attempt to mitigate the situation was going to make living with Vegeta any easier. He'd spent a good half hour that morning, while he unpacked clothes into his shared bedroom, considering throwing the race, but in the end he'd decided that Vegeta was too smart not to notice a ploy like that, and it would only make things worse.

Besides, he thought secretly, guiltily, I really like winning.

"Next time we'll race your distance, right?"

Vegeta gave him a dark look – a murderous look – and stomped off to the change rooms. Goku would sleep with his eyes open tonight.

"You should've just thrown it," Yamcha informed him lazily from where he lay stretched out across a couch in their common room. "That guy will never forgive you. You know he's been holding a grudge against Bulma since first form for being better at maths than him?"

Goku's mouth twisted to one side. "I thought they were friends. Sort of, anyway."

"Bulma and Vegeta? Nah. She hates the guy."

Goku didn't say anything but a vertical line appeared between his eyebrows. Yamcha laughed. "Don't really know why she spends time with him either, man. She's just morbid, I guess. Likes to know what makes things tick."

"Maybe Bulma knows how I can make him tick in a way that doesn't involve suffocating me with my pillow while I sleep."

Yamcha shrugged. "You should relax, Goku. Enjoy this one day without classes. Noses to the grindstone tomorrow."

"You didn't see the look he gave me, Yamcha. I don't think I'm going to live to see tomorrow."

There was a big, red hand print on his perfectly smooth scalp.

Even while Krillin tried to remember if he'd brought any hats other than those for the uniform, he felt a sort of perverse pride in the painful swelling on his head. That wasn't just any old hand print. That was the hand print of 18 Gero. There was a part of him that wanted to take a pen and write "18 GERO" in big black letters right in the middle of it so everybody would know that she'd touched him, if only because she was somehow enraged by his saying "hello" as she entered the school today.

The fact remained that she had chosen to slap him around, instead of just using that disdainful look she ordinarily employed. The fact remained that today, he was special.

Seriously, though, he was going to have to cover that up with a hat.

"Really? I thought you were going to throw it, to be honest."

Goku grimaced and tugged at his hair. "Oh man, does everyone think I should've just lost? This is the worst."

Bulma shrugged. "I'm not saying what you should or shouldn't have done. I just didn't know you were that set on winning. I should've stayed. Laughed at him at the end and all that."

I like winning, too! he wanted to say. I'm a winner! Why do people think I don't care about winning?

Instead, he said, "well, it's done now, so I just want to know if there's any way I can make him want to be friends again."

"I'm not his psychiatrist", she snapped, then immediately dialled down on the temper. "Were you guys even friends before?"

Goku shrugged. "I don't want to toot my own horn too much or anything, but I reckon he liked me better than the people he actually hangs out with."

Bulma snorted. "Big deal. He hates them."

"Maybe I should just sleep in the woods tonight," Goku sighed, wondering how his grand plans for friendship had devolved into this desperation to just not get murdered before he was ever even legal to drink.

"Good plan."

18 was furious. She'd been furious since the beginning of the month; since she and her brother had their birthday. He was a year older but their birthdays fell within three days of one another, so they always celebrated them together, on the day between. One of 17's gifts had been the chance to spend this term studying abroad. He'd been thrilled. She'd been aghast. It had completely ruined her own birthday celebrations.

No part of her wanted to admit she needed her brother to operate. No part of her wanted to give further ammunition to idiots like Vegeta, whose face still looked to her the way it had, sniggering at age 13, when he'd given her a copy of Nabokov's Ada or Ardor as a late birthday gift and told her he thought it was 'relevant to her interests'. No part of her wanted to concede anything to whoever it was who had taken his lead and wrapped a V.C. Andrews to leave outside her dormitory with a 'happy birthday' card each January since.

But now 17 wasn't here and she felt like half of 18 had gone with him.

It wasn't something sick or perverted, despite what her anonymous gift-giver might like to insinuate. She'd just never been close to her father; never even known her mother. 17 was like her whole family. The last time she'd been separated from him for any extended period was the year he began at Orange Star and she was stuck at home without him. At ten years old it had seemed like nothing else could ever be worse than having her best friend stolen away from her like that, knowing that he must miss her just as much as she missed him.

She'd been wrong, of course. Having him gallivanting off across the continent without her of his own free will, knowing that he was having the time of his life and didn't care a fig what she was doing or thinking or feeling, was much worse.

"Hello 18, are you coming in?" Mai peered out from their room, where she was brushing her curtain of dark hair repetitively. "Did you have a nice birthday?"

18 thought she detected something disgustingly smug in her room-mate's tone. "Is this you?" She snatched the wrapped book from in front of the door and held it up.

"No, it's a gift. Looks like a book."

18 narrowed her eyes. "Don't play dumb with me. Are you the one who keeps giving me these?"

Mai put down her hair brush and shook her head.

"Is it your stupid ginger boyfriend?"

"I don't have a ginger boyfrie—"

"I don't care about your personal life. Is Shu the one who keeps sending me creepy incest novels?"

Mai looked at the package warily. "If anybody I know has been buying incest novels, they haven't told me."

"Well," 18 tossed the package onto Mai's bed and turned her nose up. "Tell him that if it is him I will cut off his balls."

"Tell him yourself. Why would he want to send you—"

"That is, if he even has any. Tell me, Mai, does he?"

The dark haired girl frowned. "I don't know! I told you, he's not my—"

"I'm going for a walk. You can have the book."

"Thanks," Mai muttered, after 18 had closed the door behind her. "Just what I always wanted. A novel romanticising incest.

"'Oh, no problem'" she continued, in a too-squeaky impersonation of her room-mate. "'And might I just say thank you, Mai, for all the knives you put in my mattress. I really slept so much better once I'd bled out.'

"No need to thank me, 18. The whole school already did when they realised you were dead."

She opened the window and dropped the book out, where it landed on top of a passing brunette.

"Hey!" the girl protested, turning her eyes upwards and spotting Mai where she leant out of the window. She rubbed her head where the book had hit it. "What the hell?"

"Sorry," Mai replied. "18 Gero gave me that book but I don't want it because it's apparently about incest. Sibling incest. But she said it's really good, if you want to read it and tell all your friends she said that. Thanks." She pulled her head back inside and slid the window closed.

The brunette opened the package.

Goku made it through the night alive. He attributed this to the fact that he didn't see his room-mate even once since The Race. It was still with some relief that he settled in a few minutes early for his first ever Food Studies lesson in the kitchens. Finally!

He was flipping through the study booklet from last term when the rest of his classmates began flowing into the room, but was interrupted when a stack of books landed next to him on the counter with a crash.

Looking up, Goku met the puffy, angry eyes of a particularly intimidating Chichi Mao.

"Uh, hi."

"I just had an enormous fight with Melody," she snapped, "so I've been left without a partner. You're it. If you look like dragging down my grade I swear to god I will not hesitate to throw you under the bus at the first opportunity."

He swallowed heavily. "I really like food."

Her face twisted into an expression somewhere between confusion and horror. "You are aware the assessment is almost entirely written and theory-based?"

"Yeah," Goku pouted. "They made that pretty clear last term. I swear there's a subject with the same name at my old school and all those kids do is cook stuff for two years. This school is supposed to better, not worse."

"Maybe I should go see if Melody wants to be partners, after all."

"What? No, hey, I'm a good partner. I work real hard. What are you guys fighting about, anyway?"

"She's trying to get me to read some kind of incest porn."

"Oh." Goku wondered how he hadn't noticed Melody was that kind of a girl, and why Chichi (who seemed like she definitely wasn't that kind of a girl) would have chosen her, of all the people here, to call a friend. Furthermore, he wondered how people who were into incest porn fit into his plan to be friends with everybody in the whole school.

"Maybe she's forgotten about it, or realised not everybody wants to read incest porn. Or found some other victim."

"Why has she got incest porn? What's wrong with her? Is she demented or something?"

"Excuse me? Did you just call one of my close, personal friends 'demented'? Because I could have sworn that's what I heard you say, utensil boy."

Her eyes looked dangerous and Goku shrank away automatically. "Uh, no? Sorry." He'd kind of been hoping the holidays would erase her memory of that whole drawer fiasco.

The dangerous eyes rolled. "Wow, it's so manly the way you just back down like that."

Goku shrugged and smiled. "I don't want to fight with a girl when she's feeling mean. You girls've got no compunctions about aiming below the belt."

"Oh, 'compunctions'. Have you been saving that one up, bright spark?"

"Sure have!" He beamed brightly. "Now I've just got to find a place to use 'avuncular'. I'm expanding my vocabulary, you know."

Chichi lifted a hand to her mouth and laughed. The danger fled from her eyes. "You're either funny or sweet, but I'm not sure which because I can't tell whether you're serious."

"I'll take both, thanks."

By lunchtime a series of A4 booklets produced in one of the school libraries had taken the lower sixth form by storm. Entitled '18 Gero's Favourite Moments In Literature' (and being presently rebranded as '17 Gero's Favourite Moments In Literature' to meet the needs of the upper sixth form audience) it consisted of several different extracts, photocopied from paperback novels and collated without any more framework than the six word title on the front page.

"Apparently Melody Kaczka got this one book on personal recommendation from 18 herself, and it was just full of this shit," Oolong told Goku, his already pink face flushed with excitement from the scandal.

"Wait, is this incest porn?" Goku poked the sheaf of papers where they lay on the grass. "Chichi was telling me Melody kept trying to get her to read incest porn."

"Let's just say the brothers and sisters in the story are particularly loving and leave it at that." Instead of leaving it at that Oolong added a lecherous snicker and faked a big stretch, leaning back against the low stone wall they were sitting in front of, trying to get a peek up Maron's skirt. Bulma kicked him in the ear.

"I don't think I want to read this," Goku said.

"It's like a fatal motor accident. You know you shouldn't look, but you just can't tear your eyes away," Yamcha told him. Krillin said nothing.

The four boys were seated on the ground in one of the school's grassed courtyard, having taken their hot lunches from the cafeteria to enjoy outside in the warm (for January) weather. Behind them, Bulma and Maron perched on a wall with Lunch, having come over all demure again during the holidays, rounding out the trio of blunettes.

"It's morbidly fascinating," Bulma agreed.

"I didn't read it," Lunch said piously.

"I thought it was sad," Maron said.

"Because 18's such a pervert?" Yamcha asked.

"Because their love was so forbidden, yet so true," she replied, sternly.

Bulma made a gagging noise and the hand gestures to go with it. Lunch politely wrinkled her nose.

"The universe has never been so glad you're an only child," Bulma told Maron.

"It isn't true!" Krillin exclaimed, all the words tumbling out of his mouth at once as he leapt to his feet.

"Oh, no," Maron told him. "I really am an only child."

"What? That's not what I meant. I mean I don't think 18 reads those kind of books."

"Lots of people read them," Yamcha replied, "or they wouldn't be getting published. I'm sure she doesn't actually have creepy sex with her brother, but that doesn't mean she doesn't like that kind of book."

"I just don't think she'd read that kind of thing," the bald boy huffed. "I mean it's not even well-written."

"Pshaw." Oolong waved a hand dismissively. "You're just saying that because you're hot for her. It's not like she's going to notice you just because you go around defending her base tendencies."

"Hey Krillin." Krillin turned to look at Goku. "Maybe 18 would notice you if you grew your hair."

"Oh, maybe!" Maron said. "Not everyone likes bald heads."

"You have to have the right shaped head to go bald," Lunch added.

"Hey, I like my bald head."

"You don't have the right shaped head." Maron tapped her index finger against her lips thoughtfully. "Your ears are all wrong."

"What's wrong with my ears?"

"You know who has the right shaped head?" Lunch whispered in Bulma's ear.

"Besides, it's not like you're the only boy in our year with a shaved head, these days. It's just not unique any more."

"Those guys copied me! I made this cool." Krillin pointed to his head with both hands and Maron shook her head sadly.

"Tien Shinhan has a nice shaped head."

"You don't think I look cool? You liked this look last year."

"Oh my god Krillin, I was like fifteen when we went out. I hope I'm a little more mature than that now."

"Guys, guys," Bulma made hushing motions with her hands, which were roundly ignored. "Guys, can we get a little quiet? Lunch is trying to lust after Tien's bald head, here."

Lunch's face flushed bright red. "No I'm not I have to go here have my sandwiches no sense in wasting them." She stood up and hurried off for a few steps, then turned around and narrowed her eyes. "And I hope you choke on them, Bulma Briefs!" She scurried off into one of the buildings.

There was silence for a moment, then Krillin spoke. "I hate that guy, Tien. He's a dick. He stole my bald look."

"I'm over bald and now I'm into guys with long hair. Like, growing it out longer than regulation. That's so rebellious."

Yamcha unconsciously flicked his own hair around.

"You said bald was rebellious. Bald's rebellious."

"And scars. I'm really feeling scars right now."

Bulma squinted at Maron evilly.

"Especially, like, sexy facial scars. That whole daredevil look."

Bulma pushed her off the wall backwards and stole her orange juice.