Chapter 20 – Boiling Point
Brandishing an ice pick at the wall of frozen food in her chest freezer, Chichi tried to identify something that might be a roast. Out of the corner of her eye she could just see Gohan pacing in her kitchen, stepping over Goten absently every time he crawled across his brother's path. He hadn't offered to go back to his bedroom and resume studying. Chichi sighed deeply. Checking in with his doppelganger didn't seem to have helped his peace of mind. "So, are Reinyn and Piccolo coming to dinner or what?" Chichi asked. "I need to know how many roasts to thaw."
"No, I don't think they are," Gohan said. "I'm not sure though." Reinyn hadn't managed to say two words over lunch, and Piccolo just shrugged at the invitation to dinner. In the end, Gohan had felt like an interloper, unwelcome and unwanted. And that was just wrong. Reinyn didn't get to look at him like that, like he, Gohan, was somewhere he didn't belong when it was his world and his friend and his mentor. The guy had a lot of attitude for a guest in someone else's timeline. "I just wish Dad would show up and put everyone back where they belong, you know? He's me right, so I don't know how psychologically twisted this is, but I really don't like Reinyn very much. He acts like I'm pissing him off if I say anything to him, but I haven't done anything but try to help him. I mean where is all the hostility coming from?"
"I don't know," Chichi said. She started pecking away at the ice around what was likely a hunk of roast. "He isn't you, honey. He needs our help. I mean he'd rather be in the wilderness with Piccolo than home with us. Something's very off with Reinyn." Chichi stopped whittling at her freezer and spun around. Taking in the stubborn set to Gohan's jaw, Chichi smiled sympathetically. Reinyn was irking her son, less because of their differences than their similarities if she had to guess. He was probably feeling replaced with Piccolo and his own mother was acting motherly toward the extra-him. Sometimes she forgot that her son was only eleven, however smart and grown-up he seemed most of the time. Children had a knack for being irrational and territorial when it came to the important things in their lives, like their close friends and their family. "Reinyn won't be here long. You shouldn't let this get under your skin."
"How do we know he won't be here long? Where's Dad? He should have checked in by now. For all we know the afterlife is still isolated, and they can't fix it, and this is just going to be the way things are, and when we die, I don't know where we'll go because the afterlife isn't going to be there. And we won't see Dad again because he's in the afterlife that we can't get to." Pausing to take a breath, Gohan caught sight of his mother's face, and he wished he could take back everything he'd just said. She didn't need him to remind her that Goku was gone, and she definitely didn't need him to suggest that they might never see him again, even after death. "I'm sorry."
"Goku?" Chichi whispered. While Gohan ranted about the state of the nation, a ghost, her Goku, had appeared over his shoulder. A thousand questions, thoughts, and declarations flitted through Chichi's mind. Stumbling forward, she pushed past Gohan, and clutched at her absentee husband's shoulders. "Where have you been?"
"Dad?" Gohan stuttered. Mom was clinging to Dad so tight that her knuckles were white, like she was afraid he might disappear at any moment. Gohan grimaced at the thought, but she was justified wasn't she? That halo meant he wouldn't be around for long. Mom was crying, soaking Dad's shirtfront with tears she hadn't been able to share with her sons. She was shaking with grief for a husband so recently lost and now dangled in front of her like a cruel taunt from the afterlife. For the second time that day, Gohan felt like an interloper. He scooped Goten into his arms and slipped outside. His parents deserved a moment, several moments, if there was any justice in the universe.
Life was not fair, death was backlogged, and there wasn't any justice in the universe. Master Roshi caught a fairly revealing glimpse of some alien cleavage and was forced to amend his conclusion about the universe. Any place with silky green hills like that alien woman was sporting couldn't be all bad. The woman turned away, adjusting her top, and Master Roshi's mind clicked back on. He shoved his shades more firmly up on his nose and tried to focus on the small group of students and friends he was here to support. From where he sat at the fringe of the group, they all seemed to be huddled together around Chichi, Bulma, and the children. You wouldn't think defensive huddling would be necessary after death, but Master Roshi couldn't blame them for a little paranoia after the riot earlier.
A riot over Goku, as ludicrous as that sounded, had already whittled their numbers by one. Poor well-meaning good-hearted Saiyan that he was, Goku had agreed to wait elsewhere to avoid any further incidents. As nice and self-sacrificing as it all was, that left Chichi alone with only a thin veneer of support from a pack of friends who didn't know what to say to her. As far as Master Roshi could tell the huddle-close method of comfort might be cutting off Chichi's oxygen supply, but it wasn't doing much else. An invisible wall of tension and fear and grief walled her away from anyone who might try to comfort her. Goku had been able to slip through that wall, to touch his wife in her pain because he shared it; he understood it.
Master Roshi couldn't bring himself to participate in the half-measure, pseudo-comfort gesture, and huddle close with the rest of them. He felt empathy for Goku and Chichi's loss and their pain, but there were other tragedies here, grander and more heart rending than a temporarily misplaced soul, however long that soul had been misplaced. Master Roshi touched Ox's shoulder and nodded toward the crowd, silently communicating his need to get away. Ox nodded without abandoning his spot in the huddle.
Slipping into the sea of souls filtering through the aisles, Master Roshi disappeared easily enough. Being less than average height had its advantages, though he'd had a hard time getting Krillin to admit it at times. Steadily, he made his way up until he'd reached the highest tier of the arena. From so high, he could almost imagine that he was still alive and at a sporting event, the world martial arts tournament or a soccer game. Master Roshi was thankful for his sunglasses, thankful that no one would see him blink back the tears welling up in his eyes. He was dead. Everyone was dead and everything was gone. The thought was staggering if he let it in. His friends' tragedies, their lost children and lives were pretty insignificant stacked against the end of their universe.
As the elusive Turtle Hermit, Master Roshi had managed to spend most of his life apart from the bulk of humanity, but that didn't mean he hadn't lived or that he didn't have ties to the Earth. His greatest friends, more closely valued than any pupil, had swum in the ocean and flown in the air. The cycle of life and death he had watched from his island was over, and he didn't even know what became of those other friends, the sea turtle or the rabbits that lived under his porch. Did the afterlife have a place for all living things or was it going to be packs of people, harps, and clouds? An eternity with only people to keep a man company?
Master Roshi stared down at the sea of aliens and sighed. Time only would tell what the afterlife would hold besides interminable waiting.
No one had taken notice of Master Roshi's quiet departure, least of all Chichi. She was still focused raptly on the doorway which would be returning her oldest son. At first the children spilling forth had been tiny, too small to be her son, but now they were older, adults even. Somehow they'd skipped over her son, missed him. Chichi wanted to march up to one of those incompetent bureaucratic demons and shake him until they brought her son. But violence wasn't very effective in the afterlife from her limited experience.
Goku was so much better at getting information out of those slimeballs. Maybe that was the snafu? They probably brought Gohan to Goku because he was less likely to ream them out for taking so long. Chichi smiled, warming up to her theory, envisioning her son with his father, safe at last. She refused to entertain the thought that anyone would try to deny her son access to the afterlife or that he might still be missing.
And with an earsplitting whine of feedback, the bureaucrats addressed the assemblage. "Ladies, gentlemen, children, the bulk of the Vegetan sorting is now completed. Unless you are related to one of the four souls we are about to list, we'd like you to follow to purple ribbon of light outside to the afterlife. Any souls you were awaiting are either already in the afterlife waiting for you or they won't be joining you. Any questions can be addressed to the helpdesk before or after entering your designated afterlife. That's the purple ribbon of light right outside."
The people around her were beginning to chatter and grumble, to gather their children and continue the waiting their deaths had so far consisted of, but Chichi wasn't ready to accept defeat again. She wasn't going somewhere else to wait while new demons gave her the run around. Damn them all, her son was more important than this.
"The four souls' families we would like to remain for now are as follows: Graco, son of Sippo and Bagge; Sefter son of Tiet and Berah; Festis daughter of Teg and Winoh; Reinyn son of Goku and Chichi. If those souls' families could please make their way to the central arena we would appreciate it. Everyone else, follow the purple ribbon of light, thank you."
Chichi felt her father's heavy hand settle on her shoulder, a squeeze of silent support that lent her the strength to rise and start down the steps against the flow of alien mothers who were leaving with their children in tow. She didn't need to check and see if her friends were following. She knew her father was behind her, helping clear a path with his bulk, and her friends were trailing in his wake.
After the riot, when the bureaucrats bundled him away from his family, Goku had been excited, almost giddy. Instead of waiting on the periphery, he was going to get a front row seat to the sorting, and as frustrating as it was to leave Chichi behind, Goku just knew that from his new vantage point, things were going to be different. He'd be able to help find his son and make things right.
It wasn't the first time he'd been wrong about how things were going to turn out.
The demons running the command center scurried around like crazed pastel ants. Just another piece of furniture, another obstacle in their lives, the demons scurried around Goku, doing their small mysterious jobs, keeping the afterlife flowing forward. Goku knew better than to try and talk with them, they either didn't hear or didn't care. And they most definitely did not want his help. He had offered enough times. Instead, Goku ended up watching things he couldn't touch or even understand most of the time.
Both information-lifeline and annoyance, a monitor dominated one of the command center's long walls. Like his very own afterlife-CNN, Goku spent his days scanning the sea of faces for any sign of his son. Death hadn't changed Saiyans much that Goku could tell from his information screen. Virtually every frame that flashed in front of him showed a fight on some scale. No peace, no rest, just chaos and war. If anything, dying seemed to have pissed the lot of them off. Goku watched the command center's screen shift views to a group of warrior souls sent in to sort the saved from the damned. He stared at the new view, the new souls, and wished that he could be there, that he could help. Not helping was driving him crazy.
Goku just wanted to be there, in the middle of their stupid war. Somewhere among that sea of psychos, his son was waiting to be found, and he was the man to find him. Someone had to find him, and it needed to happen soon.
Time was running out.
It was a subtle thing, the winding down, but Goku could tell that the sorting wouldn't be continuing much longer. They had found the souls they were looking for and the rest were going straight to Hell. Not a disturbing proposition, if only his Gohan was sorted and safe.
Like an answer to his frustrated prayers, a short puce general supervisor headed out onto the floor. Goku recognized him, Felix, a demon who would talk to him. Before Felix could decide to leave again, as he always did sooner or later, Goku began weaving through the currents of scurrying demons. "Felix, you should let me go in after him, my son I mean," Goku said, not wasting his breath on small talk. "I know I could find him."
Felix's ample puce jowels jiggled as he shook his head, and he sighed deeply before answering. "You know we have the most efficient fetching demons available on the case. Sending you into that war zone isn't going to help anyone. Have some faith in the powers that be. We've dealt with the destruction of Vegeta twice now in this universe. Granted, last time we didn't have all the souls of an alternate universe coming in simultaneously, but I think we handled it well. Have some patience. We aren't sending them to Hell until everyone is accounted for."
...Accounted for, but not necessarily cleared for heaven. Goku didn't miss the phrasing Felix used, and he knew his son was listed on the borderline roster. "Most borderline souls actually make it to heaven, yes? I mean, how do you guys figure it out, with the borderline souls? How do you know which ones to let through and which to leave behind? Who decides?"
Felix shuffled his papers and bit his lip stodgily. "Now, you don't want to know that. It's pretty boring really. Ah, here come our demons now. They should have the last of the loose ends there, then we can get the dump over and done with." Without preamble four giant purple mastiff dog-demons appeared on the floor. Between them were three souls, none of which could have been remotely confused with Gohan. There was a young girl and two older men, adults.
"My son's not there," Goku said. He tried craning his neck to get a good look behind the demon dogs, but there was no sign of him.
"Sorry then. Your son must not have been cleared to enter the afterlife," Felix said.
Before Goku could choke a protest out, one of the subordinate demons interjected. "Sir, that's a negative, we still haven't located Mr. Son's son. The error has to have been a sorting tier above us. There is only a 0.00009% possibility that we missed him with that search."
Felix's puce skin visibly darkened until it was nearly blue. "Well doesn't that just take the cake? We can't close this sorting station without that soul. Blasted tier one sorters not sending me all my bloody souls," he growled. "I guess there's no help for it. Break out the F.I.D.O. He can find anything, anywhere."
Goten was digging an impressive hole in the back yard. By turns he ate a handful of moist black dirt and dumped the next down his shirtfront. Gohan was listening too hard, trying to catch a word or a phrase from his parents to distract his brother from the less than hygienic activity. When the door finally squeaked open behind him, Gohan knew his father was gone. He felt his energy fade from existence moments before. Instead of turning to face his mother, Gohan stared bleary-eyed at his brother and the dirt-game.
"You could at least pretend to care if your brother eats his way to China," Chichi said. And her voice was almost normal, almost steady. "Your father is gone, and you'll be relieved to know, that the afterlife is back to normal. Things were apparently a little crazy up there for a while, but your father sent word as soon as he could."
"If everything is back to normal, then I guess he picked up Reinyn too?" Petulant as the question sounded in his ears, Gohan wanted to hear his mother say that Reinyn was gone back to his own life, far, far away.
"Your father said that they destroyed the alternate universe and everyone in it. I imagine...well I assume that means your...Reinyn is gone too." Chichi couldn't see Gohan's face to gauge his reaction to the news. To be honest, she'd been disturbed by the thought of an entire universe declared superfluous. Who was to say that some higher power wouldn't decide they were inconvenient and erase them someday? When she finally saw Gohan's face Chichi knew that this was more personal than that. Reinyn, a boy with his face, a boy he hadn't liked very much, had ceased to exist sometime today. And Gohan could be so sensitive sometimes. "Are you okay?"
No, he was not okay. The shame Gohan had felt earlier when he realized he felt jealous toward his doppelganger was nothing compared to the guilt he felt now. Reinyn was annoying and arrogant and rude. And he was dead. No, not dead, he didn't exist. Gohan had been wishing his doppelganger away so hard, and now that he was so completely gone that he would never return, Gohan couldn't help feeling somehow responsible. "I have to see Piccolo. He'll be wondering what..." As soon as he decided to check in with Piccolo, Gohan had searched for his distinctive fighter's aura, prickly and green, but Piccolo was not alone. The yellow starburst of energy that Gohan shared with Reinyn blazed on, still alive, still in existence.
"Honey?" Chichi couldn't read her son's expression at all. His face had gone blank like he was thinking, deciding what to feel.
"Reinyn isn't gone Mom." The jealousy and the selfish tendencies that Gohan had been struggling with over Reinyn suddenly seemed unimportant, stupid, and petty. He couldn't imagine what it would feel like to lose one's universe, but Reinyn's was gone. It had hurt like Hell to lose a father, but his father still existed in the afterlife. His mother and friends and his world were still here. Reinyn's home and every connection he'd ever had were gone, rubbed away. "We have to tell him what's happened. I have to tell him." Whatever happened next, whether Reinyn was destined to live out his life for another 200 years or fade out of existence like his reality, Gohan was determined not to begrudge him another moment of life.
The world went black for a moment, and Piccolo awoke face down in the dirt. Reinyn was becoming more competent by the moment. Piccolo hadn't seen that last shot coming, and the kid did not pull his punches like Gohan tended to. It wasn't the first time Reinyn had managed to ring his bell and lay him out. Frankly, Piccolo was beginning to get the feeling that his new student might have learned all he could from their current situation. Rolling over, Piccolo squinted against the setting sun's glare. His pupil had resumed the basic balance exercises Piccolo had taught him. "You want to spar again?" Reinyn asked without breaking form.
"That's enough for today," Piccolo said. "We have a dinner invitation, and we'll need a moment to clean up."
Reinyn fell out of his exercise and frowned belligerently. "Why are we going back there? We're training. I can catch and cook dinner."
"We're not going for the food. You need a faster, stronger, sparring partner if we're going to continue this. Knocking me on my ass isn't teaching you anything," Piccolo said. With a grimace at his pounding head he came to his feet. "I said get ready."
Rather than point out that he could at any time beat his current master into a gooey green pulp, Reinyn trudged toward the nearest creek for a bath minus the soap. Piccolo's demands while sometimes annoying and seemingly frivolous were like an effervescent rush of freshness to Reinyn. Being treated like a child was liberating.
The shirt Chichi had lent him was sweaty and torn. With a sigh he skinned it off and let it drop into the yellowed weeds near the stream. Reinyn didn't even blink when Gohan came to land on the opposite bank. Reinyn had felt his approach for the last several minutes, creeping up from his picture perfect home to intrude on the brief sanctuary Reinyn had found for himself in the wilderness. "If you came to harp about dinner, we were coming anyway. So, why don't you go on back home and study or baby-sit or whatever you spend your afternoons doing."
Gohan swallowed, unable to find the words to start the conversation he'd come out here to have. Reinyn was still playing the cocky recalcitrant guest, but Gohan wasn't even annoyed. How do you tell someone their world...their universe ended? "I heard from my mom who heard from my dad," Gohan started. "They fixed the problem with time and everything is back to normal."
Everything was back to normal? Was it already time to go back to reality? Just the thought of home sparked a dull resignation inside him, and Reinyn felt the weight of the world settling back on his shoulders. Gohan hadn't come to be possessive about his mentor or bully him into dinner with the folks. He came to send the outsider home for good. "I'll need my jumpsuit back before you send me off. If I show up wearing black, I'll be breaking a lot of social codes. Or do I have to go immediately?"
"No, I don't know." Gohan couldn't seem to look Reinyn in the eyes. God, it wasn't like he'd personally caused the guy's universe to end. This wasn't anyone's fault, and Reinyn deserved to know. He deserved the facts, the truth. Gohan looked Reinyn in the eyes and pointed up. "They destroyed your timeline, your universe. There isn't anywhere to go back to. I don't know why or even how it happened, but you're here and that's okay, good even. You're welcome to stay here for as long as...well as long as you need a timeline..."
Reinyn heard the words coming out of Gohan's mouth. He comprehended them right up until he said that bit about his universe ending. What the hell did he mean by that? His universe ended? "The kids are okay though. My kids are okay." Why was Gohan staring and not answering? Had he stuttered? "The kids in Diasheru 31454 D, my kids are okay."
"Everyone, everything, is gone," Gohan said. His words were spoken softly and slowly as though their cadence might cushion the heavy blow of their content. "I'm so sorry."
"Liar," Reinyn hissed. How dare that privileged white knight lie about his home and his family, his kids? How dare he say that they were all gone, all dead? How dare he? "Take it back."
"I can't. It's the truth. I swear to you," Gohan said. But Reinyn was not handling the truth very well if his transition to super Saiyan was anything to judge by. Primal instincts kicked in and Gohan marshaled his own energy in defense before he consciously recognized the danger he was facing. "What are you doing Reinyn?"
"Don't you know the rules?" Reinyn growled. "It always boils down to a fight. You can take it back now, liar, or I'll make you wish you had."