Chapter 36 – An Education
Principal Arnold adjusted his suspenders and shrugged into his gray tweed jacket. He navigated the halls of his high school, proud that Orange Star was still the premiere magnet school in the entire country. For the third year in a row, he had snagged the highest scoring entrance examinee in each grade level and the senior class had the highest standardized test score average by two standard deviations. This year he had had to get creative to land one of the high scorers. From what his recruiter reported, Son Gohan had been seriously considering East Town Academy despite the full scholarship they had offered him and the fact that Orange Star High School was more respected. Mr. Son had a twin brother and was determined to go to the same school as his less academically inclined twin. Well Mr. Arnold knew more than one way to skin a cat. He had manually overrode the minimum math score for Son Reinyn and voila, two students were enrolling today and joining the junior class.
And if Reinyn proved incapable of handling his courses and looked to be a low scorer when senior standardized tests rolled around? There were ways to handle that too. Expulsion was an ugly word but it came up from time to time.
He had barely had a chance to sit behind his desk before his secretary was ushering in two young men. "You must be the Son brothers. Which of you is Son Gohan?" He took Gohan's hand and shook it. When he tried to repeat the gesture with Reinyn, the young man didn't pull his hands from his pockets. Used to recalcitrant teens, Principal Arnold never missed a beat. "I've got timetables for you both. I'm afraid you won't see a great deal of each other except for home room. Gohan you'll be taking mostly accelerated classes and Reinyn you'll be spending a good bit of time in the fine arts wing. I hear you have a real gift for piano, is it?"
"Reinyn composes music, all kinds of music," Gohan said. "It's really impressive."
Was that pride in Gohan's voice? Reinyn glanced askance at his brother. Since when was Gohan proud of his homicidal twin?
"Well, he has come to the right high school. We have the best music program in the country. They have an award winning symphony orchestra, a marching band, and an award winning choral program too. Now, I'm not sure how we measure up for composition; it's not my area, but Mr. Bosco will make sure you have the resources you need. My assistant Erika is going to give you both a quick tour and drop you off at your homeroom. Boys, my door is always open."
With a wave and a broad fake grin, Principal Arnold closed his door.
Splitting his attention between their tour guide and his brother, Reinyn whispered, "Could you believe that guy? You let him touch you." Fat and soft, Reinyn had imagined his hand accidentally breaking those weak bones with an errant touch.
"Why wouldn't I touch him?" Gohan asked. "Oh wait, no I get it. Think about holding mom's wooden spoons and not breaking them. It's about how gentle you need to be with regular old humans like him. You're not going to hurt anyone."
"I'm just not going to touch anyone," Reinyn replied. Everyone had ki, but the humans here were whispers of almost imperceptible energy, paper dolls. If he had been dispatched with the other boys of Diasheru to clean this world. Most of the humans would have required less than a thought. The exceptions, Piccolo, and the other warriors of Earth would have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of Saiyans in a mobilized Diasheru. With the size of the world, it would probably take three days, maybe less to eliminate all higher life forms and burn the hollowed out civilization to the ground.
"Hey, why are you freaking out?" Gohan asked.
"I'm not freaking out... much. There are just so many of them and they're so dim, barely alive. They're everywhere." It reminded Reinyn of how he used to pretend that dim beings weren't really alive the way bright ones were. You weren't murdering someone if they weren't really alive. You had to lie to yourself so you could do what had to be done. Reinyn knew he should hide in a lie now, but which lie would save him? The lie that the humans weren't really alive or the lie that he could ever be one of them.
A trained psychologist might have been able to explain to Reinyn that he was having a natural reaction to trauma, reliving a defining moment in his life at an inopportune time, experiencing emotions that didn't belong in the present, but Reinyn wasn't a trained psychologist and he didn't know one either.
Their tour guide stopped and introduced them to their homeroom teacher. Reinyn followed Gohan inside, resolutely keeping his hands fisted in his pockets. His eyes shot to a single brighter spot in the room, a human with a fighter's ki. But in that moment he didn't see a human fighter. He saw Commander Turnitz, sneering disdainfully down at him. The only thing that stopped him from flying at her was Gohan's hand on his shoulder and his words in his ear.
"Freaking calm down. What's wrong?" Gohan hissed.
Like a window sliding back into its track, Reinyn saw the world as it was in the present and he knew the lie he was living. He was pretending to be a paper doll, a human. Turnitz was dead. Diasheru was gone. He was here to master the music of this world for the sake of his passenger. Not accidentally killing his classmates would be helpful for that goal. "Sorry, I'm okay."
"Up here, you guys can sit up here!" A perky blond was trying to wave them over. Reinyn let Gohan do the talking and the steering. He suffered through the homeroom and its announcements and then he had to leave. His classes would start in a completely different building.
Reinyn crouched next to Gohan and whispered in his ear. "If I can't handle this, I'm just going to go home. I'll try not to do anything stupid. Sorry about earlier, it's like my brain shut off, got confused about where I was."
Gohan nodded. "I think I understand. Today will be the worst. One day at a time and it will get easier, right?"
"Right." Reinyn could hear the odd, blond girl chattering at Gohan as he walked away.
"Wow, you guys seem close. It must be intense to have an identical twin. Can you like feel each other's pain, read each other's mind? Do you have a twin language?"
At least the blonde seemed to be studying on Gohan's educational track, not Reinyn's.
His first class was blocked for two hours and was labeled Composition on his timetable. Reinyn headed in that direction, hopeful that it wouldn't be a large group. Stepping into room 1201 he was struck by the multitude of mysterious shiny objects. More than a hundred chairs, devoid of people but filled with what could only be musical instruments. Reinyn couldn't put a name to most of them. He wanted to just stop and experiment with them, find out what sounds they could make so that he could find where they fit in the music. This was why he came and endured the children and the fake principals and the ditsy talkative blondes. He picked up an intricate silver horn that twisted in a circle with buttons and valves.
"That's a French horn if you didn't know. Do you play?"
Reinyn almost dropped the delicate horn and shook his head. "I've only ever played a piano. There are a lot of different instruments here. Are you Mr. Bosco?"
A tall, thin middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and a set of rectangular glasses, he nodded. Like the others in this place his ki was practically non-existent, but Reinyn tried not to dwell on how easy it would be to accidentally hurt him. "I am Mr. Bosco. I've heard so much about you, Reinyn. Your mother wrote a passionate letter and sent me a frankly incredible audio recording of what she said was an original composition of yours."
"She told me she sent you that." Reinyn was reluctant to take credit for the music that he was trying to transcribe. It hadn't really come from him and he didn't want credit, not at all. "It wasn't complete or even sort of correct, I can't get the music down."
"Okay, tell me your process. Do you hear the music in your head? Do you maybe see it?" Mr. Bosco asked.
"I hear it, but I can't get it to come out correctly. Years of hammering away at my stupid piano and it's useless. Everyone says how nice it is, or how beautiful it is, but they don't know. They've never really heard any of it, because I'm not capable of reproducing it."
Mr. Bosco held out a hand and took the French horn from Reinyn. He wetted his lips and blew a series of sweet clear notes. Reinyn's eyes widened as another world opened in front of him. That could fit in Piccolo's song, the green song he'd been tinkering with for an age. It would support the third part of Biren's death. It could open Goten's lullaby. He loved that horn. "I can't play the piano and the horn at the same time, but I need that sound."
"You can play every instrument in this room, one at a time or all at once. The recording your mother sent, was of a young man fighting his piano, competently but not proficiently. You aren't a pianist and you're probably not going to be a natural on the French horn either, but you can write music for every instrument in this room and hand it off to someone who can bring it to life. Would you be able to live with it if you were never one of the people performing the music you've been trying to produce?"
"Yeah, I would be perfectly fine with that." Reinyn knew that the passenger agreed and he smiled for the first time since the morning began.
He and Mr. Bosco went around the room experimenting with different instruments, discussing their limits and variations. They finished with a stack of blank lined music pages. When Reinyn explained that he only vaguely understood how to read and write music, Mr. Bosco made him sit and learn notes and times and clefs.
"In a few minutes the orchestra students are going to be coming in. I'm going to assign you to percussion for now. There is a strong team there and they won't really need much help for what we'll be doing. I want you to listen to the room practice and hear what gifted musicians can do with their instrument of choice. Your homework is to write your first arrangement for at least two instruments, due by the end of the week." He handed Reinyn a reference book. "It has all the basics we went over on reading and writing music. You're welcome to keep it as long as you need it."
If Chichi were standing in front of him right now, Reinyn might have hugged her, he was so relieved and happy. This here and now was what he needed. He could endure the oddly torturous experience of high school if it just helped his passenger sing its song.
Author's Note:
So Reinyn has been living in the mountains with the Son family and having only very limited contact with anyone else in the world. So he may have had a little PTSD flashback episode there. Who knew that might happen? Kid needs a good psychiatrist. Not that that will ever happen. This is DBZ where four year olds are called cowards for not immediately becoming fierce defenders of their home word. Why would anyone need counseling after having a brutally traumatizing childhood? Gohan's fine, right? (Saiyaman wasn't caused by deep childhood trauma... at all.)
Well, I hope everyone who is reading along enjoyed the rapid updating.
I normally work all the time, but I had to take a hiatus from work for a few days. My little dachshund became ill, beyond our ability to handle at a general practice. So I packed her up and we drove four hours to the university. She has been living in ICU and I've been living at a hotel. So for many long hours between visits and updates, I've been writing to pass the time, keep my mind occupied, and not dwell on my sick dog. The good news is, Ruthie has been diagnosed (not quite definitively) with autoimmune meningoencephalitis and meningomyelitis. This is a good diagnosis for what was happening because that's something that we can treat and she'll get better. Tomorrow she is getting discharged and we're going home.
Bad news, no more rapid updating. Think a week between posts not twelve hours (hopefully not another decade).
I do have to rewatch the Buu saga so I can remember enough to write past it and get to the ending. We are getting close to when I need that info.