Son Gohan liked to consider himself a fairly unflappable guy. He was, after all, the coolest teenage Superhero this side of the galaxy, very technically a kind-of, sort-of former child soldier, and he'd survived being abducted by Aliens (because yes, in his humble opinion, that one kidnapping counted, even if technically the alien in question was his long-lost evil uncle) and all before the age of eighteen.
Logically speaking, it was therefore highly implausible that that he should be flappable, but the elegant looking lady in the type of fancy outfit his mom only pulled out of the closet on the once in a blue moon occasions she needed to go do Actual Princess Things from which Gohan and Goten and his father had long since been barred from going, for much the same reason Bulma never brought Vegeta or Trunks to fancy Capsule Corp functions, because the human members of their family had come to the probably-not-incorrect conclusion that it would be for the best if the more. Eccentric. Members of their clan stayed out of public events where the possibility of presenting irrefutable proof that capital-A aliens actually did exist (as opposed to the conspiracy theories that littered the internet since-well, technically basically forever, but which had definitely increased in number and accuracy after that pesky little attempted invasion oh-so-long-ago) left him very flapped, if only because Gohan had never seen before in his life, and somehow she was here, in his actual house, which was only kind-of-purposefully built to be as far from human civilization as possible for a reason.
So Gohan did the only reasonable thing. He squeaked and tripped back out of the house and slid to a heap beside the pile of logs that were forever-present in front of the house, even though they had no actual fireplace to speak of.
Alas, his brief reprieve lasted but a moment before the door swung back open and Gohan froze, turning his head upwards to face the technically-not-actually-imposing-but-actually-very-imposing figure of the strange lady who was somehow in his house. The strange lady pursed her lips and frowned at him disapprovingly, which made him shrink in on himself momentarily before the rush of realization slammed into him like the force of a fully powered ki blast.
Huh, he thought, looking at the scary woman with wide eyes, she looks kind of like Mom. Actually no, that wasn't quite right, the woman looked like his mother the way he looked like Dad, almost, as if someone had transposed all of somebody onto a different person and then decided to hit the edit button, the sort of sucker-punch kind of resemblance that left little doubt as to relation that Gohan rarely saw in other people other than him and his brother and their father, and maybe Vegeta and Trunks.
Gohan opened his mouth to speak, to say something to the funhouse-mirror version of his mother, but the words shriveled up in his throat under the force of her steely glare and all that escaped was a sort of high pitched whimper that made Gohan go red in embarrassment.
"Chi," the woman drawled, "What on Earth is that." The weight of the strange woman's disapproval hung in the air as she continued to stare, analyzing Gohan with the same sort of distant horrified fascination that children had when looking at particularly ugly bugs, or how Frieza looked at Saiyans, and caused a hot flush of humiliation to run through him as the awkward moment of eye contact persisted.
Jiang Mei felt her lip curl in blatant disapproval as she stared at the … thing sprawled on the ground in front of her. It had been such a trial to even get here in the first place, seeing as her estranged half-sister had, for some godforsaken reason, decided to move to the literal middle of nowhere on a mountain that was remote even by the standards of the Ox King, and now, just as she managed to wrangle a very reluctant Chi into a conversation, they were interrupted by the strangest creature she'd ever seen bursting through the door like it owned the place, only to run away the moment it laid eyes on them, and well, no one had ever called Jiang Mei a coward, so she followed, ignoring whatever drivel her sister was saying because really, there was no way Chi didn't know what was going on, not when she had all the intelligence and determination of the Jiang clan running through her veins.
It really was an odd little thing, Mei mused, all long limbs and black fur and strangely humanoid, scrawny and gangly enough that it seemed not-quite grown. It was, perhaps, some poor mutated monkey Chi had taken pity on, peculiar mishmash of features that it was, and curiously enough, fully dressed in an outfit that while terribly unfashionable, wouldn't look out of place on a teenage boy.
But then Jiang Mei made the mistake of looking at the thing in the frankly horrendous amalgamation of features that was its face, and her breath caught in her throat.
Because while the thing was clearly unnatural, with uncannily dark eyes and jutting jaws and a not-quite muzzle, it was-familiar. The color was all wrong of course, but those uncanny eyes were eerily similar to her sisters, to her own, to the rest of her kin. Those were undeniably the eyes of a Jiang, muddled as they might have been by whatever inhuman blood ran through its veins, and that meant that her sister had some explaining to do.
Mei stared at the creature even as she spoke, voice perfectly controlled as was suitable for a princess of the Jiang Clan, even as her eyes hardened and her mind roiled.
Chi was hiding something, and that was made only more evident when she strode out of the house and ignored Mei, choosing instead to fuss over the freak of nature sprawled on the grass.
"Gohan, what are you doing here? I thought you were at Capsule Corp with Goku and Goten all day."
"I was, I kind of decided to sneak out to, uh, hang with Videl instead, until like, twenty minutes ago? And I decided to come back here instead of enduring everyone teasing me about it, but, uh, then there was the stranger in the house and I've never seen a stranger all the way up here, so I panicked I guess. Sorry." The creature-Gohan?-said sheepishly, in a surprisingly pleasant tenor that was almost completely at odds with the... disaster that was the rest of him.
"Chi," Mei snapped. Chi turned back to face her, eyes as steely as her own as their eyes met. The creature-Gohan hovered anxiously behind Chi, all six-feet-and-something of him and doing a frankly terrible job of hiding.
"Mei," Chi said, "This is Gohan-he's my eldest. Gohan, sweetheart, this is Mei. She's-well, we have the same mother, so technically she's my older sister." The tone of her voice made it very clear as to Chi's opinion of the matter, as if being a part of an eternal dynasty were a greater shame that having a beast for a son. Then again, Chi was the product of a regrettable political marriage between their esteemed mother and the savage Ox King, so perhaps her unfortunate bloodline clouded her mind. Still, she was family.
"Chi," Mei paused as she struggled to find the best way to word this, "I'm very sorry, but your so-called son is a monkey." It was, perhaps, not the most tactful way to phrase it, but Mei had her limits, and she'd reached it long before her sister told her that the awkward creature that gatecrashed their reunion was apparently her nephew.
The effect was immediate-Chi swelled in indignant fury, and Gohan shrank back momentarily before rising back up to his not-inconsiderate height.
"How dare you-that is MY SON, you can't-"
"Mom!" Gohan cuts in, tugging gently at his mother's sleeve. "It's fine, it's fine, it's an honest mistake, even you guys thought dad was some weird kind of monkey before the-uh. The thing." Gohan finishes surreptitiously, eyeing her like he is suddenly very aware that she's still there, and he almost said something he really shouldn't have.
It was suspicious, to say the least, and clarified exactly nothing except for perhapsconfirming that the mutation came from the mysterious father. Which-honestly- what on Earth did Chi marry?
Sister? His mother had a sister? And a rather Rude one to boot (well, to be fair Gohan was a bit. Odd looking but that didn't make it sting any less)- although now that he thought about it, perhaps that was why he'd never even heard of her before literally. Right Now.
Still, why now? Mother and Father had been married almost two decades by now, and as far as he knew, this was the first time anyone other than Grandfather (and did Grandfather know about this? Probably if this was his-what, step-daughter? How did Grandfather even have a stepdaughter, wasn't Grandmother dead) had shown up from Mother's side of the family.
Then again, Mother had always gotten - titchy- when they spent too much time with normal humans, the reason he'd never been allowed to go to school until he mastered the mimicry trick Father had picked up as a kid, the one that Vegeta said was evolved to allow Saiyans to better blend in with the local populace of whatever planet they were terrorizing, but which was also very good for blending in purposes and not letting the alien cat-monkey out of the bag, for all that Gohan was the only one who could manage it for more than six hours straight, and that Vegeta deemed it below him, and that Father had enough of a reputation to render the trick useless, and that Trunks and Goten were too little to care and- okay, so maybe Gohan was the only one who even remotely bothered with it, but he was also the only one who interacted with Real People on the regular, so it was fine.
Even if today, he'd forgotten, because the only even kind-of-normal human he'd hung out with was Videl, who'd seen him at his worst that day at the tournament and hadn't even faltered.
And now, now he was paying the price, because his ...aunt… had seen, and was staring at him with the same distaste that haunted his memories of Raditz, even if she was perhaps the most diametrically opposed anyone could be to Raditz, with her stuffy clothes and icy poise.
Okay, so, judgement. Gohan was (nearly) a grown-ass man, he could deal with a little judgement. It wasn't like he was a cry-baby four year old anymore, he'd fought monsters , and Aliens, and monster-aliens, and he was even an official Superhero now.
So no, actually, Gohan wouldn't bow under the weight of a little judgement (even if his aunt glared the exact same way his mom did, which. Was not great for his self confidence, and maybe Krillen had a point when he said he really needed to grow a spine when he wasn't trying to stop an apocalypse or fighting aliens) no matter how much he really wanted to.
Besides, it was probably too late to go properly human-form anyway because explaining how he got from weird mutated monkey thing to a maybe kind of funny-looking but mostly-ish normal person was. Not The Best. Mostly because the actual explanation was some bullshitty 'evolution, I guess' that was probably tied into the general weird transformation-but-decidedly-not-actual-shapeshifting abilities Saiyans had that were kind of impossible to describe without using the A-word. A mutant monkey person was one thing, especially with Dr. Gero and his Mad-Scientist experiments (if he could make friggingCell and the androids, he could totally (presumably?) make mutated animal-people), a mutant monkey person with weird not-quite-shapeshifting abilities was another. That way led trouble.
So Gohan was stuck hovering awkwardly behind his mother, very obviously not-quite human (and how his father had managed his entire life without ever realizing he was an alien was a mystery to him) as he did his best to turn invisible .
It did not stop his aunt from looking at him funny, but it was better than being screamed at for witchcraft or whatever nonsense Real People liked to use to justify his family's eccentricities, so he would take what he could get, at this point.
Then, she spoke, serious and grave, and focusing pointedly on Chi-Chi.
"Grandfather is dead."
His mother frowned, brows furrowing in an expression Gohan would term as somewhere between disgruntled and bitter, and what Goten would call 'smad', before she replied, surprisingly snappish.
"This has nothing to do with me."
"It is tradition, and you must."
Standing toe to toe and glaring, the resemblance would be even more uncanny, if it weren't for the minor factor that Gohan had absolutely no idea what was going on.
Chi-Chi and Mei obviously did, though, because they continued to speak in not-riddles but not-exactly-complete sentences as if they weren't leaving out huge chunks and speaking in some weird almost-code.
Whatever it was they were talking about, his mother was clearly Not Happy, and she was the specific variant of Not Happy that Gohan associated with Official Princess Duties, rare as they were -because Real People, especially Royalty, did not much like talking to a warlord, even if he was Reformed and also Royalty, and also because his mother preferred to stay away from Politics as much as possible.
This made sense, technically. Grandpa was unconventional royalty, but he was still royalty, so therefore it wasn't improbable that he had married royalty, and thus, made whatever fuss his mother and Jiang Mei were raising over his. Great Grandfather? Or something. More likely than not also royalty related.
However, this did not make sense in practice, because Mother, while reluctant to actually allow Gohan to accompany her on Official Princess Business, made it a point to explain the technical details behind it to him, because Gohan was the oldest and therefore technically not only a prince, but a Crown Prince, which meant that it was going to be his business eventually, and also because Gohan had, as the human members of his extended not-blood-family-but-family-in-every-way-that-matters said, the closest thing to Common Sense and Reasoning abilities of anybody of Saiyan blood (he did not, sadly, have actual Common Sense, but it was still the most of anybody, and so he would take it).
Therefore, logically speaking, this meant that Mother should have mentioned Aunts and Great-Grandfathers before, at least in passing, instead of letting everyone assume they were dead, but she had Not, which meant there were twisty Reasons and Secrets for keeping it to herself all this time. Maybe Mother was trying to pretend they were dead, or at least Out of Her Life, and decided that the best way to accomplish this was to never mention them ever, except now her sister had come to haunt her-and really, Gohan was still fuzzy over how she got to their house in the middle of Nowhere.
Twisting his hands together, Gohan continued to ruminate over potential plots and secret family members, except now his aunt was looking at him again, even if it was more regular critical than flat Disapproval, which was worse because it was Weird and Unusual, and now she was talking. To him.
"Well then, get on with it," she said, as if that was supposed to Make Sense.
Get on with what exactly? Saiyaman? Super-Saiyan? Except he kept those last two bits in his head because he was no fool, no sir, and that was just inviting trouble.
"That thing Chi says you do," her nose crinkles in what is best termed as disbelief, "The one that allows you to pass as something even vaguely resembling a presentable member of humanity." Oh. That thing. The mimicry trick. That Chi-Chi had very much not mentioned earlier, because even while Gohan had been going off into only slightly panicky tangents in his head about that very same thing, he had been Listening, because his ears were Very Big and good at picking up Secrets and other Dangerous Noises and he was fairly sure that nobody had ever brought it up at all, which only brought their weird code into even more question.
But. Chi-Chi had stepped away and was giving him a Look, so apparently there had been some type of conversation occurring between the cut-off sentences and pregnant pauses. So. This was fine. If Mom said it was fine, then she had Reasons, even if they were twisty and related to her Secrets.
Gohan straightened-properly this time- and Focused. The mimicry trick was the first transformation he'd ever accessed (ignoring that One Time with the moon) and accessing it was easy as breathing, now. Bones snapped and joints cracked as his skeleton rearranged into an approximation of human proportions, a curious sensation of not-quite pain that prickled where Super Saiyan burned.
One breath, and then the next, and Gohan was as close to human as he got, fingers twitching as he resisted the urge to scratch at the itch of fur receding.
Still, Mei stared, scrutinizing him with an entirely different type of calculation than earlier. There was a long moment of Silence where the urge to flee was almost overwhelming, but then she spoke, resting a delicate hand on her chin, and it was Over.
"I suppose this is...adequate. Old Ye will have his work cut out for him, of course, but at least like this there's something to work off."
That...explained absolutely Nothing. In fact, it explained worse than Nothing, because now he was wondering who the hell Old Ye or whoever Was.
"Uh, what-what exactly is...going on?" Please, he needed Answers. This was the most confused he's been since, well, only since the first day of highschool, but to his credit Teenagers were Strange and Confusing. Unfortunately for Gohan, instead of answering his aunt just Looked at his mother in disapproval.
Or he could be ignored, that was fine too.
"You never told him?!" Oh wow, that almost sounded like actual emotion. Also, Told him what? There was a klaxon screaming he was Missing Something in his head, and Gohan had to say, it was Not Fun.
"Gohan knows about Father!" Chi-Chi says, pausing. "I didn't think it was necessary to tell anybody about my sordid past, not when I left it behind for good." She sniffs, glaring at Mei. "I still don't know how exactly you managed to find me all the way up here."
"Tch. Perhaps if you hadn't left, you would understand the resources our clan has at its disposal.
"Gohan," his aunt says, wrinkling her nose like his name leaves a bad taste in her mouth, which, Rude, but okay, "Your Grandmother, and by extension, your mother and myself, are members of the direct line of the Jiang Clan." And. That's it. Nothing else. As if. The Jiang Clan is Important enough for him to obviously Understand what she means. It is not. And maybe there's just enough of a niggle that makes Gohan think he should have paid more attention in History-but he has the highest grade out of anyone in the class regardless, and anyway he's planning on being a Scientist, which absolutely does not require knowledge of...whoever Mom's family is.
Jiang Mei, however, doesn't seem to appreciate his mental fumbling. "The Ruling Dynasty of Shenzhou?" The...country? That makes. A certain degree of sense, and aligns with his earlier hypothesis to boot. What it has to do with him specifically, however, he has no clue. So he's a prince, kind of? That is. Not news to him, no matter how many people prefer to ignore the King part of the Ox King's name. He can count on one hand the number of times he's been involved in Royal Business, most of which occurred Pre-Invasion and therefore consisted mostly of him clinging to his parents.
"So… what?" Evidently, that is not the right thing to say, because Jiang Mei looks even more frustrated than earlier-no small feat.
"So, despite your unfortunate affliction, you are nonetheless, also a member of our esteemed clan, and as a result, royalty."
"Oh, no, I got that. I just don't get what it has to do with me. I mean, Grandpa's been royalty since forever and we...still live here? So I don't see why this is any different?" This was all very true, and had the benefit of being delivered in an almost confident manner. Gohan preened.
He stopped preening approximately ten seconds later, when it was made clear that his nonchalant dismissal of Even More Royal-ness was. Not the Correct Response, if the sudden flush of anger on Miss Mei's face was anything to go by.
"It is the Jiang clan's duty," she began, speaking with a deliberate sort of slowness, "To follow tradition, respect the hierarchy, and to rule Shenzhou with divine right. Chi flouted millennia of tradition once, when she took advantage of her father's bloodline to run away like a despicable coward. To allow her to do so again, on the eve of Grandfather's death it-well. It would be unthinkable." That was a Lot of very fancy words, which, unfortunately, made only the barest of sense to Gohan. Or, well, he got that apparently the Jiang Clan was A Big Deal, yadda-yadda, but. He wasn't any clearer on how he exactly was involved in all this beyond being Chi-Chi's son.
Evidently, his confusion was painfully obvious on his face, because Miss Mei got the same kind of pinched look on her face the people he saved as Saiyaman got after performing one of his Brilliant dance routines, like somehow he was managing to gouge their eyes out or something without ever doing anything at all. It was as baffling now as it was then-Gohan had been paying attention, really, it wasn't his fault he was missing the necessary Backstory to Understand whatever Twisty Royal Politics Miss Mei clearly hoped that he would.
"Grandfather was the ruling Emperor of Shenzhou, commanding over the rest of the Imperial Kings, who in turn commanded the Imperial Court, who in turn controlled the common people. For him to die before he officially named a proper heir-it throws the entire system into upheaval. The entire structure of the clan is in jeopardy; the Kings and Queens are all gunning for Emperor, the Court are gunning to become Kings, and the rest of the lower nobles are trying to squeeze into a position at Court.
"In any case, the time to choose a new Emperor has begun, and as members of the direct line, it is our sacred duty to return to the homeland and assist our kin in securing our position in the clan." Okay, that makes a moderate amount of sense, maybe. Lots of Royal Politics, as Gohan suspected. He's still a little fuzzy on the details, but from what he's gathered, everyone on Mother's mother's side of the family is about to duke it out for an even More Royal Position.
Thankfully, his Mom is still there, and has had plenty of practice dealing with thick-headed aliens.
"What she means is that Mother," and wow she spits out that word the same way Vegeta says Frieza, "Is making a play for Empress, and she expects us to act as figureheads to garner more political support."
"Yes, well," Miss Mei sniffs, as if Mom were acting completely unreasonable, "She did manage to marry two different kings and extract herself quite neatly from each one for a reason, you know. A pity you're the only one of the Ox King's line, although I suppose your… children will have to do." Oh that. Sounded the opposite of Good. That sounded Very Much like Gohan was going to get Involved in Twisty Royal Politics. Which was, frankly, Ridiculous. His current extent of Political Knowledge was almost entirely hypothetical, and it was supposed to stay hypothetical until After College, by which point he would be slowly introduced to the reality of Royal Politics until the time came that he was Ready to succeed the throne after Grandpa and Mom retired.
This was-this was unprecedented, and Gohan did not Like this At All. He was still in highschool, and just barely figuring out Real People. He was, in fact, the opposite of Ready, but judging by the steely expressions on both his mother and Miss Mei, he didn't exactly have a Choice in the manner.
There were several seconds of tense silence, before Chi-Chi slumped, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Gohan," she said tersely, "Go and get your father and your brother. We need to talk."