The Torment 19: Mommy, Save Me!
Disclaimer: The money made from this fic goes to the Animorphs home for Recovering Fanfiction Writers, an institution that does not exist except in the strange, devious place that is my mind, and all the money only exists in my mind, which is why it is so poor. I do not own the series mentioned.
Imp was
bawling her eyes out as the mean man kept squeezing her tail. Where was Peekro?
Ojisan? Nice Gohan!
Every time
she had yelled like this before, Peekro had come to save her, whether Peekro
was a green or pink. Where was her Peekro?
Screwing
her face up again, she let out another wail, and then stopped, as a fist
connected with her head.
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"I will
kill you for that," Gohan vowed, not knowing why those cries shredded his heart
so. All he knew now was that man would die. Die as painfully as he could make
it. NO one made Imp-chan cry like that. She should be giggling and making
trouble.
Not squalling
in pain or unconscious, like she was now.
"You will
kill me? I doubt that," said the nameless man. His eyes were so bleak.
Then he
disappeared.
"DAMN!"
Gohan yelled, and tried to lock on to the man's ki. "Goten, Trunks, I'm going
to try and follow that guy. You tell Dad and Piccolo-san when he comes back."
The boys
nodded, and Gohan took off, and for some reason the direction seemed very
familiar…
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Piccolo-chan
felt like someone had gripped the inside of her head, and was pulling her heart
out through it.
She
screamed in pain, and fell from the skies, with Goku barely being able to catch
her.
"What's
wrong, Piccolo?" he asked, alarmed.
Tears in
her eyes, she rasped," Something is happening to Imp, and Gohan is mad. He's in
a killing rage!"
Goku was
confused. "What do you mean? How can you tell?"
"I was
bonded with Gohan, the first time we-" she blushed, despite herself.
"The first
time you what?" Goku asked, always clueless.
"The first
time we made love, you dork!" she yelled, and sped away.
"I was just
asking a question," Goku whined, and followed her.
Goku was
hard pressed as he was to keep up with her. Mother's instinct was a powerful
thing, and it was driving Piccolo-chan crazy. She had to know what was going
on!
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"Do you
sense anything?" Goten asked his best friend. Both of them had been scanning
the skies in search of Goku and Piccolo, but neither had picked up anything
yet.
Until-
"Where is
she?" bellowed a lady that neither Trunks nor Goten had seen before.
"Uh…"
Trunks hedged closer to Goten. "Where is who?'
"Imp! Where
is my daughter!" she yelled, rage keeping her from thinking. Before she had
realized what she was doing, she had grabbed Trunks by the shirt and was
shaking him so hard his teeth and bones rattled.
"Piccolo,
stop!" said a voice, and everyone but the lady looked up to see Goku drop from
the air.
He spoke soothingly
to the lady, whom he kept calling Piccolo.
"You don't
have to hurt Trunk-kun to find out where Imp is," he repeated over and over,
and finally she put him down.
"I want my
baby," she said tearfully, and Goku nodded.
"Trunks, you had better tell me what happened before she goes off again," he said quickly, and Trunks nodded hard.
His eyes
were like plates as he glanced at the berserk woman behind Goku.
"Uh,
Impwasbadandweputherdownforanap- and thensomeguywehadneverseenbefore-"
"Slow
down!" shouted Piccolo-chan, snarling at him.
"Okay, Imp
was wrecking the house, and finally we got her to take a nap, when she started
crying, and we found that someone had grabbed her, and was squeezing her tail,
and told us that we had to tell the demon if he wanted his kid back, to go to a
place he would remember. Then Gohan told him he would die, and went after him
after he disappeared, just-" here he took a deep breath. "Like that."
"So Gohan
went after them?" Goku repeated, his face intense.
"Yeah,"
Goten said softly. The way that lady was glaring was scaring him.
"Then lets
go," hissed the lady, and both boys took a step backwards. Goku didn't waste
any time, and put his hand on her arm, and they disappeared.
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"Did your
dad call that lady Piccolo?" Trunks asked Goten. He nodded, the Son confused
look marring his face.
"I thought
so," Trunks muttered, doing his best to imitate the confused Son look.
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"You are a
charming child," the man without a name said softly, as he took in the sleeping
toddler. It was amazing that he remembered her existence at all. He knew
something had interfered with his plan for revenge when strange holes started
showing up in his memory.
In the
course of his planning for revenge, he had done vile things, but justice could
not be denied. He had consorted with things that were almost as bad, and using
the Dark Arts, he had been able to figure out that his memory had been tampered
with.
It had
taken even longer for him to reverse its effects. He shuddered when he thought
about what he had done to fix his memory.
Then the
sweet memories of his vengeance returned, and he had savored what he had done
to the demon, laughing at the pain he had caused. Then, when he had located him
once again, he had been stunned.
The
abomination that had been spawned from its unholy union with a human was alive
and thriving, and while the demon's consort was not there, he had known he had
to destroy the child.
The
nameless man gritted his teeth.
No.
He would
make the demon suffer the way he had suffered, watching his own child killed
before his eyes. He would make sure he would always shun the touch of other
living things, and then he would make him live in the same hell that he had
lived through, for the past twenty and more years.
"Truly, you
are an adorable baby," he smiled gently, brushing the baby fine hair from her
face. "Too bad I have to kill you."
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"Where are
you?" Gohan roared, rage turning his hair from black to SSJ gold. The place
that he was at, an abandoned warehouse, seemed eerily familiar, and his mind
shied away from the feeling. Whatever it was, it was something he did not
want to remember.
"Right
here," said the too soft, too calm voice. He was sitting, oddly enough, in a
corner, with Imp-chan wrapped in his arms, and she was sucking her thumb with
one hand, holding her tail with the other. It would have been a cute scene, had
it been someone else. As it was, it just seemed macabre.
He could
see the tear streaks on her face, and the fear. That was wrong. A kid of one
should not be afraid, not yet.
Then he
noticed the rest of the building. It was something out of a sadist's fondest
dream, with torture devices that made him want to vomit. Old bloodstains were
dribbled around the floor, and he could see it crusting some of the…tools.
"I changed
my mind," Gohan told him, revulsion thick in his voice. "I will torture you on
some of this first, because of what you have done. Its no less than you
deserve."
"Really?"
said that calm, grandfatherly voice. "And what of your crimes? You, the consort
of the demon?"
This caught
Gohan off guard. "What?"
The old man
laughed, a bitter sound.
"Don't you
recognize your own child?" he whispered in a silky voice, calm, without
infliction.
Gohan
wanted to shake the man for answers. "Imp can't be my daughter; I haven't even
been with anyone yet!"
"Really?"
he asked again, this time with humor. Then he shrugged. "I see your memories
have been altered as well. Now we wait for them to get here," he said softly,
and seemed to withdraw into the shadows, taking Imp-chan with him.
Gohan
didn't know what he was talking about, until there was the sudden appearance of
his father and- and-
It was that
girl!
Gohan
gaped, and that weird feeling he had when he had first seen her appeared again.
Funny, a part of him noted, he had felt like that around Piccolo, too…
"What are
you doing with my daughter?" the girl yelled, and charged up to him, arms open.
She flew
backwards and hit the opposite wall of the building.
"Piccolo!"
Gohan heard himself yell, without realizing it.
What did
I just say?
There was
faint laughter coming from the shadows close to them.
"He seems
to remember a little of it, demon. Change into your real form, or I kill the
child now."
The girl
growled back at the man, murder in her eyes.
"Change, or
I-" he put his hands around the little girl's delicate throat.
The girl
stood back up, and frowned hard. Pink skin turned to a jade green, the hair
melted away, the form got taller.
"Piccolo-san?"
Gohan whispered, disbelieving. Tears trailed down the Namek's face, but the
rage was still there.
Piccolo
didn't look at his student, husband and friend. It would have been too much if
he had. So he focused all his anger on the bastard that had raped him, tortured
him, and tried to kill his baby girl.
No one, no
one, was ever going to hurt his baby girl.
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"You are an
evil man," Goku said suddenly, and turned to Piccolo, then back.
"First you
hurt my friend, then you try to kill my granddaughter," said the powerful
Saiya-jin. Gohan jumped, because he had confirmed what the other man had said.
But…Piccolo?
"You cannot
be forgiven," Goku finished, and did a silly pose. Both Gohan and Piccolo sweat
dropped.
"What? They
did it on Sailor Moon!"
Gohan
didn't really hear the last part of it, as a horrific pain shot through his
head, as he stared at Piccolo.
The
feelings that had been vague, that he hadn't known how to act on, for the past
year came into sharp focus, as he recalled exactly what had happened. The pain
of it was like someone was driving a stake through his head. He cried out, and
fell to the ground.
"Gohan!"
Piccolo shouted, sensing his pain, and turning to the old man.
"WHAT HAVE
YOU DONE TO MY GOHAN??"
Gohan himself
was vaguely aware of what was going on, too confused by the bombardment of
memories to care.
It all
makes sense, now, he thought, and that was followed by, oh, Piccolo, I
love you so much, why didn't you tell me?
Then the
last memory he had before they had been wiped was of Piccolo shaking at his
touch.
Gohan
started to cry, even as he got back to his feet.
The old man
had Piccolo slammed against the wall again, his eyes full of an odd joy.
"First," he
said deliberately. "I will kill your child. Then I will kill you consort, the
way that my child and wife were taken from me, first by you, then by despair.
Then I will make sure that you will never be able to touch another person
again. On this night of the full moon, you will know justice, Ma!"
"No, he's
not Ma, I killed him!" Goku shouted, trying for an attack of his own. Powering
up to SSJ, he started blowing the building apart.
In the
background, a counterpoint to the adults' activity, Imp was crying her eyes
out, seeing her beloved Peekro getting hurt. She remembered what she had said,
that she would hurt anyone who had hurt her Peekro.
The little
girl kept on sobbing, and looked up, hoping to find anything, anything at all.
As Nice
Gohan was being hurt, she saw the full moon for the first time.
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Gohan had
failed in his own attack against the man with no name, and wanted to scream.
Piccolo was being lifted in the air, and the screams gave testament to the
agony he was going through.
He was
bruised, battered, and all over beaten by the anger and pure evil that had come
off this man.
The man had
heard Goku's plead, that Ma was dead, and had responded with, "The sins of the
fathers shall be visited on the sons! And they shall pay ten fold!"
Then he
noticed that the little girl he was holding wasn't screaming any more. Her eyes
were fixed upwards, and she seemed to be- pulsing.
Her eyes
turned red.
She
expanded in size.
The old man
was suddenly stepped on and killed by the very thing he was trying to destroy.
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"OH MY
KAMI!" Gohan yelled, as he looked up to see the oozaru form of his newly found
daughter. She roared in anger, and stomped her feet, making sure that the
person who had hurt her Peekro and Nice Gohan were dead, dead, dead, and
dead!
The
building collapsed around them, Gohan's head made acquaintance with industrial
grade building materials.
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"IMP!"
shouted Piccolo, and the oozaru stopped, and turned to look at him. It seemed
to coo, and landed on her rear, grabbing the floating green man, and licking
him on the face.
"I guess
she knows her mommy, huh, Piccolo?" Goku grinned, and created a razor dan to
slice off her tail.
There was a
roar of pain, and the giant ape shrank, returning to her original shape.
"Oh my
gosh, she killed Gohan!" Goku suddenly yelled, and started digging through the
rubble. Grabbing Imp under his arm, Piccolo joined him, and they dug the
half-breed out.
"Is he-?"
Piccolo asked, fear evident.
Goku sighed
with relief. "He's fine, just unconscious. We'll get him home with an icepack,
and I'll baby-sit Imp-chan so you to can get reacquainted."
Piccolo did
a double take at Goku, then smiled faintly, blushing.
To be concluded!
Coming next, gratuitous getting back together lemon and
epilogue!