How Do You Know?
Chapter8: Remembering
"Begin, landing sequence. Life signs optimal, start reanimation process." The computer's empty voice sounded out as the whirr of the heating system turned on and lights on the console turned on and off. On the monitor an error message scrolled, Navigation System error: off intended course by six degrees. AutoCorrect starts in seven seconds. Every second the computer sped up its calculations and as Shashii stirred from his cold induced rest the pod was back on course.
The error was not uncommon, the navigation system was run by a central computer on a planet that no Sayajin had ever been and was fed into the ships by high speed satellite networks and then the pod's artificial intelligence dealt with it as it had learned to. By double checking coordinates and orbit calculations with increasable speed the disasters were averted and the artificial intelligence systems were the second most important tool to everyone who traveled.
Shashii awoke on impact and went through the pod's shut down checks quickly. As he exited he found his pod was embedded on a steep mountain face. The cold brisk air rushed past and dared him to try his luck on the ice covered slopes.
"Ice, is this the entire planet? No can't be, ice planets sell for nothing, this place is worth a ton." Reasoned the Sayajin calmly. "This is a seasonal place. This will be a great resort place soon." With that Shashii lifted off of his pod's door and it automatically shut and sealed its weather-proof shield.
As he hovered in the frosty air he keyed in a code on his scouter and began to scan for sento ryokos. The population was one of great diversity if it was indeed a seasonal planet and diversity meant that there would be some with powers that could be trouble and others who would be of great intelligence and figure out a technology that could really hurt. Then there was always magic, it was one of the dangers that no one would admit to being scared of but it still existed.
Shashii shuddered, not due to the cold but due to memories of his first encounter with that taboo danger. He was thirteen and on his own, he had left his teammates in hopes of getting some quiet mealtime in before they started to carve up the planet.
Meditating on a cliff above a tumulus ocean was an old man. Shashii stood looking on curious, he knew the man would soon die but still he might pick up some knowledge before incinerating the man. Cocking his head he listened intently to the mantra that was being chanted, it wasn't in Saya-go nor Universal Speak, so the words were mesmerizing and the boy tried to decipher it like a code. As he did he didn't notice the shadows creeping closer, shadows with no bodies to throw them, shadows moving like ghosts in the light winds from the ocean and mountains nearby.
The old man turned into a serpent as thick as a tree trunk and as tall as a tower and with scales of blue steel. It turned to face the Sayajin with cold fury burning in its emerald and ice eyes. Its great mouth opened to reveal three rows of hundreds of razor sharp teeth and two of them were long thin dagger like fangs dripping poison that Shashii knew by scent would kill him with in seconds of one tiny bit getting under his skin.
With a great hiss that nearly burst Shashii's eardrums the serpent lunged at his neck. Shashii managed to scramble away but soon found he could move no more than six feet from where he had stood. A leash of shadows was wound around his neck like a dog's collar.
"Damnit." He struggled midair to pull it off. Below him the snake curled up, toying with him. His fingers just went through the circle that held him like a vice. He tried to blast it off, that did just as much good as trying to claw at it. It seemed to grow now, pinning his arms and then his legs wrapping him up like a mummy. Now trapped with his neck was bruised and bleeding, it was turning into a bad day, one more wound and he'd die a slow pain filled death. Not a great thing to do in his book.
Slowly logic started to have a voice as his initial panic faded. He tried to piece everything together and found that what was happening was something that science and logic was unfamiliar with. It was insane. Then he started to try to recall his father's words. 'Stay calm, don't struggle. Stay out of the danger's range if you can and use your head. Concentrate on one thing and go into a quasi-meditative state until an answer comes. Try anything no matter how absurd.'
When he told Shashii that, Shashii was five and caught in quicksand and with a very big and hairy and toothy monster was waiting to eat him. This was a very different thing. And yet it wasn't. Shashii closed his eyes, slowly he focused on breathing exercises that the doctor taught him. In. Out. In. Out. In. He cleared his head and let his mind wander.
'Think about what you want, and don't loose sight of it.' Said a voice of reason in his mind. What did he want? To kill that over grown earthworm with utmost concern for causing the shape-shifter as much pain as he able to. 'No you don't, think.' Okay, so the mind voice was right he didn't want to ruin his honor like that.
"I just want to be free of the Shadow Chains. I want to fly. I want to be free." He muttered. 'Louder.' Said the mind voice. Shashii's eyes were starting to tear up.
"I want to be free!" he shouted as his tears started to fall. "I WANT TO BE FREE! LET ME OUT, NOW!!!" he yelled at the top of his lungs as his aura flared and his tears fell like a downpour. His tail was uncurled and puffed out and soon he was gone as far way from that place as he could get. In his head the voice that helped him laughed 'You wanted to learn something from me boy.'
No one had believed him save his father, who then told him that it was magic and that he was very lucky. Now on every planet he kept his guard up for the three most dangerous types of people; Warriors, Geniuses, and Magicians. Warriors were the least deadly of the three, obvious and easy to counter. Geniuses were a little harder to spot, okay amend that, a lot harder to spot and could kill you without breaking a sweat, but luckily they needed laboratories and support teams and time. Well, Shashii knew how to prevent that, strike quick and strike hard. Then there were Magicians, they might or might not know that your coming, you may or may not spot them, and they always had a trump card that you had to be damned lucky to beat.
To say the least he'd prefer to blow up the planet rather than deal with a skilled Magician of any type. He got several powers that if they gathered would put up quite a fight but alone were going to be pushovers. His father's pod was a few minutes away from landing and Shashii decided to go after the closest high power level which was also close by.
"MA- SANKO- HAAA!!!" a great blast hit the thick wall of ice and a bass echo through the rime canyon. The blast came from a tall green skinned man dressed in a violet gi and white cape that was dramatically flying back in the gust caused by the detonation. There was a crater the size of a volleyball in the cliff's side.
Growling insults in an odd language to himself he gathered his ki and let out another controlled volley of assaults on the eternal ice wall. His goal was to destroy the mountain of frozen water. So far after all the years of his trying he had not gotten very close at all to his wish.
He snapped his head to the southeast. Something unseen and unheard caught his attention.
"Who is that power? There's another one on the other side of the world almost as strong." He wouldn't voice it but he was worried.
He lowered himself to the floor of the craggy ice canyon. There were plenty of places to hide and several escape routes he knew he could take. Puling his ki in and taking a measure of it he decided to pop in a senzu bean. Stretching he healed his self inflicted wounds and hardened his expression as much as he could.
He remembered the last time something like this had happened, he had lost the only man on the planet who mattered to him and fulfilled his father's last request. Now Son Goku was gone as was the four star Dragonball to wish him back, that had left the planet with Son Gohan, the kidnapped child of the late warrior of honor.
Piccolo had a sick feeling that this would be a reprise of that battle.
Okay, well how do you like that? Shashii's going to go see Piccolo and probably beat the shit out of the one who was supposed to be his mentor, teacher, and second father. And keeping mind the memory of Shashii's, it's a metaphor for something big later on. You'll see. The voices in my head are finally telling me more. Hey, should Shashii be so seemingly non- traumatized by his profession? I'm thinking he's a passive-aggressive with lots of grudges and painful memories. Let me know.
Chapter8: Remembering
"Begin, landing sequence. Life signs optimal, start reanimation process." The computer's empty voice sounded out as the whirr of the heating system turned on and lights on the console turned on and off. On the monitor an error message scrolled, Navigation System error: off intended course by six degrees. AutoCorrect starts in seven seconds. Every second the computer sped up its calculations and as Shashii stirred from his cold induced rest the pod was back on course.
The error was not uncommon, the navigation system was run by a central computer on a planet that no Sayajin had ever been and was fed into the ships by high speed satellite networks and then the pod's artificial intelligence dealt with it as it had learned to. By double checking coordinates and orbit calculations with increasable speed the disasters were averted and the artificial intelligence systems were the second most important tool to everyone who traveled.
Shashii awoke on impact and went through the pod's shut down checks quickly. As he exited he found his pod was embedded on a steep mountain face. The cold brisk air rushed past and dared him to try his luck on the ice covered slopes.
"Ice, is this the entire planet? No can't be, ice planets sell for nothing, this place is worth a ton." Reasoned the Sayajin calmly. "This is a seasonal place. This will be a great resort place soon." With that Shashii lifted off of his pod's door and it automatically shut and sealed its weather-proof shield.
As he hovered in the frosty air he keyed in a code on his scouter and began to scan for sento ryokos. The population was one of great diversity if it was indeed a seasonal planet and diversity meant that there would be some with powers that could be trouble and others who would be of great intelligence and figure out a technology that could really hurt. Then there was always magic, it was one of the dangers that no one would admit to being scared of but it still existed.
Shashii shuddered, not due to the cold but due to memories of his first encounter with that taboo danger. He was thirteen and on his own, he had left his teammates in hopes of getting some quiet mealtime in before they started to carve up the planet.
Meditating on a cliff above a tumulus ocean was an old man. Shashii stood looking on curious, he knew the man would soon die but still he might pick up some knowledge before incinerating the man. Cocking his head he listened intently to the mantra that was being chanted, it wasn't in Saya-go nor Universal Speak, so the words were mesmerizing and the boy tried to decipher it like a code. As he did he didn't notice the shadows creeping closer, shadows with no bodies to throw them, shadows moving like ghosts in the light winds from the ocean and mountains nearby.
The old man turned into a serpent as thick as a tree trunk and as tall as a tower and with scales of blue steel. It turned to face the Sayajin with cold fury burning in its emerald and ice eyes. Its great mouth opened to reveal three rows of hundreds of razor sharp teeth and two of them were long thin dagger like fangs dripping poison that Shashii knew by scent would kill him with in seconds of one tiny bit getting under his skin.
With a great hiss that nearly burst Shashii's eardrums the serpent lunged at his neck. Shashii managed to scramble away but soon found he could move no more than six feet from where he had stood. A leash of shadows was wound around his neck like a dog's collar.
"Damnit." He struggled midair to pull it off. Below him the snake curled up, toying with him. His fingers just went through the circle that held him like a vice. He tried to blast it off, that did just as much good as trying to claw at it. It seemed to grow now, pinning his arms and then his legs wrapping him up like a mummy. Now trapped with his neck was bruised and bleeding, it was turning into a bad day, one more wound and he'd die a slow pain filled death. Not a great thing to do in his book.
Slowly logic started to have a voice as his initial panic faded. He tried to piece everything together and found that what was happening was something that science and logic was unfamiliar with. It was insane. Then he started to try to recall his father's words. 'Stay calm, don't struggle. Stay out of the danger's range if you can and use your head. Concentrate on one thing and go into a quasi-meditative state until an answer comes. Try anything no matter how absurd.'
When he told Shashii that, Shashii was five and caught in quicksand and with a very big and hairy and toothy monster was waiting to eat him. This was a very different thing. And yet it wasn't. Shashii closed his eyes, slowly he focused on breathing exercises that the doctor taught him. In. Out. In. Out. In. He cleared his head and let his mind wander.
'Think about what you want, and don't loose sight of it.' Said a voice of reason in his mind. What did he want? To kill that over grown earthworm with utmost concern for causing the shape-shifter as much pain as he able to. 'No you don't, think.' Okay, so the mind voice was right he didn't want to ruin his honor like that.
"I just want to be free of the Shadow Chains. I want to fly. I want to be free." He muttered. 'Louder.' Said the mind voice. Shashii's eyes were starting to tear up.
"I want to be free!" he shouted as his tears started to fall. "I WANT TO BE FREE! LET ME OUT, NOW!!!" he yelled at the top of his lungs as his aura flared and his tears fell like a downpour. His tail was uncurled and puffed out and soon he was gone as far way from that place as he could get. In his head the voice that helped him laughed 'You wanted to learn something from me boy.'
No one had believed him save his father, who then told him that it was magic and that he was very lucky. Now on every planet he kept his guard up for the three most dangerous types of people; Warriors, Geniuses, and Magicians. Warriors were the least deadly of the three, obvious and easy to counter. Geniuses were a little harder to spot, okay amend that, a lot harder to spot and could kill you without breaking a sweat, but luckily they needed laboratories and support teams and time. Well, Shashii knew how to prevent that, strike quick and strike hard. Then there were Magicians, they might or might not know that your coming, you may or may not spot them, and they always had a trump card that you had to be damned lucky to beat.
To say the least he'd prefer to blow up the planet rather than deal with a skilled Magician of any type. He got several powers that if they gathered would put up quite a fight but alone were going to be pushovers. His father's pod was a few minutes away from landing and Shashii decided to go after the closest high power level which was also close by.
"MA- SANKO- HAAA!!!" a great blast hit the thick wall of ice and a bass echo through the rime canyon. The blast came from a tall green skinned man dressed in a violet gi and white cape that was dramatically flying back in the gust caused by the detonation. There was a crater the size of a volleyball in the cliff's side.
Growling insults in an odd language to himself he gathered his ki and let out another controlled volley of assaults on the eternal ice wall. His goal was to destroy the mountain of frozen water. So far after all the years of his trying he had not gotten very close at all to his wish.
He snapped his head to the southeast. Something unseen and unheard caught his attention.
"Who is that power? There's another one on the other side of the world almost as strong." He wouldn't voice it but he was worried.
He lowered himself to the floor of the craggy ice canyon. There were plenty of places to hide and several escape routes he knew he could take. Puling his ki in and taking a measure of it he decided to pop in a senzu bean. Stretching he healed his self inflicted wounds and hardened his expression as much as he could.
He remembered the last time something like this had happened, he had lost the only man on the planet who mattered to him and fulfilled his father's last request. Now Son Goku was gone as was the four star Dragonball to wish him back, that had left the planet with Son Gohan, the kidnapped child of the late warrior of honor.
Piccolo had a sick feeling that this would be a reprise of that battle.
Okay, well how do you like that? Shashii's going to go see Piccolo and probably beat the shit out of the one who was supposed to be his mentor, teacher, and second father. And keeping mind the memory of Shashii's, it's a metaphor for something big later on. You'll see. The voices in my head are finally telling me more. Hey, should Shashii be so seemingly non- traumatized by his profession? I'm thinking he's a passive-aggressive with lots of grudges and painful memories. Let me know.