A/N: This chapter ends somewhat abrupt, but the next chapter will pick up right where this one ended.  I just wanted a stopping point and this one was easier than another.  Once again this chapter is more of a setup chapter, where we meet new characters and learn about new events.  The next chapter or two will be the same, but I will try to include more action in them if possible.  To be nice I threw in a small fight scene at the end of the chapter.  Please enjoy and review!!  Also, if you want to be notified of updates, please say so in a review.

Chapter 2: The First Friend

"I'm going to kick his ass when he gets home!" Mazen could here his mother yelling across the medical room of the academy.  He tried to look up and see her, but his head was ringing from a combination of his injuries and her shouting.  She had been on this current tirade of shouting for the past few minutes, and it didn't seem like she would ever stop.

"What did he think he was doing?!?  So many people could have gotten hurt!  Not to mention…" Parseli droned on and Mazen did his best to block out her voice.  He knew he was in for it as soon as she noticed he was awake.  His only trump card was to play on his injuries, but knowing his mother it wouldn't work.

            Mazen had injured himself far worse than this before, and rarely would his mother ever show him pity.  The fact that his injuries were obviously his own fault might also have had something to do with it.  For now though, he was content to fake sleeping until either her anger blew over, which was unlikely, or until his mother left, which was also unlikely.

            Deciding that playing his trump card was the only option, Mazen bit his lip and let the blood flow into his mouth.  The timing had to be perfect for this or all he would receive for his efforts would be more pain.  Once he had sufficient blood in his mouth, he made his move.  Gathering all of his energy, he sat up, pretended to lose his balance, and fell off the bed to the floor.  Upon hitting the floor, he struggled to get up on his hands and knees, coughed up the blood, and fell back to the floor flat.

            His eyes had to stay closed for this to work, so he had no idea whether his mother had bought the performance or not.  The obviously sarcastic clapping from across the room told him she had not.  Knowing the jig was up, Mazen opened his eyes.  He had been successful at convincing the nurse that he was horribly injured, but his mother knew better.

            "You are getting better, I must admit.  However, next time you should control your tail better.  If you were really that injured and coughing blood, your tail would be wrapped firmly around your waist or sticking straight out.  Instead, it was loosely waving back and forth all over the place."  Parseli said this with a smile, which after a few seconds became a frown.

            "Regardless of which, you have a lot of explaining to do!  What in the world put the stupid idea into your head to do this?!?"  Mazen looked directly into his mother's eyes, seeing the great fire burning in them, and knew he was a dead man regardless of his answer.  'Well, I should at least have some fun before I die, right?'

            "You did, mom.  It was your fault." Mazen said plainly.  He watched his mother's face show the slightest signs of confusion before twitching in anger.  "What did you say to me young man?!?"  Mazen felt an intense fear build up in him, but he pushed it to the side and focused on his mother again.

            "You were the one who told me to train with Cori.  We were training and decided to race to school.  Then things just got a little bit out of hand." Mazen told her.  This only made Parseli more furious.  "Only a little bit out of hand?!?  You knocked down more than twenty trees, crashed the safety net, destroyed nearly a dozen lamp and ATTS poles, and even managed to damage a few buildings.  Not to mention that you destroyed an entire wall of a classroom here at the academy!  It's a miracle you even survived."

            "It wasn't that bad, was it mom?"  One look from his mother was all it took to convince him otherwise.  Parseli then seemed to suddenly switch from anger to worry.  "You almost died, Mazen.  It took you over two hours in the regeneration tank before we were sure you would even survive.  The only reason you aren't in their now is because I wanted you to learn a valuable lesson."

            Mazen just looked at her like a madwoman.  "You took me out of the regen tank early?  Just so I would have to suffer in pain?  What kind of mother are you?"  Parseli couldn't tell if he was being serious or not, but she would have answered the same regardless.  "I am a mother of a monkey.  That's what I am.  A mother to a monkey."

            "Who are you calling a monkey?  You have a tail too.  If I'm a monkey, you're a monkey!"  Mazen shouted back at her.  When Mazen first came to school he was the first Saiyan most of the children had ever seen, so his tail got him the nickname "monkey".  It was a sore spot for him.

            "I don't think you understand.  I'm not calling you a monkey because you are Saiyan, I am calling you a monkey because you are a stupid, careless Saiyan!"  Mazen couldn't think of a response to that.  It was rare for his mother to get so angry at him, and he realized that he must have made her worry badly.  He knew from the beginning he wasn't going to get out of this easily, but now he could see it was going to be a very difficult day.

            After a few moments Parseli gained her composure.  "Mazen, I am glad you are going to be alright.  Especially because now I can punish you like this!"  In a rare show of power, Parseli used all of her ki to speed herself up and grab Mazen's tail with lightning quick reflexes.  She ignored his ground shaking screams and grabbed a syringe that was lying on top of the nearby counter.  She focused all of her remaining power and jammed the needle right into his behind and injected the medicine inside.

            "That was ten units of regeneration liquid.  You should be back to normal in a few hours, except for a sore tail.  Until then you can either rest in here or return to class when you are ready.  I will see you later tonight and we will talk about further punishment."  Mazen barely heard her words over his own screams but the message did get through.  He got back on the bed and lay down.

            A few minutes later the nurse left the room for lunch.  She gave Mazen about five nutrition tablets, enough to feed a person for several days, or a Saiyan for a few hours.  While it didn't come close to as satisfying as real food, it was not horrible.  After a short wait for the nurse to go down the hall towards the cafeteria, Mazen spoke up.  "Come on out, I know you are there.  Have you been waiting there the entire time?"

            The wall in front of his bed seemed to distort until his friend Shinou became fully visible.  "How did you know I was here?  I thought I did it perfectly that time."  The young illusionist said.  "It was flawless.  I couldn't see you at all.  But I could feel your life force.  It exists in all living things and each person has their own unique signature.  I can't feel one as weak as yours from far away, but across the room it is obvious." Mazen told him.

            Shinou was the youngest in a guild of illusionists.  His parents and two brothers were also in the guild, but they were much stronger.  As it was, Shinou could only do a handful of techniques, mostly basic ones.  He never had the desire to become like the rest of his family, wanting a real life rather than a guild life.  He was the first of his race, the Artenjou, to choose a normal school like Pepper Academy instead of a guild apprenticeship.  He only practices his techniques at home for fun.

            Like most Artenjou, Shinou was very tall and skinny.  At 6'3" he was almost a foot taller than Mazen but weighed sixty pounds less.  The best term for his appearance was lanky.  The Artenjou had limited magic use, mostly for create illusions and similar purposes.  They had little actual strength but their intelligence was above average.  Shinou though was not as smart as most of the other Artenjou.  While smarter than someone like Mazen, he still lacked the intelligence to truly master the ways of his guild, which is why he was somewhat of an outcast.  Seeing as how Mazen was an outcast too, it is easy to see that they hit it off easily.

Beginning of School Year – 148 AL

            Mazen was nervous and afraid.  He had never truly socialized with other people or races before, especially ones his own age.  After living the past year in isolation, this lack of experience was even more daunting.  His mother explained to him quickly about most of the races who went to the school and how the school system worked.  The school was normally comprised of Ralekians, Arborians, Falversians, Gerimians, Duralgorans, and now one Saiyan and one Artenjou.  While this was the first year for all the students in his class at Pepper Academy, the other races had been going to schools together for many years before.

            The day was supposed to be comprised of one core class and three electives.  The core class lasted several hours and covered basic math, science, and language.  Electives covered things like arts and gym, as well as specific electives like pruning for the tree-like Arborians or psychic training for the empathic Gerimians.

            Since they were both new to the class, they were forced to stand in front of the class and give information about themselves.  Mazen remembered that his mother told him not to reveal his strength, use of ki, or any other abilities that would make him stand out.  In a sense she wanted him to appear to be just a Ralekian with a tail, rather than a Saiyan.  Shinou on the other hand was happy to reveal much about himself to the class.  Coming from a highly respected family line, Mazen could tell that Shinou was somewhat a snob.  The looks on the other kids' faces told him they would set him straight pretty quickly.

            After the longwinded speech given by Shinou, Mazen quickly stood up and made short statement.  "My name is Mazen.  I have a younger brother.  I am a Saiyan and I live about 50 miles west of here."  The abruptness of his speech unsettled some of the kids in the class, but Mazen could see that a few of them had bad intentions.  His analysis turned out to be true later that day at recess, when four of the boys started picking on Shinou.  Mazen wanted to help him but he remembered once again the words of his mother.

             His choice not to fight was taken from him when a large shadow was cast over his body.  A large boy, most likely 14 or 15 years old now stood in front of him.  With this boy were four others, the three who were attacking Shinou and Shinou himself who had been dragged there.  The four pushed Shinou to him and told him that they would allow both newcomers to fight at the same time.  It seemed they wanted a better fight than three on one, so they made it four on two.

            Mazen reached his hand down to Shinou's and pulled him up.  "Get behind me Shinou, I'll take care of them."  Mazen knew he would get in trouble from the school and his mother, but something had to be done.  He gave all his strength into fighting the urge in his blood to fight.  The four boys began to taunt him, pointing at his tail and calling him a monkey.  Even though Ralekians, which these boys were, looked just like Saiyans but without tails, it didn't stop them from discriminating.

            "Are ya going to swing by your tail, monkey boy?  Well, are ya?  Do you want to climb a tree, monkey boy?"  The taunts hurt Mazen, and he would hear the nickname often over the next few years, but it was the next line that put him over the edge.  "Is your father a monkey too?"  The largest boy was the one who asked this, and was also the first to fall.

            At the time Mazen only had a power level of 58, but since normal Ralekians only had a power level of 4 or 5, it wasn't much of a challenge.  Before anyone could notice or react, an aura burst around Mazen, causing huge gusts of wind to lift up nearby dirt.  His first punch hit the bully in front of him in the chest, immediately shattering three ribs and sending him flying back close to thirty feet.

            Continuing his attack, Mazen pulled his arm back towards his chest, jutting out his elbow which hit another kid's nose.  After the nose shattered, the kid fell to the ground unconscious.  A kick to the left into a third bully's stomach made him throw up his lunch and fall to the ground clutching his own stomach.  The aura surrounding Mazen got even brighter as he then charged a small ki blast and sent it at the final bully, burning part of his front and sending the bully flying back further than the first.

            None of the damage was outside their medical technology to fix, and within three days they were all back in school good as new, except for their pride.  Mazen only received a week's detention and a strict warning since the bullies obviously started the fight.  Mazen and Shinou became good friends after that, and they would hang out together all the time.  While some taunting did continue, Mazen and Shinou never got into a fight again.

End Chapter 2

PS: Next chapter is shaping up to be a straight forward history chapter.  It will mostly cover the time from the end of this chapter until present day.  Chapter 4 and/or Chapter 5 are looking to be the first chapters to start the actual plot of this story.  I hope you enjoyed reading.