I've heard many comments on how odd it must look for Gohan to wear the Saiya-jin undersuit and his father's boots. Well, as it turns out, I'd illustrated it on my webpage. You can see it Here.
Okay, there were a goodly sum of reviews and emails pertaining to why the Saiya-jin armor didn't fit Gohan, even though it could stretch to crazy proportions for the Oozarus and such. And I probably would have thought so, too. However, Saiya-jin armor isn't a one-size-fits-all type of deal.
On Namek (though the dub forgot to mention this) Vegita was rather irritated when, after raiding Freeza's ship in search of new armor after his was royaly trashed by the Ginyu Force, he was unable to find the newest model of armor "in his size." For some reason the dub made him say that the model he got stuck with was a "newer model" which directly contradicts what he said in the manga (no longer available) at Planet Namek. However, later he was able to produce the "newer model" in Gohan and Kuririn's size.
Why couldn't he fit into their size?
My guess is that the proportions were wrong. With smaller bodies, they had shorter, more compact torsos and thinner shoulders. Yeah, he probably could have weasled into one, but it would have been irritating and awkward, too tight under the arms and riding too high on the stomach. The same would go for Gohan; who, at thirteen, wouldn't be the same size as he had been with he was five. Perhaps he could have tolerated it in good health, but keep in mind his whole body is barely holding itself together, and any slight unpleasantness could be downright painful.
It surprised Sunow how, in the coarse of one night, Son Gohan could alter his appearance so greatly.
Yesterday, the boy looked as though he had been shredded to ribbons and had one-and-a-half feet in the grave. He had been filthy, bloody, broken and unrespondant. He had walked as though he didn't have the energy to keep his head up--which he probably didn't--and his voice had been paper-thin and crackled like an autumn leaf.
But today was different; Sunow could see so the instant Son Gohan emerged into the sunlight from within his capsule house.
Though he limped pretty heavily, he looked fresh and healthy; his skin, milky and clean, positively glowed with life, his head was held high, his shoulders were swept back, and his tail trailed behind him, curving gently down behind him while the furry tip pointed skyward.
The boy's dress, for the second time, caught Sunow by surprise--the first surprise he had was seeing Gohan in his house clothes--for, just as his house clothes had made him appear somehow less dangerious and more studious, the body suit, obviously ment for combat situations, made him look far more like a warrior. The dark material hugged tightly into every muscle and curve, expressing the very power his loose house clothes hid. A change in wardrobe was all it took to alter one's first take; at least it was so with Son Gohan.
Sunow found himself rising to greet the boy--the thought suddenly struck him funny; an Aeesu-jin rising to greet a mere alien boy--and said quite happily, "Son Gohan! You look much better this morning."
The boy smiled genuinely, "I feel much better this morning." To emphasize, he stretched his arms over his head and arched his back, all the hairs on his tail standing on end as he pushed up onto his toes in a mighty stretch.
Sunow smiled, "I was noticing your new choice of dress, I didn't think you had any other sets of clothes except the two I'd already seen."
Gohan looked down at his body suit, "I didn't think I had any, either. I found this under my bed." He looked like he was about to add something, but then closed his lips. His eyes scanned the horizon.
"What is it?" Sunow asked, looking around, too, "Danger?"
Gohan shook his head, the cheerfulness he had been radiating seemed to wilt and dim, "Nothing."
From the sky dropped Bojack, startling the Aeesu-jin. The Biraju-jin glanced the boy up and down, taking in his new attire and healthy appearance, locking eyes for a moment, then smiled his twisted blue lips.
He held up four blue fingers of one hand, then slowly lowered a finger. It didn't need any words. Gohan got the message: You had four days. Now you have three. Tick tock, tick tock.
Gohan broke eyecontact first, too late to salvage entirely his previously happy additude. His tail wrapped itself tightly around his thigh.
He got a sudden chill--what if Bojack-tachi didn't want to go along with his plan? What if his guesses were off, and it wouldn't work? Bojack wanted a plan, wanted to take down and out all the Tahch-jin, wanted to win, and wanted Gohan to tell him how in three days. What if.....
There was so much hanging on him that is was frightening; and now that he was more rational, and wasn't half insane from pain and fatigue and loss of blood, he wasn't so sure the plan was as fool proof as he had dilusioned.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
He needed information, and he could only hope Sunow had it.
As he frowned, he was aware of the tightening of skin on his cheek. The gash he had recieved from his first fight on planet Aeesu had hardened into a spectacular scar. The sight of it had begun to really bother him; every time he passed the mirror in his room while he was cleaning, he noticed it, a line of almost purple-brown that ran two inches down his face. When he glided his fingers over the scar tissue, he couldn't feel the contact. He should have noticed how deep it was when he first recieved it by the amount of bleeding it caused, but had been too busy before.
He began to think about how odd he must look; what would Piccolo-san think of him, now? Wearing a Saiya-jin body suit, his long furry tail, and the scar on his face..... He looked like no scholar, that was for sure. But he certainly didn't feel like he thought a Saiya-jin or any other warrior would feel. He was just some unfortunate boy who wasn't what he wanted to be, and looked like something he didn't want to be, all the while he felt simply confused and lost and homesick and dreadfully alone-
"Son Gohan?"
The boy jumped, startled to realize he'd been feeling sorry for himself like a spoiled....
Tick tock. Tick tock.
"Sunow-san, what do you know about the mechanism that dissallows transformation on this planet?"
Sunow blinked at the question, then said in a hush-hush tone, "More than I probably should. Why?"
Gohan glanced over his shoulder to find that Bojack was watching him. With a shudder, he said, "I have some questions I need to ask you."
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One secretarie hadn't reported for work that day. One was in intensive care. Two were dead. Victims of Heng. They had failed to find out what Heng wanted. Heaven was no place for failures.
The remaining two secretaries, all that was left of the original six, sat in stark terror; their entire attention focused on Heng. They were terrified. All was not well in Heaven. Their computers had been breeched. Their power stollen. Nearly all of their underparties--one of which had been Backlash--had been beheaded, leaving them scattered and disorganized. And time after time Heng found himself being personally humiliated from all sides.
The great Aeesu-jin's lip curled upward, exposing his teeth. The armrests of his wonderful, beautiful chair were crushed from his constant grip; even now his fingers were sunk into the wood. His tail, slung over his armrest, swung dangerously back and forth. If things didn't improve, someone else was going to die.
All of his men's efforts only gave him three names. Tahch-jin. Henning Le'Armont. Joru Le'Armont.
Nearly fve weeks of research total, since the problems had started and the Aeesu-jin nobility had begun to die. And they only now had the names of the culprits. Heng slightly regretted it, but he had killed the secretary who came up with the names, for the very reason that it took him so long. But it didn't matter. Heng was making a list, and that list was slowly growing.
Bojack had to die.
Son Gohan had to die.
Off-planet Aeesu-jin Freeza had to die.
Doctor Koda had to die.
Joru Le'Armont had to die.
Henning Le'Armont had to die.
And, as time progressed, the list began to become detailed and specific: Bojack, Son Gohan, and Henning had to die slowly, painfully and humiliatingly. The very thought of their names made Heng's blood boil.
In the center of the room, Heaven, stood an Aeesu-jin; kneeling before the throne. Not too young. Not too old. Perhaps a hundred and fifty years old. Perhaps two hundred. Perhaps three hundred. By this stage in life, Aeesu-jin seemed to become ageless, and wouldn't grow or change physically for a goodly number of generations. Their horns would perhaps begin to curve. Their limbs bulk up with earned muscle. But no real change would begin again until they neared six or seven hundred of age.
But his particular Aeesu-jin was important to Heng, if the news he claimed to have was even half-true.
"You say that you've worked for an alien named Joru Le'Armont for the past four weeks?" Tzukalt, a dim yellow Aeesu-jin and the largest of Heng's secrataries began speaking, breaking Heng out of his violent thoughts.
"Um," the Aeesu-jin said, "Uh, sir. Yes. I mean, yessir. Yes. Sir." Overbearingly nervous, he seemed to have the habit of sucking his teeth loudly. His tail, notably longer than usual, had a particularly submissive curl, trailing down behind him so dramatically that it hugged the back of his legs, the last two feet flat against the ground, unmoving.
"What is your name?" Tzukalt continued his questions, feeling slightly rediculous with his number dwindled down to two. He rubbed the back of his neck casually, not bothering attempting to intimidate this already fearful, brow-beaten, over-used little pawn of an Aeesu-jin.
"Ah....Oh, well, sir, my name is, ah, Chiling....sir." Accompanying this broken statement, he ran his tongue along the front of his teeth visibly, then poked around the inside of his cheek. He seemed to have something stuck between two molars. "I'm an, ah, second class citizen..."
After exchanging an overdramatacized look with a fellow secretary, Tzukalt leaned forward and said, "Tell us everything you know about the Tahch-jin."
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With a final nod of thanks, Gohan departed from Sunow's company; his mind would have been more put to ease if Bojack would stop staring at him, watching his every move. It was unnerving.
The Plan, the Plan. The facts were there and workable. It was possible. He hoped that the light at the end of this tunnel wasn't as false as the others had been; maybe, just maybe, this was the one he was waiting for. The finale.
He was getting tired again; his body was sucking up whatever power he was slowly regaining and applying it to his injuries; mending torn flesh and knitting broken bone took considerable energy. But now he couldn't sleep, for he had many things to do in the remaining three days, and the sound tick tock, tick tock was forever on his mind, and even when he was safely inside his house again he could swear he felt the Biraju-jin watching his every move.
What he had to do now was find his tool box and take some things apart.
The capsule house wasn't very large, but as Gohan began searching for his tools he decided it had far too many cabinets and drawers and closets and cupboards and hide-aways and corners where things could easily get lost and never be found again. It took almost two hours of searching before he finally found the red tin box in his upstairs attic storage locker.
How it got there was beyond him; he hadn't been up there in years. The dust was so thick it almost reached his ankles, and with his particlar distaste for dust, he normally avoided going up there. Clamboring up and down the narrow staircase to get to the attic was quite difficult on his poor leg. But he needed those tools. It was important.
He placed the tin tool box on the floor of his livingroom and started carefully walking through the house, inspecting each piece of electronic equipment he came across, making estimates on the size of the gears, wires, batteries, sprockets, screws and bolts, placing the objects he found most suitable in his livingroom by his tool box. His television, his VCR, his alarm clock, his portable laptop, his phone and, most important of all, two walkmans, which he used to listen to his studies while he slept more than to actual music.
He sat crosslegged on the floor in front of the pile of devices, his tool box open in his lap; in one hand he held a screwdriver, in the other he held a pair of needle-nosed pliers.
He had a lot of work ahead of him.
As he went through the pile, opening up each impliment with his screwdriver, he found that no pieces were the size he wanted. Too small or too large, too heavy for the delicate machinery he intended or too delicate to work with; he was frustrated from the begining, constantly reminding himself that beggers couldn't be choosers and he had to work with what he had.
Still, he managed to work for a good three hours, his eyes growing heavier and heavier as he struggled to keep awake and alert enough to continue this precise line of work. In the end, he had the pieces he needed, figured out how to make them fit together enough to (hopefully, kami willing) work. He got a scarf from a drawer in his room and placed the pieces he had chosen onto it. Making sure none of them rolled off, he folded the scarf and the pieces into tight square and put it in a drawer.
He couldn't risk losing a single sprocket.
He went to his bathroom and splashed cold water onto his face and stared at himself in the mirror with irritation. Eyed the scar on his cheek. Examined his nose, which had a slight disalignment; it had been broken again somewhere back there. His hair was being peculiar; sticking up in wild spikes, even more than usual and his attempts to brush it into submission caused it to perk up. Wetting it down did no greater a job. It just wasn't going to obey.
He sighed and began to undress, pulled his boots off and slithered out of his bodysuit with special care not to agitate his shredded leg. He then unwrapped his calf to find that the skin around the stitching was red and swollen. Infected. Painful. He applied another splash of hydrogen peroxide, then chased it down with rubbing alcohol--with gritted teeth--and re-wrapped it with new gauze. He ran a washcloth over his face, behind his ears, under his arms, and along his shoulders in a quick sponge bath, brushed his teeth then swished his mouth out with water.
It felt good to finally have the time to remove the sour taste of old blood from his mouth; much less getting the layer of grit off his teeth.
His toilette routine done, he folded up his body suit, slung it over one arm, collected his boots and returned to his room. Fondly, he returned the unusable parts of his old Saiya-jin armor to their box (he had forgotten to earlier), retaped it, and slid it back under his bed.
Wearing only his boxers, his body aching and already begining the healing process, he climbed under his soft, smooth blankets. The matress felt absolutely devine on his worn body, soft and forgiving, it sank and gave under his weary muscles in absolute comfort. It was when he started to relaxe that he realized how stiff he had been. Going limp was a luxory he finally allowed himself to enjoy.
As he waited for sleep to claim him, he thought about the unpleasant visit he had survived to the Underground. Unable to yet mentally confront the meeting with Henning, he went further back: why had he gone down there in the first place? Oh. He wanted to see the good doctor, to make sure he was alive. And then.....
Memories of the riot suddenly flashed before him, unbidden and unstoppable. The Saiya-jin, fighting for their life and freedom, dying, bleeding, their chi flashing brightly then winking out in death. The Aeesu-jin, killing in masses, grinning as their opponents were little more than babes in comparison to their power. And him, Son Gohan. The Master of Death. The Slayer of Aeesu-jin. The Champion of the Saiya-jin. He wanted to vomit.
All the Saiya-jin were dead now. He was sure of it. How many was that, exactly? There must have been thousands. Did they see it coming? Were they happier to have faught and died, than to have gone on living in such miserable conditions? It was so odd, that they had left Vegita-sei with hopes of a better life, escaping the civil war with the Tsufuru-jin, only to meet their deaths at the hand of a foreign enemy.
Did the Aeesu-jin see it coming? Hundreds of them surely died in that riot as well. He had seen to that. Did they have regrets? Did they, in their moment of death, wish they had done something different? What did they think of, before they died? Family? Friends? Revenge? Or did they think 'Ah, jeez, I was supposed to return that call to so-and-so' or 'Crimeny, I was supposed to attend a meeting tomarrow' or some other small thing they were supposed to do, but never would, due to their sudden death.
Gohan rolled over under his covers, pulling his pillow over his head. Death. He was alive, but death played a larger roll in his life than living could ever hope for. His leg was throbbing. What if it was so infected it would have to be amputated? It was an unlikely situation--his Saiya-jin genes were too hearty--but it was a better train of thought than the riot, so.... What would life be like without a leg?
I would never be able to fight again.
From under his pillow, he opened his eyes.
Where did that thought come from? And why was the thought followed with such underlaying horror? He would have expected his first thoughts to be how it would affect his future of being a scholar. Or of having to get a prostetic leg or sitting in a wheelechair the rest of his life, or how he would go up stairs or if his mother would have to help him in the bathroom or something.
But his first thought had been, I would never be able to fight again. His first thought. The very first. It had been about fighting. As he closed his eyes again, he wondered what that ment. Perhaps he liked fighting more than he allowed himself to admit? No, don't follow that thought through. You'll start thinking about the times you enjoyed fi- So what if he never faught again. Cell was dead. And androids were allies--by marriage!--and the Earth, dear Chikyuu-san, was in perpetual peace.
Why think of fighting?
Because fighting makes me feel so ali-
He cut the thought short before finishing it. Fighting was what caused war, right? If people didn't fight, then there would be no wars. His mother said that so often it was in his mind from conception. But there was more to that. As much as he didn't want to think of it, he was remembering the fight he had with those six Aeesu-jin, when he had broken into the Tahch-jin fortress for the first time to rescue Freeza and Garlic.
That fight had been incredible. Enjoyable. When, for a single second, his mind, heart, soul, spirit, body, insticts and chi had all become one, quivering eagerly as he faught. He had felt so alive. More alive than he ever had during peace. Was it just some chemical reaction his Saiya-jin breeding reacted to? It was more than genetics. In that moment, he had been enjoying it. It was life, not death, that made him fight. Fighting to live, to sustain life, for life against life in a clash as old as the sky and the stars.
Battle. Life against life. The glory and, yes, sometimes defeat, and, yes, sometimes horror, but also the thrill of dominance and victory. Who knows why people started fighting. And who knows why they liked it so much.
His mind ill at ease, Gohan fell asleep.
Two days left.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
***
He stood in a cloud of darkness, the very air and sky, atmosphere, existance around him blacker than oil-slick polished ebony. The blackness hovered over his head and body, sucking the color from him until his skin was white and his clothes were gray, stopping abruptly at his feet, where the dark transformed into a flaming red.
He was standing in blood, sticky. Squishing between his bare toes. Still warm. He tried to move, get out of it, but for a reason he did not know, he couldn't. He was unable to move, even to tremble. Warm, thick, noxious blood. Rising. Climbing up his feet. Up to his ankles.
He tried again to get out, but the blood held him down like quick sand, and when he finally broke one foot free with a sick thwuck of suction, he lost his balance, and his foot went back down, this time unable to break free. Warm. Odious. Horrendious.Climbing his calf. Rising. Whose blood was it? Its smell was unfamiliar; alien. There was so much; hundreds of people had died to contribute to this horrible spectacle.
Suddenly, from deep within the tide of crimson, now up to his knees, came a hand, white as snow, boney, clawing at his pant-leg. He drew back from it, staggering through the blood as it scaled to his knees. The hand, pursuing him, was joined by a second, white and bloated with decay, it was reaching for him. More hands grasped out of the red sea of horror, dripping with the the very matter they erupted from.
A different hand joined them, now. Not white, but peach, the same color as his own flesh. A single detail depicted what and whose it was.
The hand, larger than Gohan's, had a blue armband around its wrist.
It was then that he realized whose hands these were. They were the hands of the people he killed; the Aeesu-jin from the riot, from the fights before, and that one hand, that one awefull, vile, horrible hand, was the hand of......
Suddenly, emerging behind the bloody, armbanded hand, came the rest of the body it possessed. The lean, musculare arm. The orange gi. And, finally, a face, haloed in stiff, bristly black hair. Gohan stopped breathing. His heart pounded rapidly. Tousan. It was Tousan. Climbing out from the tide of blood, now rising past the boy's hips.
The face of Son Goku was not the fresh, kind face the boy remembered. Not the warm, reasuring, honest face of a lost loved one. It was grinning evily. Twisted, the skin a sallow yellow, old, bad, like rotting meat. He was still reaching his dead hands toward his son, his perverted face grinning wider as the red tide climbed to Gohan's elbow, then his shoulders. Then it neared his chin.
He choked, desperatly trying to escape, but with nowhere to go. Warm and salty, it rose to his mouth; this was the blood of his victims, trying to get in his mouth, to fill his lungs. He wanted to close his eyes, but stark terror refused him to miss a second of the horror. Under the thick, rolling surface, he felt the cold hands of the dead scratching at his legs, grapping at his ankles and wrists, trying to pull him under.
Suddenly, his dead father reached forward, grasped his son by the shoulders, and forced his head down, down, under the thick, warm, sticky.......
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A long, loud scream erupted from somewhere inside the capsule house, shattering the peacful night.
Sunow gave out an involuntary gasp and jumped from his seat, a sudden surge of adrenaline flooding his system. A second scream exploded, so intense it seemed as though its owner was being eaten alive, torn piece from piece. Sunow looked left, then right, hoping someone else was around. Freeza, having been leaning against the wall of the capsule house, now stood alarmed, looking around for an unknown threat.
Forester and Eesei, previously asleep, were both awake now, sitting up, their eyes wide with fear, looking around in confusion. Eesei clung to her brother's arm as he stood up, lifting her up with him. She kept her tail secured tightly around his shoulders, seeking comfort, and in return he wrapped his tail around her. She was whimpering. He was trembling. Another howl sounded, so tortured, so horrifying that it chilled them both to the bone.
Garlic remained at a distance, his legs and arms crossed. He had seen this brewing from a distance, watching sightlessly the changes and swirls of chi, for the past two hours. When the screaming started, even with his forknowledge, it still set his teeth on edge. His sensitive ears were ringing. Unable to concentrate, he opened his eyes and watched the capsule house with narrow, coal eye.
A fourth drawn-out scream of horror rattled the house, and gurgled back into a foreboding silence.
Only one person was missing from camp; Bojack, who had left sometime after the rest of the odd party had bedded down.
"What was that?" Sunow asked Freeza, approaching cautiously.
Freeza shook his head in answer, not taking his eyes off the house.
"Papa?" Forester's shaky voice sounded, "What's going on?" A frightened wail came from the little girl, whose face was pressed against his chest.
"I....I don't know," Sunow said, putting a hand on his son's shoulder, and his other hand on his daughter's head. His tail was poised behind him, subconsciously, poised to attack or defend from any threat. It was natural, even to an Aeesu-jin with as little training as Sunow. "Why don't you take your sister down by the beach, hm? Papa will take care of everything."
"I'm not afraid," Forester insisted.
"I know."
"But.... But Eesei is. That's why I'll do it. I'll go. I'm just worried about her."
"I know. Thank you. You're a good son, and a better brother."
The Aeesu-jin boy smiled thinly, nodded, and hurried off into the night, his tail held high behind him like a flag.
Freeza advanced toward the door of the house, glancing over his shoulder to watch the children depart, his hand pausing on the door knob.
"Wait," Sunow said, looking around as though for assistance or danger. He was jumpy. Oh, he was jumpy, "Do you think we should go in? It might be dangerous. We don't know what's in there...."
"What action do you propose?" Freeza asked almost breezily, "You were the one who wanted to know what that sound was."
Sunow was perplexed for a reaction. In his youth, he had been victim to numerous cruel tricks from his peers, most afflicted for his timidity and tendency toward hesitation. Was he to hesitate now? In front of the off-planet?
Another scream filled the starry night.
Sunow took a deep breath.
"Let's go in."
The other Aeesu-jin expressed a smirk, turned the knob, and the two entered the house.
The the raucus sound was not difficult to follow to its source. Down the hall, on the left, the two Aeesu-jin paused in the doorway of the house's bedroom. Within, on the single bed, Son Gohan lay, half-under the sheets, fast asleep.
It had been the boy screaming.
As the two watched, his body twisted and turned under the sheets, his clawed fingers tearing at his mattress, he gave forth another inhuman howl, starting with a low whimper, snowballing in volume, wavering higher and louder until the windows shook in their panes and he started choking.
"Oh, my....," Sunow heard himself say. He held both hands over his mouth. He felt sweat drip down his back.
Next to him, Freeza snorted, "So it's the gaki," he said, "Now you know, Sunow-san, what the sound was," he turned to exit, elbowing the other to follow, "and now we can leave."
"Uhm," Sunow said, looking at him, then back at the boy, who, with his sheets twisted around his legs, was making small, 'Aaaah....nn...AAAaah' sounds, "We can't just...leave him like that."
Freeza looked at the youth, in all his disheveled glory, then losely coiled his tail behind him in curiousity, not without a hint of indifference, then, turning to Sunow, said, "Why not?"
The Aeesu-jin opened his mouth to answer, his tongue lifting to express, but a shrieking wail, devoid of all conscious restraint and forced to a sharp pitch, interupted him, and with a wild thrash that drew both Aeesu-jin's attention, Gohan, still restlessly asleep, threw himself from his bed, landing square on his back. The impact did little more than knock the wind from him, but it must have interupted his dream, for, now on the ground, he was no longer thrashing or wailing; he was out of breath. His eyes were open.
"Son Gohan?" Sunow asked, concerned, taking two tentative steps forward. The boy turned his head, responding to his name, but his eyes were still hazy; he looked as though he was asleep with his eyes open. "Are you okay?"
There was no recognition in the youth's eyes, but, slowly, his face contorted in grief, his brow knitted, his eyes watered, and he said, not quite looking directly at Sunow, "I'm sorry, everyone. I'm really sorry.... I didn't.... I didn't want to hurt anyone, honest.... All those people.... I'm so sorry..."
"Gohan?" Sunow asked again, hoping to bring him from his dilusion, but hesitant to approach lest he suddenly turn violent.
But the boy's eyes closed again, from deep within his narrow chest, he gave a great sigh of relief. His face shifted to that of a porceline doll, peacefully serene, without a fear in the world. Innocent as the angles themselves. His lashes still glistened with tears.
Sunow looked to Freeza in question, but the other Aeesu-jin had already left.
***
Garlic Junior closed his eyes again, muttering quietly to himself, "Guess it's over now."
----------------------------------------------------
In the largest room of the Tahch-jin fortress stood the largest ansamble of Tahch-jin owned warriors on the planet. Every sentry, every secretary, every servant, slave, general, cadet, peon that either Joru or Henning owned. Each stood alike, feet apart, shoulders back, chests out, heads up, hands strictly held behind their backs.
There must have been nearly a thousand, two thirds of them being Aeesu-jin.
Henning and Joru walked, side by side, before them, pacing up and down the line, inspecting each man with a sharp eye and correcting with a sharper tone, "Chin up, warrior, there's nothing interesting on the ground." "This isn't home, warrior, straighten up that slouch." "Are you squatting or standing? Straighten up those knees. Tahch-jin warriors got pride."
It was an act that Henning greaty enjoyed, and Joru abhored. And Joru felt worse, now, than he had ever felt in his entire life. These warriors were being prepared to hunt down Son Gohan, to scour the planet, every inch if neccessary, every shadow and crevice, every corner and every cave, all the highs and all the lows and everything inbetween, in search.
Joru felt like he was going to throw up. His head pounded. His stomach churned. The stress had given him a nervious twitch in his right eye that irritated him to no end, and his eyes watered often because of it.
There was nothing he could do but play along. If Henning got even an inkling that his own brother had betrayed him, Joru was quite sure it would the his very end. Nothing could save him from his brother's wrath.
Henning, on his own, was excited by the prospect of the hunt, and in his excitement he had gone through the trouble of finding his commanders hat; a startched, deep blue with a wide, short black bill to block the sun from getting into his eyes, which he wore at a cocky angle. Every time he made eye contact with Joru, he grinned widely and tipped his hat with a thumb. Oh, he was thrilled.
Their inspection of the men satisfactory, the two Tahch-jin brothers met in front of the ansamble to talk in quiet tones.
Henning was almost wiggly in his eagerness, "Things are getting together fast then planned, brother dear!"
"Yes," Joru said, unable to bring any excitement into his own voice. He was merely warring with sounding dead-pan.
"We have all the supplies packed?" Henning's eyes gleamed. He fingered the brim of his hand with a white hand, his weight shifting from one foot to the other in a little ansy-dance.
"Reports just came in." Joru tapped the data log he held in his hand, "We have everything packed but the chi detectors. It's taking longer than estimated to reproduce them with the alterations you wanted; our scientists are working with alien technology, here and don't quite understand-"
"Will they be done tomarrow?" Henning interupted, his eyes studying the room of solders. He removed his hat, ran his hand through his blue hair, then replaced the hat again, adjusting the brin until it was angled as he liked it again.
"If the mass-production goes all night...," Joru paused, reading the report had had only previously skimmed, "Yes. They'll be completely packed by eight in the morning at the latest."
"Warriors, men," Henning suddenly turned to address the large group, "Departure has been bumped up! We leave at eight tomarrow morning!"
"Sir, yes, sir!" The group spoke as one.
Henning grinned widely, I'm coming, little Gohan. Soon we'll be back together again.
Joru abruptly left the room, and hand on his stomach. He was feeling queazy.
To be continued......