Scarce is the Aeesu-jin of any age that can claim to have seen Heng. Rarer yet is the Aeesu-jin that could truly have seen Heng stand apon his own two feet, rather than supporting his immense frame in his deeply set wooden chair.
But the Aeesu-jin secretaries that accompanied Heng now witnessed a spectacle in which no living Aeesu-jin had ever seen before.
Heng was no longer in Heaven.
He was storming through the halls, his huge size filling every breadth and width, his horns raking against the ceiling, his arms denting the walls on passing, his feet crushing deep prints in the tiles beneath him. His phenomenally long, large tail sloped behind him, seeming almost endless from whence it started to its point of conclusion.
His inside sources, scoping the Tahch-jin's every move, had reported the very information that had caught up in the mind of Son Gohan the previous day. The Tahch-jin had left their fortress virtually unprotected. And, also like the Saiya-jin youth, the gargantuan Aeesu-jin deity had seen this as an invitation to attack.
And, like Son Gohan, Heng's destination was the same. He sought the main computer, but only here did the two's intentions differ.
Heng wanted his power back.
And he was going to get it. By force if need be--and hope, he did, that force would be required.
The strategic pieces were set, and in the end of this game Heng would not find himself in any other position than directly on top. And he was hoping there would be a mountain of bodies to stand on. He was angry. And he wanted blood. And his long ignored warrior's instincts were ablaze with the premonition that there would be much fighting and battling and killing lying ahead.
Again, he hoped so.
----------------------------
The search process in which Son Gohan participated was far more boring than expected. His assumptions laid true that the fortress was, indeed, partially abandoned. And the remaining persons, a quick mental sweep of chi showed, were hardly worth reckoning with. These were the trainees, the young, or the inexperienced. These were the sentry that had spent their employment with the Tahch-jin behind a safe computer terminal or filing papers or washing clothes.
These were not fighters.
Gohan's hair-thin confidence was clawing at anything it could find substance in. This could work, couldn't it? This might actually work?
But even now it was only with difficulty that it stuck. And his other selves were not ready to agree.
Don't you dare get your hopes up, yet, kiddo. Any second something bad is going to happen, and if your not ready for it you might as well die now rather than wait for it.
Wearily, he let himself hang on that balance, walking the rail between determination and weary cynicism, dipping to one side then the other like a drunken ballroom dancer, wetting his toes in each and deciding he didn't have the interior strength or willingness to fully sustain either.
He palmed the eleventh door open of the left side of the hall (Freeza was checking all the doors on the right side), and for the eleventh time it swished open without resistance, revealing a room very much like the past ten. Drab color scheme, dichromatic, of gray ceiling, gray walls, and a floor set with deep earthy orange tiles. Within the room were only the implements of dwelling and living. A single cot with light gray sheets, topped with a darker gray pillow and feather quilt. A wardrobe filled with only two other uniforms and a single set of casual clothes--a search proved. A mini-terminal was installed in the corner, not unlike the terminal he had seen before in Sunow's house--a time that felt so far away, now.
He had already learned that these computers did not have the type of access he needed.
Gohan felt old. Not matured or experienced, but rather as though his years had suddenly slipped out of him through his still tender nose, or perhaps his ears, leaving behind an aged shell for him to dwell in. Weary. His eyes felt heavy and dry. His sockets stiff.
Hell to it all. He was going to do this, alright. But then he was going to take a nap.
Door number twelve, and nothing worth looking at.
He sighed, closing his eyes a moment and the door swooshed closed. He moved on.
His powers of perception seemed disturbingly limited in the knowledge they sent to his brain. It took him quite a while to realize he was chewing heartily at his lower lip, gnawing at a stubborn scab. The remains of his split lip. He was unaware he was chewing at it, rolling it between his teeth, until the scab tore itself free, landing pointedly on his tongue; instantly his lip began to bleed again, a warm droplet sliding halfway down the center of his chin before he caught it with the back of his wrist. He pulled his hand away from his face to eye the red smudge, spitting the scab out.
Still eyeing the red smudge, his clean hand palmed the thirteenth room. Glancing up: another living quarters, as suspiciously similar to the last as the eleven were that came before it.
He wiped the blood from his wrist on his hip, looked up the hall at the numerous other doors, hundreds, really, all waiting to be checked.
They were probably all just living quarters.
But, then again, they may not be. Any door now, he could come across that which he sought.
Or not.
He did not know.
The scientist inside Gohan--who the boy had long since presumed dead, dying long ago somewhere along the rough road he'd recently trod--whimpered pathetically, complaining about the over-abundance of doubt cropping of late. But it was soon silenced by the side of Gohan that was not his friend, so harshly and with such acts of mental violence that the boy flinched. That side of him he would need to work on.
Door number fourteen.
Clear.
Number fifteen.
Clear.
Sixteen. Seventeen. Twenty. Twenty-five.
Clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear, clear.....
Kuso, you didn't think about this happening, did you, dummy...
*
Freeza's thoughts were fabulously similar to those stewing in Gohan's mind. Forty or so paces up the hall from the curiously baffling, ultimately infuriating Saiya-jin kusogaki, the Aeesu-jin, coming up yet another clear living quarters (unlike the boy, he did not count off the rooms he searched), he wished the doors were on hinges just so he could slam them shut after reaching each redundant let-down. He, also like the boy, was almost convinced they would not find anything.
Uncertainty, however, seemed to be viciously contagious, spreading from the Saiya-jin boy to the dead Aeesu-jin dictator like a splurge of wild fire consuming a field of sun-dried grasses.
"Ah...hn..."
A small sound of surprise or perhaps distraction alerted Freeza, obviously coming from the gaki.
Freeza glanced back, his arms crossed, prepared to demand what was wrong now but stopped when he caught sight of the stance Son Gohan was in.
The boy, his ankles pressed together, his weight pressing entirely on his toes, his heels elevated only millimeters from the ground in readiness. His back was fully straight, his neck craned, his head tilted at a slight angle. He resembled, somewhat, an alerted bird, but rather than ruffled feathers, his dark locks seemed to have risen half a centimeter from his forehead, whilst his tail swung anxiously behind him like an absent pendulum, the hairs of it standing out in such a severe way that it seemed to be made of spines. One of his eyes was closed, the other squinted, as though he were looking at something afar with a single good eye, or hearing some distant sound.
By now, Freeza recognized the symptoms.
The boy was feeling something in the invisible forces of chi. And, judging from his stance and alerted position, it was something less than assuring. Perhaps danger. Perhaps lethal. Perhaps approaching.
"So?" Freeza asked, cursing himself that his voice lacked the confidence he had spent so many years fusing into it.
The boy blinked, retrieving his chin from its elevated position, his eyes centering forward and slightly downward, his brow furled.
He pressed the knuckled of his index finger against his lips.
"Something...big." His fist still partially covering his mouth, he tilted his head remotely to the right, as though picking up a better reception there, the crease of concentration in his brow transforming to concern, perhaps bordering on fear. "Lot's of big...things. Aeesu-jin. They're Aeesu-jin, I'm sure of it." The distraction of describing what he felt as he felt it saved him from pending panic.
Freeza, his fingers nervously digging their opposite arm's elbows, decided that the description 'big', when referring to chi, meant strong. But how strong? Stronger than Freeza? Stronger than the gaki? Stronger than Bojack?
"Heng." The boy spoke from behind his fist, his face now sinking into foreboding certainty.
The single word put it all into its macabre context. Heng. That strong. The corners of Freeza's eyes wrinkled in inbred fear. Heng.
Gohan continued to tap at his mouth and chin with his index knuckle, his legs mechanically separating into a sturdier stance, his body set taunt on only his toes, hunkering lower to the ground to center himself better with gravity. His tail, rising to the level of his shoulders, a backwards question mark, suddenly changed its natural course as the boy, instead, whipped it tightly around the boy's narrow waist.
"Where?" Freeza dropped his normally sharp tongue for the sake of survival. Things were suddenly not looking quite so easy as he had assumed they would be.
The boy blinked, looked left, his lips moving inaudibly, counting quietly to himself. Then, his pupils shrinking by order of his Saiya-jin nature, he blinked, looked right, lips moving, counting. Then he looked up, seeing things in the levels above them that Freeza could not see. His countenance growing paler, his body shrinking closer to the tiles under his feet defensively.
"They're...," face bloodless, now, white as a sheet, pupils pin-dots of ink, his chin smudged with blood sliding from a split in his lip, "They're everywhere. Swarming."
He looked like a doomsday prophet.
The boy's hand went to the communicator fastened to his ear, wanting immediately to know Sunow was okay and aware of the danger.
He didn't even get to say a word before he heard the static-filled, yet audible voice of Sunow in his own ear:
"Son Gohan?" the voice said, "Gohan? Can you hear me? I think we've found it. I think... we've found the main computer."
----------------------------
The bedroom of the capsule house is lined with soft gold light as the sun filters in through the windows, flirting across the walls and furniture like merry birds at wing.
Lying on the bed, where Son Gohan had slept so many times, is Henning, the sheets pulled up over his shoulders, his face pressed against the pillow where he can still smell the presense of Gohan, his eyes closed. He sleeps, napping easily in the home of the jewel he would soon have, sweet and innocent and saged and frightened. And maybe, on the momentus day in which it would be presented, the object of his fascination, dear, dear beautiful little Saiya-jin Gohan, would have a tempting line of crimson blood sliding down the side of his narrow little face, to drip off his pointed chin.
The Tahch-jin dreams of such delicious things as he sleeps, his hands resting on the pillow to feel the presence the little Saiya-jin has left for him.
The boy's arms are fastened above his head, against a wall of darkness that could not be seen, for it did not matter to the dreamer. All the dreamer knows or cares to consider is the shape of the boy, who, his shirt and boots removed, hangs motionlessly, his pale bare chest expanding each time he inhales, then, each time he breaths outward, a whimper also escaps his lips. This is his Son Gohan, the dreamer is sure. His, his, his. His to play with and savor and hurt and touch and caress and break and destroy and kill... Not necessarily in that order.
On the outside, the Henning's colorless lips creet open in a sleepy smile. He sighs peacefully, perhaps even snort-laughing in his sleep, and turning over, nuzzling his pillow, drooling a little until, even in sleep, his pale tongue glides over his lips to clean them. Tears of joy escape his eyes.
The dreamer stands over the boy with a hot branding iron, shaped into an intricately designed 'H', to stand for 'Henning'. It glows red hot with scalding heat. Rising the burning brand, so hot that a thin line of smoke drifts off it, the dreamer speaks. "Look, Gohan, see? I'm marking you my own. My very own." But as before, the boy does not raise his head to look, and he remains silent. He does not speak. The dreamer spits on the hot brand, watches it sizzle and crackle, then carefully presses it against the boy's lower abdomen, maybe harder than necessary, just beneath his right breast. The boy cries out as the brand hisses loudly, a high-pitched "ssssss!" The dreamer, aware only now that this is indeed a dream, makes a point to remember to do this when he has the real Son Gohan.
Outside the capsule house stand three Aeesu-jin, two of them arguing with a third, the guard of the capsule house, about something very important. The two arguers have just returned from their search across the planet, they are out of breath from running back to camp, and insist they have information Henning would like to hear. The guard Aeesu-jin insists that 'Henning-sama' be left to sleep.
Inside, the Tahch-jin murmers in slumber, unaware of the commotion outside.
This is the dreamer's ultimate moment of triumph, the time he has lived to see ever since laying his eyes on the beautiful little Saiya-jin boy with the long furry tail and feathery dark hair. The breaking of Son Gohan. The boy, still against the wall, hands still fastened over his head, his knees bound together, is trying to gather his knees to his chest, to protect himself, but is too feeble to do so. The branded 'H' on his abdomen is red and raw, the smell of burned meat fills the air. The dreamer kneals before the boy and digs two sharp fingers into the burn, making the boy utter sounds of pain. "Are you afraid, Gohan?" The boy tries not to answer, his teeth clenching together to stop his tongue. "Are you? Are you?" Insistance will work this time. His fingers worm against the wound, making it weep heavily.
The boy begins to cry. How long had the dreamer been doing this that he finally got such delicious tears? Weeks? Months? Years? It didn't matter. The sight was soul-shatteringly perfect.
Leaning in closer, his mouth inches from the boy's ear, fingers digging into the the burn, other hand resting against the hot skin of his cheek, feeling the moisture of tears. Whispering. "Are... you... afraid?" A profound silence follows, a whimper of despair escapes the boy's torn lips, filled with such raw emotion, and his lean body sags in final surrender.
"Yes. I am afraid." The voice is soft and tremulous.
A sob of bliss escapes the sleeping Henning's lips. The dream is so real for him.
Outside the capsule house, the guard Aeesu-jin, his arms crossed authoritarianly, is begining to nod his head as the two sentry explain their find. Perhaps, indeed, his nod says, this is worthy of waking up the Boss.
"Admit that you lose."
The boy's head lowers, his eyes hiding behind his hair, tears glittering off his cheeks. Grab his chin, make him look up. His ink-black eyes seem sunken in, weary, swollen from crying. They plead, wordlessly, for the dreamer to stop. They beg him not to force an answer. Beg the dreamer to leave him to die. The dreamer revels in the sight, hoping it's just as beautiful when it really happens. He strikes the boy in the face with a keen white fist, staining the white hairs with red. Still gripping the boy's chin, he demands eye contact. "Admit that you lose."
A whisper, "I... I..."
The dreamer leans in closer to hear the words...
"Henning-sama!!"
The barking voice of the Aeesu-jin guard shattered the Tahch-jin's dream.
Rolling over, Henning almost snarled ferally, barely finding the strength to catch himself, before he asked, fully awake, "What is it?"
"Sir," the Aeesu-jin said, shrinking back at the sharpness of the Boss's tone, "One of the search parties... they think they've found foot prints belonging to Son Gohan. We-"
Henning was already on his feet, pulling on his second boot, "Take me there." He tugged on his cape as he went through the door, following the guard to speak to the two Aeesu-jin responsible for the find.
The dream, he swore to himself, would someday come true.
Determination was a strong Tahch-jin trait.
----------------------------
Even with phenomenal Aeesu-jin technology, the main computer was huge.
In the center of the room it stood, spanning from floor to ceiling in a large, seven sided column, each side lit with a series of monitors lining the top of it. The rest: a virtual wall of gauges, toggles, switches, keys, levers, buttons, blinking lights, printout papers, controls and a vast variety of other forms of inter computer control and manipulation.
It was, for the record, Bojack that discovered it, nearing uncounted door number thirty two. When the door refused to open after he thumbed the control, he tore it out of it's frame with a single, sinewy hand. He didn't bother considering that there might be sensitive equipment inside.
Seeing through the mangled doorway, the Biraju-jin blinked his brooding eyes, snorted, amused, and uttered a single word-- "Hey!" --and Sunow and Garlic were there, peering into the room around him.
The Aeesu-jin pushed past him, his thick, stubby tail raised at just an inquisitive angle, to inspect the find; the gremlin entered behind Bojack, half-way through the door, his spine stiffened. He spun around, entering the room backwards, his eyes widening under his prominent brow as his inner sense in chi picked up the approaching Heng and all his men (though he, himself, was unfamiliar with Heng's particular chi).
He just knew that this was bad.
He turned, straightening his cape nervously, to voice a warning of the approaching danger, but Sunow's pale hand was already to his communicator. He was talking:
"Son Gohan? Can you hear me? I think we've found it. I think...," an Aeesu-jin smirk of impending victory creasing his lips, "we've found the main computer."
Grinning, he continued to hold his hand agianst the communicator, his eyes studying the far wall as he heard the boy on the other end saying something that even Garlic could not hear clearly. Slowly, Sunow's grin slipped down to a thin line of worry, "What? Are you sure?" He looked at Garlic, a question in his eyes. The gremlin nodded grimly; the gaki had saved him the trouble of having to say anything. "Where are...," he became silent, listening again, "Why now? Why now that... Right. Right, I understand. Be careful."
His hand fell to his side. The conversation was over. And everything was upside down.
"What's wrong now?" Bojack hissed through his canines, "What did that supid bozu do?"
Sunow exhaled and, sullenly, began tapping at the keys of the discovered computer, knowing he had a task to do, but convinced it was half-way impossible, "It was nothing Son Gohan did."
"Don't give me that crap, the kid is cursed. No matter where he goes, trouble always finds him. He did something wrong, even if it was just surviving birth." Bojack's concern for his own well-fare was kindling. Again he asked, "So, what's wrong now?"
"Heng," Sunow said slowly, attempting to come up with a logical place to start his collosal task, "Heng has entered the equasion... and he's brought reinforcements."
The colorfulness of the string of words that escaped Bojack's lips would curl hair.
He turned, his great mane of lava hair swinging behind him, and settled his potent glare on Garlic, "You."
The gremlin settled into a sturdier position on his feet in case the Biraju-jin seemed fit to attack.
"You," Bojack said again, this time pointing, "If things go sour, and knowing the kid's luck they will, I want to be able to keep myself alive. Take me to the kid, I can't trust him to keep himself alive."
Garlic, though loath to deny the Biraju-jin what he asked, had no choice to answer with truth, "I can't feel him right now. His chi is hidden." When Bojack's face began to darken, he found himself adding--though he had no clue the notion had even come to him yet--, "However... Okay, I've found Freeza. With any luck, the gaki will be with him."
Bojack nodded and exited the room without further adue, Garlic hurrying his short legs after him to lead the way, leaving Sunow alone to work desperately at the computer.
The Aeesu-jin didn't bother mentioning it, but he felt that splitting up would be the last thing they should do right now, when sticking together and enjoying the safety of numbers would benefit them the greatest.
His tail a loop of anxious worry behind him, he continued typing.