The days after Goku 's death were dark for me and I went through them in a bleary conscious. Bulma, Yamcha, Tien, Chiaozu, Piccolo, and even Vegeta turned up for mourning and the spreading of Goku 's ashes. Vegeta, being the way he was, sat away from us all, arms crossed, brow furrowed. He left only after an hour of seeing our tears.
Gohan, my father the Ox King, and I wanted to cremate Goku 's remains. We spread his ashes through the woods he loved and set up a memorial of beautiful polished stone written in Kanji of Goku's name and birth, what he did and life and who he left behind. Bulma ordered it for us and paid for it herself.
Bulma and I scrubbed the house of the dank smell it had given off in the days after Goku died. It soon began to smell a little better and I cooked a huge meal for all of the guests, but my mind was clouded so badly that the curry came out bitter and the rice undercooked.
Without Goku I felt as if my life had already ended. Gohan kept himself distanced and took to studying, hardly eating anything. The friends and mourners disappeared back to their ordinary lives and the only person who kept in contact with me was Bulma. Bulma had always been loud and pushy, but now in the wake of her friend's death she was quiet and mild mannered. She supported me and for once I welcomed her friendship. Our rivalry was over.
The snow began to fall after Goku 's death, a possible sign that Kami was still paying attention to his Earth. This year I didn't welcome it and I hated the snow.
I remembered, after not eating for at least two days, that I had a child growing inside my body. I placed my hand on my belly, which was still as flat as cardboard, and closed my eyes. Goku could control Ki and with it he could sense things. One night, a week before falling ill, he placed his hand on my stomach and announced softly that I was pregnant. I tried to feel with censes, letting my body relax. To my surprise I could feel something inside of me, too weak to do anything yet, but there was still the presence of the soul there. The piece of Goku I had always wanted to myself had come alive. I began to cry.
Six months passed quickly and by then I was eating again and so was Gohan. I told Gohan to be strong and set an example by going on with my daily tasks. Goku, though, was still at the back of my mind at all times.
This was when bad things began to happen. The Androids, a creation of the mastermind Dr. Gero, the creator of the Red Ribbon army, were suddenly let loose on a cool, Saturday morning on the eleventh of May. By then I was rich with my baby in my stomach, the back aches coming regularly and the excitement of the birth upon me.
It all began in morning. I had turned on our small TV to check the news before heading out to my garden, a thing I did regularly now to stay on routine. When I saw a crestfallen reporter reading a paper shakily in his hands, I first assumed it was something sad like a plane crash or a devastating disaster. That's when I knew something horrible had happened when he suddenly went pale.
He stated that Ginger Town had been destroyed, gone up in flames, by unknown doings. Everyone the Government rescue force found was dead. Nearly two thousand had died in one day at one time.
"G-Gohan!" I called, running to the staircase and up it. "GOHAN!" I felt a sudden panic in my chest. I knew my son would follow his father's constant example by protecting the innocent.
Right then, the only innocence I saw was in my son.
I barged into his room to find his textbook open, the pages blowing from the open window. Gohan was not there. I knew then that my son had left for the same reason the reporter was talking about on TV.
I waited for an hour before hearing anything. Bulma called me on the telephone, saying that three cities were already up in smoke.
"ChiChi, Vegeta was gone this morning! Something is so terrible wrong………"
Everything on that day came so fast that it seemed as if I had blinked my eyes once and it was over. I ran outside when I felt a presence there and sure enough it was Gohan, bloodied and bruised.
"M-mother," he gasped and fell to the ground. I knew then, that in that moment that the beginning of the end had come.
The Androids had arrived.
Author's Note: PLEASE R&R. Your comments are appreciated.