The Years After
Chapter SixI returned to my own home that day with Tomoko clutching my hand. She was such a young beauty, her eyes wide and keen, searching every place there was to see. She kept my spirits lightened, but just barely.
"Cheer up Mama! Gohan will come home! Happy!" she cried, dancing around me. I didn't feel like dancing. Instead I felt like dying.
I must've collapsed, for I found myself suddenly on the ground, convulsing with sobs.
"GOHAN-CHAN!" I cried, although none could hear.
No one was the harsh reality of my life. My husband was dead, my son most likely dying, my father old, and my daughter young. I had no one to confide in and if I could, I wouldn't be able to explain.
Why did I feel this way? Why did I feel so hopeless?
Tomoko wiped my tears with her small fist and kissed my nose.
"Why do you cry so much Mama? Why do you cry?" she said, tears brimming in her eyes.
Tomoko means cheerful.
I smiled through the mist my eyes were clouded with at the sweet memory of the conversation I had had with Gohan long ago.
"I just miss your father, Tomo-chan. I miss him a lot."
Tomoko reached out to me with her chubby arms and wrapped them around my neck. She buried her head into my shoulder and I knew then that I would not pursue my own selfish desires to terrify my own daughter.
"Daddy misses us too."
I carried Tomo-chan the rest of the way home. Bulma had dropped us by air car three miles away from our home for I had insisted on walking. Maybe my request to walk was to remind myself that I was still alive.
We live; we live.
When Gohan was seventeen he survived his first major battle with the Androids. After that it was all bad luck from there. His wounds were deep, mentally and physically.
"Mother…I am so sorry…." He would tell me as I tended to his wounds. I laughed softly in my fear.
"Don't be, darling. You're alive…you will be for a very long time…"
"No…" he murmured. "I'm sorry that I didn't say goodbye."
I cradled his head on my lap.
"You can wait until next time, when I go," I told him softly. Why did I miss Goku so when I knew that he lived right inside his son and daughter? Everyday is a wonder. These were the years of wonder.
I had no doubt to believe that wasn't true.
Another year came and went quickly and by then Gohan had increased training, searching ruins of cities for survivors, while Bulma and I built a large bomb shelter with the aide of survivors.
Tomoko and Trunks carried heavy bricks to assist us. Without machinery, it would take time to build. Time was scarce, back then when the Androids terrorized. I never directly met the Androids but I have experienced their terror right in the midst of it all. All the blood, seeping red, would increase my dread of my son's future. Not to mention Tomoko.
The day she disappeared for those terrifying ten minutes changed my life forever. Bulma and I and the young ones headed towards the East province to help build more bomb shelters. We had landed and unloaded her capsule car and began to direct survivors into how to dig up the ground properly and mason the bricks. In that long time Tomoko, curiosity getting the best of her seven-year-old mind, had wandered off. I had only noticed before it was too late.
"Bulma, where is Tomoko?" I asked her from where I was digging. Bulma set down her shovel and wiped the grime from her forehead.
"I don't know. I haven't seen her."
I panicked, feeling my chest tighten. Bulma, too, was becoming worried.
"TOMOKO!" I called, crawling out of the pit I had made and stood on my shaky legs. "TOMOKOOOO!"
I wandered, half blind, through the smoldering ruins of the city we had been trying to save. Buildings crushed, human remains everywhere. Not hands or feet, if you have the gory mind, but shards of clothing and tattered books.
"TOMOKO!" I cried again and I went towards the skeleton of a large building, crawling through shards of metal, glass, and wood.
"What's your name?" I heard her voice say from where I was standing.
"Tomoko?" I gasped and clambered towards where a burnt wall on the skeleton's structure was and peered around it.
I saw Tomoko, my seven-year-old daughter, making pictures on the cement with a pebble and talking to a very peculiar looking man who was staring down at her. His eyes were what captured me, so unlike Bulma 's round ones or Gohan 's tired ones. They were narrow and the color of the eyes was exactly like the backside of a CD, silver and iridescent.
I didn't move. Fear wouldn't let me. The man had an orange scarf tied around his neck.
"My name is Juunanagou," the man said, abnormally calm. Tomoko looked up and smiled her small smile.
"I'm Tomoko-chan."
Juunanagou, the Android I knew he was, peered down at her and grinned.
"Are you sure 'Chan' applies to someone dead?"
Tomoko, sweet little Tomo-chan, who had the kindness and naïve personality of her father, had the remark fly over her head.
"No, weirdo! You're being dumb. Why are you here anyway? Shouldn't you be building the bomb shelter with my mother and the others?"
This was when I moved, sending a scrunched piece of metal flying to my kick right at the Androids head. He dodged it, but he looked surprised.
"TOMOKO!" I cried, grabbing my daughter and then running for it. I knew I couldn't fight this demon; I would be killed in an instant!
"YOU WRETCH!" the Android yelled and took off into the air after me. Sure enough, like a real life drama, I tripped and landed hard on the ground clinging to my daughter.
"Mama…" Tomoko murmured and then fainted.
"MOTHER!" I heard Gohan's voice call and out of nowhere a ki ball the size of a large ball went zooming over my head and connected with the Android pursuing me.
"You again!" the Android hissed.
Gohan descended down and picked me up in his arms and took off towards the bomb shelter.
"Gohan! Not towards the bomb shelter! The Android will kill everyone!"
Gohan, realizing his mistake, descended onto the ground and put me down.
"RUN!" he urged and immediately I tore off, thinking only of Tomoko in my arms.
Gohan took of into the air and delivered another ki ball. The Android dodged and punched Gohan 's gut. I knew this because I saw it all out of the corner of my eye. The Android had forgotten about me and so I headed towards where Bulma was. Bulma looked up as I ran to her.
"The…Androids…" I gasped. Bulma gasped and turned to the builders,
"THE ANDROIDS ARE COMING! HIDE!"
Bulma turned to me and clasped my shaking shoulders, shaking me slightly.
"We must hide, ChiChi-chan!"
I nodded and I saw Bulma tear off in the direction where Trunks was carrying a cinder block towards the scurrying builders. Bulma grabbed him and motioned everyone into the half finished bomb shelter.
I must have prayed to Kami right then and there when I sat heavily under because I forgot my surroundings. I only remember Trunks tugging on my arm, asking how Tomoko was.
"Tomo-chan! Wake up!" he cried, shaking her. Her eyes opened slightly.
"What?" she whispered. Then the explosions came.
Everyone screamed and so did I, hugged Tomoko tightly to me while Bulma did the same to Trunks. I could feel out shelter brace and then a heart-wrenching tumble of bricks father down the tunnel. The screams of the people down there were silenced immediately and I knew exactly what had happened.
"Damn…them…" I murmured into my daughter's hair, tears wetting it.
There were more shakings and more sounds of collapsing buildings around us. Finally, silence.
Gohan descended to the opening of our tunnel, his skin hanging off of one of his shoulders and a bleeding scar over one of his eyes.
"I…failed…" he croaked when he saw half of the tunnel collapsed and he fainted into the mud.
I crawled to him and took his hand and kissed it.
"No…no…" I murmured.
Even though I knew, in truth, that we all had failed.