"Raindrops"
by Acey
Disclaimer: I own next to nothing of value (a coin collection, a porcelain "Gone with the Wind" Bonnie doll I've had since I was five [not in mint condition, however], a boombox). DBZ is something of value. Therefore, it's an extremely safe bet that I don't own it.
Author's Note: That was too long of a wait (especially for a cliffhanger). But I couldn't let this fic die out. It's kind of close to my heart. No more delays-- this being the last chapter.
Author's Other Delaying and Not Pertaining to the Story Note: My mother's birthday (November 7) was today. =)
He turned around instantly out of pure reflex, not scanning in the figure before doing so, uncharacteristic, but it was rationality that kept him from it.
There was no real need to bother. Goku's presence had been obvious from the first syllable he had spoken of his name, a programmed-in voice stored in a chip of memory. Goku, black hair sticking up in rather random spikes around his head, carrot-orange gi, what seemed in Juunanagou's biased mind to be a forever-present idiotic look on his face. The man that by all rights, intents, and purposes, should have died of a heart virus years before, or, if needs be that the time traveler had to come, blown up by a monster. Different way to end the same life. A life of purehearted naivety, a life spent defending the planet that he wasn't even born on. A heroic life.
Juunanagou stared him straight in the eye, defiantly silent. None of that seemed to fluster Goku as it had his twin, and he went on.
"You're Juuhachigou's brother! Someone-- I think it was Kuririn-- told me you lived around here, but I never really gave it much thought. I guess Kuririn only knew anyway because of your sister telling him, or something. Well, nice to see you, then!"
The man honestly believed that Juunanagou had reformed just as his sister had done, a naive thought if ever there was one. Goku had stared evil in the faces of dozens of monsters and still attempted to see a good side, to warn them, to give them the slightest chance of escape from combat. Yet with the escape came a price (for wasn't there always a price for the things you desired?), to end their reigns of terror, to better themselves for the safety of everyone on Earth and elsewhere.
Few, if any, were ever or would ever be prepared to do this. The claimed little good in evil was not present in a fiber of their beings. So, holding to their pride, they would refuse the offer and plummet fast to their own destruction.
Goku paused, a look of slight worry, question, on his face.
"That's your house! Isn't it?" he said, apparently noticing the scattered wood and rubble on the ground. "What happened to it?"
************************************************************************
Kuririn returned the books to their shelf, alphabetically. Dickens, Hugo, Melville, Mitchell, Poe, Scott, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Twain, and more. The classics, with their daring heroes and evil villians, their doomed romances and dying hopes, their quests and journeys ranging from insane to valiant. The characters so well-defined as to be complete, real, on the faded pages. He set them all back to their proper placement, the placement they were in before Juunanagou had come.
It did not take him long. His brother-in-law, with few exceptions, had taken each novel from the bookshelf in the order they were already in when he had piled them into stacks, probably unconsiously. Kuririn noticed this as he glanced at the spines and covers of the books, and so picked half-stacks at a time up and pushed them into the shelf, as many as would go in each shelf piece. He felt a near-guilt as he did so, realizing that the bookshelf stacks had been the only visible change to the house since Juunanagou's arrival.
'That, and a broken plate,' he thought grimly. Not to mention that his brother-in-law had through every fault of his own caused all the tension in the house that morning.
Kuririn stopped himself. He shouldn't be so quick to judge, so condemning. Juunanagou was his wife's brother; Kuririn should try to think civilly of him, regardless of how hostilely he returned that.
The former monk sighed and left the room.
************************************************************************
What happened to it. A pertinent question for someone like him, like Goku, so aware of others' strength and power but blank on matters concerning natural disasters. Such disasters as earthquakes were the only things left that would and did occur without human intervention, and as such made them still feared by many.
Perhaps not so blank. The man before Juunanagou blinked for a second.
"Earthquake?"
How brilliant, Juunanagou thought as he turned from the face back to the rubble, the guileless face so altogether unlike his own. The face bored him because of its lack of deviance, its good-naturedness, annoyed him as he saw none of his own characteristics or lack there of in it. Annoyed him further as he realized the man was wanting to assist him.
He let him wait, but Goku continued as if there had been no silence.
"Do you need any help putting it back up?"
At last Juunanagou spoke to the alien, spoke bitterly, with all the caustic pessimism he had echoing into the sentence.
"This cabin was here for seventeen years. It stood that long without your help--" and Goku, chilled by the tone of the words, stunned, barely managed an unanswered "Are you sure?" before he left the forest.
The cyborg noticed it only then that there were raindrops falling on the ground.
************************************************************************
He never returned to the Kame House, nor was he seen anywhere else but in the tree-covered woods by lone hunters, woodsman, the rare hopeful dreamer who wanted to see nature in a time when nature was more commonly found in museums. They saw him, on occasion, posture straight in bravado, cerulean eyes constantly mocking, like a computer on a default setting. They saw him never for what he was but for what he had been, assuming his humanity in a statement like "I think that's the person who lives in that cabin without the windows" when it had been gone for longer than anyone alive knew. They saw Juunanagou.
No one else, from Juuhachigou to Kuririn to Marron to Goku, involved with his stay at the pink house on the island, ever did again.
finis
Disclaimer: I own next to nothing of value (a coin collection, a porcelain "Gone with the Wind" Bonnie doll I've had since I was five [not in mint condition, however], a boombox). DBZ is something of value. Therefore, it's an extremely safe bet that I don't own it.
Author's Note: That was too long of a wait (especially for a cliffhanger). But I couldn't let this fic die out. It's kind of close to my heart. No more delays-- this being the last chapter.
Author's Other Delaying and Not Pertaining to the Story Note: My mother's birthday (November 7) was today. =)
He turned around instantly out of pure reflex, not scanning in the figure before doing so, uncharacteristic, but it was rationality that kept him from it.
There was no real need to bother. Goku's presence had been obvious from the first syllable he had spoken of his name, a programmed-in voice stored in a chip of memory. Goku, black hair sticking up in rather random spikes around his head, carrot-orange gi, what seemed in Juunanagou's biased mind to be a forever-present idiotic look on his face. The man that by all rights, intents, and purposes, should have died of a heart virus years before, or, if needs be that the time traveler had to come, blown up by a monster. Different way to end the same life. A life of purehearted naivety, a life spent defending the planet that he wasn't even born on. A heroic life.
Juunanagou stared him straight in the eye, defiantly silent. None of that seemed to fluster Goku as it had his twin, and he went on.
"You're Juuhachigou's brother! Someone-- I think it was Kuririn-- told me you lived around here, but I never really gave it much thought. I guess Kuririn only knew anyway because of your sister telling him, or something. Well, nice to see you, then!"
The man honestly believed that Juunanagou had reformed just as his sister had done, a naive thought if ever there was one. Goku had stared evil in the faces of dozens of monsters and still attempted to see a good side, to warn them, to give them the slightest chance of escape from combat. Yet with the escape came a price (for wasn't there always a price for the things you desired?), to end their reigns of terror, to better themselves for the safety of everyone on Earth and elsewhere.
Few, if any, were ever or would ever be prepared to do this. The claimed little good in evil was not present in a fiber of their beings. So, holding to their pride, they would refuse the offer and plummet fast to their own destruction.
Goku paused, a look of slight worry, question, on his face.
"That's your house! Isn't it?" he said, apparently noticing the scattered wood and rubble on the ground. "What happened to it?"
************************************************************************
Kuririn returned the books to their shelf, alphabetically. Dickens, Hugo, Melville, Mitchell, Poe, Scott, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Twain, and more. The classics, with their daring heroes and evil villians, their doomed romances and dying hopes, their quests and journeys ranging from insane to valiant. The characters so well-defined as to be complete, real, on the faded pages. He set them all back to their proper placement, the placement they were in before Juunanagou had come.
It did not take him long. His brother-in-law, with few exceptions, had taken each novel from the bookshelf in the order they were already in when he had piled them into stacks, probably unconsiously. Kuririn noticed this as he glanced at the spines and covers of the books, and so picked half-stacks at a time up and pushed them into the shelf, as many as would go in each shelf piece. He felt a near-guilt as he did so, realizing that the bookshelf stacks had been the only visible change to the house since Juunanagou's arrival.
'That, and a broken plate,' he thought grimly. Not to mention that his brother-in-law had through every fault of his own caused all the tension in the house that morning.
Kuririn stopped himself. He shouldn't be so quick to judge, so condemning. Juunanagou was his wife's brother; Kuririn should try to think civilly of him, regardless of how hostilely he returned that.
The former monk sighed and left the room.
************************************************************************
What happened to it. A pertinent question for someone like him, like Goku, so aware of others' strength and power but blank on matters concerning natural disasters. Such disasters as earthquakes were the only things left that would and did occur without human intervention, and as such made them still feared by many.
Perhaps not so blank. The man before Juunanagou blinked for a second.
"Earthquake?"
How brilliant, Juunanagou thought as he turned from the face back to the rubble, the guileless face so altogether unlike his own. The face bored him because of its lack of deviance, its good-naturedness, annoyed him as he saw none of his own characteristics or lack there of in it. Annoyed him further as he realized the man was wanting to assist him.
He let him wait, but Goku continued as if there had been no silence.
"Do you need any help putting it back up?"
At last Juunanagou spoke to the alien, spoke bitterly, with all the caustic pessimism he had echoing into the sentence.
"This cabin was here for seventeen years. It stood that long without your help--" and Goku, chilled by the tone of the words, stunned, barely managed an unanswered "Are you sure?" before he left the forest.
The cyborg noticed it only then that there were raindrops falling on the ground.
************************************************************************
He never returned to the Kame House, nor was he seen anywhere else but in the tree-covered woods by lone hunters, woodsman, the rare hopeful dreamer who wanted to see nature in a time when nature was more commonly found in museums. They saw him, on occasion, posture straight in bravado, cerulean eyes constantly mocking, like a computer on a default setting. They saw him never for what he was but for what he had been, assuming his humanity in a statement like "I think that's the person who lives in that cabin without the windows" when it had been gone for longer than anyone alive knew. They saw Juunanagou.
No one else, from Juuhachigou to Kuririn to Marron to Goku, involved with his stay at the pink house on the island, ever did again.
finis