The Variation Elements
1.2 As Under Provocation
meek (mêk) adj. 1. humbly patient or submissive, as under
provocation from others. 2. Unduly patient or submissive; tame.
3. Obs. gentle; kind; yielding; docile; forbearing; humble
-American College Dictionary
Copyright© , 1947
Diesen ist meine neues Gehimnis Tagebuch.
This is my second attempt to keep a secret journal, which Mutter does not know about. Perhaps it is a bad idea, after what happened last time. About that, however, I do not want to speak oder write about. My arm healed just fine, anyway.
I am writing auf Deutch, in German, because I know Mutter does not know this language. (You see? I am being more careful; my last attempt was auf English, which, as I have learned from last time, she happens to know quite well.) Entschuldigung, I'm not sure if I spelled all of that correctly. I am writing in Romanji, and have realized I have a bad habit of sounding words out using English pronunciations.
There is a man in the house, who it seems Mutter must marry or else Opa shall lose his kingdom and possibly his life. I don't think I should use proper names, in case Mutter does happen to find this Tagebuch, so that she won't at least know who I'm writing about. I think I will call the man Der Prinz.
I am not entirely sure why I've started geheimnis schribern again, and I feel both guilty and foolish about it. I should not have to keep secrets, and if I really wanted to talk about something I should go and find Picco Meinem Lehrer für sprechen. Es ist alles verrückt.
Perhaps I merely do not want to bother anyone without due cause. Or perhaps I am a coward and am thereby unable comfortably talk about it. I prefer the former possibility.
I can too-easily hear Mutter und Der Prinz conversing in the living room; I do not think they will be going to bed anytime soon. I just heard Mutter invite him to stay the night, thankfully outside in a capsule house of his choosing. I hope he doesn't open a capsule mansion and crush all the plants...
Mutter is laughing. I haven't heard her laugh so openly in a long time. Something is seriously wrong with me, and I feel horrible for it, but knowing that she is laughing with Der Prinz does not make me happy. It is selfish and unthoughtful. I shall have to watch that in the future.
If you'll excuse me, then, I would be going to bed now, so guten Nacht.
--Deinen Shreiber
Asleep, his dreams were ever devoted to his love. To Genevah. To Genevah's long legs. To Genavah's soft hair. To Genevah's incredibly dark, deep eyes... as dark as human eyes could naturally be; so dark they looked like black...
Like Chi-Chi's fathomless eyes...
He turned over in his sleep before falling deeper and farther beyond consciousness.
His first crush, to be true, was the enchanting (and disturbingly aggressive) daughter of the cannibal monster Gyu-Mao.
It had never been love. He was young, but he was never so foolish in such things; neither, though, was it entirely lust, for he was too young again to feel intense physical urges for her. And by the time he had learned the entertainment of touching himself, he failed to fantasize about her, as she had been forgotten. Forgotten under the love of Genevah...
Though he had been a stately two years older than Princess Chi-Chi, with his already gloriously broadening shoulders and a good complexion, she had intimidated him beyond belief; by the time it came down to it, he had spoken to her approximately zero times when he asked her father if she was available for marriage. Which she wasn't. He had been a year too late.
She married another. An untraditional savage of a man, with no honest royalty in his veins... who she loved enough to pursue him to that tournament, to train enough to ensure she would reach the finals. To reach him. She went after him. She challenged him. Made her marriage intentions known. And after a heated battle, had lost honestly to him, while in the same breath had won a husband.
And he had stood in the crowd and watched. Why had he followed her all the way to that tournament? Why had he felt impulses to watch as the only woman he was infatuated with was lost to him forever? He was almost compelled to enter the ring and challenge her himself! Would have done anything at that moment to win her! To have her as wife, to be allowed to talk to her and kiss her and be able to touch her body...
But he had no talent in hand to hand combat, and the tournament had a strict policy against weapons; he would not have been able to use his scimitar. And... and even if he had been allowed to use his sword, and had been able to defeat her and take her by force, she would not have been his wife.
For there was no way in existence he would ever have been able to defeat Son Goku. Even all these years later, with over a decade more training in fencing and physical and mental endurance, he couldn't begin to fathom how that boy had done even half of the things he did.
He had speed. Power. Force. Brutality. The backing of nearly the entire body of finalist fighters. Son Goku was the essence of toughness. He had been overwhelmed. By a boy younger than himself. Smaller, too. He hung his head in shame that day.
And then he met Genevah. And fell in love. Such beauty the world could hardly contain, standing there in that awesome dress, amid all those people that didn't matter, at that dull banquet his father had held. Beneath that royal blue dress was a body not at all well endowed: flat-chested, too slim of the hips. It didn't matter. It was the eyes that held him, those incredibly dark, deep eyes and those perfect, cupid lips that created an enticing smile.
So he initiated conversation. With the first he had ever been attracted to.
The angel's voice was a rich falsetto, with a northern accent even stronger than his own; thick and deep until it seemed to fill that entire glorious mouth. That mouth that pronounced his name as it was meant to be -- "Yon-da-lah" -- without ever needing to be told.
The only other person living that pronounced his name like that was his father. In private. It was their personal code of secrecy.
The banquet ended.
The people went home. He caught Genevah's arm, and they wound up talking all night...
Talking all night in her, Chi-Chi's, living room, sipping tea and...
...
and he then thought to himself 'Oh, I seem to be waking up' just as his eyes opened.
It was early morning. Even under his turkey feather-stuffed quilt and flannel sheets it was much colder than down in the flatlands he normally called home. If it was this cold in a mountainous autumn, he was loath to think of what it must feel like in a mountain winter. Though yesterday, he had been much too intoxicated by the utter femininity of Chi-Chi to notice, the altitude was giving him a migraine...
He rolled over under his feather decker and tried to fall back asleep, but his feet were too cold. His own damn fault, sleeping naked, but it wasn't like he knew...
He stumbled through the confines of his capsule house, looking out each window at the mist-shrouded mountains; the sun had just penetrated the fog to show imposing and dark shadows of great monoliths of stone. Beautiful if not mildly intimidating. Through the obstructing fog and mountains, he would be unable to watch the sunrise.
He dressed in his warmest clothes -- traditional brown leather, with fur-fringed sleeves -- and pulled on his lace up boots before venturing outside. He recapsulated his house (he'd promised he would, to avoid killing the already yellowed grass.)
It was probably too early to knock on the Son's door (it was damaging to his pride to see that name, Son, emblazoned in red above their front door; it was a reminder of the first rival who he'd lost to.) So he wandered the premises, circling the modest dwelling -- to think it housed a princess!! -- until he was startled to find he was not the only early riser this morning.
Chi-Chi's son... (Gohan was his name?) was already hard at work, on his knees in the dirt. He wasn't dressed nearly as nice as he'd been yesterday; it was a prudent move, considering he was doing gardening work. A long sleeved flannel, cheap brown boots and faded jeans -- from behind, he saw they had an embarrassing red patch sewn over a hole in the bottom.
"Good morning, Prince Jondalar." The boy said without turning his head, admittedly startling him, as he didn't think he had made a single sound in his morning walk around the house, "Did you sleep well?"
"Very well, thank you," the man answered through his surprise, more aware of his dialect when compared to the boy's precise pronunciations, it was more 'fery vell, dank you' , "Though it is colder up here; I hadn't been anticipating it... the leaves of the trees of my home have just now begun turning gold."
"Snow will be falling pretty soon... and when it snows, it blizzards for days at a time." He looked over his shoulder a moment, then back down to his work again, "You should get out of the mountains before it happens or you could be snowbound for a few weeks." The boy stood up and, seeming oblivious of the cold, (he wasn't even wearing gloves while digging in the half-frozen ground) he drove a pitchfork into the soil to till it, rotating and loosening the brown clumps to a more pliable texture.
Canting his head, the man wondered if the boy wasn't trying to hint that maybe it was time for him to go away. Not finding it appropriate to mention that the idea of being snow bound in the same small house as Chi-Chi was a dream come true by his standards, he evaded the entire conversation, "Would you like some help?"
The boy knelt back down, dragging a bag of manure fertilizer closer to himself, steaming slightly from internal heat, "No, thank you very much." He looked up from his work finally and smiled very kindly -- an exact duplicate of the smile he'd shown the night before, "I like working in the garden." He picked out a few remaining weeds in the dirt, then massaged in a handful of the bag's contents.
When the youth began poking holes in the ground and inserting seeds, the man kneeled down beside him to watch. "You know, I don't think I've ever seen someone actually gardening before in my entire life."
"I'm sure you were busy."
"Not really."
"Oh."
The boy covered over the seeds, neatly bedded in their holes, and stood up, brushing his hands off on his pant legs. Still kneeling, the man questioned, "Aren't your hands a little cold?"
"Hn? Well, no..." He backed away to survey his work.
Growing uncomfortable with the silence and the increasing air of his inability to hold a conversation with the son of his future wife, the man looked across the field, "What kind of plants are those over there? You seem to have a lot of them, though they're all brown from the cold."
Something on the boy's face both warmed and saddened, "Lilies-of-the-valley. I got more than I planted... I didn't know that they spread by root as well as seed."
"Don't weeds do that? Choking other plants with their roots?"
The boy gathered up his bag of manure and the pitchfork, placing them in a large basin with the Capsule Corporations logo on it, beneath the emblazoned red number '15'. Closing the lid and striking the button on the side of it, the thing recapsulated. "They're not weeds... though they're not a very popular type of flower. I was studying botany a few years ago...," came the answer, "And came across a legend about the Convallaria magalis, Lilies-of-the-valley... I really liked it." He cleared his throat and quickly returned the capsule to a green case with a flower on it.
Curious, the man raised his eyebrows in a 'and?' way, spreading his palms as though asking for more.
"It was a very old Sussex legend about a man called St. Leonard, who went deep into the woods outside of Horsham to slay a great dragon... they fought endlessly, with everything they had. It must have been a... colossal... battle." Something in his eyes became sharp as he spoke, as though in thinking of such a great battle he was both excited and terrified, experiencing it personally, every adrenaline pumping moment,
"St. Leonard finally won and slew the dragon, but was heavily wounded in the process; some versions of the legend even say that he died while killing the dragon... fighting until the last breath. Can you imagine it? The forest must have been ablaze around them, neither caring if they were burning because they were too busy just... fighting." He shivered slightly, though likely not in response to the cold, "It's said that everywhere the saint's blood fell, Lilies-of-the-valley sprang up to commemorate the battle. Those woods are still thickly carpeted with them, now... Just a long stretch of little white flowers."
"It is a gory tale... why would you like such a legend?" The man asked after a moment of consideration, unable to keep himself from mentally experiencing it for a few agonizing seconds, considering how intensely the boy himself had narrated it...
The boy's face changed back to vague and gentle, losing the sharpness and what could possibly have been the true emotion and passion vanished back into an open but somehow unbelievable smile, as though it were practiced to perfection before a mirror but lacking what made a smile really a smile. The man wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't seen how the youth could really look.
"The story has sentimental value to me."
The man went out on a limb, "Does the warrior, St. Leonard, remind you of your father, then? Would you dedicate your garden to him?"
The sharpness and almost-weary look returned for half a moment, "Yes." The youth seemed to be talking more to himself, looking out at the expanse of dead lilies, which could very well have been pig weed or cat nip or blossomless dandelions for what they looked like at the moment. The man couldn't be sure, but the boy could possibly have whispered, "Tousan..."
"You, ah... know why I'm here, don't you?" The man finally asked.
The boy looked at him closed for a moment, studying his face, open but hesitant which told the man that likely the youth generally liked most people, and was fighting his own little dragon on whether he should like the man or not. "I do."
"Then just... bear with me, okay? I'm not as great a warrior as Son Goku, and I can't hope to beat anyone at the Tenkaichi, but I'm sure that when I'm your stepfather everything will-"
The boy abruptly turned his head and said quickly, "Do you hear that? A car is coming; we're going to have company soon. It's Yam-... I think, ah, Yamcha-san was going to come visit us. That must be him. I have to go inside and get dressed, these clothes are all dirty. I probably have time to take a shower if I hurry. Ah, I'll be... please excuse me." He half tripped over a five-gallon bucket full of weeds, their roots sticking up heavenward as though grasping for hope after death.
The man stood up too, quickly brushing the dirt of his expensive pants. He followed the youth to the front door of the house, and took the bold initiative to also follow him into the house. The heat inside was enticing compared to the chilly air without.
He paused at the threshold, looking back over his shoulder, holding as still as possible, listening. He heard no car.
Fifteen minutes later, however, he did, when it pulled up the gravel drive and stopped in front of the house.
(Reference: Botanical.com)
He didn't know what to expect when he pulled his car up to the Son residence; it was still rather early in the morning, so it was possible that the wife and son of his deceased friend were still asleep. He'd stayed the night here enough times, however, to know that at least Gohan would likely be awake by this time (he took after his father in that way -- which must have meant it was a Saiya-jin trait... -- the two of them could easily get through their day on four or five hours of sleep; to bed late at night and be up at the crack of dawn without a sign of fatigue.)
The only times the boy ever slept in late was the rare occasions he visited Piccolo and got roped into a spar; sleeping helped to increase his healing speed (another Goku-Saiya-jin thing, likely...)
He was surprised to find such an expensive car already taking up space in the driveway. It was with a former-thief's appraise that he figured the thing could get well over a million easy if sold. But of course, he had to remind himself, he wasn't going to steal it and sell it. Because it was silly. He already had a net worth of a couple million... or would if he pooled it all together.
"Puar." He said. She had been sleeping on his lap, purring off an on throughout the trip, her tiny paws kneading his thigh, claws snagging his pant leg. She looked sleepily up at him, and grinned her strange, sly cat-grin. He didn't have to say anything else as she automatically scaled his long-sleeved shirt (he'd dressed up, not wanting Chi-Chi to call him a slob again) and curled around his neck like a stoal.
"It's a lot colder up here," she commented in his ear as they got out of the car, tightening her tiny body closer to his to keep them both warm on the way to the door.
After knocking just once they were surprised when the door was answered by a strange man, and for a moment he thought he'd somehow come to the wrong house, "Yes?" The man asked, looking startled.
"Hi. Um, we're here to see Gohan and Chi-Chi, are they in? We were hoping to see their new baby."
"We? ... Oh, I didn't notice your pet up there. He's so tiny." The man said, pushing his lips together, "We don't have many animals where I come from."
He felt his furry accomplice dig her talons into his shoulder a little; he stroked her side gently. It was not the first time someone had been unintelligent enough to mistake her gender, and they could forgive him that. But it was irritating to come across the type of people that automatically assume if a creature doesn't look like a human, it must be a pet, a wild animal, a monster, or an alien. This would not be first person to make such an assumption, either, though it was the first person that he hadn't struck for their stupidity in response.
"Good morning, Yamcha! Puar!" Gohan interrupted a possibly bloody scenario as he came out of the kitchen, dressed in his usual, decent house clothes, smiling welcomingly. "It's not everyday we see you two way out here."
"We were heading for the desert and decided we could stop by." Yamcha explained, grinning, "It's been a while, hasn't it? You're hairs gotten shaggier."
"Yeah, I haven't had it cut since..." He paused, glanced at the stranger for a quick second, then said quickly, "For quite a while, I think. I'm considering growing it out again. You're changed yours as well?"
"I'm a man who's never satisfied with his looks; besides, Puar seems to think it helps detract from the scars. Who's your friend here?" He jerked his thumb at the stranger.
A good warrior (and indeed, he was a very good warrior) can read a person's reactibility, emotions, intentions, tension factor, and damn near soul through a their stance and chi. Though nothing specific changed on the normally upbeat, quiet, warm son of his old friend, he quite suddenly stopped looking so... welcoming. He went on smiling anyway, "Yamcha-san this... is Prince Jondalar of the Blue Monarch Empire." His tone became even more inhospitable, "Prince Jondalar, this is Yamcha: a very good friend of the family."
The two men shook hands, but Yamcha was suddenly getting the feeling he should not like this man. When the prince said, "It's a pleasure," he responded with, "Yeah. Is that your million-dollar car outside? You seem to have forgotten to recapsulate it; you may be in the boonies, but there are still crooks out here, and if they don't get getcha, the cold sure isn't healthy for a nice car either."
The man blinked in genuine surprise, "Oh, thank you for telling me! I'm afraid I don't go many places without a driver..." He quickly slipped outside to rectify.
In his immediate absence: "What's he doing here?"
"Come talk to me in my room, please," the boy said, and headed down the hall, not even waiting for his royal guest to return.
He followed without a glance back. He couldn't be sure if it was his own mind or Puar whispering in his ear, but the words, "Easy Mark" rattled within his skull. He should have stolen the car. He could easily have capsulated it and stuck it in one of the many secret compartments of his own personally modified car... Somehow the thought of fleecing a bonified prince had a very large appeal, even for a man who had given such habits up years ago.
"This is crap." The crumpled and taped up sheet of paper was thumped pointedly by the back of a hand to signify what, precisely, was being referred to.
"It is." Said with resignation.
"What are you going to do?" Half-hysterical with passion at the injustice.
"There is nothing I can do." Resignation continued.
The building of disbelief, "You're going to sit back and do nothing?!"
Razor-sharp little teeth pressed together. "You make it sound like I don't want to do anything."
"Then act. You don't have to be meek and quiet all the time."
Mounting frustration integrated with tight restraint, "What would you suggest?"
"He's issued a challenge? So give him a challenge. And even if she has no choice, even if she wins, then at least she can have the dignity of making him a loser, even if he does get his way."
Leaned closer, suppressed feral tendencies making eyes gleam at the prospect of some form of conflict or victory, "What do you have in mind?"
"Make her stronger. Make her better than him. I think I'm going to hang around for a while, if it's okay with the two of you... I can help you. I know how to use a sword better than any other warrior you know."
"...A-alright. Yes. Maybe you have something..."
When he felt tension in her voice as she spoke on the phone, it almost always insinuated a situation he would soon be told about whether he wanted to hear it or not. Bearing such in mind, he didn't bother to exit the breakfast table and resume where he'd left off the day before in the gravity chamber, instead stumbling through the newspaper's headlines, trying to piece together information through the few words and letters he knew of the Earthling written language.
"I despise politics," she informed him once she hung the receiver back on its cradle.
"Nn." He replied, though even he couldn't deny possible curiosity. Most affairs of this tiny world were beneath his notice, but if any events were to impose on her, they were then an issue of his utmost attention. Until they were obliterated.
"That was Chi-Chi on the phone; do you know what kind of hell she's going through at the moment?" It was likely a rhetorical question, but she paused as though waiting for an answer.
He didn't bother mentioning his feelings for Kakarotto's mate: the woman who he blamed for wearing away at Gohan's blades, ruining any chance for him to be a true, independent warrior. It didn't matter, after all, that he was almost infinitely powerful and extremely well trained. His heart simply was not in it, because that stupid woman and her misguided ideals she inflicted on him whenever she had the chance would not allow him to embrace his Saiya-jin nature. She wanted him meek and obedient. And he was. Dammit, if he wasn't. And it seemed no one else but he had noticed that underlying current of oppressed instinct that ripped through the boy's chi and skewed projection of mentality which his own Saiya-jin nature gave him privy to.
She had methodically mixed him up so badly he was nearly incapable of taking care of himself, being so wrapped up in emotional conflict, only fighting back when something or one besides himself was threatened. Any good warrior would know that it was impossible to tend to other things if the self was not first tended to. Even the common Earthling knew such things.
It was another tender issue with him, as he was certain if Kakarotto were still about it would have a profoundly positive impact on the boy's mental health. After all, being Saiya-jin (mixed up and confusing as he was) he also had the sensitive mental insight that appeared latent in the human mind. (The Namek he had never been sure about, though it was more than possible that he, too, possessed auxiliary insight outside of the common man.)
"She's being pushed into marrying another man! Can you imagine the gall of whoever would be sick enough to force a widow into matrimony without giving her even a year to mourn her first husband!"
"A year." He said, half to himself, to confirm the length of time since Kakarotto's death.
She scowled at him, "Oh, don't correct me so much. Maybe it's been a little longer. I don't know, okay? Right now I'm just trying to say that something's rotten in Denmark, or rather Paouzu, and Chi-Chi and Gohan seem to be in for even more rough times. I guess Yamcha's over there with them, and seems to intend to stay for a while... That poor girl. And poor Gohan, too. Stepfather's are so hard to adjust to, even for normal children."
"Why." There was no question. He had a large difficulty with raising the last syllable when making inquiries.
"What?" She, however, seemed to only know how to have her voice raised, making quite a few statements she made sound like questions, even if she didn't intend it.
Were he speaking to anyone else, he would have beaten them bloody for using such a tone with him. For her, however, he clarified, "Why should she comply. Has she no status as mate to what was once the strongest man on Earth? Or even if that means nothing, Gohan is ever at her beck and call. Why not simply sic her slave-son on-"
"Don't you know how to solve any conflict without using force? Of course she wouldn't use her own son to hide behind; she would be asking him to stand up to an entire army. The Blue Monarch Empire is huge, and if they don't get what they want through marriage, they'll just end up taking it by force."
"An army of weak humans. Gohan could eliminate them all in less than five seconds."
"Can you see him ever doing that? Honestly. Think about it."
"I said could. I know full well the boy's inadequacies in carrying out his duties." He felt more stubborn than usual, as though it were an argument that, if won, would then transform Kakarotto's son into a normal Saiya-jin brat instead of the mixed up mess he was, which would then give him hope that a Saiya-jin crossed with a human was capable of perfectly integrating its dual natures. He wanted verification that his own son would not be riddled with inner conflict between Saiya-jin aggression and pathetic human defense, which, no matter which side made a decision, seemed to give him a feeling of defeat through the side that lost.
"I can't talk to you." She said finally, theatrically throwing up her hands to show she no longer wanted to touch on the issue, "It's no wonder your an alien; you're so far out in left field you can't possibly be from this planet."
He assumed this was her way of calling him either different, or insane. He couldn't quite tell. He realized she had left, though he wasn't entirely sure how long she had been gone. Or how long he had been sitting at the table contemplating the Son's situation since. Damn the need to keep track of time. Time! The bane of all mortals...
"Papa?"
"Your mother isn't here," he said to the small toddler who had entered the room, chewing on the end of Night-Night, his disgusting purple blanket that he refused to go anywhere without.
"'Kay," the small creature said, crossing the room and sitting down on the floor next to the man's chair leg.
"Ksh," he snarled at it. He had never heard his voice recorded before, so really didn't know what he sounded like, but he was aware that such particular sounds were created with some different part of the vocals, the gravely area in his throat that Bulma had informed him humans simply did not have, where growls and -- in the intimate and safe encirclement of his mate's bed... her soft arms -- purrs would come from.
He rose from his seat and stepped over the creature to get past it and exit the room; he had no idea what to do around it. She had told him to set a good example, and he did feel his own warped paternal instincts for that which was his son, but for all his power and knowledge acquired in his school of hard knocks, he had no idea how to begin behaving around it.
"Ksh," the toddler mimicked perfectly -- it must have inherited that peculiar second set of vocals... -- before quickly getting up as well, swinging Night-Night over his shoulder, and following.
It followed him through the kitchen, down the hall, and to the bedroom where his clothes had been all ready picked out. When he pulled on the loose sleeveless shirt -- he had finally relinquished wearing his armor -- the creature climbed up onto the bed to watch. When it seemed to feel the attention it was receiving inadequate, it bared it's teeth pointedly at him and hissed, "Ksh!"
"What do you want?" He asked of it as he pulled on his pants.
"Ksh!" It went on again, seeming to find the mouth-sound interesting, before viciously chewing on Night-Night again. Saiya-jin children grew very slowly; his teeth were still growing out a bit, and likely his gums itched something terrible. That, at least, was a good thing about the Night-Night: Before getting it, the creature chewed on any object it gained hold of.
"Go find your mother," He said to it, but didn't try to leave this time. It had happened before: This was a game now. The creature would follow him wherever he went until it grew tired on its own.
Two small hands clutched his shirt front, and scaled him like a squirrel scaling a tree, up over his shoulder to hang upside-down on his back. Despite his many attempts to deny it, he couldn't help but be amused and slightly proud at times like these. No worthless human toddler, after all, would be able to perform such a strenuous feat. Saiya-jin power triumphs yet again.
So why couldn't Gohan be so well-adapted to his hybrid state as the creature Trunks? He may not have been born into the knowledge that he was not entirely human, but for all the events he had lived through, he should have been able to grasp himself in entirety by now... How could anyone with even a drop of Saiya-jin blood in their veins be unassertive? Sure, it would be strange for the oldest of the hybrid brats to suddenly change into a ferocious little creature (indeed, his behavior while fighting Cell had been severely unnerving, and the world felt for a while as though Gohan had died along with Trunks and Kakarotto) but despite, he couldn't help but feel something wasn't quite right about that kid.
With his heir-creature dangling from his shoulders and neck like a pro-gymnast, he made his way to the gravity room on the uppermost tenth floor, with all its privacy.
Well, he had to remind himself, perhaps even though Gohan did surrender too easily in the smaller things, when it came to honest principles (especially those upheld by his backwards sire) he did have a relatively good grasp of perseverance.
He had seem examples before, such as a specific moment that came to mind, not without an element of guilt:
It had been a very long time ago (who knew how many years, but it was before Cell... yes, likely even before Kakarotto returned from Namek) during what Gohan often referred to as a "disagreement" between the two of them, whenever a mere argument came down to violence, which was almost always the outcome. He did not recall what the "disagreement" had been about, or how it had started.
He only remembered that it had ended with him breaking the boy's arm.
The boy was so much smaller back then, and so much weaker, on his knees, arm twisted behind his back. He could look down and still recall holding one of his little hands, twisting it at the wrist to keep him from struggling, while his other hand was pressed into the back of that little elbow.
Hm. He was rarely one to feel regret, but recalling the memory left a vaguely unpleasant taste in his mouth. Even back then he honestly didn't have the initial drive to hurt the kid, it was just that the moment was so tense and exciting, and his instincts were rampant and his foe was subdued and the predatory part of him, (which might have felt the urge to eat the child were he not already well-fed) was feeling quite inclined to rip and render and bite and claw and tear and kill, not caring specifically what.
"Say it." He could recall speaking through that second set of vocals, which just happened when he was angry. Hn... perhaps it was no real surprise Gohan was usually so on edge around him. He could feel his regret all he wanted, but it hadn't been him face down in the grass that day. "Vegita-sama. No Ouji. Prince. You pretend to be so subservient, now do it, say it, bow down and apologize, and maybe I'll let go."
"I can't." Was all the kid said in response. Well, not said so much as whispered; trying not to scream. Even then, as he remembered his hand put more pressure to the back of the kid's elbow, bending it so far the wrong way his acute ears could actually hear tendon beginning to tear, he began to realize they were at a stalemate; he couldn't show his own weakness by releasing without getting what he wanted, and the then-brat couldn't give him what he wanted.
"I mean it," he had said. He had said, as he wished he were anywhere else but there. He had broken and killed so many creatures it wouldn't have meant much if he tore the boy's whole arm off, but he was realizing it would be counter productive. He would be punishing the kid for remaining firm in a resolve, which he rarely did even back then (which had even concerned him back then, though at a much less tangible level.) What else could he do? He had known perfectly well he was going too far. But had also gone too far to go back.
The then-brat made a small throat sound, "nnNN!" and quite suddenly the elbow he was applying pressure to gave a wet pop and then offered no more resistance. Well, then the boy did scream, loud and grating to the ears; a Saiya-jin scream, from that second set of vocals, like an animal.
What could he do? He'd never had to actually deal with repercussions such as guilt after inflicting damage on another creature -- sure, maybe a sound beating from a superior for disturbing the peace but that wasn't much of anything. He took a step or two back from the pained and screaming child, looking left and right for someone to blame for this -- the Earthlings were supposed to keep this sort of thing from happening. Didn't they know their little brat-friend was in trouble? Had he no keeper? He surely wasn't old enough to be left completely on his own, yet, no matter how strong he was.
Finally, he came to the realization that no one else would be coming to rescue the brat from him and tell him he had better leave and take the problem out of his hands so he wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.
So, confused but resolute, he made his way to that peculiar island where he could feel the bald human, Kuririn's, chi. Though there were other warriors on the ridiculous isle, only the short hairless human had the balls to come out and meet him, mildly nervous but more curious than so. He had already begun losing their fear with friendliness. Despite what his mate would say, it was indeed a bad thing.
With some bartering and a beautifully constructed, of-the-moment string of lies, he acquired a senzu. A single senzu. Apparently, they didn't trust him with any more than that. Good.
He returned at a regular flying pace; it wasn't like then-brat was going to die or anything. When he reached him, the kid still hadn't been within much of a rational level, so he had to grab a handful of his hair to make his head hold still, pry those clenched teeth apart -- Saiya-jin-sharp little needle-teeth, tore holes in his gloves, the fucker -- and managed to stuff the senzu not only into his mouth but halfway down his throat in one quick jab. Maybe he stuffed it further than necessary in his irritation, but he wasn't about to hear any complaints.
The kid, who of course didn't grasp all that was happening at the time, gagged, coughed, then reflexively swallowed. Then lay there panting from all the screaming. And there was that. He had turned and left the area feeling verified that he could take care of any situation that came up and didn't think any more on it for quite a while (at least not for too long in each burst of memory). ... No harm done, yes? He fixed the problem on his own. Good as new. He took care of it.
...
Of course that had not been the first time something like that had happened.
... Nor the last.
Looking across the empty expanse of his training room, trying to ignore the brat-child tugging at his arm, he wondered if maybe he wasn't slightly at fault for Gohan's level of complacency.
Maybe he just wasn't supposed to be allowed around children.
He pried the toddler-creature off his neck and set it down outside the door, distracting its attention by showing it a line of three or four ants that had somehow made it this deep into the mansion. And with its full attention directed to smashing each insect with its tiny fingers, the man slipped into the gravity room and locked the door behind him to insure no one followed.
A warm orange glow, creeping in through the western window, altered the coloration of the room. It helped warm her, soul and body. The bedroom was not as warm as the living room or kitchen, where the stove and fire place were located, though the vents had been opened to feed the heat sparingly through the rest of the house. Her fingers felt like ice, and hurt dully; she suspected that perhaps all the nimble sewing and vegetable cutting and the years of repairing the house's leaking shingles and windows bare handed had taken a toll.
When she got older, she would likely get arthritis. If she got older, that was; life had proven that death was unpredictable and waited for no man, or woman (or even child), no matter how strong they were. After all, she never thought she would see the day she outlived her husband, who had proven himself strongest man on the planet and, later, strongest man in the known universe. And yet she had survived him not once, but twice.
She curled her cold hands into tight balls and put them under her legs to warm them. She could have gone into the living room; Gohan had been keeping up a fire in the woodstove since before she had even woken up this morning, but she honestly didn't feel like seeing anyone at the moment. She had only ventured out twice: Once to investigate all the voices from the living room, and once to get a breakfast and make a few phone calls.
But then she retreated back to her room. She couldn't look Gohan in the eye at the moment; she hadn't told him a thing about the prince, yet he seemed to know the purpose of his presence already. Yamcha and Puar were visiting as well, and though normally she loved company, she wasn't feeling up to being a host.
She especially was not feeling up to being a host to the Prince Jondalar. It was like keeping a delicious cake she had snitched into out in plain view: The temptation still remained to devour the rest, but there was also the forever present sense of guilt that she had snitched into it in the first place. He was so polite and kind, with all his subtle compliments; when she met his eyes she felt as though she were melting in the tenderness he regarded her with. He was so different from her former husband.
Goku, rest his infallible soul, had been as gentle and kind as he was capable of; he never complained, was always exciting and eager to please her but... Well, every wife had her complaints, but he had never been able to contain the wild element within him. It hadn't been possible, after all; he was born feral at heart, like a burning candle that would shine bright and scalding hot until it finally burnt out. And then, of course, he had died.
She stood up from her bed and paced the room to avoid crying. She didn't have time to cry, and besides that Gohan always seemed to know when she did, whether it was his impeccable hearing, or sense of smell, or some other alien talent he had failed to tell her about. She finally went to the quilt-drapped basin that sat opposite the room of the cold, drafty window, just beneath the vent that pumped in the warm air from the living room.
Within the basin lay the sleeping Goten, contentedly sucking on the corner of his pillow as he likely dreamt of feeding. His tiny face was such a reminder of her late husband, chubbier and less tanned, lacking the faint frown between his eye brows from years of perfecting a look that could stare down any opponent. He was always so sweet and kind and without a grain of threat, no matter what she did or said in her fits of temper.
She deeply missed Goku; missed him so much that her heart ached and her soul yearned for him and her mind refused to entirely comprehend that he was gone. Going to bed at night she would still half-dream that he would be returning within a year, and convince her self so thoroughly that upon waking it was with a thrilling sense of expectancy, a sort of 'I just can't wait 'til that day!'. Or maybe it would be two years. Or three. It didn't matter, in those early morning times she was convinced she could wait eternally. She would lay in her queen sized bed, the same she had shared with him since the two had first begun living together, and almost feel his warmth beside her, could almost feel his large, calloused hands sliding over her hip and up her side to rest on her shoulder, or touch her hair. Could almost feel him press his mouth to the back of her ear and breath deeply, saying she smelled wonderful.
That small part of her mind that felt warm and soft whenever he was near, which now felt empty as though something had been violently snatched from deep within her skull, would be filled again with bright golden light.
She rubbed her palms together to keep them from stiffening up too much. Perhaps she could slip into Gohan's room and borrow his electric blanket. She had purchased it for him last year when, after a few months of agonizing he finally admitted that the intense cold of the exceptionally dry winter made his left shoulder ache deeply at the socket. She had bawled him out for taking so long to tell her... And then she went to her room and commenced bawling of a different nature. She wanted her little boy back, the one who cried when he had a scraped knee. That's what children were supposed to do. She wanted to comfort him, not have him protect her.
Like father like son. She could deny it all she wanted, but Son Goku and... and his son were not normal people. They weren't even human. That didn't mean she loved them any less. That just meant she didn't understand them, couldn't begin to relate to them through anything but love... and grief, as she was finding out.
The door rapped hollowly.
Glad she had resisted crying, the woman answered with a clear voice and assurance that her face was clear of incriminating red blotches and swellings. "Yes?"
"Mother?" The door creaked open and her son's pale face appeared over the door jamb, "Is everything okay?"
She smiled warmly; it was impossible to hide from him, "I was just thinking... and it's a bit cold in here."
"Oh." He looked behind him, out of her view, then back, "Um... may we come in and speak with you for a moment?"
She didn't have time to ask who 'we' would happen to be when the door was pushed the rest of the way open by Yamcha, who stood a good foot taller than the boy next to him, "Yeah, we got something we really needa' talk to you about."
She took a deep breath to help steady her nerves, "Come in."
She noticed Gohan was carrying something behind his back, and looking down in a guilty, nervous way, "Ah... we..."
"Gohan told me all about this situation of yours," Yamcha stepped in, his words clearer, his demeanor more confident, "And we've been giving it some serious thought." She considered telling him as politely and inoffensively as possible that it was none of his business, but didn't have time, "And we want to help! I understand there isn't muchuvah choice in all this, but... well, as the widow of one of my closest friends, and the once-strongest man 'under the heavens' -- that's not even mentioning the mother of the current strongest kid in the universe -- you deserve the chance to have more self-dignity than these people are allowing you. So-"
"So!...," Gohan tried entering the conversation; she was figuring
out that his hesitancy was coming from guilt about meddling, "So I, well,
Yamcha-san and I..." He sighed at such blundering, and instead said in
conclusion only, "Here," and brought forth what he was hiding behind
his back.
Whatever she was expecting, this was a true surprise. Her jaw dropped, in all its ladylike fashion, "That's...!"
"It's Otousan's nyoi bo," her son said with a small smile, "He gave it to me a few years ago when we were still training for the Jinzouningen. We... well, you can use any weapon of... your choosing..." He was beginning to blush, "I... read the letter of challenge. I'm really sorry, I know you wouldn't have wanted me to but I really had to know, so..."
"So we decided the best weapon any warrior could ask for was without question the nyoi bo of Son Gohan, Goku's grandfather. It's indestructible, powerful, enchanted-"
"It's really light, too!" Gohan quickly added, "So it doesn't take time to gather momentum like a metal sword would!" He held it out for her to take, seeming more like a guilt-wriddled child presenting to his mother with an accidentally broken vase rather than an experienced warrior presenting his contemporary with a prize weapon.
"An' since it can elongate and retract almost instantly, it can be used in both closed-in and wide open fighting areas," Yamcha said, all grins.
Though it was still mostly in its peculiar traveling 'tube', when she rested her hand on the small, bright red portion of the nyoi bo sticking out of the top end, her other hand absently rubbing the yellow cord that once kept it tied around her husband's torso, she realizing the weapon felt warm. She expected it to be cold, like metal or glass (a material equal to it had never been found by science). But it was warm. And it felt nice in her cold hands. Warm and smooth.
Would it be wrong? To use such a weapon? Would it be cheating? To use her former husband's prized and only weapon he deemed worthy to use besides his own lethal weapon of a body, to ward off her future husband's advances? And if it was... then was she to remain widow for the rest of her potentially long life?
It was warm and smooth in her hands.
"I... don't know how to use it," she said hesitantly, sliding it out of its tube to hold in all ten of her fingers.
Both Yamcha and Gohan seemed to jump expectantly and happily at this, Yamcha beating the boy to the punch, "That's the easy part! Yer' looking at two of the most capable warriors on the planet! I spent the first half of my life using swords and staffs!"
Gohan, firm in his resolve, quickly verified, "And Tousan showed me how to control the nyoi bo's enchanted abilities! I would be happy to teach them to you!"
She ran her hands up and down the staff, turning it one way then another, looking down its perfectly straight shaft. It was perfect, flawless... and warm to her cold hands.
"If... yes. I can't... well, I can't come up with any better idea. It's terrific. Yes. Let's do it." She said finally, slipping it back into its tube.
"Hai!" Gohan yelped.
"Right!" Yamcha raised his fist.
She closed her eyes, and hoped it was the right choice. Because she wanted it to be so very much.
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