The Variation Elements

1.4 Everything From Happening

"Time is what keeps everything from happening at once."
-- Robert Bloch

"Space is what stops everything from happening in the same place."
-- Arthur C. Clark

(FFN readers will not be able to view this scene, as it is in manga format. Consult my current website.)

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The bovine horns were not entirely natural. Though they were real ivory, grown from the skull of an authentic living animal... they had not been grown from his own personal arsenal of bone.

It was a tradition stemming from eleven generations of monarchy, from when the title Ox King was given to a king whose skull was so sturdy and thick that he could ram his opponents, head down, and crush their ribs and sternum with the top of his head like an ox. His heirs inherited this very same feature, (one was even said to have deflected a loosed arrow from his bare, unhelmeted head) until, two generations later, an experimental surgery was performed to attach a set of true ox horns into the thick expanse of the king's skull.

Through a marvel of ancient technology, the horns were not only accepted by the body, but took root and begun growing anew as time went on.

The was tradition ever since, passed from one father to his heir the day he took the throne.

And, he was thinking to himself as he leaned over a high balcony, looking down at his kingdom, It is a tradition that will die with me.

He hadn't thought to pass the procedure to his daughter -- the female heirs were spared the procedure -- and, when first meeting Son Goku and observing his peculiar tail, while developing his future matrimonial plans for the boy had thought, Yes, I could pass the reign of the Ox to the reign of the Monkey. When the tail trait had been also passed onto their son, he was nearly set.

But it was not going to happen now, he didn't think.

Yes, through this second marriage of his daughter he would be able to keep his kingdom and his life, but neither were really his own now. They were Dunadar's, and when the emperor died or decided he would pass on his power to his son, a foreigner to Fry Pan, and then this kingdom would be nullified. Without having to say it, the propositioned marriage had insinuated that, on the day Jondalar and Chi-Chi became king and queen, the Fry Pan kingdom would be annexed into the Blue Monarch Empire.

And there would be no more reigns of the Ox.

He had to lean heavily on the railing as he ambled to a large chair placed on the balcony for him; his weight, which made him so ruddy and powerful in his youth, was becoming more of a burden than an asset. The doctor had said during one of the last (increasingly frequent) checkups that it was a wonder he hadn't had a heart attack yet. He rocked in his chair, staring down the mountain at his kingdom, staring down the mountain that had once been immersed in the flames that had given it its name, rubbing his arthritic hands together and he wondered.

He wondered about what was to happen in the future. What would happen to his beautiful daughter, who so much resembled her mother it hurt a place in his heart.

His confidence was waning. The once clear plans, so solid they were tangible were now heaps of desolate ruin to behold; things had gone along at such a hectic pace these last few years, it was as though everything was happening at once and he simply could not decipher what it was that kept time and space from looping back upon themselves in all the confusion.

Damn all of this! Goku was supposed to end up the king! Gohan and whatever other children they might have had (they were still so young!) would have been all the little princes and princesses. He wanted to be able to hand the position over and spend the last of his days watching his heirs grown into maturity.

He was massive and powerful. He was a king. He wished his old friend Son Gohan were around; he was always the cooler head and gave such perfect advice, it only seemed natural, so appropriate, that his grandson (adopted nor not!) should...

He had no idea if he had made the right decision with this Blue Monarch situation. Being the king, however, meant leaving such doubts hidden to all outside eyes.

He rubbed his gnarled hands over his face until the skin stretched and observed his little town from above.

This car did not hover over the ground on a cushion of air as his own did; instead, it lumbered on four wheels and though it had good shock absorption and traction it was still a truck and nothing more. Typical that it would belong to a such a middle-class individual as the man Yamcha.

The company with him was as equally un-stimulating as the car.

It was hard to not glance out of the corner of his vision at the prominent (and quite fresh) dark ring around the boy's eye. He would like to claim it was concern, and perhaps on a level it was, but it was mostly the common, morbid, human curiosity that made him wish social sanctions did not forbid him ask what had happened.

Prying, he had learned, was a villainous means to acquire information. The blunt 'this is my question' approach his father was accustomed to involved a certain self-importance that he could not yet withhold. Were Genevah here, tactics of honey tempered with subtle wheedling could divulge international secrets with grace.

None of these methods were available to him, through lack of training, technique and natural talent, "Ah," he said to the boy, who was resting chin in palm to look out the window, expression blank, "Are you... all right?"

Blink. The boy startled, then created a very thin, impersonal smile on his face (which was just losing the last of its childhood plumpness), "Oh, yes, Jondalar-san," -- that was what he was calling him now, since the request to cease the too-formal title of 'Prince' -- "I'm fine." The corner of the smile twitched, then the lips turned in on themselves to purse. "Please... don't mention to my mother...," he made a vague movement of his head to insinuate the rest of the sentence. "She gets upset, sometimes, if she thinks I've been fighting."

In truth, it probably would have slipped his mind anyway to ask Chi-Chi about any such incidents... but now that a boon was being asked for, a question could be answered as a returned favor, "All right, if you feel it would be in her best interest to not know... but tell me at least what happened?" (His 'would' and 'what' were 'vould' and 'vat'.) Human curiosity, he was finding, was far more superior and unrelenting than a cat's.

The reply was long in coming and unsatisfying in completion, "I had a disagreement with someone."

He almost asked more... when the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and the roots of his honey-colored hair bristled in a sudden chill that overcame him; for a split second he felt a strong fear of the boy... A sense of danger that made his fingers drum nervously on the steering wheel. He glanced about for a few minutes more, hither and thither, trying to find a source for this almost tangible sensation of... capability, invulnerability, rolling aggressively over his body. It was disturbing how much of a presence this seemingly dull, inanimate youth could have.

He listened to the council of his vague and normally silent human instincts, and let that vein of topic drop.

In a dull monotone, the boy mentioned through his thoughtfully blank look out the windshield, "You're in the wrong lane."

Still, not comfortable with the heavy silence of the traveling auto, he corrected his navigation in both his driving and conversation, "So Miss Chi-Chi is truly going to be using the legendary Nyoi bo in our battle this spring?"

A nod, mein seeming so very tempered with an unchild-like maturity and neutrality.

"And you're training her?"

"Yamcha-san and I are certainly trying to." A politically correct answer, another polite, tempered smile.

He couldn't hide that he was remarkably impressed, "You seem to know quite a lot about weapons combat." He managed to avoid adding 'for a kid', though he was aware that, compared to the perfect, dictionary pronunciation the boy used, he had said 'qvite a lot'.

"I only know what my Father and Piccolo-san taught me."

Yes, he had indeed said Piccolo. The reincarnation of the Demon King. The same creature that had once zealously pursued the life of Son Goku, the boy's father, destroying most of the Boudokai while he was at it (the same Boudokai in which he, personally, had experienced his first heartbreak.)

Still, he had already known the feud between Piccolo and the Son family had died out. In fact, when carousing the Son residence a few days earlier, he had come across a startling photograph of the terrible demon himself, standing in all his power, long green arms crossed, head lowered in a menacing expression that said 'I barely tolerate you,'... and perched atop his broad swathed shoulder, grinning widely, was a young Son Gohan. (Of course, he had made the mistake of asking Yamcha about it, the answer coming from between a grin of fiercely bared teeth, "Yeah. Old Piccolo and Gohan are pretty close. He's what you could almost call a second father to the kid." How he hated that man.)

The connections these Sons had, while not all noble, were formidable indeed. Bulma Briefs, Piccolo Jr., the Sr. Son Gohan, Gyuu Mao...

"Well," he let it go, "It's fortunate your family inherited such a fine weapon from your great grandfather Son Gohan." (He pronounced it 'veapon'.)

"He's not really my great grandfather," the boy corrected, though it almost seemed more the first dispute he could find with the statement."Son Gohan adopted my father, though it was official. I've searched all the archives for the surrounding ten miles and can find no paperwork legitimizing it."

... this was certainly a revelation. One of the few accreditations he had allowed the notorious Son Goku was his relation to the martial arts master Son Gohan, fellow pupil of Gyuu Mao under the legendary Mutenroshi-sama.

He spoke through the warring of curiosity and reluctant courtesy,"Son Goku is not the biological heir of Son Gohan? Then who is he descended from?"

"We don't know. My father has no known birth certificate."

Stranger and more engaging yet, "Well, where is he from? Where did Son Gohan adopt him from?"

"He was found in the woods... abandoned, I guess you could say, when he was very young." And then to attempt stifling the already heated flames, "Look, none of us know who his parents were -- With Bulma-san's advanced computer network, if there was any trace of them in existence it would have been found by now."

Shaking his head in wonder, he spoke partially to just hear out loud what was being said, to see if it even sounded feasible (though he didn't have a doubt that it was true), "So... Son Goku had no home country, no known parents and no official guardian?" To a man born into high status such as himself, title and family history were rudimentary ingredients to even prove existence. How had that man accomplished as much as he had without even knowing his original given name?

"My father became a legal citizen of the Fry Pan Mountain kingdom when he married my mother, just as I inherited my citizen ship though I was born in the Paozu mountain area." (It was a known fact that the Paozu chain of mountains, named from the original mountain the Son's now called home, had once all belonged to Son Gohan. When the aging martial artist began developing his more hermit-like tendencies, he ended up giving most of it away. The final Paozu mountain, however, and the surrounding twenty miles or so, having never been owned by any specific nation of kingdom, was a neutral district that claimed no distinct government or community, thus disabling the few people living there from claiming actual residency.) "Father's home has always been the little house on Paozu mountain."

Was the next question strong to the point of cruel? "Is that where he is buried?" Perhaps it was, but he actually had dual reasons for asking: finding a burial lot in a cemetery would have been difficult without all the paper work that was supposedly missing. Besides that, it was an ongoing mystery among those that had known of the great Son Goku as to what had actually become of the body... a question only rivaled by 'What, indeed, killed him in the end?' (That is not to say that many of the people curious about the body's whereabouts weren't interested in digging it up to see it, or examine it or, among a few select scientists Son Goku had rebuked in life, experiment on to determine what exactly it was that made his feats of physical prowess possible.)

It wasn't until he heard the answer that he realized, through his strong curiosity, he had failed to heed his warning-instincts, discovering his palms slick and sweaty on the wheel while his teeth chattered to an indefinable chill.

Short, blunt and so controlled, so absolute masked in composure that it was frigid cold, "No." He continued looking out the windshield as though discussing a book he had just read, "My father's body was destroyed. There was nothing left to bury." And then the partially lidded eyes looked directly at him, no longer dull or disinterested, but agleam with a smoldering sense of animocity and ferocity, "And I'm asking you to honor my request to not question further about it, Jondalar, sir." He disengaged his sweltering expression to melt back to the world outside the car.

Another word was not dared the rest of the trip, he proceeded with his shoulders hunched against the cold sense of doom that had filled the car, for fear of attracting some unknown but terrible occurrence that he could not name, but felt deep in his gut that would come as retribution from this boy beside him.

... but glancing from the corner of his eyes, at that purple and flesh-toned shape staring idly out the windshield beside him, he couldn't help but allow to run through his mind in a dazed sense of wonder and foreboding: My father's body was destroyed. There was nothing left to bury. He had been there when it happened. Son Gohan had witnessed his father's death.

And that, for all of its effects, only made him more dangerous.

He flew at high speeds, eyes closed, the buffering winds plastering his hair to his forehead, his flannel to his shoulders, whipping abrasive grit into his face at a hundred miles an hour. He wanted to forget that he'd seen her again.

He had known it would turn out like that.

He had known there was no way he and she could get along anymore. Not after so many painful misunderstandings; how many times had she accused him of faithlessness? How many times had he grown irate at the time she spent traveling, or how little she had grown to consider him in her plans? He may have had no job (he didn't need one with his carefully stashed income but she didn't know that) but he did have his own schedule. Their agendas simply did not co-align in the end; she was a rich, successful, beautiful woman and (as far as he let anyone knew) he was an often-homeless vagabond with a scarred face and a criminal record.

Besides, she never remembered Puar. He couldn't take an exotic vacation to an exotic island resort at the drop of a hat and leave her behind to tend the house, which had been suggested more that once. He depended on his furry accomplice more than he would like to admit, and being away from her for more than a few days at a time made him feel insecure and useless.

As he ascended in altitude, nearing the Paouzu mountains, he noted the air getting cooler around him, encouraging him to increase his chi.

... Despite all of that, he wished he had gotten the nerve to marry her. She was tough and lackadaisical and somehow both painfully blunt while equally whimsical to the point of fantasy that one could never tell if what she was saying was true or entirely fictitious.

He still wondered what their children would have been like. Or if he would have been able to locate his parents over these past decades and invite them to his wedding... They hadn't come any of the times he'd competed at the Boudokai, nor to any of his baseball games (though that sounded so childish, didn't it? Being a full grown man?)

He landed on the limestone gravel drive of the Son's house. His hands fisted in his pockets, he made his way to the door, which was opened by Puar before he even touched the knob, "Welcome back, Master Yamcha!" she mewled, floating out of the doorway and to the ground, her coal eyes watching him as he entered. Just by the gait of his walk she observed, "You and Miss Bulma argued."

With his furry accomplice, he wasn't required to reply, just as she wasn't required to ask permission before leaping to his shoulder to comfortingly occupy the space behind his neck and speak into his ear, "Miss Chi-Chi has been training out back all day; perhaps you could aid her?"

Yes; distraction was what he needed.

A short walk through the backyard, he found her standing in the cold, her arms bare in the uncomfortable weather, goose bumped, her breath coming from her lips in almost opaque little clouds, the Nyoi bo slashing and arcing the air in rapid bursts, her dark hair tethered back in a tight braid that ran down the center of her spine.

"You're getting very good," he commented while scratching Puar's ears.

She dropped out of her stance almost too eagerly, as though she had only been waiting for the excuse of distraction, and rested one end of her staff into the ground, supporting her weight on it. "Oh... thank you very much." And she smiled at him. It was an exhausted smile, her cheeks red in the cold weather, her eyes reflecting the dull gray of the sky; her hair was mussed, her clothing rumpled from all the activity; she looked cold and, for a split second, the facade of the princess shuddered under the weight of wanting to simply being a woman, tired and cold.

He realized his hand was resting stationary on Puar's neck, unmoving; his mouth dry. He got himself to laugh good naturedly, "You and Gohan both are too polite with your 'thank you's. It was just an observation... But why don't you come inside for a little bit to warm up? For once let me make you some cocoa, hm? And then we can come back out and have a real training match."

Grateful for the excuse of even a short pause, she nodded and converted the staff to its original size, barely the length of an arm from elbow to palm, and slipped it into its tube-sheath.

Puar might have said something silently into his ear, but in the roaring wind in the autumn leaves of surrounding trees, he wasn't sure.

And the claws he felt in his shoulder were surely only to maintain balance.

Puar's blue furry body helped warm her lap as she conversed professionally as a means of stalling. She did not want to go back outside again, where the cold would make her body heat increase tenfold under her arm pits and down her back until the material there was soaking. At the same time, her fingers would loose feeling, even against the staff, which did not absorb temperature from any elements (she and Gohan-chan had experimented; chi did not make the mysterious material even remotely hot, nor did fire or boiled water.)

Besides, talking with Yamcha was amazingly comfortable and relaxing. The man, it was true, had no honest manners, but displayed honest effort to appease her, stammering when he almost forgot "Oh... ah, thank you!" Besides that, though neither were willing to talk on the subject, there was an underlying sense of kinship betwixt them for their shared grief of Son Goku. Husband, friend, protector... father (at the thought, she looked down the hall, trying to hear if Goten was awake and crying in his bassinet, though the feline in her lap's sharper hearing had been attuned to the task all day while she had been outside.)

Once the cocoa was gone, however, and even her spectacular social talents had run low on subject of conversation, she reluctantly agreed to return to the great outdoors, staff in hand, to resume training. Puar, bless her, agreed with as much willingness as ever to stay inside to insure Goten wouldn't be left to cry alone in the house... though was it just her imagination, or did the small blue cat appear... out of sorts? Disappointed or...

Well, one never could tell what was on under those long whiskers and all that fur. No more stalling...

They trained well together. Yamcha was about the same size and Jondalar, whose build she was initial focusing her talents to defend against, as she would eventually find herself matched against the Blue Monarch prince. That had been one of the difficulties with sparring with Gohan -- he was so much smaller that it made things difficult to compare to combating a full grown man.

... well, that was one of the reasons she was willing to admit to for not sparring with her son. She never mentioned the frightening few seconds at the end of their first training session. And Gohan certainly didn't seem willing to bring it up. What could be said? She had seen that wild element she had only witnessed before in her husband, on those rare occasions he gave way completely and... how could it be worded? He became one with battle. Goku was combat's intimate lover, and at the height of passion, in the midst of fighting, nothing mattered but fighting until only one was left standing --

-- that was why, after a few disastrous results (not unlike the situation she had found herself in with Gohan) husband and wife had agreed that, while training together was okay, sparring together was not. By a law of power and instinct.

It was not a pleasant sort of nostalgia to witness the same barrier of nature erect itself between herself and her son.

So, yes. Yamcha was a better sparring partner in the end.

They battled for nearly an hour, him pausing them from time to time to show her a better grip, or a dangerous flaw that was potentially developing, showing that a well placed match could be played almost like a game of chess, each move done to force the opponent to move to defend themselves, until... Check mate.

He would then lower his sword away from whatever vital it was pressed against, laughing, telling her what she had done right long before subtly hinting at what she could possibly have done wrong. He was a surprisingly good teacher, despite his many rough edges. Had he ever taught before? Contact with him over the years had some gaps that spanned nearly half a decade, and the more she heard him say, the more she realized just how little she knew about him aside from his ties to her husband.

Again, she wondered about Puar, realizing she knew even less about the small, sentient feline than even the man she now found herself spending most of her day with.

When Yamcha's blue truck pulled into the driveway, she was quite sweaty, her tight braid coming unkempt at the sides of her neck, a rip in one sleeve where the sharp sword had nipped a tad too close. They both paused in mid-spar as they picked out the silent yet grating hum of chi Gohan seemed to be emitting as he gracefully slid from the passenger seat and slipped almost ghostlike into the house (the stealthiness of the movements both her son and husband had been capable of never failed to unnerve her.)

She would have liked to follow her eldest inside-- he certainly didn't seem of the good cheer he had been maintaining the past year or so. Jondalar, however, was climbing out of the driver's side, looking quite... human... compared to the memories of her husband. His feet crunched on the gravel; he had to rest his hand on the seat to steady himself for a moment, and he almost caught his hand in the door when he shut it.

... He was just so... ordinary. She couldn't place what it was; his clothes were lovely, his hair vibrant and red, his eyes a lovely shade of green; he could possibly have been more handsome than her simple-faced former husband, with his dichromatic garb, unkempt hair and utter disregard for manners. So what was it that made the idea of Son Goku glow? Watching the prince pace the truck until he found the decapsulation button, she pondered.

Many other women would take Jondalar over Son Goku in a heart beat. Goku had been an unemployed brawler who lived in a miniscule house at the very top of a mountain and didn't have any money because he'd never needed it before, being able to catch and kill his food and get his water from the stream. He had needed no other ammenities.

Jondalar was a prince; he was rich; his empire was huge and growing larger.

He had the grace of a remarkable swordsman. His balance was nearly flawless, his arms at perfect readiness without having to think. He held his head as high as Goku had, his chest held out but... She couldn't place it. He simply wasn't Son Goku. Because Son Goku was not of this planet.

She had never been more aware of it than now.

... So it was disconcerting to find that instead of finding these earthly traits minuscule, she found a warm shiver had traveled up her back, leaving a hot, sweaty feeling while at the same time making her arms break out in goose flesh.

But then the prince looked at her and smiled.

... and she felt this clenching right between her lungs. It was nothing like her late husband's shameless grin; the entire facial structure was different but... it was so genuine, so relieved and though only moments before she felt he was too human to get his shine anywhere near the heights of Goku, it seemed the very down-to-earthness of Jondalar was his redeaming quality. In his smile, she could see emotion, hesitation. Doubt. Tentativity. In Goku, with his reckless abandon and endless confidence and courage, these were some of he the only things he had lacked.

That was Goku. Not of this planet, but that only meant he did not have human qualities.

She started when she saw Yamcha leave very abruptly, his sword setting her teeth on edge as it gave a high-pitched metalic whine when sheathed. Through periferals, she watched him vanish into the house.

Suddenly finding herself quite alone with this man that set her nerves to such tenseness, she took a few steps back at his approach, masking the retreat by making to retrieve the Nyoi-bo's tube sheath.

"Where should we unload your groceries?" He asked (it sounded more like 'vere should ve unload your groceries'), standing a polite distance as she devoted as much of her attention as possible to putting the staff back in its tube, not wanting to look into those distinctly northern, up-turned green eyes.

"Goku-san dug a pantry for me last year, not long before he, well," she had to be brave on this topic, "Before he died."

At the mention of her husband, the prince wilted. She had never seen Goku wilt before. Very rare did she visually catch Gohan doing so, either. Were humans so transparent?

He averted his spring-grass eyes to his feet, watching them shuffle. "R-right. I'll bring them in in a moment I... Well, you see, I just..." (Though he said 'vell, you see'.)

She knew she should have said something. There was a notable darkening of color crossing his cheeks, and he was likely going to say something that would only embarass them both. Being the daughter of the king and this man's betrothed, it was nearly her duty to keep him from humiliating himself.

For the life of her, however, she couldn't find any correct word to say.

"... I promise to... offer you a fair battle." (He pronounced it 'vair battle'.) It was obviously not what he had planned to say, as he looked as confused to say it as she was to hear it, "Erm, this spring, that is." He nodded his head at her staff, shuffling again, "I just wanted to say that though I know the Blue Monarch isn't always known for playing fair... I do plan to."

"Oh." Was what she ended up responding with, "Good then. We'll both be fair."

He nodded and, his nerve visibly failing him, backed up a few feet, "I'll...," he tried again, and again failed, "...leave you to your training then."

She nodded.

It was amazing, the speed he suddenly employed to vanish into the house. As once again she watched her house's door open and shut (there was certainly more coming and going with their extra house guests), she could almost see the rosyness of her cheeks, result of more than just the nip in the air.

It was flattering, Jondalar's behavior, really. Almost sad, how his composure crumbled like stale bread, but definitely flattering.

Goku had never been unnerved by her before...

She then trained hard for the rest of the afternoon as punishment for the thought.

She wasn't neccessarily mad at him so much as dissappointed, yet again, at the major difference between the both of them. And she knew him well enough to accept that he would not see their relationship as anything beside pure friendship. And in essence, that was what she, too, strove for but with... how could it be put?

When just the two of them are together, doing nothing more than lazing around like any bachelor and cat would do when left to their own devices - him, lounging back in an easy chair, her nestled in the crook of his arms, she couldn't help but feel there was some element of romance. That was always how she saw it; platanic romance.

So to see him attracted to other women was somewhat of a deviation of what made their quality time together genuinely pleasurable.

... Which was why she was quite glad that, though he had overcome his fear of the opposite sex, he certainly hadn't overcome his terror of commitment, which seemed to cause him drastic attraction to women that he would not have a chance to actually be with.

Thus she was quite content where she was just now, settled comfortably on his chest like a warm, fuzzy loaf of bread while he lay back on the Son's couch, one of his legs hanging over the edge. She was purring quitely, her nose just inches from his chin. His eyes were closed, but he was in no way asleep. She could tell by the pace of his heart and breath, just beneath her, each inhalation raising her an inch up, exhalation lowering her an inch or so.

One of her ears swiveled to listen to the sounds of Jondalar puttering uselessly around in the kitchen. She observed him sometimes, under the guise of household pet, amazed at his incompetence to so much as create a successful sandwich. The prince seemed to have taken up the habit of talking to her when no one else was around, which she found amusing enough to pretend to 'coincidentally' acknowledge him sometimes by squeezing her eyes shut or flicking a tail sympathetically.

Her bright eyes were intent on Lord Yamcha's face. Looking at his dark lashes, the way his scars caused out of place shadows across his face. She uncrurled his body and slowly stood up, her paws so used to finding footing on his chest that she was able to maintain her catly fluid motions as she edged closer to his face, sitting on his collar bone. Her face was now just an inch above his.

... She wondered what he would do if she kissed him right now.

He let her smooth down his hair with her tongue sometimes, though it made him giggle in an almost boyish way, saying it tickled (she loved that little laugh, and was quite pleased that no one else seemed to have heard it before.) And often at night she would butt her head against his chin to say goodnight.

Thinking back, he had never turned her down or away at anything she wanted to do.

So... so would it be okay? Just this once, to try kissing him?

She contemplated his lips; they were nicely shaped, though much larger than her own. Hers were more... catty. Enough that she was quite successful at speaking just as good as any human (a good mental shake of the fist in Jondalar's direction) but still... would it be wierd? For herself as well as him?

She brought her mouth and nose closer...

He chuckled and opened one eye, "Your whiskers tickle," he said.

She squeezed her eyes shut with undisguisable pleasure. She was actually relieved that he had inadvertantly stopped her mad idea. She didn't get an chance to reply.

"Is it okay having her close to your mouth like that?" (When he said 'having' it came out 'hafing'.)

Lord Yamcha sat up and she slid down his chest to his lap, and replied, "I have a dirty mouth as it is; if anything, she'll improve it. You could stand to give it a go sometime."

There seemed to be a baseless rivalry between Jondalar and Yamcha, which neither seemed to feel like going out of their way to hide.

The prince seated himself on the other side of the coffee table with a bowl of what could only be poorly concocted soup from a can. He looked into her eyes and she boldly looked back until he had to blink-- few were the men that could hold the stare of a cat. "Whatever," he said with a shrug (phonetically it was 'vatever'), spooning at the small chunks of condensed soup that had failed to integrate with the water during boiling.

Yamcha didn't seem up to letting the little conversation end there, "You made it home, I see. I'm impressed you were capable of driving with your limited experiance with sitting behind the wheel, instead of sitting behind the man sitting behind the wheel.."

"I can navigate any car on the road, thank you very much," the prince snapped. He certainly seemed in hardly a better mood than Yamcha. "And I can do it well." (It came out 'I can do it vell.')

"Sincerely?. Your old man must have had to spend thousands to afford tutors with enough patience to teach someone of your... unique caliber."

"My 'old man' is also a very rich, very powerful man, so I suggest you learn your place when dealing with those in higher levels of influence."

She took to staring at his forhead until he had to rub his hand over the spot to make sure a blemish hadn't cropped up, while Yamcha replied, "Wow, how old are you? I think I stopped hiding behind my daddy when I was in diapers... No, actually I don't think I depended on his, what did you call it, 'higher level of influence' even then."

She found it prudent not to mention that he had never depended on his father because he hardly remembered what his face looked like, having no pictures of him and having not spoken to him in at least two decades.

"You're probably right," Jondalar was replying, "You wouldn't need to use such threats when you're holding a sword against a person's throats as you take all of their belongings. I've done some research on you; Yamcha, the dreaded desert bandit. Only dreaded because you were never caught." ('you vere nefer caught') "Seems much more like a glorified mugger."

Her ears perked forward to point at him with interest, now. It seems she wasn't the only one to have done some research.

"Christ, I was only sixteen and even then, at least I was able to depend entirely on myself. Have you ever had to take care of yourself before? I doubt you would be able to... couldn't live without Daddy's 'level of influence'. I mean, just look at you now, can't even get a woman to marry you fairly, so you need Daddy to force a still-greiving widow with two children into 'accepting' you by threatening to kill her aging father." Oo, he was certainly on a nasty thread today. She couldn't help but be reminded of him as the dashing waif with a sword, taking the whole world on with stride from their desert hideout.

"It is not like that!" This was a bit of a bellow, and now the prince was leaning forward, hands on knees, subquality soup forgotten. She moved from Yamcha's lap incase the master should need to move quickly in defense. "I saved this family. My father was already planning to take Fry Pan; it was my idea to try doing so peacefully and without bloodshed. They owe what peace of mind they have got to me-"

"That reminds me," Yamcha quite blandly interupted, his expression nonplussed, "Gohan seemed to be quite lacking in his peace of mind when you returned; what the hell did you say to him?" He leaned forward now, in full intimidation-mode, all quantity of joking aside, fully serious, "Because if you're doing anything to make his life anymore unpleasant than you already are-"

"My god, man," the prince's neck seemed thicker than normal as his jaw worked at the air, "I don't know what happened in that car; you could just feel this... this something in the air, making my whole body go cold-"

"You were just feeling Gohan's chi." Yamcha seemed mollified that the other man was so shaken, "When people are very powerful, any shift in their chi can be felt..." Even she was noting, however, that the prince's level of fear was abnormal; likely he posessed a level of natural talent at tasting chi, which wasn't so uncommon amoung humans. It would explain his high level of success with the sword...

The prince went on shaking his head, and she realized that when he got pale like this a few freckles stood out, making him look almost foolishly young, "If it's as you say... Oh, forget it. I'm not to blame for that boy's... 'chi', or whatever evil spirit had taken over that car. I was just asking him who he must have pissed off to make his face look like he'd tangled with an angry freight train!"

This particularly pricked Yamcha, as well as herself.

They exchanged glances, the same thought running between them: There weren't many explanations available when Gohan came home from Capsule Corporations injured.

"Bastard," Yamcha said, biting the word out of the air. She closed her eyes, curling on the couch

-though fortunately, I was able to slip past Mutter before she got a good look at my face, so hopefully I won't get in trouble. Der Saiyan's temper seems to be degenerating; he is becoming irritable. Perhaps not at me so much at the general direction events are leading. It is a feeling I'm growing accustomed to, as well. Odd to think back, but it seems I've grown used to Der Saiyan's unpredictable behavior, though the circumstance around our most recent conflict are worth noting: I declined his offer to hilf mir by killing Der Prinz. How difficult it is for him to go out of his way for other people, I wonder? The resulting anger that followed was surely to be expected but... I'm concerned that something more significant happened at the same time, that I am not aware of.

Though he released my arm when he could easily have crushed it, it felt as though some distance suddenly came between us. Not to say there wasn't always a rift, but it felt somehow final. I am feeling intrepidation when I think of it.

Der Saiyan came to a decision today, I think.

I would like to think on it more, but am just too tired and angry (it took a long time to decide on that word; I don't like admitting when I'm angry, but I really am. I want to do things that are lacking in control. I want to scream at the wall. I'm blushing to write something so foolish but that is honestly how I feel; this is my geheimnis Tagebuch, is it not? I must be allowed to write foolish things somewhere, sometime, mustn't I?)

One way or another, I am hoping that Der Saiyan does not try to harm Der Prinz... though even now, I am wondering if I would be very upset if he did. I feel sick about that. Sick right to my stomach, but on some level I wish I hadn't stopped Der Saiyan at all.

On the journey home, Der Prinz wouldn't stop asking embarassing questions about meinen Vater.

I know that I need to not be so overly sensitive about the topic, as there are many curious people out there who want and feel they have a right to know details pertaining to Vater's death but hearing them from that man made me so angry I just wanted to do something terribly rash to-

It is two hours after what I was previously writing. Entschuldigung, Yamcha wanted to talk to me (I think it's okay to mention his name... he's not in any of Mutter's 'problem areas'.) Der Prinz must have mentioned something to him, as he came into my room seeming very irritated. "How long are you going to let that Arschloch kick you around?!"

I did not think it would help to mention that I hadn't been kicked at all. Instead I calmly set this Tagebuch down -- I was hoping he would not notice it -- and told him, "If your talking about my run in with (Der Saiyan), it's not a matter of my allowance; he was angry. Though I didn't see it as a reason to cause a large dispute over such little damage."

Yamcha is a nice person, but he does tend to get overly worked up about many things, and he seemed angrier than neccessary, almost yelling, "Mein Gott, Gohan! I would have thought now that you're stronger than him you would be able to stand up for yourself!" And then he made me pull back my hair and let him look at my face. I don't really understand why he was so worked up; we've both sustained far worse damage before without suffering from much affect. He kept repeating "Verdamten gewaltem Saiyanen!" and "You have to start standing up for yourself!"

Funny thing is, he sounded something like Der Saiyan when he said that. Why is everyone so concerned that I am not assertive enough?

Can't they see I prefer things as they are, rather than to break the peace by trying to change things by fighting, bringing the whole world back into a spinning mess, where everything feels as though it's happening at once?

... and yet I can't help but wonder if by using force, I could not alter these feelings of helplessness I have been expiriancing about Mutter and my own current situation. Der Saiyan did have a good point; if I do not want der Prinz interfering in my life, why is he still alive-

-Entschuldigung, but I'm setting the pen down. My hand is shaking too badly to write right now. I'm going to start out earlier than planned to go hunting.

I need to get away from the house for a bit.

Names left little affect on him and time meshed together like a chain link fence; each passing arc in life potentially viewable but so hard to focus on one incident when all incidents occurred, just as the past ones had, and events stopped holding precedent over the long myriad of things that happened each minute, each hour, each year.

It was no new innovation, no magical personal revelation.

He had killed millions of people. Was it strange that he had destroyed so many to the point that not even his own mind could fully encompass the accurate figure? Before the radical changes this past decade had brought on, he had been only half-living his life; he had gone through the motions of existence, breathing and eating and interacting with his environment...

Of the millions destroyed at his hands, though very few faces bothered to say in his accurate memory... there were still a few thousand incidences that stood out clearly in his mind. Watching a little boy running away before being consumed by flame. Watching a woman trip and fall in her terror and burst her own head open before anyone else was able to kill her.

At the moment, he was contemplating something that even he had, at the time, found rather disturbing:

The race was strong enough for consideration and, the Master wanting to enhance his army, instructed to have a few of the brats rounded up and removed to the ship before the business got too terribly messy. Fine enough; walking through the streets, he was already dragging along by the bony ridge of its scalp a young alien child, thankfully unconscious.

Rounding a charred corner, idly kicking up a little cloud of dust, his scouter alerted him to a few beings huddling in the corner: a female, her large, unrestrained breasts swinging wild, her ridged scalp brown with terror, in her arms holding an infant while two small children cowered behind her.

This alone would have left no imprint on his mind; the mothers always tried to get in the way, the brats always sniveled and cowered. What so surprised him was that the female, shouting in her planet's dialect, hissed at him, "You ssshall not have them!" And, grabbing a large stone of rubble from the ground, she raised it over her head and (he was actually expecting her to throw it at him or something equally comical) and brought it straight down on her own infant's head. The skull split in a muffled sound akin to crushing a light bulb in a leather sack. "I will not let you have them!"

The children, having been clinging to her until that moment as their final source of comfort suddenly started to scream, one turned to run before she caught him by the arm and brought him down to the ground and smashed his head in as well; the final child managed to dart from arm's length and began to flee... until his back combusted into a flame that echoed through his body and out his chest.

The female looked almost grateful as he turned his hand away from the carnage of her spawn and aimed it at her; she then looked almost startled, then, in her state of hysteric madness, cracked a resigned, mildly amused grin before degrading into a pile of soot and sharp angles of bone. She would rather have killed her own children than have them taken and altered from how they were meant to be.

It was crazy, and even now to remember it made him feel the urge to hysterically chuckle. He had related the account to Bulma once, under the affects of delirium at being able to relax with her after a rousing course of love making. She didn't find it as funny as he did, so he hadn't gone into any of his own private thoughts on the matter.

... But in his darker moods, especially those aimless moments when he had been performing the tedious busy work of wiping out one world after another, he wondered if that mad female hadn't been stronger in will than his own father.

Should he, himself, have been killed? His head smashed in with a rock rather than be degraded to servant of the mad little tyrant of Freeza? He had many of his own qualms with his father but, be it selfish or not, he despised his father the most for the transgression of sacrificing his own son in the sake of appeasement.

He -- his thoughts were interrupted as a soft, uncalloused hand slid up his rub cage to rest gently against his breast. A gentle feminine sigh told him that the female occupying the bed with him was still quite asleep.

He studied her blue hair in the darkness of the bedroom, lit only by the city lights and moon outside the window, pondering if his priorities were in the correct place.

She had been around that human again. Yamcha. Her not-quite-mate, who he had managed to eradicate from the picture not long after he entered the scenario. (When had he started to feel strongly for the female? He couldn't pin point the occasion; he could only remember her saying a week or so after he had taken up residence in her house, "You know? Me and you, we're both ass holes. There's no way around it; ass holes surrounded by people that expect us to not be ass holes. It's frustrating, isn't it?" And she laughed. Right then he found himself thinking, I could like someone like that, maybe; not her particularly, but possibly someone like her...)

But she had been around that human again, and she had gotten upset about him, and it was possible that she had cried a small amount about it and he wanted to get mad at her but...

Well, he couldn't say a word, because though she knew he didn't want her around that man... He knew equally well that he wasn't supposed to excessively harass the son of Kakarotto (Or at least not, he had come to the understanding, on the grounds of the Capsule Corporations, or even in the city if possible. Humans, in a rare fit of intelligence, had developed the saying "Out of sight, out of mind", which he could easily live by.)

So though he was mad, keeping silent would be the best plan.

... He hadn't meant to hit the kid, anyway, though there was a strange sense of relief that he had restrained himself to a point, which was a concern of its own. Actually, he had been feeling quite resolved to do the opposite. He had held no other intention than trying to find a way to just... return things as they were. Whoever the unknown and weak Prince Jondalar was, he posed no threat other than to break the continuum of the relative peace that had been presiding in his own personal life. He didn't like when things changed. He despised it. And killing was the quickest, easiest way to keep it from happening.

But instead of thanking him, or being his usual resigned self and doing nothing, that boy had actually insulted him by denying his aid (a grave business to turn down an offer from a superior). It was one thing if the boy was meek and docile on his own. But to try imposing such diffidence on the Saiya-jin no Ouji! Gall!

There was a shuffling sound, below the skills of a human to hear as the door of their room slowly slid open and there stood the toddler-creature, dragging Night-Night behind him, entering the darkened room. He didn't say anything, though he watched with a deep musing as the creature sleepily, scrubbing one eye, crossed the room and scaled the bed.

Was this heir-creature going to live up to its potential? he wondered. Or would the weak, deplorable softness of the creatures around it destroy its potential and reduce it to a mess of simpering unfulfilled longings like the other half-breed...

He was remembering the female and her wobbling breasts and the moist crunching sound of stone brought against bone and wondered, and wondered and wondered. Was that the path that a parent must be willing to take to preserve the true soul of their child...?

He would not claim to be afraid, but these musings even left him feeling cold and uncomfortable and squirmy, even as the squirmy creature nestled in between him and his female; when it looked up to see his awake eyes watching, it said, "Ksh!" in greeting as it settled in, completing the general irony of the world.

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