My Life As I Knew It
By Moonraker One
A/N: I'm sorry I'm skimming, but this is my first romance story and I've decided to skip the break parts.
CHAPTER TWO - Breaking the Mafia
Slowly but surely, she made her way in secret to the compound where Centra kept the vast majority of their financial bank records. It was this building that served as the bank for the massive company that Alyssa worked for. With her knowledge of the Mafia, she understood full well why they would want to try and attack the financial complex of one of the largest companies that was in the area of West city. The enemy had already taken most of the front entrances, and neutralized most of the guards that were on duty, so she had to enter through the side. The steel door that protected the side entrance she forcefully removed, albeit as quietly as possible, and snuck in. Creeping past the many rows of server systems, she saw a group of about thirty armed men gathered around one man who was typing away at a laptop that was connected to the primary monetary control server. Setting her sound sensors to "audio enhance," she listened to their conversation from three hundred yards away. So far, the leader was having trouble hacking through the network firewall. She had a perfect idea on how to stall them.
/This ought to slow you down/, she thought as she extended a small "wire" from the tip of her finger into the data transmission port of the secondary network server. Within the space of a second, she had a counter-program coded and transmitted onto the hard drive of the system. Suddenly, as the hacker for the mafia men was about to break the firewall, the system seemed to lock up on him. He silently screamed as he furiously typed away at the keyboard. She smiled and crept towards the group.
"John!" whispered the leader of the group. "I thought I heard someone, so do a check!" The man behind him turned around, cocked his weapon, and took about two steps in the opposite direction when a fist met his head with just enough force to send him unconsciously to the ground. Another man beside the leader turned and fired his silenced weapon, except it was kicked from his grasp after two shots. Before he could react, the same foot introduced itself to his forehead, sending him to the ground as well. One by one, in less than a minute, all thirty men were on the ground. Alyssa stood and marveled at her work; more than thirty armed mafia men, all of which were trained to break into the most difficult of places and defeat the deadliest of people, were down in seconds. Alyssa knew she was going to have to go back to Erika and thank her for this gift. Just as she was about to fly off in the opposing direction, a cloaked figure swung a fist at her with just enough force to send her flying through six rows of computers.
/What the hell was that?!/ thought Alyssa as she slinked out of the complex via a hole in the wall she made with her fist. The fact that the alarms systems were taken out were surprising to her, considering that the Mafia men didn't need to neutralize them to break in. It was then that she saw it; a Red Ribbon army transport vehicle. Walking backwards away from the building, she bumped into the cloaked figure. Rapidly, she whirled around just to be introduced to a hard kick. She stood up firmly and attempted to gather herself to fight back, but was uppercut before she had the chance. /Whoever this freak is/, she thought, /has some serious power./
Increasing her internal power source's power output from a tenth to half power, she found that his fists came just a bit slower than before. The figure, wearing a thick cloak over his head, took to the air in pursuit of her, and continued to press the attack. Careful to dodge his vicious attacks, she loaded her internal martial arts program, and skillfully began to counter his brutal attacks. The darkness was a hinderance to her, but that was quickly remedied by activating image enhance. He obviously wasn't affected by the darkness, and such was evident when he flew back at her after a angry counter attack. A rapidly calculated punch caught itself right on the upswing at her stomach, drawing her back a bit. However, it did not affect her because she was a cybernetic organism. Impressed—but not surprised—at her taking a punch full on without flinching, he improved the speed and momentum of his attacks just in time to stop her powerful counterstrike.
Alyssa realized she was not going to win at this level, so she increased her internal power output to sixty-five percent power. Her opponent was obviously a cyborg like her, because like her his power was only obvious to himself. Somehow, although his forceful strikes were well-calculated, an opening in his pattern arose for her to take full advantage of with an elbow. With the fist on the same arm, she backhanded him in the face. An upward kick sent him higher into the sky, but was abruptly cancelled when she appeared above him and struck him with an axe-handle smash.
"Don't play me for a fool," she said, not caring who was hearing. "I know you're better than that. Why don't you come up?" Rising quickly from the crater he formed from his impact, he stared hard into her eyes.
"You're voice...you CAN'T be..." he whispered. "Don't tell me..Alyssa?!"
"How the hell do you know my name?!" inquired an uneasy Alyssa. Her answer came the instant he removed the cloak from on him. She couldn't believe what she saw; the shoulder-length jet black hair and scarf were unmistakable.
"JACK?!" She removed her ski mask.
"ALYSSA?!"
A whole minute passed before either moved or even blinked. Colonel Silver, who Alyssa decided against killing on her previous mission, ran up to the area immediately below the two of them. "What are you doing?!" he shouted. "FIGHT BACK, JUUNANAGOU!" Hearing the words, Jack had a bit of a problem on his hands. One one side, he was bound by the oath he took after being sold to the Red Ribbon army; on the other, Alyssa was his sister and by what he could see of her fighting, more powerful than him as well. He didn't know how to go about solving this little equation. Alyssa shot him a look, and analyzed the situation at hand.
/Hey, Jack/, she told her brother using her secret communications device, /why don't you pretend to lose to me, and if they buy it, I'll blow up their main transport vehicle to force them to leave./
/That's a good idea!/ he cried, over the secret comms. /According to my calculations, there's a seventy-five percent chance that in the struggle to escape alive, they'll leave me behind./
With that said, Alyssa drove a kick hard to the side of Jack's head. Not even a second later, she pointed two fingers in the direction of the main transport vehicle and blew it to pieces with a release of ki. Dust, dirt, and a few soldiers were thrown many feet by the shockwave. The shouting soldiers quickly got back in their jeeps and tanks and got the hell out of there as fast as their wheels could carry them. The yelling and disorderly exodus of the soldiers reminded the female nano-cyborg of lemmings. Afterwards, a grin made it across Alyssa's face as her brother Jack surfaced from behind a series of crates. Before he made his presence too known, she used her infrared vision mode to scan the immediate area for body heat of soldiers, but found none. He then flew up to her position in the sky.
"You are quite a strategist," Jack said of her quick-yet-excellent plan.
"You're not a bad fighter," Alyssa said of her skirmish with him.
Roughly a month from the time that she became reunited with her twin brother, she began to realize the uselessness of working for Centra Laboratories. With her money flowing into a large savings account, she brought herself ever closer to a dream of hers that had been brewing for quite some time. Her brother Jack found a job of his own working at a martial arts dojo.
Finally, on a boring Tuesday morning, it happened.
"How are you doing today, Alyssa?" inquried Abrems, her main boss. She stopped him as he proceeded down the hall, and faced him with a smile.
"Mister Abrems," she told him, "I'm sorry to say it but consider this my two week's notice." The look on his face indicated that he did not understand; she worked at this place for the better portion of a year and a half. What could possibly be better paying than the job she had? Perhaps, he thought, it wasn't the money.
"May I ask why you're leaving?" Abrems asked, a hint of concern on his face. She smiled.
"I'm finally realizing my dream," she simply told him. Those words would be the last he'd hear of her after the two weeks were up.
"Are you sure this piece of land is what you want?" the realtor's voice seemed to be a mile away from Alyssa as she stood at the place down from the mountain. The land, to her, was perfect: it had the right altitude for a mountain village, it was not too secluded, and gave a sense of peace as the nearby river flowed gently. From the time she left her job, to the time where she searched for the land was about a half-week. The time it took her to decided that the land was perfect was about two blinks of an eye. Young Alyssa Martin gave the realtor a quickl glance.
"I'll take it!" she happily cried.
At this point, she could visualize the next year, as her dream was constructed. Slowly but surely, one by one, the pieces of wood and metal came from the city as local villagers and the twins themselves worked on it. At the end of the construction process, everyone stood in front of the building and marveled at their creation. In front of them, on what was once two acres or so of useless land, now stood her dream.
"What'll you call it, Alyssa?" a local villager asked. The young woman looked at a person who now was a friend.
"This'll be the 'Martin School of the Eastern District,'" responded Alyssa. "I'll be hiring teachers from the villages in a thirty-mile radius of the school, and this way, the parents won't have to send their kids to a far-off city for schooling!" Jack stepped out from the crowd.
"What can I teach?" asked Jack. Alyssa did not think of that. Attempting to bring to mind the skills he possessed, she drew a blank. Inevitably, though, she wondered why she hadn't seen it before.
"You can teach martial arts during P.E.!"
Yes, Life was good.
BRRING!
As boring as it was for the students, Alyssa Martin couldn't help but think of how good it was when the morning and afternoon bells rang. Although forty teachers each kept the village children busy, Alyssa herself desperately wanted to actually teach rather than just run the school, so she taught the subject she was best at: math. Now, close to a year and a half of teaching, she realized that nothing gave her happiness more. Nothing more than seeing her pupils succeed.
"Okay class!" she announced. "I'll see you on Monday, and don't forget that parent-teacher conferences are this Saturday!" Most of the students, as expected, dashed out of the classroom as fast as possible. One student, a young boy about age eight, kept to himself in the back of the class and worked on his homework. The school traditionally closed at four o' clock, so she approached him.
"Son Gohan?" she asked. "Aren't you going to go home?" The young boy looked up from his assignment.
"Not right away, ma'am," he told her. "My dad won't really be waiting for me when I get home, he just expects me to get home before sundown." Alyssa almost laughed to herself about what was just said; such a tactic was horrible parenting. Then again, since he said "dad" and not "parents," she guessed that maybe his father was a single parent. She sat down at the desk immediately in front of her pupil.
"You seem to be doing very well in your classes," she told him, "so nothing would indicate a problem. Is something wrong, Gohan? I mean, with your family and all? It's okay if you don't want to say it."
"No, it's okay." Alyssa sensed that in that sentence, Gohan felt as though he had to say it. "My mother died almost a year ago. My father tried to kill himself twice. Nowadays, he trains martial arts to get his mind off of her. Have you heard of the Dragonballs?"
That piqued her interest. "Yeah, a legend of some mystical ornaments that give a wish to whomever gathers them."
"Well," Gohan continued, "they're in a museum. My dad was almost arrested twice for trying to break into the museum." It was kind of against the rules, but she said it nonetheless.
"Gohan," she explained, "can I walk you home today?"
The pair walked the entire three miles to his house at four-nineteen, giving their life stories to each other along the way there. It simply amazed her that a kid could stay sane in such extreme conditions that he had to endure. Alyssa knew she grew up with loving parents and a caring home. Gohan, her student and pupil, had one of his loving parents taken away from him and now had a father who couldn't go on. She doubted her own self if she was forced to undergo those same conditions. Then again, this place seemed to calm the soul, so maybe that was the reason that Gohan was able to withstand the situation.
"Well, we're here, so I guess I'll be going," Alyssa started to say as they arrived at his house.
"No, stay for dinner!" cried Gohan. He pulled open the door, and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Daddy! My teacher's here for dinner with us!" For a minute or so, nothing happened, but then, she followed Gohan into the house. Feeling slightly out of place, Alyssa made sure her hair was kept up, and looked around; for a single father, the place was sure kept in good condition.
"Hello, Mr. Goku," said Alyssa as she sat down at the dinner table. Goku had on his face the phoniest smile someone could possibly have; her woman's intuition told her that he was in worse emotional condition than she thought. This was clearly a shell of a man.
"Are you...Ms. Martin?" he asked. "What brings you to my humble abode?" He turned off the heat to the stove. Another surprise; for someone in this bad of a emotional state, he could cook halfway decent. From the smell, the beef stew actually smelled like decent food. She looked at him, analyzing his facial expression.
"Yeah," she continued. "For a single father, you sure keep things in good order." He actually chuckled; a third surprise.
"My wife," he said. "Died eight months ago. She always used to complain that I never kept the house clean." From his eyes, she could tell that he was fighting off tears like it was going out of style. These memories were of the worst kind. Gohan, taking it as his cue to get some more material for the third-of-the-way finished stew, left to kill some more meat. He knew exactly how much his father was going to eat—if he ate—and how much he would eat. The instant he dashed outside, Alyssa tried to start a decent conversation.
"Well," exclaimed Alyssa, desperately scrounging for something to say. "You cook well for a father. I've never met a man who could cook anything that wasn't microwaveable." His fake smile got faker, against all she believed.
"I grew up in the woods," he admitted. "One thing I knew was how to cook."
"Tell me something, Mr. Goku..."
"Please call me Goku without the mister," he interrupted.
"Tell me, Goku, do you keep track of your son's grades?"
"Oh yes. Again, my wife..." he stammered mid-sentence. She didn't want to bring him to tears. Somehow, he forced back the tears and demanded that his voice speak. It did. However, it spoke with a faltering tone. "...my wife kept track of his studies like a hawk and I didn't really care as long as he was healthy and happy. I guess I kind of..."
"Did it in memory of her," Alyssa finished his sentence. She realized that this conversation was not going to end well. So, as she stood up, she continued with, "Mr. Goku, I really must be going..." Before she could rise, he put his hand on her shoulder.
"No, please stay," he tried to say mildly. She could sense, however, that it wasn't a request. It was a PLEAD. With her woman's intuition, this was the tone of a man who desperately was clinging onto a last-chance hope. Perhaps, she thought, he was trying to cure his inner sorrow. During the unbearable silence, he began to rub her shoulder in a circular motion. Looking at his hand, she realized, this was a touch of a person who, above all else, needed love in his heart. At this point, there was no way she could stay.
"Sorry. I must go," she said. Struggling for another thing to say, she lied, "I've got a meeting to get to."
With that, she exited the dome-shaped house and tore off at top speed for her mountain home.
/What was that about?!/ she thought to herself as she slipped off her business suit. /That man is in dire straights. He's going to completely self-destruct if he doesn't do something./ Letting her hair down, she walked through the hallway and into the shower in the bathroom. She could do nothing except think to herself as the warm water streaked down her naked figure. Using her internal modem, she logged onto federal records to find out about the mysterious Son Goku. What she found was incredible.
/Wow,/ she thought. /Two-time world tournament champion. Married to a Chi-Chi Mao after defeating Piccolo at the world tournament. When she died of a blood clot in her lung, his record has not two, but THREE suicide attempts, followed by a five-month stint at a mental hospital./
"Baba," Goku said as he visited the fortune teller. "Can't you take me to see my wife?!" He collared her. "I saved the whole world from Piccolo Daimyo and his son, and the red ribbon army! DON'T I DESERVE SOMETHING?!"
"Goku," she told him, "the other world regulations say I can't bring Chi-Chi to you unless King Yemma thinks you've improved."
/What's the big deal that put him in a mental institution for FIVE MONTHS?!/ thought Alyssa as she sat down. Suddenly, though, she found out that the federal records had since been updated. A later autopsy revealed that his wife was killed by a murderer. She flew off to visit a personal friend.
The office of local sheriff was full of robbers that were being incarcerated. The deputy smiled as a familiar face appeared. "What can I do for you, Miss Martin?"
She cleared her throat. "I want to know what happened to Son Goku after his wife died." It seemed to be a dark memory.
"Miss Martin?" he told her. "Scary investigation. A 'Johnathan Clarksen' guy, wanted fugitive escapee, made his way to Goku's house when he and his son were gone. Mother was raped then murdered. Father came home a day prior to his son, and must've found the Clarksen guy still there." His eyes dimmed. "This's the freaky part; in a moment of anger, Goku killed the man. Snapped a grown man's back like a twig. Later declared innocent due to temporary insanity, he spent about five months in a correctional institution."
She cringed; obviously, this was a man who was worse than she could ever have expected. A number of questions streamed through her mind. The primary one was, how could a man that experienced such a traumatic incident raise a son as normally as he did?
By Moonraker One
A/N: I'm sorry I'm skimming, but this is my first romance story and I've decided to skip the break parts.
CHAPTER TWO - Breaking the Mafia
Slowly but surely, she made her way in secret to the compound where Centra kept the vast majority of their financial bank records. It was this building that served as the bank for the massive company that Alyssa worked for. With her knowledge of the Mafia, she understood full well why they would want to try and attack the financial complex of one of the largest companies that was in the area of West city. The enemy had already taken most of the front entrances, and neutralized most of the guards that were on duty, so she had to enter through the side. The steel door that protected the side entrance she forcefully removed, albeit as quietly as possible, and snuck in. Creeping past the many rows of server systems, she saw a group of about thirty armed men gathered around one man who was typing away at a laptop that was connected to the primary monetary control server. Setting her sound sensors to "audio enhance," she listened to their conversation from three hundred yards away. So far, the leader was having trouble hacking through the network firewall. She had a perfect idea on how to stall them.
/This ought to slow you down/, she thought as she extended a small "wire" from the tip of her finger into the data transmission port of the secondary network server. Within the space of a second, she had a counter-program coded and transmitted onto the hard drive of the system. Suddenly, as the hacker for the mafia men was about to break the firewall, the system seemed to lock up on him. He silently screamed as he furiously typed away at the keyboard. She smiled and crept towards the group.
"John!" whispered the leader of the group. "I thought I heard someone, so do a check!" The man behind him turned around, cocked his weapon, and took about two steps in the opposite direction when a fist met his head with just enough force to send him unconsciously to the ground. Another man beside the leader turned and fired his silenced weapon, except it was kicked from his grasp after two shots. Before he could react, the same foot introduced itself to his forehead, sending him to the ground as well. One by one, in less than a minute, all thirty men were on the ground. Alyssa stood and marveled at her work; more than thirty armed mafia men, all of which were trained to break into the most difficult of places and defeat the deadliest of people, were down in seconds. Alyssa knew she was going to have to go back to Erika and thank her for this gift. Just as she was about to fly off in the opposing direction, a cloaked figure swung a fist at her with just enough force to send her flying through six rows of computers.
/What the hell was that?!/ thought Alyssa as she slinked out of the complex via a hole in the wall she made with her fist. The fact that the alarms systems were taken out were surprising to her, considering that the Mafia men didn't need to neutralize them to break in. It was then that she saw it; a Red Ribbon army transport vehicle. Walking backwards away from the building, she bumped into the cloaked figure. Rapidly, she whirled around just to be introduced to a hard kick. She stood up firmly and attempted to gather herself to fight back, but was uppercut before she had the chance. /Whoever this freak is/, she thought, /has some serious power./
Increasing her internal power source's power output from a tenth to half power, she found that his fists came just a bit slower than before. The figure, wearing a thick cloak over his head, took to the air in pursuit of her, and continued to press the attack. Careful to dodge his vicious attacks, she loaded her internal martial arts program, and skillfully began to counter his brutal attacks. The darkness was a hinderance to her, but that was quickly remedied by activating image enhance. He obviously wasn't affected by the darkness, and such was evident when he flew back at her after a angry counter attack. A rapidly calculated punch caught itself right on the upswing at her stomach, drawing her back a bit. However, it did not affect her because she was a cybernetic organism. Impressed—but not surprised—at her taking a punch full on without flinching, he improved the speed and momentum of his attacks just in time to stop her powerful counterstrike.
Alyssa realized she was not going to win at this level, so she increased her internal power output to sixty-five percent power. Her opponent was obviously a cyborg like her, because like her his power was only obvious to himself. Somehow, although his forceful strikes were well-calculated, an opening in his pattern arose for her to take full advantage of with an elbow. With the fist on the same arm, she backhanded him in the face. An upward kick sent him higher into the sky, but was abruptly cancelled when she appeared above him and struck him with an axe-handle smash.
"Don't play me for a fool," she said, not caring who was hearing. "I know you're better than that. Why don't you come up?" Rising quickly from the crater he formed from his impact, he stared hard into her eyes.
"You're voice...you CAN'T be..." he whispered. "Don't tell me..Alyssa?!"
"How the hell do you know my name?!" inquired an uneasy Alyssa. Her answer came the instant he removed the cloak from on him. She couldn't believe what she saw; the shoulder-length jet black hair and scarf were unmistakable.
"JACK?!" She removed her ski mask.
"ALYSSA?!"
A whole minute passed before either moved or even blinked. Colonel Silver, who Alyssa decided against killing on her previous mission, ran up to the area immediately below the two of them. "What are you doing?!" he shouted. "FIGHT BACK, JUUNANAGOU!" Hearing the words, Jack had a bit of a problem on his hands. One one side, he was bound by the oath he took after being sold to the Red Ribbon army; on the other, Alyssa was his sister and by what he could see of her fighting, more powerful than him as well. He didn't know how to go about solving this little equation. Alyssa shot him a look, and analyzed the situation at hand.
/Hey, Jack/, she told her brother using her secret communications device, /why don't you pretend to lose to me, and if they buy it, I'll blow up their main transport vehicle to force them to leave./
/That's a good idea!/ he cried, over the secret comms. /According to my calculations, there's a seventy-five percent chance that in the struggle to escape alive, they'll leave me behind./
With that said, Alyssa drove a kick hard to the side of Jack's head. Not even a second later, she pointed two fingers in the direction of the main transport vehicle and blew it to pieces with a release of ki. Dust, dirt, and a few soldiers were thrown many feet by the shockwave. The shouting soldiers quickly got back in their jeeps and tanks and got the hell out of there as fast as their wheels could carry them. The yelling and disorderly exodus of the soldiers reminded the female nano-cyborg of lemmings. Afterwards, a grin made it across Alyssa's face as her brother Jack surfaced from behind a series of crates. Before he made his presence too known, she used her infrared vision mode to scan the immediate area for body heat of soldiers, but found none. He then flew up to her position in the sky.
"You are quite a strategist," Jack said of her quick-yet-excellent plan.
"You're not a bad fighter," Alyssa said of her skirmish with him.
Roughly a month from the time that she became reunited with her twin brother, she began to realize the uselessness of working for Centra Laboratories. With her money flowing into a large savings account, she brought herself ever closer to a dream of hers that had been brewing for quite some time. Her brother Jack found a job of his own working at a martial arts dojo.
Finally, on a boring Tuesday morning, it happened.
"How are you doing today, Alyssa?" inquried Abrems, her main boss. She stopped him as he proceeded down the hall, and faced him with a smile.
"Mister Abrems," she told him, "I'm sorry to say it but consider this my two week's notice." The look on his face indicated that he did not understand; she worked at this place for the better portion of a year and a half. What could possibly be better paying than the job she had? Perhaps, he thought, it wasn't the money.
"May I ask why you're leaving?" Abrems asked, a hint of concern on his face. She smiled.
"I'm finally realizing my dream," she simply told him. Those words would be the last he'd hear of her after the two weeks were up.
"Are you sure this piece of land is what you want?" the realtor's voice seemed to be a mile away from Alyssa as she stood at the place down from the mountain. The land, to her, was perfect: it had the right altitude for a mountain village, it was not too secluded, and gave a sense of peace as the nearby river flowed gently. From the time she left her job, to the time where she searched for the land was about a half-week. The time it took her to decided that the land was perfect was about two blinks of an eye. Young Alyssa Martin gave the realtor a quickl glance.
"I'll take it!" she happily cried.
At this point, she could visualize the next year, as her dream was constructed. Slowly but surely, one by one, the pieces of wood and metal came from the city as local villagers and the twins themselves worked on it. At the end of the construction process, everyone stood in front of the building and marveled at their creation. In front of them, on what was once two acres or so of useless land, now stood her dream.
"What'll you call it, Alyssa?" a local villager asked. The young woman looked at a person who now was a friend.
"This'll be the 'Martin School of the Eastern District,'" responded Alyssa. "I'll be hiring teachers from the villages in a thirty-mile radius of the school, and this way, the parents won't have to send their kids to a far-off city for schooling!" Jack stepped out from the crowd.
"What can I teach?" asked Jack. Alyssa did not think of that. Attempting to bring to mind the skills he possessed, she drew a blank. Inevitably, though, she wondered why she hadn't seen it before.
"You can teach martial arts during P.E.!"
Yes, Life was good.
BRRING!
As boring as it was for the students, Alyssa Martin couldn't help but think of how good it was when the morning and afternoon bells rang. Although forty teachers each kept the village children busy, Alyssa herself desperately wanted to actually teach rather than just run the school, so she taught the subject she was best at: math. Now, close to a year and a half of teaching, she realized that nothing gave her happiness more. Nothing more than seeing her pupils succeed.
"Okay class!" she announced. "I'll see you on Monday, and don't forget that parent-teacher conferences are this Saturday!" Most of the students, as expected, dashed out of the classroom as fast as possible. One student, a young boy about age eight, kept to himself in the back of the class and worked on his homework. The school traditionally closed at four o' clock, so she approached him.
"Son Gohan?" she asked. "Aren't you going to go home?" The young boy looked up from his assignment.
"Not right away, ma'am," he told her. "My dad won't really be waiting for me when I get home, he just expects me to get home before sundown." Alyssa almost laughed to herself about what was just said; such a tactic was horrible parenting. Then again, since he said "dad" and not "parents," she guessed that maybe his father was a single parent. She sat down at the desk immediately in front of her pupil.
"You seem to be doing very well in your classes," she told him, "so nothing would indicate a problem. Is something wrong, Gohan? I mean, with your family and all? It's okay if you don't want to say it."
"No, it's okay." Alyssa sensed that in that sentence, Gohan felt as though he had to say it. "My mother died almost a year ago. My father tried to kill himself twice. Nowadays, he trains martial arts to get his mind off of her. Have you heard of the Dragonballs?"
That piqued her interest. "Yeah, a legend of some mystical ornaments that give a wish to whomever gathers them."
"Well," Gohan continued, "they're in a museum. My dad was almost arrested twice for trying to break into the museum." It was kind of against the rules, but she said it nonetheless.
"Gohan," she explained, "can I walk you home today?"
The pair walked the entire three miles to his house at four-nineteen, giving their life stories to each other along the way there. It simply amazed her that a kid could stay sane in such extreme conditions that he had to endure. Alyssa knew she grew up with loving parents and a caring home. Gohan, her student and pupil, had one of his loving parents taken away from him and now had a father who couldn't go on. She doubted her own self if she was forced to undergo those same conditions. Then again, this place seemed to calm the soul, so maybe that was the reason that Gohan was able to withstand the situation.
"Well, we're here, so I guess I'll be going," Alyssa started to say as they arrived at his house.
"No, stay for dinner!" cried Gohan. He pulled open the door, and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Daddy! My teacher's here for dinner with us!" For a minute or so, nothing happened, but then, she followed Gohan into the house. Feeling slightly out of place, Alyssa made sure her hair was kept up, and looked around; for a single father, the place was sure kept in good condition.
"Hello, Mr. Goku," said Alyssa as she sat down at the dinner table. Goku had on his face the phoniest smile someone could possibly have; her woman's intuition told her that he was in worse emotional condition than she thought. This was clearly a shell of a man.
"Are you...Ms. Martin?" he asked. "What brings you to my humble abode?" He turned off the heat to the stove. Another surprise; for someone in this bad of a emotional state, he could cook halfway decent. From the smell, the beef stew actually smelled like decent food. She looked at him, analyzing his facial expression.
"Yeah," she continued. "For a single father, you sure keep things in good order." He actually chuckled; a third surprise.
"My wife," he said. "Died eight months ago. She always used to complain that I never kept the house clean." From his eyes, she could tell that he was fighting off tears like it was going out of style. These memories were of the worst kind. Gohan, taking it as his cue to get some more material for the third-of-the-way finished stew, left to kill some more meat. He knew exactly how much his father was going to eat—if he ate—and how much he would eat. The instant he dashed outside, Alyssa tried to start a decent conversation.
"Well," exclaimed Alyssa, desperately scrounging for something to say. "You cook well for a father. I've never met a man who could cook anything that wasn't microwaveable." His fake smile got faker, against all she believed.
"I grew up in the woods," he admitted. "One thing I knew was how to cook."
"Tell me something, Mr. Goku..."
"Please call me Goku without the mister," he interrupted.
"Tell me, Goku, do you keep track of your son's grades?"
"Oh yes. Again, my wife..." he stammered mid-sentence. She didn't want to bring him to tears. Somehow, he forced back the tears and demanded that his voice speak. It did. However, it spoke with a faltering tone. "...my wife kept track of his studies like a hawk and I didn't really care as long as he was healthy and happy. I guess I kind of..."
"Did it in memory of her," Alyssa finished his sentence. She realized that this conversation was not going to end well. So, as she stood up, she continued with, "Mr. Goku, I really must be going..." Before she could rise, he put his hand on her shoulder.
"No, please stay," he tried to say mildly. She could sense, however, that it wasn't a request. It was a PLEAD. With her woman's intuition, this was the tone of a man who desperately was clinging onto a last-chance hope. Perhaps, she thought, he was trying to cure his inner sorrow. During the unbearable silence, he began to rub her shoulder in a circular motion. Looking at his hand, she realized, this was a touch of a person who, above all else, needed love in his heart. At this point, there was no way she could stay.
"Sorry. I must go," she said. Struggling for another thing to say, she lied, "I've got a meeting to get to."
With that, she exited the dome-shaped house and tore off at top speed for her mountain home.
/What was that about?!/ she thought to herself as she slipped off her business suit. /That man is in dire straights. He's going to completely self-destruct if he doesn't do something./ Letting her hair down, she walked through the hallway and into the shower in the bathroom. She could do nothing except think to herself as the warm water streaked down her naked figure. Using her internal modem, she logged onto federal records to find out about the mysterious Son Goku. What she found was incredible.
/Wow,/ she thought. /Two-time world tournament champion. Married to a Chi-Chi Mao after defeating Piccolo at the world tournament. When she died of a blood clot in her lung, his record has not two, but THREE suicide attempts, followed by a five-month stint at a mental hospital./
"Baba," Goku said as he visited the fortune teller. "Can't you take me to see my wife?!" He collared her. "I saved the whole world from Piccolo Daimyo and his son, and the red ribbon army! DON'T I DESERVE SOMETHING?!"
"Goku," she told him, "the other world regulations say I can't bring Chi-Chi to you unless King Yemma thinks you've improved."
/What's the big deal that put him in a mental institution for FIVE MONTHS?!/ thought Alyssa as she sat down. Suddenly, though, she found out that the federal records had since been updated. A later autopsy revealed that his wife was killed by a murderer. She flew off to visit a personal friend.
The office of local sheriff was full of robbers that were being incarcerated. The deputy smiled as a familiar face appeared. "What can I do for you, Miss Martin?"
She cleared her throat. "I want to know what happened to Son Goku after his wife died." It seemed to be a dark memory.
"Miss Martin?" he told her. "Scary investigation. A 'Johnathan Clarksen' guy, wanted fugitive escapee, made his way to Goku's house when he and his son were gone. Mother was raped then murdered. Father came home a day prior to his son, and must've found the Clarksen guy still there." His eyes dimmed. "This's the freaky part; in a moment of anger, Goku killed the man. Snapped a grown man's back like a twig. Later declared innocent due to temporary insanity, he spent about five months in a correctional institution."
She cringed; obviously, this was a man who was worse than she could ever have expected. A number of questions streamed through her mind. The primary one was, how could a man that experienced such a traumatic incident raise a son as normally as he did?