Disclaimer: DBZ (DB/DBGT) no owned by me humble self.
Summary: The two have seemingly forgotten—but will they ever forgive?
Chapter Two: Off Into The Wild People Yonder
"But Mom, do I have to? I don't want to go to school with a bunch of stupid weaklings!" Pan pouted at Chichi.
Chichi sighed. "Yes, Pan, you have to. It's not a matter in which you have any choice. You have to socialize with other people your age. You need friends!"
"But Mom, I have friends!" Pan whined.
"Only through your father!" Chichi retorted.
Pan slumped into her chair and sulked. The fifteen-year-old knew she was beaten but didn't want to admit it. Chichi looked at her youngest daughter in exasperation. She was unable to use the Horrifying Frying Pan of Doom and Famine on her simply because she was her daughter and not a son who was easily intimidated by the appliance. So she had to do things the hard way with Pan. She sighed again and took one of Pan's hands.
"Honey, I know that you don't want to go to Orange Star High. But you have to go. You're already enrolled, having passed the entrance exams. Just think of this as an adventure. There'll be Trunks, Marron, and Bra there with you!" Pan just turned away. Chichi shook her head.
"Sweetie, you're going, and that's final."
Pan continued to look the other way. Chichi stood up and turned away. "You'll start school tomorrow."
Pan stood up and stormed out of the door. Goku came in just at that moment and looked after his huffy daughter. Pan just swept by him and went up to her room where she put on her training gi. She leapt out the window and was soon engaged in a furious flurry of punches and kicks that felt the wrath of Pan's Saiyan-developed anger.
Soon after his two sons had disappeared, Goku had come across a ragged orphan wandering around their forest. She had been ten at the time, a year younger than Goten. Goku had taken pity on her and brought her home to the care of Chichi. She had grown up in the doting household of the Sons and had become a medium-spoiled brat. It was only in situations that seriously went against the grain in Pan's opinion that she drew on her teenage hormones and went wild. This happened to be one of them.
Goku finished his journey into the kitchen and sat in the chair Pan had been occupying earlier. He asked Chichi, "I take it you told her and she didn't take it very well."
Chichi nodded. "That's the gist of it." She turned around and faced her husband. "Sometimes I wish I could thwack her on the head with my frying pan and get some sense into her, but she's not Gohan. Or Goten."
Goku exhaled. "No she's not." The silence stretched between the two as each was lost in their own memories of the fighting duo. Both Gohan and Goten had fought in all the battles starting from their uncle Radditz kidnapping the both of them. But aside from the battles and the training, the two brothers had found the time to constantly study and be harassed by the Frying Pan of Famine. But sometimes Goku could get them away and they'd go fishing.
Of course all that had changed at the Cell Games. With Goten distracting Cell and Goku encouraging him, Gohan had finished the android off, with Goten helping afterwards.
The Cell Games had marked the turning point in the lives of the Z-senshi. The pair of Chichi and Goku had unintentionally started ignoring their sons. Soon it had grown so bad they had needed a serious wake-up call, a call they were still recovering from.
But that was not entirely relevant to this case at this time. Pan was Pan and she always would be.
The next morning dawned bright and clear for the Harrison family. Marc and Jeff had been up for hours already doing their daily sparring and normal hunting exercises. But at the first blare of their parents' alarm clock, the two dropped their fighting stances and made their stately way out of their self-created battlefield. By the time Marc and Jeff came into the kitchen, Myna was sleepily getting a cup of tea for herself, while Jack read the newspaper. Linda was still sleeping. Her first college semester didn't start for another week, so she was allowed to sleep in still.
Jeff grinned at his mother's expression. Marc leaned over Jack's shoulder to look at a piece of news that had interested him.
Myna finished her tea as Jeff went upstairs to take his shower and get dressed. Marc copied his brother a while later, reassuring his dad that yes, he would be surfing the waves safely after school. And yes, he would do his homework before he started.
The brothers came down refreshed and ready to go. They grabbed their glasses of orange juice and ten pieces of toast each and said their good- byes to their parents and a grumpy Linda. Linda just waved them off.
Marc grabbed the car keys to the van and followed his brother out the door. It was his turn this week to drive their co-owned car and Marc was especially happy it was the first week of OSH. Last year it had been Jeff's week on the first year that Marc was even allowed to drive with a permit.
Jeff got in the passenger side of the two-seat car. Marc got into the driver's eat and shut his door. He made sure his surfboard and things were locked down correctly. Then he checked to see Jeff's lacrosse equipment was there and buckled down. Then he started the car.
Jeff checked his and his lil brother's bags to make sure all the stuff they needed were in there. They were. The laptops they had been supplied with by their family, the binders, paper, their summer homework, pens, notebook, even locker decorations, all were there.
Jeff raised an eyebrow at Marc as he held up a poster of Freddie Prinze Jr. with a milk moustache and a slogan saying, "Make it big" and "got milk?". Marc grinned sheepishly at the poster. Jeff shook his head and said, "Sometimes I worry about you, lil bro."
Marc simply grinned and continued to drive. He and Jeff talked about the news article Marc had read about students in Nagasaki who, when they woke up later and went to school later, were much more pleasant company at school than people who got up at the standard time. Marc snorted and said, "That would certainly apply for me all right."
Jeff nodded. "That's for sure. We'd definitely have more time to spar anyway." Marc Grinned™.
They pulled up at OSH. The brothers got out and Marc capsulated the vehicle with all its contents. Jeff threw him his messenger bag, and they both strolled into the high school like they owned the place. They did, in a sense.
Jeff was one of the most popular guys in his grade, if not THE most popular. Marc wasn't too shabby in social standing amongst the juniors either. He was well known and respected among his peers, a respect the sixteen-year-old never failed to return. But one thing to always keep in mind: keep off their bad side. If you don't you are their everlasting enemy, something that will make you miserable for as long as you are on the same ground with them. But if you're their friend, you've got 'em for life.
They stopped by the receptionist's office to get their schedules and any extra information. The secretary informed them that four new students were coming to OSH this year. Two of them were going to be sophomores. The other two were juniors. Jeff thanked the secretary politely as she gave them their schedules and they exited the room.
The older sibling murmured to the younger, "Two new students in your jurisdiction. Take care of 'em, bro."
Marc nodded in agreement. "Of course. Unless those students are the owners of the kis we're feeling." Indeed, four very familiar kis were approaching the building. Marc and Jeff felt very lucky that they had found a way to warp and distort their own kis to resemble a cross between Myna and Jack's ki frequencies with a little foreignness thrown in for added effect.
Jeff groaned. "I have a feeling that those four are the new students Ms. Robbington was talking about. I am so going to kill Dende."
Marc replied, "Not if I don't first, bro." Jeff smirked at the challenge. The brothers separated to find their lockers and their friends before homeroom started.
Dende hung his head. Why had the Z-senshi done this?! This had definitely been a bad idea. Too bad they had started it into motion already.
Dende moaned. He was definitely going to be explaining the situation (hopefully!) to two very intimidating demi-Saiyans soon. Ohh boy.
Trunks followed Marron as she led him, his little sister Bra, and Pan into the Orange Star High School building. They were immediately confronted by the faces of hundreds of unknown people, students, and teachers alike. The daughters and son of the Z-senshi asked one person where the receptionist's office was and shouldered through all the rest of the people to it. Some people were already coming out of it. Of course, there were all the people who already had come early for their schedules. They were just standing around and talking away.
Trunks, Marron, Pan, and Bra received their timetables from Ms. Robbington. They had a question for her, "Uh, where do we go?" Ms. Robbington looked a bit startled, but she snagged a junior named Logan and a sophomore named Mandy from the crowds to show the newbies around.
Mandy started off with Bra and Pan in tow. Logan spotted a friend of his and headed in his direction. Trunks and Marron followed a mite timidly. This was a new situation for them. Although these two could take care of themselves, it was still a bit overwhelming to be in one situation one day and an entirely different state of matters the next. It just was not natural.
Marron was behind Trunks, so she was the only one to get a glance of a group of boys coming in behind them. She was particularly rattled by one of the boys. It wasn't that he was cute, he was, but it was the fact that she felt she had seen him before. Had known him somewhere. But where? And why was she being confronted with his face now?
Marron had no more face to dwell on as the group swept away down in the opposite direction the trio was going. Marron turned her head to see if any of them were looking back at her, but they were out of sight. Marron turned back her head to Logan's back and scooted hurriedly up to catch up with him and Trunks. She didn't like the way that one boy had upset her nerves, like it was important for her to know him, for whatever reason the Kais had set for her.
Marc had been mildly surprised by the way Marron's face had changed, but he had expected to bump into her. After all, he had been keeping track of her ki along with Trunks' and Bra's. He didn't know that the Sons had kind of adopted Pan, but her ki did eerily take on an edge of Goku and Chichi's kis.
Marc continued on down the hall with his surfer and computer dude friends to his homeroom. He wasn't a junior counselor, thank Kami, not Dende, so he wasn't tied to two homerooms at once. He just prayed that his homeroom was not the same as Trunks' and Marron's. Oh well, he would find out if and when he had any classes with them, which was inevitable.
Marron and Trunks were introduced to John and Maurice, Logan's friends, and hit it off with them pretty easily. It turned out that both Marron and Trunks had classes with either Logan, John, Reece, or all of them in the classes. Much happiness was celebrated and much fun was anticipated.
Bra and Pan weren't so lucky. Mandy was in actuality a stuck-up jerk, even more than Bra, and the two friends were quite happy to dispense with her company for their classes. They had only one of their seven classes with Mandy in them, so they were quite happy with that too. But unfortunately, they only had two classes with each other in them. Bra and Pan exchanged pouts before departing for their first class of the day: Bra: Mandatory English, Pan: Chemistry.
Pan was coming out of her exhausting Chemistry class with Mr. Reynolds, and was on her way to locker 79 to get her stuff for Advanced Calculus when she felt the curious electrically sparking atmosphere of suppressed ki. She looked up and saw two people at the very end of the long hallway heading toward her. Pan immediately discarded the wimpy looking chestnut brown haired person on the right.
Instead, her eyes were drawn to the very tall black-spiky-haired person striding beside the wimp. A brilliant grin was spread across his features as he and his walking partner talked enthusiastically about something they really liked with a passion. The grin reminded Pan weirdly of her father's famous Son Grin(tm).
As they came nearer, the atmosphere became more and more compressed. Pan was soon breathing with the same amount of pressure in the air that she usually did around her father or Vegeta. It felt like millennia before the two warriors passed each other, at least that's what Pan felt. When she reached the point where they were side by side, Pan was nearly stumbling with the amount of crackling in the air. But then they were separated and Pan could breathe easier as the amount of distance between the warriors increased. Pan was glad of that, too, because whoever this person was, she didn't want to hang around him for longer than possible until she got her bearings. Once Pan got comfortably settled into the school, then, and only then, would she seek him out and challenge him to a fight.
Jeff also noticed the air of suppressed ki. It didn't nearly affect him as much as it had affected Pan, but he was definitely interested in the female who was the source of the snapping air. His eyes followed Pan as she passed by him. Coal eyes met coal eyes as Pan looked back also, and held for an ageless moment as Time slowed from Its run to a slow walk. Pan was the first to look away under the eldest demi-Saiyan's unwavering gaze. Jeff followed shortly thereafter, catching Ren's question in time to answer it for the first time.
"Tutor you on Calculus? Sure, as long as you teach me the effortlessness of speaking Spanish aside from my Latin studies." Ren and Jeff clasped hands to seal the deal. Ren did look like a wimp, but he was by no means one. Ren was the Captain and the second-toughest player on the boy's lacrosse team. He had been the toughest until the beginning of sophomore year when Jeff had quit surfing and joined the lacrosse team. Ever since the boy's lacrosse team had added Jeff to their ranks, they had retained an ongoing no-loss streak for two years and were looking to continue it this year. Training had already started.
There were some classes in which all grade levels from 9th to 12th grade had classes together. That was true with Jeff's last period before lunch. Jeff, Pan, Bra, Trunks, Marron, and Marc had all ended up in the same study hall. Logan was with Trunks, and this was the one class both Bra and Pan had with the snob Mandy.
Marc was sitting in the corner of the highest part of the grandstands surrounded by his closest companions Ivory, Bobby, and Lindsay, and also by other people who wanted the group's popularity rub off on them. Logan was placed a row down and two seats off to the left of Marc. Trunks sat to Logan's right, making him sit only a seat away from Marc's black stare.
Bra was chatting away with Pan and Marron off in the opposite corner of where Marc, Trunks, and Logan were, so there was no chance of conversation there. Jeff hadn't arrived yet, but he was about to. Pan felt the compromised air long before the senior lacrosse second-in-command arrived. Marc felt his brother's ki, too, but he chose to ignore it for the time being. Trunks looked up as the almost-familiar ki approached. He frowned as he tried to figure out why the air was compromised and why the ki level causing it was so familiar.
Trunks was frowning so hard little lines began to form in between his eyebrows. Marc noticed Trunks' frown and, just out of curiosity of his ex- best friend's reason, casually read his mind. He calmly withdrew a minute later and sent an almost lazy query into his brother's mind, Hey, bro, did you know that our dear friend Trunks is feeling your suppressed ki? He just doesn't know it. Now how about that? He's so advanced now.
Jeff was just as casual in his reply. Thanks, baby bro. I'll try and be more careful next time. Hey, do you know which class is my next? I've never been to room 117.
Marc grinned. Keep coming, bro. You're almost there. Jeff raised a mental eyebrow at his little brother's mysteriousness, but didn't reply as he cut off their link.
Marc settled back into talking with Ivory as he felt the eldest demi- Saiyan's ki gradually become more suppressed until even the son of the kingly Prince of all Saiyans could barely feel it above a normal person's average. Granted, Jeff's ki level was still a bit higher than the average human, but that couldn't be helped. Marc's ki was a little lower, but only because he knew that Trunks was going to be keeping a close eye on him when he figured out just who he looked like.
Subconsciously, Marc watched Trunks' brows furrow a bit more, then relax as Trunks shrugged and leaned back in his seat. As he turned his purple-haired head to catch Logan's concerned inquiry, Marc caught sight of another puzzling phenomenon. Bra and Marron were sitting with another girl and talking a mile a minute like they were old friends or something. With Marc's Saiyan hearing, he easily caught their words.
Bra was saying, "I can't believe we have to be here amongst humans like this. If only Mother hadn't forced us all to come here, I could be shopping with Marron and you would be fighting with Goku, Pan."
Marc's interest was piqued. Pan fought with Goku? This was interesting. He also noticed that Pan's ki had a sort of Son-ish quality to it. It was something that all Sons had in their ki signature. Marc knew he had it, Jeff had it, Goku had it, even Chichi had it, and now this girl had it. Hmm, a dilemma. Especially considering that Pan looked nothing like his parents, no, his biological parents, at all. Okay, so maybe she had a little Chichi in the face. And she moved like Goku somewhat. But that could have been acquired from years of living with them.
Marc thought no more on the subject as he felt his brother's ki just outside the door. He knew that Jeff knew what he knew when his emphatic mental link surged with shock and laughing disbelief. He looked to the door just before Jeff entered it.
Jeff was shaking his head in amusement as he entered. Trunks noticed, as well as Pan, that he was shaking his head when he entered. But it was even more baffling to them when he faced the grandstand in one particular spot and called, "I cannot believe this. What are the odds of a sibling being in the same class with another?"
Marc was grinning as he said back, "I know, it's totally crazy. Maybe they think we have to keep an eye on each other during study hall?" Jeff was still shaking his head. Trunks, Pan, and now Bra and Marron were watching him and Marc exchange their words. Now how had Jeff known his brother was going to be there without seeing his face in the crowd first? From what they had seen, Jeff had just walked in and said his stuff without having to pick out Marc's face in the crowd. How was this possible aside from ki? Unless...unless these two could read ki. And if they could read ki, then maybe... could they manipulate ki? Hmm. Perhaps this was another threat to the Earth? Let's find out.
Trunks asked Logan, "Hey Logan, I just noticed something weird. Jeff seemed to know before he walked into the room that his brother, is it? His brother was here. How did he do that?"
Logan shrugged. "I noticed that too. But it's just one of Jeff and Marc's weird traits. They've always been sort of odd, even when Jeff was a freshman here at Orange Star High." Trunks stored away the information for later. He asked who Marc was. Logan showed him and quickly snapped to attention as the teacher Mr. Andricolen arrived.
Trunks, however, ignored the arrival of the teacher as he stared at Marc. Marc was jarring a long-stuffed memory from the darkest recesses of his subconscious. He looked vaguely, no, more than vaguely: strongly. Strongly like a forgiven-but-not-forgotten friend of his, theirs, before the Lost Years after Cell. The Lost Years of not only friendships, but of sanity and hope. But hope was already stirring in Trunks again as he stared at the strong resemblance to a boy he knew. Once knew. He had once known a boy named Son Goten.
Pan looked carefullyat Jeff. There was just something very weird to her about the guy. She didn't like him, that's for sure, for some really bizarre reason, but there was something strong in him that reminded her a lot of Vegeta. No, not Vegeta. The guy wasn't so princely or kingly or whatever the word was. No, more like her dad.
As soon as the word "dad" entered, it was immediately overshadowed by a sudden recollection of a picture she had seen quite often on the mantle. A picture of her father grinning happily with two boys and flashing the peace sign with two fingers. Another flashback followed of her mother and sometimes her father telling her about the two sons they had had before they ran away and before they had found Pan as an orphan.
Pan looked from Jeff to Marc. She was struck instantly with a Saiyan-sized lightning bolt by their heavy resemblance with not only each other, but more than a bit vaguely like her father. She swallowed, suddenly very afraid. She was afraid of what they might do to her if and when they found out she was from the Son group. She had a feeling that she didn't want to be with them, especially if they turned out to be the original aliases of Son Gohan and Son Goten.
At that precise moment, Jeff and Marc turned their heads to face the direction of Trunks and Pan with her group. They had smirks on their faces, little ones, not big ones, but those little ones were not comforting at all. At all.
SP: Three more revisions...
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