Double Hate

Disclaimer: DBZ (DB/DBGT) no owned by me humble self.

A/n: Another update in only three days! Well! I hope you're happy, no, not just happy, bouncing off the walls, as it were. I'm sure that most of you are doing that. (Eyes certain readers) Yeah.

It took me a long time to write this chapter. Not so much in terms of days or anything like that, but the hours I put into this. It just sort of, I don't know, dragged at me, if you can imagine that. Hmm. Rei and Autumn must be getting lazy. /Shakes head/ I need to seriously do something about this. (Starts plotting)

(Notices readers) Hey, don't mind me! Go on, read, enjoy, and review! Don't forget to tell me if you have any ideas for me! (Waves, turns back to plotting mercilessly)

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Previously, on Double Hate

Marron looked up at her and responded, "Sure." She accepted Bra's hand and used it to help lever herself off of the floor. Bra hung on and towed her out of the door to the elevator, where Trunks and Pan were waiting for it already.

If it were just Jeff who was one of the Lost Sons, how was it that Marc looked so much like him then? And again, why was it that Marc reminded her so much of an older Goten?

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Chapter Seventeen: Sinking Up and Rising Down

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Myna always did like tea, even though it contained far more caffeine than coffee and didn't exactly help her to go to sleep before bed, when she normally drank it. lately, though, she had been brewing and drinking her favorite tea—Lipton black—after she got home from work in the scant hour before Jack and the kids came home. It was the stress of having to worry about the Z-senshi that drove the medium tall, stocky woman to such a change in her routine. Now she didn't drink tea before bed anymore, knowing that too much caffeine in one day would do her no good, and she did sleep more at night.

Myna Harrison was not the typical American, not that there was any such thing as a "typical American." She was only an inch shorter than her five-foot-eight-inches husband and proud of it. It was her black hair that had been passed on to Linda, though Myna's was ear-length and curled at the ends. Myna's eyes were a clear gray-blue that always sparkled even if their owner was not. She had a smallish nose that she never paid any attention to and a lopsided mouth that often produced a smile just as asymmetrical. She wore sensible clothes but was far from that, being a hopeless romantic above all else. That was what Jack found to be so charming about his wife, although that was not the only thing he appreciated about her.

Myna sighed as she sipped her tea. It calmed her immediately; all of the stress from her workday drained away, leaving only a tired relaxation in its wake.

However, this tired relaxation was enough for Myna to start contemplating the situation at hand, the very reason that she had started drinking tea straight after she came home. Myna hoped that the circumstances wasn't going to last much longer; she wasn't sure how much more she could take of this. What would happen were she pushed beyond her limit, even she didn't know.

She had never been in something like this before in her life, and would greatly appreciate it if she never were again. She knew that the other families really should know that Jeff and Marc were indeed Gohan and Goten, but she couldn't bring herself to tell them, not after what they had done to her children.

When Gohan and Goten had appeared on their doorstep, Myna had been nothing less than horrified by the state she and jack had found them in. Both of them were skinny, skinnier than they should be at their age, and were in the possession of hollow, haunted eyes.

On Goten, the smaller of the two, there was a thick crude bandage over one knee, which unveiled a gash so deep that Myna had had to stifle a gasp upon seeing it. Jack, who was part of a doctor family but not officially one himself, had quickly taken over, cleaning, sterilizing, and re-bandaging the knee properly. Goten had not made a single sound, though at the time Myna had been sure that it hurt him.

Gohan had explained only that Goten had cut himself with a big knife and refused to tell anything other than that until his brother was seen after. Myna had insisted that they stay, and Linda, although reluctantly, had shown them the room where they would stay for the next month.

When Linda had come down Jack had told her that although these two had come along and needed serious attention, Myna and Jack were not going to neglect her. Their daughter had cheered up after that, and had greeted the haggard boys the next morning with all of her usual fervor, something myna had been heartened to see. Jack had always been a perceptive person.

The same day Gohan and Goten had told them their names and greeted them in the politest Japanese manner Myna had ever encountered. She had wondered at the time whom had raised these kids to be se polite and then had thrown them out as if they were trash and weren't good for anything. Myna just could not understand people like that, people who saw children as burdens only, and not living beings with feelings which would one day affect the future of the world.

The next month had been spent in getting to know the children as Goten's badly slashed knee slowly healed. None of them had pushed the children to tell them about their past, or even talked about it; they all figured that the Son brothers would tell them in their own time. Instead they talked of other things, such as Jack's grandmother, who was coming to the month after next, in August, for her grandson's birthday.

Goten had shyly expressed a desire to know about her, and Jack was happy to tell him and his silent brother how the eighty-five-year-old woman loved to play her harmonica every year for Jack's, Myna's, and Linda's birthdays, but would not play it for her own self. Jack had to do that for her, not that Luann insisted upon it anyway. Still, Jack had to upload the family tradition, especially since no one else would do it. Luann wasn't exactly popular in their family.

Along the way, Myna had found herself to be falling in love with them. She felt as if her world was cracked if she saw either of the Sons to be unhappy, the same as she felt if Linda was out of sorts. Luckily, her daughter was just as emotionally involved with the Son brothers as her mother was, and the only thing that Linda was bent out of shape for was the way that the Sons still didn't trust her yet. This mistrust had been the subject of many a rant in that month, and the two or three months that followed, after the adoption. Myna had understood; even if she hadn't shown it quite as expressively as her daughter, she had felt exactly the same way.

Because of this emotional involvement, adoption of the two had been on her mind for a quite a while before they'd presented it to the Sons. Three weeks long, actually. It had not been a solid idea of until the second week of deliberation (making it the third week of the month), but it had suck up on Myna one day when she was troubled about their future after Goten's knee healed. If we adopted them, we wouldn't have to worry, she had thought. If we adopted them— But then the realization of the thought had hit her, forcing her to break it off with a gasp. Since then, however, it had constantly been on her brain, lurking in the shadows of her mind as she worked.

Finally, at the end of the third week, Myna told Jack about it. Her husband had been as stunned as she had, but after half a day thinking about it, he had agreed. She thought it was looking at the quiet pair of Sons that had convinced him, the way that they seemed so lost and alone in the world. The way they so obviously craved warmth, and love, and yet kept themselves distant from it, as if it would only hurt them, as if it would quickly get taken away if they gave into it.

Linda had also agreed, and the family had started collecting the paperwork they would need to adopt the Sons. They filled out the sheets that could be filled out, but left the spaces blank were appropriate, for the Sons to fill out, including the new names. Linda had come up with the alternate first names of Jeffrey and Marcus, in case Gohan and Goten didn't want to sue their own, and decided to use the Sons' real names as an initial for their middle names. Still, the family could only do so much without knowing if Son Gohan and Son Goten were willing to be adopted. So they had breached the topic in the fourth week of that month, when Jack finally judged Goten's knee to be as good as new.

Linda, who had been impatient with their refusal to divulge anything about their family until Goten's knee healed, had finally pounced on them. She had wrenched the information that Gohan and Goten were runaways out of them first, then sang out the idea of adoption in the form of an innocent question, as if she had just thought of it. The Sons had been shocked, then filled with wonder that anybody would do this for them. Myna and Jack had seen the hope in their eyes, however, and that very same day the Sons had become full-fledged members of the Harrison family.

Even so, it had taken a long time for the new Harrisons to trust them fully. Not even Great-Grandmother Luann's visit had been enough to assuage them completely, although it certainly had gone a long way. Luann had been more than approving; she had positively fallen hard for them at first sight. She still did love them, too, as much as she loved Linda, Jack, and Myna. She played the harmonica on their birthdays.

Finally, though, Jeff and Marc had begun to believe in them. They had talked more about themselves, but not about their family or their past. Those would come a year later, while out camping. Their eyes had lost some of their haunted look, they had a lot more meat on their bones (and what an appetite they had had!), and were even acting more like their age. They were still quiet, but not as lost-looking, especially with the haircuts she had gotten them. That had been a lot of hair.

When Jeff had shown her how both her and Marc could wield ki during the tale of their lives, Myna could not have been more surprised. So there was such a thing as chi! Chi had been the word she'd learned for "inner energy", but saying that word had not been an option, seeing as it was also a nickname for their biological mother.

She'd also been shocked when Marc had told them they had defeated Cell and could still power up to Super Saiyans I and II. They wouldn't do it, so as not to attract the attention of the feared Z-senshi, and would have to get used to a life without using ki—a seemingly impossible feat for two people had been aware of it since they were toddlers. Still, Jeff had remarked wistfully, it would be nice to spar with ki again after so long.

Myna, Jack, and Linda had all looked at each other.

And now here they were, after several long tumultuous journeys undergone by all of them, about to embark on yet another one. We have already started, she mused, her hands cupped around her now-cold and –empty teacup, with no end in sight.

Sighing, she put down the cup and stared out of the window. Even after all this, would Jeff and Marc want to go back to the Z-senshi? It didn't seem likely, but doubt still gnawed at her. Very often she didn't understand what was going on with her adopted children, especially if it was ki-related. It was the same with Linda, but not in the areas of ki. It made her frustrated and afraid that she couldn't help her children, even though she had helped aplenty already, and they could take care of themselves.

She still felt that Jeff and Marc should have someone to understand them, other than themselves, when it came to ki, and the Z-senshi were the ones who could do that. Would this understanding be enough to drive her children back to them? She hoped not. She had loved them too much for too long to now know that her heart would shatter if Jeff and Marc left them. And not just her heart, but Linda's, especially, and Jack's. all three of them had become so tangled and meshed with the newer members that it was impossible to see life without them. And now it looked as if it was going to happen.

Oh, Kami, this was getting really hard for her to think about. And Jack was going to be home soon, and the kids, including Linda. It was the weekend, so Linda was coming home in about fifteen minutes, if she judged the distance over time correctly. She had to get cleaned up, before any of her family saw her in such straits.

She proceeded to do just that.

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It was a drained Jack that tumbled through the door of the Harrison home eleven minutes later. His wife smiled at him sympathetically from the living room, but it had an odd half-heartedness to it, as if Myna wasn't putting her whole heart into the gesture.

Now, Jack knew Myna. There was absolutely no reason for her to be half-hearted about anything, unless she'd been thinking about the Z-senshi. Approaching her, the light-haired, lean, lanky, brown-eyed man thought that that must be the case. Why else would Myna's gray-blue eyes be so troubled?

His wife of nineteen years stretched out her arms to receive Jack's hug. As he embraced her, he whispered in her ear,

"This whole thing is bothering you, isn't it? I could see it when I walked in."

Myna puled back, startled. Jack let her go, smiling amusedly at her look of astonishment. As he reached to brush Myna's hair behind her ear, Jack watched her expression change to a wry amusement of her own, complete with the curl of her mouth.

"You always did manage to see right through me, Jack Harrison," Myna muttered. She looked up, smiling, up at her grinning husband, whom merely drew her closer to him in response.

"I just don't know what's going to happen, Jack," Myna said quietly. "What if Jeff and Marc want to go back to the Sons? I don't think I could ever survive if they did."

"Neither could I," murmured Jack. "Linda, either. But, I don't think that Jeff and Marc will go back. They just hold too much of a grudge against them to do that."

"I know," came the subdued response, as Myna rested her head on her husband's shoulder. In a slightly muffled voice, she continued, "But grudges heal over time. What if Jeff and Marc see Chichi and Goku and forget all about it, and want to go home with them? I—my heart would break." Tears were leaking out of Myna's eyes now, dripping onto Jack's shirtfront. It was with a gasp that Myna lifted her head, though, as a pair of arms wrapped around her from behind.

"It's okay, Mom. We'll never go back to them. Believe us," Jeff said, couching his face on Myna's shoulder.

Marc, beside her, also slid his arm around his mother's waist, but rested his head on Jack's shoulder, knowing that if his mother had doubts about the whole thing, so did Jack. Jack smiled down at his sons and Myna; never before had Myna looked so vulnerable, or so assured, either. He was glad they were there, in his arms, and made a firm resolution never to let them go away.

Marc finally let go, followed by Jeff. Jack hung on for a bit longer, reassuring Myna in his own way, before he, too, released her. Myna was still crying, but she smiled through her tears at her family. Jack stepped away and out of the living room into the kitchen, where Jeff and Marc were walking to the kitchen table. Marc, however, didn't stop at the table but went on to deftly fish out a bag of fish chips. He avoided Myna's smiling admonishment ("Marc! You know you're not supposed to have snacks right before dinner") and went over to the table where his brother and father sat. There he chomped down on the chips, pausing only to grin impishly at Myna as she, too, wandered over to join the rest of her family at the kitchen table.

Linda's burst through the door brought Jack's head around so quickly that he thought he heard bones crack, but knew they didn't. It was only because it was starting to rain out there, like last night, that Linda was in such a tearing hurry. Out of habit Jack looked at Jeff to see how his son was faring with the rain; he was fine. Jack reminded himself that Jeff didn't have any reactions of lethargy with the rain anymore, but it was a habit built up over several years; it was going to be hard to break. Still, it was nice to know that Jeff was fine, and so was Marc, too, although those fish chips were running out, if the expression on his youngest's face was an indication of anything.

Linda's voice cut short his reverie. "So, how did it go for Videl?" Jack mentally kicked himself in the head. He had been so interested in the fate of Videl after he had found out that she had a catharsis. And here had his sons been for all this time and he hadn't thought to ask. Of course, Myna had needed some comforting…

"It went well. She talked her dad about the no attention thing and he promised not to do that anymore," Jeff answered, leaning on the table with his elbows. "Still, it's kind of hard to believe that Hercule Satan is going to stop trying for the limelight and stop with all the women and so on right away. I believe it'll take a while for our friend Herc to return to the respectable life."

"It's a start though," Myna commented, pleased. Jack nodded, but he could see that neither Linda nor Marc seemed enthusiastic about the discussion. He only smiled at them sympathetically, making them grin sheepishly. Neither of them had exactly forgiven Hercule for his taking all the credit for the Cell Games, never mind that none of them had done anything about it.

The discussion then moved on from there. Mostly it was everyone retelling what had happened that day for each of them. Finally, though, it was Myna who came up with what everyone was trying to avoid.

"What are we going to do about the Z-senshi?"

Jeff and Marc glanced at each other, then back to Linda, Myna, and Jack.

"Actually, we were thinking about that just yesterday."

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Since tomorrow was Saturday, the Harrisons decided to go to the park, relax, have fun. Linda, even was persuaded to eschew her homework for the day, although it was a difficult process, Linda being the studious and anxiety-wracked college student she was. So it was with much racket that Jeff and Marc pulled Linda into the Harrison van with them, where Myna and Jack were already waiting.

With them the Harrisons brought several picnic baskets, a blanket big enough to hold three people, a Frisbee, the Nerf ball that Videl had tried to steal one day, and also several umbrellas, in case there was rain. It didn't seem like it was going to; the sky was a cloudless robin's egg blue, and the sun was shining merrily upon them, as if it were wishing them a good day.

When they got to Hinagashi Park, a park that was much closer to their home than Murasimo Plaza, the Brothers fairly spilled out of the van. Linda followed more sedately, as did Myna and Jack, but even they were fired up with good cheer. It had definitely been a good idea to go on this picnic, an idea that got them away from their problems and worries.

Marc and Jeff set up shop not far away from their parents and Linda, who prepared the picnic baskets and the blanket. As Myna and Linda lowered themselves onto the blanket, Jack went over to join the Brothers in their "friendly" game of Frisbee. As Linda wryly observed, no game between males was ever "friendly".

Life was well for the Harrisons, until Phase I of the plan they had outlined yesterday unexpectedly went into effect. It began with the hearing of voices calling out, "Gohan! Goten!"

The Z-senshi had arrived.

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A/n: Whew! That's over with. (Grins tiredly) Don't worry, I'll get to work on the next chapter right away, but this writing stuff is work. LOL, that's why I like it. Duh. (Rolls eyes)

Right, then, what'd you think? Are you excited? Or are you dreading it? I can't wait to see your reviews! And I left it on such an evil, if perfect, cliffhanger. Don't you just love me? Yes, I know you do.

Readers: (Eye SP balefully)

:) Cheer up, folks! I promise not to leave you in suspense too long. Heh! Heh! Heh! (Snickers)

(Briskly) Corner of Reviews, coming up next!

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The Evanescent Corner of Reviews

1) DBZ Chick1—Thanks!

2) Frying Pan of DOOM—HI! Long time no see! (Glomps) Yes, the end is near. Look! I twisted one of your suggestions and used it! You actually helped me out with a little problem I was having. Arigatou! I updated!

3) Nooka—I so want to see that movie! Is it as totally crazy as it seems to be? I don't care what Lilith Morrigan has been through, just kill her already! Crazy female. /Mutters/

Will the Brothers Harrison listen to reason, indeed? We're going to find out pretty soon! I have to thank the manga artists whose works I've been reading for the self-hate thing. I would never have thought of it otherwise. Arigatou, my sensei! You truly are marvels! (Bows deeply)

Lisana, eh? Very well. Time to go book hunting! (Picks up naginata and marches off) SP, over and out, mate!

4) MarshmellowDragon—/Taps foot/ Hello to you too. /Tartly/ Yes, poor Trunks, and no, you can't blame them, not that much. It was still their fault though. Yes, math is a bother. But not if you like it, like I do! (Grins) Yes, I know, I'm insane. Muahaha… Thanks for your review.

5) Oligel Ronew—I take it you're pleased with the already more frequent updates? I am too. :) Yeah, the Z-senshi is still very much scarred from the Go-brothers' escapades. And now that Jeff and Marc have given them home… I love your support of these more in-depth chapters. It keeps me going!

Not much farther to go now… It'll be sad. Peace to you, too, man, until the next update and/or review.

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Oligel Ronew, MarshmellowDragon, Nooka, Frying Pan of DOOM, and DBZ Chick1, thank you so very much for your reviews! I couldn't have been happier when I got them! (Bows)

During the last week of June and the first week of July, I'm going to be in San Jose, California. During those two weeks, I'm not sure I'll enough time to write anything, so in case I don't get DH finished before then, you'll not see me for two weeks. I'm telling you this now so that you don't wonder where the HFIL I am during the aforementioned two weeks, although the weeks before and after are fair game for guesses. Heh. Just so's you know and don't try and kill me if you perceive me as lazy. I may actually be working. Heh!

Oh I can't wait to get to the confrontation! It's going to be so much fun to write! (Dashes to computer, sits down, and thinks of how exactly to go about doing this) Can't talk now, 'm busy writin' the next chap. Later!

Sayonara!

TheShadowPanther, Rei, and Autumn, from AASN

AASN; Writing is what we do for you at AASN. Enjoy.

Updated 06.14.05