Author note: 01.24.16
I'm kind of skipping through the early Dragon Ball chapters. The relationships that are established are the important things, or at least more important than some of the events.
The sea turtle was rather polite, but for Bulma, he was invasive. If Goku really was helping him to the ocean, then Bulma would be without her bodyguard... and Goku would be alone.
She also only had 30 days to find the other Dragon Balls.
"Shit."
Goku spoke with Sea Turtle about what the sea was like. He couldn't really imagine a wide salt bath. He heard the sound of Bulma's motorcycle and he smiled as she began to ride next to them.
It took about an hour, but they eventually did reach the ocean. Sea Turtle swam away in a hurry.
"I'll bring my master to meet you both! We truly owe you a favor on my behalf. Please wait there!"
Bulma nodded, lifting her pink nightgown. She waded out into the water, sighing at the coolness of it on her legs. She called Goku over.
"Goku, roll your pant legs up and come into the water! It feels wonderful." She watched as Goku took off her shoes and socks. The little girl came out into the water after she rolled up her pants.
"It's cold." Goku wrinkled her nose and bent down to look into the water.
"What's wrong?" Bulma asked, holding back a smile as she watched Goku cup her hands, lifting some of the sea water into her little hands. As the water touched Goku's tongue, Bulma laughed at the girl's discomfort.
"What's wrong with this water?! It's salty!"
They splashed around in the water for a while, and then Bulma showed the girl how to make a sand castle.
"Question for you, Goku?"
"Yeah?"
"If you turn into a girl, do you... You know?"
"Know what?"
"Do you... think you can have a baby?"
Goku made a wall of sand around their little castle. "What's-" The child grew silent, her nose in the air. "I smell something." She looked out into the ocean.
"What's wrong, Goku?"
"Sea Turtle's coming back, and there's someone on his back!"
Bulma turned to where Goku was looking and saw a black speck in the distance. "Are you sure? How can you see that far?"
The Turtle and his guest arrived, who happened to be an old man with a purple shell on his back.
"Hello, children."
Bulma and Goku made their way to the old man. "Hello, sir," Bulma greeted, she and Goku both bowing.
"It seems like you helped out my turtle here!"
"We did," Goku affirmed. "And who are you, Grampa?"
"I am Kame Sen'nin." The man turned to Sea Turtle and asked who had helped, to which the Turtle affirmed that it was Goku.
"I see." Kame Sen'nin approached Goku with a kindness to him that Bulma found herself missing; it reminded her of home. "Young lady, allow me to commend you for your hard work. I have a wonderful present to thank you with!"
"A present?" Goku's tail was moving behind her in curiosity.
Kame Sen'nin attempted to call an Immortal Phoenix to them, but it had apparently died. The old man then settled on something called "Kinto-Un."
"A cloud! It's coming right at us!" Bulma pointed to the sky and, truly, a little cloud was coming right towards them. It stopped in front of them, hovering about the ground.
"This is Kinto-Un. If you can ride on it, you can fly anywhere you'd like!"
"I can fly in the sky!" Goku went forward and pet the cloud.
"There is one catch," Kame Sen'nin annotated. "Only those with a pure heart can ride on Kinto-Un! If you aren't a good girl, you won't be able to ride it. Here, watch."
The old man jumped onto the cloud and promptly fell through it, sending Bulma into a spiel of laughter.
As Sea Turtle helped Kame Sen'nin up, Goku jumped on the cloud-
"What?!"
- and stayed on it.
"I can ride it!" Goku shouted, before she flew off into the sky.
Bulma smiled. Having a flying cloud of all things would make their travel so much easier.
"Hey, grandpa! Can I have one of those too?"
"Huh. Did this girl help you too, my friend?"
The Turtle shook its head. "No, not a bit."
"What about the salt-water I gave you?"
The old man seemed to ponder this, probably thinking of something small to give her. Bulma pouted when he heard him mumble about there only being one cloud, but she spotted something under his white beard; a little orange ball.
"What about that little ball hanging from your neck?"
Kame Sen'nin looked down and removed his necklace from his person, and there Bulma saw the Three Star Ball.
"I'll take this!"
"Okay... Show me your panties as exchange."
Bulma stood there for a moment, frozen, as the Sea Turtle scolded his master. She thought on her options. Give in to him and get another step closer to her wish, or...
"Here you go!" Bulma lifted up her nightgown, eternally thankful that she had put her panties back on this morning after talking with Goku.
When they came upon a village later, they encountered more people than Goku had seen in his entire life. They had been terrorized by a strange demon that had been stealing girls from the village.
"Now he wants mine." The Priest of the Village held his daughter of eight years old close. Goku watched as the little girl hid her face in her father's chest. Goku thought for a moment of his own progenitor, and he nodded at Bulma's suggestion of helping the villagers.
"What should we do then?" Goku turned to Bulma who was deep in thought.
The young woman smiled after a few moments. "Goku, have you ever worn a dress?"
"No."
Hurriedy, as the time of Oolong's arrival approached, Goku was dressed up in Flugel's clothes, a dress and bandanna. Bulma rubbed something onto his skin, calling it a "foundation," to make him look more like a girl.
"You know," Bulma whispered, "since you turned back into a boy already."
Goku nodded. He guessed that the thought made sense.
Goku had had to pull his pants down to piss before Oolong figured it out.
The desert reminded Goku of something he didn't want to remember. As he flew on Kinto-Un, he was reminded of cold bodies, bodies that he had handled. It seemed like a long time ago, which was indeed during his first time out of the Healing-Dan as an infant.
Maromashu.
"Don't worry, Kakarotto," he remembered being told, but he didn't remember who it was.
"Bulma's fallen asleep," Goku commented. Oolong sighed.
"That girl is so spoiled. We should rest, too, though."
Goku frowned. His own stomach was growling. "I'll go look for some food. Do you like pork?"
"You bastard! What do you think?!" Oolong growled. Goku stared at him and wondered why he was so mad, but then a weird rumbling noise caught his ear.
A Jet Squirrel carrying a young man arrived. As the man stepped off of the machine, Goku smelled only one other scent on him; he must be living out here in the desert.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the King Hyena of the Desert. The name's Yamcha." The young man laid his hand on his weapon; Goku wondered if it was a blade. A small cat came to be by Yamcha's side. "And this is Pu-erh."
"'Pu-erh'?" Oolong pointed at the little cat, and Goku frowned at the act; it made him feel more than annoyed. "You don't mean 'Crybaby Pu-erh', do you?"
"What? Oolong?"
Yamcha looked down at his ally. "You know him?"
"S-Sort of. In my first year of shape-shifter school, he used to pick on me all the time." Pu-erh grimaced. "That is, until he was expelled for stealing the female teachers' panties!"
Yamcha chuckled as Oolong tried to defend himself. "You know, I don't usually pick on babies. Hand over your money and any capsules that you've got!"
The great fire of Frypan Mountain was licking at the tail of his Kinto-Un and Goku hurriedly got them away from the hungry flames. He grimaced at the feeling of failure that bubbled in his tummy. He'd have to tell Bulma that they couldn't get into the castle this way.
"Bulma! We can't get in!" The girl in the weird bunny outfit looked frightened, shocked, and other feelings that Goku found to mean embarrassment.
"Goku!"
A large man was by them, and Goku realised that this must be Gyu-Maou. He stood with an air of toughness that didn't really affect Goku; he'd play with sharp-tooth tigers and silver apes as an infant. A man didn't seem like much compared to them.
"Wait?" the large man asked. He stared at Goku, or at least what he was standing on. "Is that Kinto-Un that you're riding on?"
"Yeah!" Goku answered. "Grampa Kame-Sennin gave it t' me. You know that Grampa?"
Gyu-Maou laughed heartily, gently taking Goku's hands in his. "He was mah teacher, the Sen'nin what taught me. He taught me an' a friend, who was 'is number one."
"Really?" Goku shivered with excitement. If he could meet that strong person-! "What was his name?"
"Son Gohan."
Goku felt that excitement shock his mind and heart as harshly as he could. "You knew my Grampa Gohan?!"
"You're 'is grandson?" Gyu-Maou looked him over and there, he stared over Goku's shoulder. "The Nyoi-Bo! You are Son's grandson!"
"Yes. I'm Son Goku!"
"Son Goku. Wonderful!" The man pulled him close and Goku shuddered at the unfamiliar contact. Not a lot of animals had hugged him when he was on his mountain, so it was still strange to be on the receiving end of it. "Can you help me, since ya got Kinto-Un? The fire wasn' there always. A curse was put here, and the onl' thing tha' can help is the Bashou-Sen, which I sent my daughter Chi-Chi to go git from Kame-Sen'nin."
"Did you want me to pick her up and get us both there?" Goku watched as Gyu-Maou pulled out a picture - a really well-drawn picture! - of a child with long black hair, black eyes, and a blade on her head. Gyu-Maou nodded at the question.
"If you could. Please, Goku! You could have any o' the treasures inside after the fire's out!"
Goku couldn't think of anything that he would want, but Bulma stepped forward. "Have you seen an orange ball with red stars in it? Is that one of your treasures?"
"That sounds familiar. If ya want it, ya can have it!"
Bulma pointed Goku in the direction of the Sea, and Goku began to race towards the great water, smiling to himself at the thought that the world had gotten bigger and smaller at the same time.
'He knew Grampa.'
As she wandered through the desert, she rubbed at her throat. She should have packed more than just one canteen. With her fans at her side, she trekked through the sand, feeling the iron pull her feet deeper into the dead soil.
She looked up to the sky. She was certainly heading towards the south, but there was no view of the sea yet.
"How big is the world?"
The girl perked up at a noise, like a laughing wind and she turned to see a young boy on a cloud. His dogiwas a blue color, and his hair was spiked in every direction. He seemed surprised and happy to see her.
"Hey, are you Chi-Chi?"
His eyes were blacker than the empty night sky, and Chi-Chi found herself distracted by that. Even her own father's hair was lighter compared to her, and hers was blacker than the deepest ink.
"Yeah, and who are you? How do you know my name?"
"My name is Son Goku. Your papa sent me to help you get the Bashou-Sen!" Goku lowered his cloud down and Chi-Chi managed to climb on with a bit of difficulty. She stared at the tail attached to him.
"We're heading to Grampa Kame-Sennin, right?" Goku told her to hold onto him because they might be going a bit faster than she's used to. She nodded and held onto him. He was very warm and hard against her hands, so she figured that he must be strong, especially to know Kame-Sennin and to have spoken with her father.
As they flew through the sky, she looked down as she saw the desert shrink below them and saw that the land eventually turned into river-fed valleys and grassy mountains.
"Wow..."
"Are you okay, Chi-Chi?" Goku turned back to her, tilting his head up to see her eyes. "Are you tired?"
"A little bit," she murmured, laying her head on his shoulder. He smelt of smoke, the smoke of Frypan Mountain. "I just didn't know that there was so much green in the entire world."
Goku smiled. "I know what you mean. Where I was born, there wasn't much green. Where I lived with my Grampa, we only saw the mountains and the river, like that valley we just passed. But ya know... Me and Bulma, we went to the sea to help Kame-Sennin's Sea Turtle, and I'd never tasted the ickiest water in the whole world 'til then!"
Chi-Chi giggled. They were both new to the world then, chicks that hadn't flown yet. She felt something move against her tummy and she put some space between their bodies to see a wiggling tail at the base of Goku's back.
"Are you some kind of monkey?"
Goku blinked at her, his smile shrinking slightly. It was still there, but it seemed to be painful to keep smiling like that.
"I'm Saiya." Goku grinned up at her. "You're human, right?"
"Of course."
"Then I can't kiss you, right? We would always kiss cheeks when making new friends."
Chi-Chi smiled. Whatever the silly word meant, Goku seemed proud to be associated with it. She pressed her lips against Goku's cheek, and she felt a spark inside of her chest, like a warm fire. Not like the one that came and took over her home, but one that her father had lit one night when the electricity had disappeared and they stayed in his room by the fireplace. He warned her not to touch, only look and grow warm from. She had fallen asleep, safe from the cold of that autumn night.
Goku's smile grew then, and he pulled her down a bit to kiss her cheek. Chi-Chi's heart skipped. Goku was like her, and he liked her, even as a friend.
"Say, can you tell me about Saiya?" Goku hummed at the question.
He never answered her about Saiya, but he did tell her a story; "it explains a lot about us!" he explained. It was the story of Seyen Warrior and Damu the Future Guardian. Chi-Chi yawned a bit, but Goku told her that she could take a nap as they flew, and it'd be a while yet. She was almost asleep, comforted by Goku's voice and the gentle rumbling in his body that came from him speaking, until she heard one line.
"The young mercenary was invited to greet the newborn. The moment his eyes fell upon her, he was gazing upon the face of beauty, and he was as one dead."
"Goku, what does that mean? Did he die?"
The boy shook his head. "It means that he'd die for her."
"Would you die for me?" Chi-Chi asked sleepily.
"Sure, Chi-Chi. I'd die for you."
The girl smiled as she closed her eyes, and when Goku turned and kissed her cheek again, something more than friendship grew in her chest.
Author Note: 01.24.16
Males and females in Saiya-jin culture are all equal in legacy unless their names are worth remembering according to the storyteller. I use this kind of speech a lot in explaining equipment when I can't remember the names of pieces or procedures.
* In this case, however, Seyen and Damu can also be what they were previously used for - this makes the story even stranger.