Title: Keeping in the Family
Disclaimer: ...Yeah, because this would ever happen.
Rating: PG-13 ( T ), for angst, violence, lust and a young Saiyan hybrid learning the value of naughty words.
Summary: "If 'Nii-san won't marry you, will you marry me instead?" With a misplaced wish on the dragonballs, this could turn into a problem. Post-Buu, GV – but which G?
Chapter Four: Now! What Happens?
Flick. Sputter.
Damned contraption...
Flick. Sputter.
I've really got to put a better one into production.
Flick. Sputter.
"Augh!" Bulma groaned in exasperation around the cigarette clamped betwixt her teeth. "This goddamn thing makes me want my cigarette more!"
Flick. Spark. Life.
Before the flame could escape back into the plastic, combustible-filled contraption, the aging heiress to Capsule Corp inserted her carcinogen stick into the eager-to-die spark of fire. She pulled the cancerous smoke into her lungs, prompting the cigarette to light, and visibly relaxed as the nicotine assuaged her addiction. "Brilliant marketing strategy, now that I think of it."
"Ah, Bulma-san...," an anxious Gohan spoke up, withholding any and all violent urges toward the unhelpful family acquaintance. "Can't you think of anything to help us?"
Bulma exhaled smoke as she released the button on her lighter, the weak flame disappearing instantaneously. Cigarette now securely held aloft between her fingers, Bulma reassessed the situation across the room.
Goten – all nearly-naked six feet of him – was snuggled deep into the bosom of his older brothers should-be girlfriend, ecstatically proclaiming that they should get married in February, on his birthday. Videl struggled against her unfamiliar, zealous admirer.
"Are you deaf?! I said let me go!"
"'Nee-chan, would we still get to eat cake in a traditional wedding?"
"Augh!"
Bulma took another drag.
"Can't say I've ever invented anything for this, no," she admitted.
Gohan tangled his fingers into his own hair, aware and unaffected at the prospect of early male pattern baldness. "Can't you invent something now?"
Her mouth, lined from years of nicotine abuse, drew into a frown. "Kid, if I could invent something to reduce aging, I would be a helluva lot richer than I am," smoke was exhaled from her nostrils in a huff. "And that's saying something."
"So, you're saying it's hopeless...?" Gohan's head fell, supported only by the roots of his hair clenched between his fingers. The armchair he was sitting in creaked as his entire upper body fell forward in defeat.
"How is that for the son of Son-kun 1 to talk, huh?" Bulma leaned on the arm of the chair, nudging Gohan's limp shoulder with her elbow. Her other hand supported the cigarette which was trickling ash on the expensive, white shag carpet. "It's not hopeless. There's always the dragonballs."
Gohan's head lifted, turned slightly to his left to look at Goten, now scooping Videl up into his arms for an overly-enthusiastic hug. Pressed chest to chest, Videl was swung around like a violently swearing rag doll.
"Put me down, you bastard!"
"We're gonna be together forever, 'Nee-chan!"
"If you live that – eek!" Videl squeaked as all of the oxygen in her lungs was expelled at once. Her nails dug fiercely into Goten's hard flesh, struggling desperately for breath while the ever-unobservant Saiyan crushed her to his bare, golden-tinted chest.
"I don't think I can wait a year, Bulma-san," Gohan buried his face in his palms, a vein in his temple twitching at an almost audible beat. Behind them, Videl successfully took a breath as Goten relented his affection.
"Stupid...bastard."
Bulma rubbed her chin with her free hand, the wrapping of her cigarette slowly burning away into ash from neglect. "What about the Namekian dragonballs? I'm sure the Nameks will be more than happy to lend them to the son of Son Goku."
"We don't even know where New Namek is, or how far."
Bulma rapped him on the head with a fisted knuckle, grinning with a sharp-witted counter. "Son-kun went there once. To retrieve Dende, remember?"
Gohan rubbed his abused scalp and turned his hopeless scowl upon the middle-aged heiress. "Otou-san can't even find his way between here and home, Bulma-san. I don't think he'll be able to remember where New Namek is."
Bulma drew her cigarette to her mouth in deep thought; the ash shriveled and fell away from the tip, startled by motion.
"He was able to find the location with help from Kaio-sama 2," she suggested after a moment. "I'll bet he can do it again."
"Otou-san has been pretty much banned from the afterlife. He mentioned something about breaking the laws of nature...besides, I don't think that the Nameks would be too happy to see him, either. Dende told me that he's seen as some sort of bad omen by most of the villagers."
A puff of smoke snorted out of Bulma's nostrils. "I can see that. I mean, the first time he showed up, their planet exploded. The second time, he appeared out of thin air to kidnap Dende."
"Yeah...so it's probably better if Otou-san doesn't collect the dragonballs this time. Plus, Kaio-sama warned him not to use the Instant Transmission for long trips too often. Not unless he wants to split all the molecules in his body, at least."
"From what I've been led to believe as a scientist, that would be cause for concern."
"I can't think of anything else, Bulma-san...do you have any more ideas?"
"Nope, not a thing."
Gohan ached to bang his head against something hard and, if at all possible, sharp and pointy.
"Either way, this thing isn't going to be fixed before dinner. Someone's got to call Chi-Chi."
"Will someone help me get away from this imposter already?!" Videl's shriek drew the war-worn veterans away from their conversation. "Or are we waiting for the honeymoon?!"
As Videl attempted to drag herself out of Goten's arms by her fingernails, kicking aimlessly at her captors head, Gohan sighed. "I almost wish I were telling her that someone died again..."
— — —
Crack...tinkle.
Gulp.
Goku inched a little further away from his wife who was, for some reason, taking out frustration on a towering stack of dirty dishes and cursing violently. Every so often she would release a frustrated scream and toss another dish onto the vastly greater pile of broken dinnerware.
"Ohh! Those boys – late again!" Chi-Chi fumed, another plate crumbling between her merciless hands. "Goten I would expect this from, but Gohan too?"
Aching to flee, but knowing better, Goku pressed himself as far against the opposite wall as he possibly could, denting the delicate plaster in his own image. Goku gulped again; all the power in the world and he still couldn't find the courage to speak to his own wife. "Ahem...ah, Chi-Chi, dear...?"
"I mean, I know that Gohan has a little girlfriend now and that he can't neglect his obligations to her, but really...,"
"Chi-Chi...?"
"...he shouldn't neglect his family, either! Poor little Goten will grow up without a brother and...,"
"Honey, could you...?"
"...he could just bring her along to dinner! It's not like she sits down to eat with that incorrigible father of hers. She needs to experience a real family meal..."
"Chi-Chi, I'm trying to...,"
"Really, how did my oldest son become so inconsiderate? Must be all that time he spends out in the wilderness with that good-for-nothing green man – "
"Chi-Chi!" Goku raised his voice slightly, snapping his wife out of her self-propelled rant.
Bad move.
"What, Goku?" She slammed her sopping dish rag on the counter, suds and dirty water flung in all directions covering her immaculately-kept kitchen with a light sprinkle of diluted food. "What is so much more important than your sons happiness?!"
Goku pressed so hard against the wall that cracks began spreading from the dent he had made in anxiety. "Um...I j-just wanted to tell you that G-Gohan was on the phone...they're all at Bulma's."
Throwing the dripping, smelly rag into Goku's face, Chi-Chi sped out of the kitchen toward the living room video phone. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?!"
Deciding that his life was better spared elsewhere, Goku scurried to freedom out the kitchen door and took to the air, the one place his wife wouldn't be able to follow him. "Geeze...and she wonders why I train Uub so much!" Goku shivered, powering up to his full speed.
Time to blow this scary pop-stand. Uub could cook almost as well as Chi-Chi, anyway.
"WHAT?!"
Cue to exit, stage left.
And with that, Goku took to the wind and, within seconds, was far away from the place his family called home. Boy, did he miss being dead.
— — —
The video screen went blank, officially devoid of his mothers face, and Gohan released an involuntary shudder. He hadn't even gotten to tell her the bad news yet.
"It wasn't...erm...that bad," Bulma said, exhaling an unusually large cloud of smoke. "I mean, it could have been worse."
Stumbling backwards into the armchair he had been using earlier, Gohan stared blankly at the dark screen as a creepy twitter of laughter began leaking out of him, "Oh, it will be..."
Bulma backed away from Gohan, fumbling for her pack of cigarettes in her cluttered purse. "Well...it's not like anyone's dead, or anything. And we can fix this somehow, I'm sure, even if we have to send the two of you to Namek the old-fashioned way."
"Didn't that take a month the first time?"
"Well, yeah, but that was over ten years ago, kid. Our ships can get there and back within a couple of days now. You know, as soon as we figure out how to get there."
"Yeah, right after that..."
"Augh! Would you get him off of me?!"
"'Nee-san, are you mad at me for something?"
As Gohan banged his repetitively abused head against Bulma's dented coffee table again he sorely began wishing that it was his death that they had to break to his mother...
— — —
Word Bank:
Sensei – most commonly recognized as "teacher." Can also be used to address others with "professional" careers, such as a doctor, lawyer, author, manga-ka, etc. (Ie, Hinako-sensei from Ranma ½, Toriyama-sensei)
(I know I've mentioned "sensei" before, but I realized that there were parts of the definition unexplained. For instance, Manga-ka was mentioned in the previous definition and not further explored. Therefore, I've put it in again for overall clarity's sake.)
Manga-ka – (you'd think I'd put these in the story or something) An author/artist of manga/graphic novels. (Ie, Toriyama Akira and Takahashi Rumiko are both manga-ka.)
—
Footnotes:
( 1 ) Son-kun is what Bulma calls Goku in Japanese. Toriyama-sensei probably did this to express the differences between Bulma, who was raised in proper society, and Goku, who lived rural solitude for most of his young life. You'll notice that Goku will address most characters more familiarly than the rest, even upon first meeting them, not really understanding any better. For instance, he immediately takes to calling Bulma by her first name (and first name only) in the first volume/episode of Dragonball (which is, btw, a no-no if you happen to visit Japan one day; considered disrespectful).
Gohan, in complete and utter contrast, refers to even his familiar's by "-san," most likely due to his mother and inborn shy nature. He even refers to Videl as "Videl-san," despite his close age and relationship to her. I can't honestly say if or when he stops calling her -san in the series since I stopped watching the Buu Saga half way through, but I wouldn't be shocked if he still called her that in GT. Psychologically, he probably does this to distance himself from people, thinking himself an unworthy troublemaker for the Earth...but that's a completely different story, there.
( 2 ) Kaio-sama is "King Kai," or Lord of the North in the afterlife. Short, squat blue guy that tells jokes worse than the ones you find on popsicle sticks. He trained Goku by instructing him to catch his monkey... Anyway, I hope he sounds familiar now.
—
Authors Note: I chopped this chapter in half (again) so that I could go ahead and post it. SIGH. So sorry to all of you who have been waiting, but I've been hung up on my Naruto story as of late and have been attempting to keep up with those chapters. So far, so good, but I don't have much time left over for other series; sorry, folks.
I've also shortened my plot considerably, which I hope will enable me to finish it sometime this century. I still fully intend to make this the best story possible, however, and won't skimp on any of the necessary details. From here on out it'll be mostly humor with a twist of angsty romance, as promised previously. The only REAL mystery is: Who in hell will Videl choose?
Stay tuned to find out.
. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .