A/N: Okay, so I'm posting this to give people a better idea of where this is headed. Don't think this will all take place on the campus-it will, admittedly, for a little while, but as Ellie expands and makes friends it will in turn expand. Goku is going to be friendly but I can't guarantee entirely IC. This is going to be a really long story; I'm going to try to aim for 90k words or more, so there's going to be a lot of filler and fluff like this chapter. I don't think I do that enough with stories and people seem to enjoy that more than plot on a constant basis. I'm really aiming for a more "normal" relationship in this.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Ball Z or anything affiliated with it.

-MalRev

DEEP - SIX

3 - How To Tutor

The damn words I had been absolutely dreading rolled off Goku's tongue in the next second.

"Oh, you must be Owen's sister!"

If I was writing with a pencil, it would've snapped clean in half. I smiled tightly at the five-hundredth person acquainted with my older brother and the cogs in my mind began to turn. So they were all in one big clique, apparently, and Owen happened to be at the head of it. That didn't seem right. He didn't really… fit in with any of them and I knew for a fact he wasn't into martial arts.

What was it about my brother that got him tied up with such strange people?

Goku slouched forward on the table and I noticed his orange shirt was damp with sweat, proving he had indeed been at the gym like he said. He cocked his head at me with innocuous curiosity but there was something else in his eyes that I couldn't digest. It was alarming. Was I seeing a sinister flicker?

I shut my calculus book quickly. No, no, relax, Ellie. If you're not more trusting of people you'll never make friends like Owen has. Jeez, he's really blossomed since he left home.

"Yes, sorry," I said. "I'm just ceaselessly surprised by how many people Owen knows. And I thought I'd be tutoring someone younger in algebra but—" I stopped suddenly and held up my hands apologetically. "N-not that you're stupid or anything; some people just don't get math so… so…"

There was an ease about Goku that I had never seen in a guy before. I would've expected a normal person to at least roll their eyes at my babbling, but he beamed. His body didn't stiffen in the least. My jabbering hadn't offended him and he was finding it amusing.

"It's alright, I'm pretty dumb. I only got into this school because I'm good at punching people!"

"Oh," I faltered. "You do the martial arts thing, too? I didn't know that was even a sport."

"Uh huh, my friends and I asked the school to let us." Goku leaned back in his chair, tilting on the edges of the legs, and grinned at me. "You're smart like Bulma, though. I can tell. D'you make cool gadgets and gizmos like her and her dad? I love going to Capsule Corp. and lookin' at stuff."

"Ah… no. I'm going to be a pharmacist."

The creaking of his chair stopped very suddenly. He was staring at the ceiling, still smiling.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Your brother mentioned that a while ago."

Thank you, Owen, for talking about me behind my back!

Unnerved, I opened the algebra textbook Goku had brought and decided to start with something simple—graphing wasn't that tough. He whistled to himself merrily while I picked out a few problems and wrote them down on a sheet of paper, worried about how many things Owen had spilled to his friends. He was always so social and outgoing… what if something bad slipped out?

Goku suddenly dropped back on his chair properly, dramatically flopping his upper body across the table in an attempt to catch my attention. They didn't even tell me his damn name when I agreed to tutor but I was beginning to suspect he had ADHD or something like that. He kept twitching like he had somewhere to be that was much more important than learning math.

Typical muscle-bound brute. He would go on to be paid millions to "punch people" and I would listen to a woman screaming her prescriptions at me over a loud speaker. Entertainment came before healthcare, after all, so I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to expect. I pressed my lips together and shoved the paper beside Goku's lean arm, pointing at the first slope problem.

"This should be easy," I said tersely. "Do you know the formula for slope?"

He held the paper in front of himself, studying it with furrowed brows like he'd never seen anything more confusing. The minutes ticked by. I wrung my hands underneath the table.

Then he smiled triumphantly at me. "Nope, not a clue!"

"B… but how do you not even know slope?!"

"I've got a bad memory, I guess. This is my… third time taking algebra! Can you believe it?! Yamcha took that other hard math class a bunch of times and I can't even do this one!"

"Do you know what a variable is?" I asked in a rising pitch. "'X' and 'y' and all that?"

"Mmm, kind of." He set the paper down and put his arms behind his head, completely and utterly relaxed. "My math professor said I'm gonna have to study all the time and get a really good tutor if I want to make it to my junior year. I hope I do so I can keep punchin' the heck out of people!"

Oh, Jesus Christ.

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers and reviewed the first few chapters with Goku to establish exactly where he was in algebra. He knew how to substitute and balance an equation, but hadn't gone far beyond that (or had a selective memory). It would be a long journey getting him to the point where he could confidently solve a long equation but I hoped I could be of help. After all, if he failed algebra, he would be thrown out of school.

There was no pressure in that fact whatsoever. I had just moved to West City in hopes of becoming a pharmacist, and I met more people in one day than I had throughout my entire life. On top of that, I had to be Owen's babysitter and teach some ludicrously attractive kung-fu guy how to add polynomials.

Soon he was draped over the table again with the math problems between his arms, glaring at them while I brushed up on my calculus. The library was getting quieter and quieter and I wondered how long we had been together upstairs. It was only supposed to be for two hours twice a week.

The paper slid toward me and pleading, dark eyes met mine. "I dunno how to do this one," he mumbled into his arm like a pouting child. "Can you help me, Amelia?"

"Ellie," I corrected absently, leaning toward him to examine the problem. "Oh, this isn't that bad. Look, when you're combining a lot of terms together you need to remember PEMDAS—it's the order of operations. If you don't do it right, you'll get a crazy answer. Parenthesis first, then exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction."

"So I've gotta multiply before I divide and add before I subtract?"

"No, those go together." I sketched out the answer with my pen beside his attempt, writing out 'PEMDAS' and circling the 'MD' and 'AS'. "See? Whichever comes first goes first."

He perched his chin on his forearm, examining my notes. "So in this one I would multiply two and four before dividing four by two again, right?"

I nodded encouragingly. "Exactly. See? You're gonna do just fine in algebra, Goku."

A few of Owen's friends didn't seem too bad and Goku was definitely one of them. He was willing to learn when he got past his attention problem and was genuinely friendly to me. The only one I hadn't liked was Raditz, but I doubted my brother would get tangled up with that type of guy. It struck me that Goku might know more about the certifiable jackass.

I felt kind of bad interrupting his intense concentration. He was slowly writing each number like his life depended on it, comically sticking out his tongue and grasping his paper with one hand. My eyes roamed curiously across the contours of his fingers until I caught myself with a furious blush. Christ, quit ogling the tutee, Hayworth.

I coughed uncomfortably and tapped my pen's eraser on my notebook. "So, Goku, do you know a guy named Raditz? He kind of almost knocked me over."

The tip of Goku's pencil broke. I became aware of how silent the library was.

"Raditz?" he echoed in a strange voice.

"Uh, yeah. Your nice friend Krillin, who is incidentally friends with my freaking brother, came between us before I socked him in the mouth." I shook my head angrily at the memory.

My tutee sat up in a smooth motion, suddenly much calmer than before. His smile was gone. "Did Raditz put his hands on you at all?"

"No, except when he hit me in the shoulder and made me drop my lunch. It's not a big deal, I just—"

"Of course it's a big deal," Goku interrupted, gazing impassively at his math work. "I can't let my older brother walk around campus pushing girls, now can I?"

"He's your brother?! I never would've guessed that. You two look nothing alike."

Then Goku rose with a cool expression on his face that was far different than the one I had seen when we first met up. He organized his books and smiled down at me.

"I'll catch up with you later, Ellie," he said. "Thanks a lot. I think you're gonna make me really smart."

It felt like a veil came over his face that obscured his true thoughts from me. Goku was terribly guarded and I could only blabber "sure" before he left the library, shoulders rigid. Uh oh. Was I creating drama in the group my brother hung out with? It hadn't been a big deal, Raditz was just a little rude.

Bemused, I packed up my things and decided to study in my dorm after confronting Owen. Of course my tutee had a brother who I had brought up in the midst of teaching and distracted him with. Raditz was going to hate me even more now and I'd probably have my food knocked out of my hands a ton of times. I winced, walking quickly back to the dorms.

They were already crowded because the second day of classes was also a good excuse to get drunk in the hallways. I picked my way amongst the people to my brother's room across the wing and knocked a few times on his door, threatening to kick it down if he didn't answer.

The door only opened a crack and I struggled to wedge my foot in and force it open all the way. Owen would not budge. I could only see his fingers wrapped around the edge of the door. People brushed past me, oblivious to my peaking rage. Oh, what the hell was wrong with him now?!

"Would you mind telling me why 75% of the school knows you?" I demanded. "And why won't you let me in? Do you have a girl in there or something?"

Owen breathed out in an off-kilter sigh. "I'm glad your first day went well, Ellie. I was worried."

Then he slammed the door shut in my face and I heard the lock twist into place.

I stood in the sea of strangers for a few minutes, trying to digest what had just happened. Owen never treated me like that at home. Was I being a pest?

Bewildered and a bit upset by my brother's rejection, I scurried back to my dorm and holed myself inside for the night. I didn't want anyone else asking if I was 'Owen's little sister' and I didn't want to run into Raditz again. It was my first day and I still had a lot of things to learn about the school itself, plus my new job at Hannah's Pharmacy started at the end of the week.

It was too busy in the halls for me to risk a trip to the shower. I put away my textbooks, wrote down my next meeting with Goku, which was in two days, and planned for my next day while I waited for the party to die down. Breathe, Ellie. Take everything in stride, one step at a time.

I gnawed on my pen. Yeah, one step at a time.