Pairings/Characters (for this chapter): Son Goku
Rating (for this chapter): G
Chapter summary: Goku tries to find pieces of the past.
Word count (for this chapter): ~631
Chapter Four: Thinking of Shifting
Location: Gobi Desert
Date: 30 Mar 21xx
Time: 1500
Goku squatted on the sand, a bandanna wrapped around his head and a lump of dirt in his hand. Carefully, he tapped the lump with a pick until it cracked. He continued chipping away little bits of the dirt until he exposed what looked like a piece of pottery.
"Professor, I found another one!" he shouted.
A middle-aged woman ran towards him and eagerly, but very carefully, took the pottery from Goku. "Excellent work, Goku!" she cried, eyes gleaming as she looked at the prize she cradled in her hands. "Isn't this exciting? Think about it! A completely unknown city buried here in the Gobi desert, and we'll be the very first people to unearth it, to see it after how many hundreds—maybe thousands—of years!"
Goku looked at his professor and scratched the back of his neck. Professor Huian easily got excited whenever she was working on something.
Goku stood up and stretched, removing his bandanna. The afternoon sunlight glinted off of his golden diadem, making his professor blink a few times as the reflected light shone right into her eyes.
"Oops. Sorry, professor," he said sheepishly.
"No worries, no worries," Professor Huian said, waving the hand that wasn't holding the bit of pottery. "As I've said before, I like your diadem. It resembles the one that the mythical Seiten Taisei from the ancient stories wore." She glanced up at him and smiled. "And think of it; if we unearth this city, we may be able to prove that he wasn't mythical after all!"
"Professor!"
"Excuse me, Goku," the woman said and hurried towards another student a few feet away.
"I'm not mythical," Goku said softly to no one in particular. His smile was amused as he decided to take a break and go into his tent to rest.
As he lay in his cot, he thought about what exactly he was doing in this dig site. What he was trying to accomplish by helping unearth a city that supposedly had a temple in the middle. A temple that may or may not have one of the founding sutras of Heaven and Earth. Years that had been wasted in the pursuit of rumors led to this one moment.
Maybe nothing's even there, he thought to himself, golden eyes focused on a shaft of light that filtered in through a small hole in the side of his tent. But there was something that made him stay, to continue posing as an archaeology student.
Goku closed his eyes and wondered what he'd do with the thing if he did find it. It wasn't like he could use it, after all. And he knew that even if he did find all five, there was no way he could bring back the dead—bring back Sanzo and Gojyo and Hakkai and Hakuryuu—with them. He didn't even think the gods were kind enough to make a trade.
A millennium of wandering, and the only thing that weighed down on his mind was five hundred years spent trapped in Mt. Gogyou. The reminder of the past before Sanzo had been a blessing and a curse, those five hundred years of loneliness following his life in Heaven, which were arguably the happiest days of his life.
He thought of Nataku and wondered if he was still comatose like Kanzeon Bosatsu had said he was when she'd restored his memory. That was the last time he'd seen the deity: the day she came down to Earth to congratulate them on a job well done and give them gifts.
Goku's reminiscing was cut short when he heard someone calling for him. With a sigh, he stood up and walked out of his tent into the bright afternoon sunlight.