Chapter 061 - The Haunting Past
Time was of the essence. It was now a week until the start of the Cell Games and both Piccolo and Vegeta had spent a day each inside the Room of Spirit and Time in a bid to grow stronger and be enough of a challenge for Cell. Now it was Trunks' turn to train. The tension on the lookout was fantastic as each fighter was left to his own thoughts whilst Dende grew used to his new home.
Things down on Earth were far more panicked. Scared of the upcoming tournament and ultimate threat Cell had made on national television one day ago, the residents across the Earth were frantic and mad, scattering across the planet like ants uncertain of where to go and how to escape the monster. Many had given up hope but many more desperately wanted to cling to life. None had remembered the young boy who'd stopped Piccolo from carrying out a similar threat fourteen years ago, none had remembered the many times that same boy had saved the world from the grips of the Red Ribbon Army, the Saiyans and even been the world champion. History and Earth had forgotten Son Goku.
For the next few days Corset spent time relaxing at home and helping her mother and grandfather out in the labs. The news on the television continuously filled her with sorrow; it looked like the whole world was panicking about Cell's tournament. The media had no idea just the impact this tournament would have on the planet; sure they understood it would lead to the end of the world if Cell won, yet they spoke of how the world's hero and current world champion, Mr Satan, would rise and surely defeat Cell. She could tell even by looking at him through a screen that he was nothing special. Just another egotistical human who'd get himself killed. He wouldn't be the Earth's hero – Goku would. He'd always been Earth's hero...
Corset decided one day to visit the local coastline as she was rather fond of the sea. If these were to be her last days alive then she couldn't resist not visiting one of her favourite spots close-by to her home.
The cool salty air blew lightly against her face as she sat on top of a cliff looking out to sea. Corset contemplated as she watched the blue waters roll in from the horizon, admiring the beautiful view. Every-so-often she'd hear the footsteps of people walking across the public footpath behind her. It twisted and wove its way across the hilly cliffs down to the town to the left and towards the beach.
A couple of shrieks and yells caught her ear. She spotted a group of teenagers were climbing up an outcrop of the shoreline. Corset watched curiously, wondering what they were doing and hoping none of them would slip – didn't they realise what they were doing was dangerous? None of them could fly (naturally) and there were some rocks hidden in the shallows below them. One wrong move and one of them could easily fall into the shallows and break something or worse! She didn't understand why some humans were so reckless. At least she'd be in a far better position to save herself if something were to go wrong!
The small group reached one level of the rocks and to Corset's shock and disbelief, one by one they began to jump straight into the shallow waters below! Corset watched nervously, leaning over the edge of the cliff precariously trying to see under the surface. She wasn't sure if she was thankful but so far, all of them had managed to reappear unscathed. She could see they were all landing in a deeper sandy part of the seabed, although there were some rocks inches below the surface dangerously close to where they were landing!
She knew what was going to happen, just one of them had to mess up and it would end in tears. Anxiously she watched for a little while longer.
Corset wasn't kept waiting long.
A boy – younger than most of the others – had chosen a spot just to the left of the others to jump from. He wouldn't land in the same spot they had and apparently he had no idea of the dangers just below him. Corset could see from where she was standing and guessed he couldn't.
His body began to fall as he bravely and foolishly pushed himself off, goaded by his friends in the water.
Corset jumped off the cliff as fast as she could and shot towards him. She caught the boy mid-fall, flying a little out to sea before she doubled-back towards the narrow sandy beach below, back to his gobsmacked friends.
The boy suddenly started screaming and frantically wriggling about. "I'm flying? What's going on? Why am I up so high?"
"Hey, try not to wriggle around otherwise I'll drop you!" Corset ordered slightly irritated he'd been so reckless.
"What? Don't drop me!" The boy cried trying to get a glance of whoever was talking to him!
Corset descended and landed back on the top of the cliff, letting the boy down on his feet. She wasn't too pleased with him.
"Why'd you put me up here? All of my friends are down there!" The boy pouted turning around and glaring at her. "You ruined my jump! I was tombstoning with the others!"
"Are you nuts?" Corset snapped. "What you were doing was dangerous! You would have landed on those rocks just under the surface! What do you think would have happened if I let you fall?"
"I wouldn't have landed on any rocks. Everyone knows it's all sandy down below there!" The boy retaliated. "You're such a kill-joy! Now they're all gonna make me do it again!"
"It's not flat down there! I can see the rocks submerged from here!" Corset bellowed growing increasingly angry. "See for yourself!" She pointed down towards the spot where he and his friends had been.
The boy glanced down. Looking at his face, Corset could tell he'd seen the rocks; the water was pretty clear from where they stood.
"... I wouldn't have hit them," he grumbled.
"You were heading right for them and if I hadn't jumped in and caught you, you'd probably be drowning on the seabed having a fit!" Corset folded her arms. "Man you're stubborn!"
"Yeah well thanks to you they're gonna call me a chicken and tell me I've gotta do it again! It was scary enough the first time!" The boy spat.
"If you find it scary then why are you doing it?" Corset asked agitated.
"B-Because I have to, otherwise they won't let me hang around with them!" The boy snapped.
"Big deal, find some new friends." Corset rolled her eyes. "If they're gonna pick on you for not being stupid and having some common sense then what kind of friends are they?"
The boy quietened for a moment looking at the grass below his feet.
"... So you're with your sister's friends?"
"Yeah."
Corset and the boy had calmed down and were both sitting on the grassy banks of the cliff. Apparently the boy had spotted a couple of the people from his group had headed towards the stairs at the end of the beach and were coming to get him. Until then all the boy could do was wait and not wander off. His sister would kill him otherwise!
"Why were you guys tombstoning off the cliff?" Corset asked. "That's dangerous."
"It's fun... or at least they all say it is," the boy replied. "I've never actually done it before so they picked a spot that wasn't too high up... I don't really like high places that much but they all started calling me chicken!"
Corset pouted annoyed and unimpressed. "What kind of friends are they?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well they're friends with your sister, aren't they? Why would they put her little brother in danger like that, especially since you don't like heights? They're not friends."
"They're all I have at the moment," the boy frowned. "Ever since we moved away from West City, I've had no luck making friends at the moment so I'm stuck tagging along with my sister. The worst part is I'm still in elementary school and she's in middle school so I don't see her at school."
"That's too bad," Corset felt a little sorry for this boy. "... So why did your sister let her friends pick on you? She doesn't sound like a good sister to me! I'd never let my friends tell my little brother to do something so dangerous!"
"Oh no, she's not mean at all. She's really nice," the boy smiled. "My sister wouldn't let anything dangerous happen to me if she knew about it."
"Then why did she let you do it if she knew it was dangerous?" Corset asked; she really didn't understand this girl's perception of safety!
"She didn't; she was off buying ice-cream so she doesn't even know," the boy answered. "... Hey, you're a girl, right?"
"What? Of course I am!" Corset raised a baffled eyebrow. Was he that dense?
"S-Sorry, I wasn't sure," The boy grumbled. "Your hair's all gelled and sticking up! How was I supposed to know? It's a weird hairstyle for a girl!"
Corset realised she was still a Super Saiyan and went quiet, turning away and looking out to sea. She didn't need to explain her hair to him at all...
"... So are you here with friends?" The boy asked.
"No, I'm here by myself," Corset replied.
"What? By yourself? Isn't that dangerous for someone like you?" The boy cried. "What if you fall off a cliff or get kidnapped by someone creepy! No one's gonna know! Do your parents know you're here on your own? Man, and you had a go at me! You're even worse than I am!"
Corset glared at the boy, "I'm pretty sure I can look after myself... For starters I can fly."
"You were the one lecturing me about danger – you're a hypocrite!" The boy folded his arms.
"You're annoying," Corset stood up and looked down the path towards the beach. "When is your sister supposed to be getting here? I wish she'd come and find you so I don't have to talk to a jerk like you!"
"Likewise," the boy replied. "You're so grumpy and you look like you've stuck your finger in a plug socket!"
There was a small pause, suddenly an audible gasp came from the boy's mouth. "Krag's jumping!"
Corset looked over to see the group from earlier were back on the rock tombstoning. Before she could even realise what was about to happen, one boy disappeared under the waves.
He didn't come back up.
"... Where is he?" The boy asked nervously getting to his feet. "He hasn't come back up!"
Slowly the others in the group were climbing down the rocks, jumping into the sea at lower heights and swimming over to where their friend had entered the water. Without any second thoughts, Corset grabbed the boy and jumped from the cliff, flying straight down onto the beach amidst the boy's screams! In seconds they landed on the wet sand, Corset rushing into the sea as fast as she could knocking a decent amount of water away with her strides! It wasn't fast enough, there was too much drag from the water slowing her down so she jumped free from the water and flew over to the point she'd seen the boy vanish; now amongst the several panicked friends. She helped them to pull him up to the surface and drag him back to the beach. The boy was unconscious and bleeding.
A small crowd slowly gathered as the group of teenagers and Corset brought him in.
"Krag!" The boy gasped, looking at his sister's friend before flinching and turning away. "I hate seeing broken bones!"
There wasn't much Corset could do right now. She didn't have any senzu beans on her and she couldn't fly and get Dende to heal him; the flight to Kami's and back would take far too long.
"Somebody call an ambulance!" One of the friends bellowed.
"Soba!"
The boy turned around, "Sis!"
It was a further half an hour until the injured boy was taken away by an air rescue crew to West City Hospital. Corset watched with the others as the helicopter slowly rose into the air and carried the casualty over the cliffs and towards the city.
"I hope Krag will be ok," the boy sighed.
"I can't believe he actually got hurt," one girl gulped. "What happened anyway?"
"He hit the rocks," Corset answered. "You couldn't see them from where you guys were jumping, but if you look from the cliff at the top of the beach, you can see the rocks below that rock formation."
"... To think that could have happened to me," the boy mumbled.
"W-What?" His older sister gasped horrified. "You mean you were... Alright, which one of you guys told him to tombstone with you? He's scared of heights for starters and he's my little brother! I don't want you encouraging him to do dangerous things!" She yelled at her friends. "If you wanna jump in the sea then you go ahead, just don't get Soba involved! My older brother would kill me and all of you if anything happened to him!"
Corset smiled to herself. So this boy's sister was good after all...
"As it is, the world's gonna end unless Mr Satan steps in to beat Cell; don't get yourself killed before it you guys! I wanna be able to spend as much time with you all as possible..." The sister added.
Corset frowned and looked down at the grass below her feet. It was three days now until the tournament would start. She'd almost forgotten about it...
"Thanks for flying in and saving me earlier."
Corset blinked and realised the boy was talking to her. "Oh, it's ok. I hope you learnt a lesson."
"Yeah, I guess so," the boy nodded. "My name's Soba and this is my sister, Ramen. What's your name?"
Something clicked in Corset's mind that had been bothering her for a while. The brown hair, dark but innocent eyes, the voice; they'd all sounded a little familiar to her and now she thought she knew why.
"... Soba, you said you were from West City, didn't you?" Corset asked.
"Yeah," Soba nodded. "I lived there until a couple of years ago... Now that I think of it, I remember this one day in West City First Elementary, I knew this girl in my class and one day I saw her fly off…"
'IT IS HIM!' Corset gasped, 'Soba was in my class at Elementary School!'
"Come to think of it, you can fly too!" Soba scratched his cheek. "Who are you?"
"Um... I've gotta go home. It's getting late and my mama would kill me if I don't get home on time." Corset spluttered. "It was nice meeting you, Soba!" With that she took off, leaving the confused group behind her! That had been a close one!
On the grassy verge, Soba's eyes began to widen in shock, he slowly pointed after the fleeing girl. "... It couldn't have been..."
"Wow, so she can fly?" Ramen exclaimed. "I wish I could do that! Dunno about the weird hairstyle! Was that really a girl?"
Two more days remained. Corset was beginning to grow nervous now. Just two more days until the start of the Cell Games. Anxious and restless she decided to head over to visit Goku and Gohan for the morning. After dropping in to see if they were home, she was informed by Chichi that the boys were down the stream fishing and relaxing. It didn't take long for Corset to find them.
"Not long now," Gohan mumbled as he lay back into the lush grass. "Are you nervous?"
"Of course," Corset answered.
"Don't worry you two, there's not much point in worrying about it," Goku replied as he stared up at the clouds above. "Trust me we'll come out of this alive. Cell won't win."
Corset and Gohan both glanced over to Goku curiously. He'd been so chilled out ever since they'd come out of the Room of Spirit and Time and hadn't explained why! Every time they'd asked he'd just simply told them not to worry.
"... Goku, exactly what is your plan?" Corset asked. "You must have one; you're so confident everything will be ok."
"Look, stop worrying about what my plan is and just let yourselves relax," Goku answered avoiding directly answering the question. "Just trust me on this one." He rose to his feet and stretched. "Right, time to catch lunch." He started to remove his jacket and the majority of his clothes save his boxers, a sight which Corset'd rather not see as she forced him out of her peripheral vision. He had no shame at times!
There was a splash as the Super Saiyan entered the water of the stream before them.
Gohan sat up and sighed. "I'd be able to relax more if he told me what he was planning to do... Dad and Korin think that Cell could be stronger than Dad..."
"Why won't he say anything?" Corset frowned.
"Mother's been acting a little differently over the past couple of days," Gohan murmured. "She's been a little more lenient with my studying and has been looking through photo albums a lot... I think she's worried."
"I can't blame her," Corset sighed bringing her knees to her chin. "I think we're all worried, no matter what your dad says. I'd worry less if I knew what his plan was!"