Tale of the Three-eyed Assassin
Matsubani was watering plants on his front lawn and admiring the nice spring weather. He was a martial artist of considerable power and had been using his power to help his city. He had never won a Tenkaichi Budoukai or even entered. He hadn't seen the need. Instead, he'd been using his powers to keep crime lords out of his city. He looked from his watering with a satisfied smile to see the mercenary Tao Pai Pai staring at him. The watering can slipped from numb fingers as he felt a cold chill pass through his body. Tao smirked.
"You know who I am?" he asked rhetorically. Matsubani nodded because he did not trust himself to speak. "Then you know why I'm here," Tao said. "Someone is paying a lot of money so that you stop living. I am nothing if not an accommodating businessman." He smiled a murderous smile that snapped Matsubani out of his fear. He couldn't let Tao just kill him! He had to fight!
"This is one payment you won't collect!" Matsubani declared as he defiantly threw a punch at Tao. The mercenary lazily leaned his head to the left. Matsubani stepped back and unleashed a roundhouse kick that would have smashed through a steel plate. Tao stepped idly to the left. Matsubani raised one hand high and it glowed bright yellow with ki energy… and Tao drove a fist through his heart. Tao watched as Matsubani gurgled and gripped at Tao's forearm to try and struggle for life. He sneered and pushed the dying man away with his other hand. He looked at the man's house and saw a three-eyed woman standing in the doorway with a rifle in her shaking hands. Tears ran down her cheeks and her face was screwed up with murderous fury. Tao gave a dismissive wave of his hand to send a kiai at her. There was a "snap!" as the woman tumbled into the house with her neck broken. Tao walked over the dead husband and wife to enter the home. No sense in leaving any brats to plan revenge. Tao looked all over the house and found no one. When he entered the bedroom, however, he found a crib. Inside that crib was a sleeping three-eyed baby with a medallion tied around its neck with a red silk ribbon. Tao reached a hand down to twist the baby's head off… and it stared up at him with serious eyes.
Tao Pai Pai had never been one to shy away from murder because the victim was "innocent." Nearly every person he'd ever killed had been "innocent." Good people rarely paid you money to kill the wicked. Still, he stayed his hand and stared down at the baby. He could feel a tremendous power radiating from the child unlike anything he had ever sensed. He scooped the baby up out of the crib and pinched the little gold medallion between thumb and forefinger.
"Tenshinhan," he muttered as he read the medallion. Not a bad name, especially when he himself wasn't in any great position to come up with something better. Tenshinhan it was.
OoOoOoO
Shen scowled at the swaddled, three-eyed baby sleeping on his kitchen table before looking up to turn that scowl on his brother who was sitting across from him. The first time Tao had shown up in a year and what does he do? He brings a stupid baby!
"What am I supposed to do with this?" Shen asked incredulously. Tao shrugged.
"Raise him," he said as if it were an obvious thing. "Train him." Shen scoffed.
"The Crane School is not a nursery, brother," he remarked snidely. "If you want my advice? Kill the brat." He peered over his glasses at Tao… and the look his brother gave him froze his blood in his veins.
"The boy has power, Shen. I have sensed it. He could grow more powerful than me someday," he smirked and crossed one leg over the other and his arms over his chest. "Do you really want that power to be wasted in death? Or worse, if I were to drop him off at an orphanage and he somehow found his way to Roshi?" Shen fumed at that and dragged his nails across the table. Tao always knew how to aggravate him.
"Fine," he huffed as he threw up his hands in defeat. "I'll do it. But I expect you to visit once in awhile!" Tao chuckled and got up from the table. He didn't say anything and instead walked right out the door. Shen scowled down at the baby who stared up at him. "Tenshinhan, huh?" he muttered as he read the medallion.
OoOoOoO
"No!" Master Shen had scolded as he slapped the back of five-year old Tenshinhan's head. "What was that?!" There was a burn scar on the rock from where Tenshinhan's Dodonpa had struck it. There were several such burn marks. "A proper Dodonpa would have pierced a hole right through the rock! Again!"
"But Master Shen," Tenshinhan protested as he gasped for air and dripped with sweat, "I… I'm tired! Could I just rest for a minute? Please?" Shen struck him harder this time.
"Rest is for those who have accomplished something! Only the cowardly and the weak ask for something when they have done nothing! Are you weak?!" Tenshinhan shook his head. "Again!" Master Shen barked. Tenshinhan wearily lifted his arm and used the other arm to straighten it.
OoOoOoO
The training began as soon as Tenshinhan could walk and speak. Shen was not a loving caretaker. While he grew strong, there was no rest for Tenshinhan. No adventure. No games. The other Crane students would not talk to him. They avoided him, afraid of his power and unsettled by his three eyes. One day, however, that changed. When Tenshinhan was ten years old, he met a new student. He'd been cutting apart firewood with his fists when the other boy had come to him.
"Hello there," the boy had said. Tenshinhan had been startled. Not by his wide eyes or his white skin or the red circles on his cheeks. Not even by the fact that he was floating an inch off the ground. He had been startled because the boy had spoken to him.
"H-hello," Tenshinhan had muttered back before he quickly looked away and resumed his chopping. It was his training and a chore. He couldn't afford to stop. The boy was still standing there. "Why… are you… still here?" he asked as he went about his task.
"Why not?" the boy had asked. Tenshinhan stopped to stack the wood.
"Most students are afraid of me," Tenshinhan explained, "Because I look different." The other boy had smiled.
"I don't know if you noticed," he'd pointed out, "But I'm not the most normal-looking person either." That made one end of Tenshinhan's mouth... quirk up on one side. "I'm Chaozu."
"Tenshinhan."
"That's kinda long to say after a while," Chaozu had said. "Do you mind if I call you Ten?" The other end of Tenshinhan's mouth quirked up. It was almost a smile; not quite, but almost.
"Ten. Okay."
Despite having a friend, Ten's life did not grow any easier. Nor did his training, even though he grew more powerful. It seemed as if with every increase in his strength, Master Shen found a new way to humble Ten and break him. Once again, that changed one day. He had been twelve when the man had arrived. He had been wearing a purple overcoat and had been talking with Master Shen as he watched the Crane Students train. His face seemed… familiar to Ten, even though he had never met the man. Everyone gasped and stopped what they were doing as he walked onto the field.
"Boy!" the man called. Ten realized he was talking to him. Ten stood up straight and bowed to the man. "Do you know who I am?" Ten shook his head. "I'm Tao Pai Pai. The world's greatest assassin. Shen tells me you're his strongest student." Ten nodded… and the man drove a knee into Ten's stomach. It was the hardest he'd even been hit. He coughed up blood and fell to his knees. "Pathetic," Tao said dismissively as he turned away. "If you want to be truly strong then you have to drive the weakness from your heart." Tao Pai Pai walked past Shen and from the look on his Master's face, Ten could tell… Shen was scared of him. Something about that resonated with Tenshinhan. It imprinted the value of strength upon him. No one could hurt you when you were strong. No one could make you do anything you didn't want to. The strong stood over the weak. Tenshinhan threw himself into his training harder than ever before. Every year, Tao Pai Pai would return and spar with Ten. Usually, he was beaten into a state of unconsciousness, but once he got a hit on Tao Pai Pai. That had surprised him and it had allowed Ten to ask him a question before he left.
"I recognized your face the first time you came here!" Ten had blurted out. "Tell me! Are you my father?" Tao had smirked at that.
"I suppose I am, in a sense." Tenshinhan hadn't been sure what that had meant but his idolization for the master assassin grew with that all the same. He wanted to become an assassin himself! When Tenshinhan was seventeen, he knew he was as strong as Tao Pai Pai. This time he could defeat him and make Tao stick around. Finally, he would answer his questions! But Tao Pai Pai… never came.
"My brother has been killed," Master Shen had explained. "Killed by… Son Goku. A student of the Turtle School." Tenshinhan had never met Son Goku or even heard of her or the Turtle School before Shen had told him of her. Yet, in his heart, he felt a black hatred for her that he had never known. She had taken his victory! She had taken his answers! She had taken everything. "But you will have your revenge, boy," Shen had assured him. "If you only have the will to take it!" Tenshinhan pushed himself beyond his limits for three years, letting the training break him and rebuild him into something stronger and colder. He trained with a savage intensity that he had never had before in his life. He even meditated with intensity. A single-minded goal consumed him, one even more powerful than his goal to surpass Tao Pai Pai: revenge.
OoOoOoO
Tenshinhan breathed deeply as he brought his hands to his chest. A torrential rain poured down on him as he put them together in a diamond shape and glared at the mountain in his line of sight through his hands. He could feel a tremendous energy building inside of him and pouring into his hands. It was agony to draw on the power but he pushed through. The weak stopped when there was pain at the price of power. The strong seized the power because it was theirs because they were strong. The sky rumbled with thunder and lightning flashed. He could feel the power building to its peak and roared as the orange light filled his hands.
"Kikouhou!" he bellowed as a massive orange square of ki filled his vision and flew away. There was a blinding flash of orange light. When it was gone, so was the mountain. He smirked and dropped his hands to his side. He'd finally mastered it. Son Goku didn't have a chance now.
OoOoOoO
"You are ready!" Master Shen declared proudly as he paced around Tenshinhan and Chaozu with the rest of the students gathered around them on the training grounds. They were in their full Crane School uniforms: green longcoats with the character for "Crane" on the breast with purple pants and black hats with red balls on the top. There were only days left until the Tenkaichi Budoukai and their training was finally complete. Even though he walked around both of them, Shen was only addressing Tenshinhan. "You have the same blackness in your soul as Tao Pai Pai." He stopped and stood in front of Tenshinhan and looked up at him. "What is your destiny?"
"To avenge Tao Pai Pai," Ten declared, "And take his place as the world's greatest assassin." Shen nodded and grinned.
"Yeeees. What have I taught you?"
"Son Goku is my enemy." Shen pulled off his sunglasses and looked Tenshinhan in the eyes with burning intensity.
"So what. Must. You. Do?" Tenshinhan narrowed his eyes and balled his fists.
"I must kill her!" The other students roared their approval and pumped their fists in the air as they chanted his name.
"Tenshinan!" The students crowed like a battle cry, "Tenshinhan! Tenshinhan! Tenshinhan!" Shen stood beside his students and the three of them took off into the sky. Son Goku, Ten swore to himself, would pay.