Chapter 20. Let's play keepers
Athena was back and more vengeful than ever. She had repelled any attempts to engage her at the start of the match and no one had been brave enough to speak to her for the duration of it. Now that it was done and my dad, Goku and Ringo started across the battlefield to join us, she turned, rammed her fists onto her hips and demanded: "Questions?"
I had loads. What had happened to her battle suit for starters. Apart from the scouter on her scowling face, she was dressed more like a random jogger than a warrior with the black shorts and top she was wearing. She was also in terrible shape. There were scratches all over her skin, she was limping and her long hair was a matted, weed-infested mess. I knew that she had sparred with my dad earlier, but unlike with him, you wouldn't be able to tell it from the smell coming off her. She reeked like the compost pile my grandma kept beside her kitchen garden out back. My dad was by no means a patient training partner – I never walked away from that without bruises – but I could not see him work her over like that. She looked like she had been dragged through the woods by a bear.
Even so, all Ringo and Turles did was shake their heads with a firm: "No, Captain."
Goten and I swapped glances at how uncomfortable they both seemed and how they were trying very hard not to look straight at her. Rather than putting me off from it, the fact that her presence daunted them as well, fortified me to get right to the bottom of this.
"How about what happened?" I suggested.
The captain glared at me with those predatory eyes, impressing on me that her question had been a rhetorical one. I had a hard time standing my ground and I was saved from giving it up when my dad reached us and she pinned her gaze on him instead. He looked right back and I felt another one of those weird staring matches coming on. Maybe he had roughed her up after all.
"Captain." my dad said easily, but I thought it sounded just a bit too much so.
"I am." The captain's aggression was more palpable than that stench coming from her and she issued a precisely articulated: "Prince."
I had a sense that there was a whole lot left unspoken and Goten obviously sensed the same. Growing up around his mom and her frying pans, he was well-trained to recognize an argument brewing and was always ready to jump in and stop his parents from getting into it. He had learned that humour was the best way to diffuse a situation like this.
"That must have been some sparring match." Goten joked, more certain than I was, at this point, that the bout with my dad was not what had put her in such a state.
Goku jerked Goten back by the collar and laughed awkwardly at the captain while scratching the back of his head.
My dad took in the captain's bruised, welted legs. "She looked fine the last time I saw her." He held her gaze like he was puzzling her out and turned my suggestion into a real question. "What happened?"
Everything about her stance said that she did not want to answer and she gave a rough, impatient tug at the tangled hair lying across her shoulder. "Funny story, that. I had another go at mastering ki suppression. Turns out sky-high is not the best place for it."
Goten saw fit to throw me a self-satisfied smirk. He had done the same when he was learning to suppress his ki and years later I could still take pleasure in telling him how that was the dumbest thing he had done to date. Screwing around with the energy you needed to keep flight, while flying, was retarded.
"I did that." Goten said, taking full ownership of his stupidity now that he shared it with someone as cool as the captain. "Hurt like a bi…" He looked at his dad and grinned innocently, finishing: "big bad word I am not allowed to use."
The captain had no problem cussing for him. "The biggest bitch was my landing. Had I done it inside this stinking bog, I would not have cabbaged my fucking ankle. Sadly, I toppled in right after busting it."
Though Goku looked beset by all the bad words, he groped around in his back of senzu beans and held one out to her. "Here, take this. It will get you right back up to snuff for our tournament."
The captain took the bean and gave it a mildly disgusted look, then reached down and dropped it into the leg of her boot.
Goku laughed. "No, not like that. You are supposed to eat it."
"How silly of me." the captain drawled. "I am not at all suited for conversation with a man of your intellect, Kakarot. Best save your breath for someone more worthy." She looked at me and left the sarcasm behind as she indicated West with a jerk of the head. "You made some headway unearthing that wreckage."
I beamed and Goten said: "I helped."
She ignored that. Her hellish eyes were narrowed and stuck on me. "Struck gold yet?"
"No luck, Captain." I reported, wanting to blush at remembering how she had described the device to me. Twice.
The captain failed to bite back on a soft, brooding: "Fuck me." while she absently touched the back of her head. She snapped out of it at the expectant looks everyone was giving her. "Well, carry on."
"You are not competing?" I asked disappointedly.
And Goten added a hopeful: "That senzu bean will make your ankle good as new."
"I can't eat green things." Despite her busted ankle, the captain crouched, sat down on her haunches and plucked the scouter from her face to fidget with. "I only came to see what the mayhem on this thing was about."
"Okay, second pool goes first." Goku decided with a last regretful look at the captain. "That's Goten, Trunks and Ringo."
"Second what?" Ringo looked puzzled but let himself be drawn into the circle for another round of rock-paper-scissors.
"What are you doing?" the captain demanded as if she had just caught us in some gross criminal act.
"Rock-paper-scissors." Goten said.
I huddled in closer with Goten and Ringo. "To decide who fights first."
"The benders' game?" There was something murderous in the captain's voice, yet by the time she had gotten from her haunches, it was gone and she sounded light as a breeze. "How uninspired. Those big bleeders teach you that?"
"It is universal, apparently." Turles told her and I didn't know why he should sound apologetic about that.
Goten and I raised our fist, ready to make the first throw, but Ringo did not join in.
"Stop." the captain commanded, her voice cutting and shrill.
Ringo had a strangely contrite expression on his face as he stepped back from our huddle and Turles was staring off in the distance as if he wanted to avoid his captain. He touched the back of his head like Goten and Goku would do when they were struggling for a pose, although Turles made it look tough instead of silly. Goten broke out more jokes at the mounting tension, Goku seemed to have no clue that there was anything wrong, and I got sidetracked on how mannerisms, such as head-scratching, were apparently hardwired into someone's make-up and not adopted, which in turn made me wonder if I had any quirks handed down to my from my unknown Saiyajin forbears. I looked at my only link left to that part of my heritage and realised that my dad had been younger than I was now, when he got separated from his family. Could it be that he never talked about them, not because he didn't want to, but because he didn't remember? The thought made me sad and I kind of hated my brain for bringing it up, but the same mechanism that caused my off-topic considerations, also distracted me from examining them further when it found something else fascinating to latch onto. The captain was switching moods again, flipping through a vast array of emotions faster than I could toggle through the menu on my PlayStation. She landed on smiling and selected her most sinister one.
"There are faster ways to decide on who gets to fight first." she said. "Come stand around me, all of you."
We dutifully formed a circle around her and organized it around my dad as well because he had folded his arms and refused to move. He was clearly getting impatient with the dawdling. I searched out Goten nearly across from me. He held up his hands from behind the captain's back like he was saying that he too had no idea what had happened to the dreadful tension that had been there only seconds ago. It was gone now, just like that, as if the wind had blown it out of the air. The captain looked in her element and it boggled my mind how anyone could be that erratic.
"Cover your ears, Princeling." she warned me and then she turned to Goten with a grin. "Here come some very big, bad words."
Goku wanted to object, but the captain already began pointing us out, starting with me and moving on to the next person with every word of her rhyme.
"Twing twang, you will hang." She shoved Goku out of the circle.
"Off to hunt, this stupid cunt." Ringo was next to go.
"A runt this is." There went my dad.
"You smell like piss." Out was Goten.
"Down to twos, which one to choose. Let me think. Oh right, you stink." And she pushed me so hard in the chest that I stumbled back out of the circle.
Turles was left and the captain held up a hand to indicate him, saying: "Here is our keeper. He fights first."
"That was sick!" Goten looked to be losing it. He was laughing and jumping up and down. "What now? We do it again?"
But I wanted to know: "What if there had been more players?"
"You add more sentences." the captain said.
"Do you make it up as you go?" I asked.
"Only if you are really good at it." She smirked and bragged: "Like me. The first and last rhymes are fixed. Now that we have our keeper, he needs to be challenged. He could be a hung keeper, or a keeping stinker. Then there are hanging pissers, pissy hangers, and the cunt could be a stinking one or a pissing one, or it could be a keeper. The options are endless."
"Yeah alright, we catch your drift." my dad broke in at that point, though he looked suspiciously entertained by how all this was horrifying Goku. "Any more and his head will explode."
"Very well, Prince. This here is a kept runt." The captain gave Turles a hard clap on the chest of his armour. "And he is all yours to beat. Or not."
The grin om my dad's face became set, but before he could say anything, Goten asked: "What about me? Who am I fighting?"
The captain shrugged and moved on to pair the hung pisser and the cunty stinker, which meant that Goten would be going against his dad and I was up against Ringo.
"And after these matches, whoever have two wins, go against each other in the final match?" I guessed.
"How would you gain two wins from one fight?" The captain grimaced suddenly and I felt her ki shoot up.
Fearing that she was losing her patience again and not wanting to try it further, I chose not to answer her question.
"We already had a first round." Goten was happy to supply.
The captain gave us both a distracted look and I felt her ki flicker before it disappeared again. She was still trying to get the hang of masking her ki, I understood. Her random fits of rage made more sense to me now. She was just angry because she couldn't master the ability.
"Not really how this works, but alright. Have it your way, Princeling."
I was doing swift maths in my head. With the way the matches were arranged, Goten was going to come out with two losses. There was no chance he was beating his dad today. That would give Goku two wins and a spot in the final match. My dad was going to defeat Turles, which put him in the finals with Goku. That left Ringo and me both with a shot at gaining one win, meaning that we would be competing for a spot in the match for third place against Turles. If that was how it worked, anyhow.
"What if you have one win and one loss?" I dared ask.
The captain put her hands on her hips and asked without a trace of cynicism: "Who cares about that loser?"
Her ki did not flare again so I hazarded: "I do. I still have a chance to gain a point. Me and Ringo. Whoever wins our match should be up against Turles for third place."
"Third place?" Turles asked and his captain too seemed sincerely puzzled when they exchanged looks.
"What Trunks means…" Goku started.
By then, Goten had done the math as well. "Hey!" he cried out. "None of this is fair. I shouldn't even be going up against my dad. I am in the second pool with Trunks and Ringo."
"Ah, fairness again." Turles sighed pityingly. "I do hope those dance moves gave you enough stamina, prancer. We are in for a long journey, you and me."
Goten flushed and said no more, but I was willing to stick up for him by pleading my own case. "In this round, we have two pools. The winners and the losers. Everybody fights everybody in their pool."
"Then go fight. Why play the benders game? For kicks?" The captain rounded on her men with a devastating glare. "You two sure are fast to forget."
"Akane…"
"You keep my fucking name out of your mouth, Turles." she snapped.
My dad was done. "For the love of battle, it has been two sentences since your last episode. Can you keep your muzzle on long enough for this to actually kick off? I came here to fight, not to watch you have your break with reality. If you are staying, do it quietly. If not, find yourself a spot away from me and go lose your shit there. Now sit down."
The captain did not blow up, miraculously. She sat back down on her haunches, then flopped to the ground altogether, tossed her scouter to the grass beside her and sat back on her hands like she was at a picknick, her mangled looking legs crossed. "As you say, Prince."
"We are keeping the arrangement." my dad ordered. "I fight Turles first and Trunks goes against Ringo. The winner takes on the second fighter in their pool."
He strode onto the battlefield and the captain glared Turles after him.
"I am judging." Goku said happily and he jogged off to catch up with his brother.
I walked closer to the sideline with Goten and Ringo to watch the match. Athena's wrath had past, apparently. She looked her usual brooding self when she turned up beside me. I found it telling that she followed my dad's orders only for as long as he was around to see her do it.
"Why the game? If everyone is fighting everyone anyway, what is the use?" she persisted, her gaze fixed on the match kicking off.
"To randomize who gets to fight who first so that no one can claim that they were disadvantaged in some way." I wanted to add that it was fair, but swallowed it for obvious reasons. Instead I continued explaining how a tournament elimination system worked. "After all the matches in the winners pool have been fought, whoever won against both competitors wins the tournament. Second place goes to the competitor who lost one match and won the other. The one who lost both matches, will have to compete with the winner from the losers pool for third place."
"There are no places." the captain said. "There is a winner and a whole bunch of sad-arse losers."
From the battlefield we could hear Turles shout a fierce: "I will dig your grave!"
My dad was rushed with such an excessive explosion of force, it took him off guard. He was kneed in the gut and sent upward, then intercepted from above and slammed back down to the ground where he was driven under by an energy barrage that ate a crater into the already upturned earth. Nevertheless, it was his own grave Turles was digging. Amidst the shelling, my dad's silhouette could be seen shooting up from the crater, the attacks bouncing off the seething outline of his second stage, super form.
"Brutal. " The captain pulled her face into an exaggerated wince. "There he goes. You have to hand it to the big bleeder. He can go down."
Ringo laughed along with her. "No way is he walking away from that without a jacked spine."
"I think he has those big, gapped gnashers lodged up his arse by now. I hope the green things work on that. I would hate to see him go around without his teeth for a moon's turn."
"They work." Ringo assured his captain.
I watched my dad wrap up his victory with substituted shame. He dragged Turles from his grave by the hair, getting him out in the open for all to bear witness of his defeat. The stomp to the gut was a perfect representation of a pesty bug getting squashed under a boot.
Goku couldn't even call the win before my dad challenged him to their own match, sidelining the rest of us who had wasted so much of his time. In a tournament it was custom to alternate winners and losers pool matches to keep up the suspense, but he was clearly well past all that. Turles was revived to be the judge, needing two senzu beans to get him back on his feet and actually being happy about that. The booming laugh that carried over to us, made the captain snigger in shared fun. We waited for the fight to start, but my dad and Goku got busy arguing about something.
"Dick-swingery." the captain identified what was going on out there. "See, Princeling, if you had let me finish back there, I would have told you that this is the way I intended these battles to go. The winner keeps the ground as long as he keeps winning and you all get to have your shot. The real game is different, though. It is supposed to be a free-for-all."
"How does that work?" I asked.
"You start with the rhyme-around, like we did, and select a keeper. It is important to pay close attention to the name everyone is given. You need those later to challenge each other. After selection, the keeper gets to fight first and defend his ground until whoever beats him, takes his place. The last one standing, is the winner."
"How many players?"
The captain grinned. "The more the better, but never less than twenty."
"Twenty?" Goten butted in.
"The keeper has to fight everyone to win?" I asked as disbelieving.
The captain shrugged. "Sometimes it plays out that way."
"But that is impossible." Goten said. "Not even my dad could win that."
"Turles could. Back in the day." the captain told us. "He was the strongest warrior in his tribe."
My heart was bursting. "You had tribes?"
"Only in the South."
"What was in the North?"
"Many annoying little lordlings like you. Do you want me to tell you how this game works?"
I nodded, swallowing a multitude of burning questions and resolving to ask them all later.
"The field is a large circle with a trench around it. The Shield Smashers lit that thing up with fire before the start of a game, the Tall Hands used pikes and I think the Moon tribe put dusk snakes in theirs. Anyroad, the aim is to kick your opponents out of the circle, preferably into the trench. When you get thrown out, you will be eliminated until the next player falls. This frees you up to try again, unless the trench left you too incapacitated to longer fight. Usually, the keeper isn't the only one fighting. Other players may challenge each other and enter the circle. They can band together to wipe someone out and turn on their allies when it suits them. The aim is to take out all the contenders and get to the keeper, who can't be attacked unless he fails to call his next opponent after winning a fight. A challenge has to be made using the name that was given at the beginning of the game, coupled with your own."
Goten had lost the thread and asked for clarification.
"Let us say you wanted to enter the circle to beat Ringo. You would challenge him by calling him a cunty pisser or whatever, and he would be obligated to fight you. If you wanted to gang up on him with the Princeling, you would call something like: stink-pissing-cunter and all three of you enter the circle. But he doesn't have to keep the alliance. If he wants to gang up on you with Ringo instead, it is allowed."
"That is way too much to keep track off. How do you hold that all in your head and still be able to fight?" Goten asked.
"It adds pressure." the captain agreed. "Keepers is designed to hone skills. That is why all the best warriors come from the South."
"We are playing that." I told Goten.
"Wait until my ankle is healed. I want in." The captain pointed up at the sky. "No more questions now. This fight is finally getting started."