Dragon Ball: Space Adventures
Snail Pace I
One thousand-hundred seventy four—One thousand-hundred seventy five—One
thousand-hundred seventy six, bit by bit the record was getting near—four thousand, wasn't it? she had done it on a whim to see how many she could do. By the end her arms trembled like a palm tree being whipped side to side by a typhoon and the mere act of moving both extremities posed a much bigger challenge than when she had done a turn around the world when she was four.
It was funny how that worked, how flying around the world only made her sore and going down and up using her arms and the help of some weighted weights seemed to be the limit of what she could handle. Wasn't 197 million square miles not something much greater than four thousand pushups? The thousands of islands she had seen from above like ducks swimming in a pond, with their cities and trains and highways and skyscrapers and beaches filled with people that were marked by that delicious looking yellow sand, all those immense mountains like tall people doing lines to buy food at the store she went with her grandpa that one time before she left for the voyage towards the end of everything, where he so wisely lifted her up from the ground and rolled her forward into the space, him, the only one who trusted her—all those that small towns lived in the middle of nowhere like ants in those deserts filled with nothing besides rocky formations cactuses and cracked dirt that hadn't tasted the scent of water in a hundred years, water like the one that covered the world in those immense never ending oceans who seemed to go on and on no different than the universe went on. Pan was slightly frightened by it, by how similar the ocean and the universe was, how at night she remembered how everything disappeared into nothing and she couldn't tell left or right even when she made a KI lamp so she could at least see her own hand. But it was funny, because she had done it already, and now remembering how angry her dad had gotten over that because she had missed school for a day, the girl couldn't really understand how four thousand push-ups was the limit of her strength. Sure, if she removed the weights then four thousand wasn't that hard—but it'd be different then, suddenly doing push ups would be too easy. Without the added mass the girl felt that hitting eighty thousand was the equivalent of farting. There was only one proper answer to all her questions; she was weak.
Pan stopped a moment to catch her breath, sweat poured through her hands and face like a shower was hitting her head. The girl hadn't counted the ones that were easy, she was counting the ones that had started to pose a difficulty, and right now the upper arm and forearms were quietly getting sorer by the second, and bit by bit the whole body was beginning to ask for a rest—but she couldn't rest, not after what had happened. The girl groaned and turned around, putting both hands on the floor again and restarting the battle with weights. One thousand hundred seventy-seven—One thousand hundred seventy-eight—One thousand hundred seventy-nine. Each push had now begun to take things from her that she had lost about two hundred pushups ago, the only thing that propelled her forward was that question, that string of words uttered by that black-haired idiot. Every time she thought of it, a grin of anger morphed in her face accompanied by a rush of strength that was sent straight into her struggling arms. Her teeth grilled against each other and her eyebrows inclined downwards like a ship capsizing. The girl couldn't even remember a time she had felt so angry against someone, it was actually surprising. The daughter of Gohan was no stranger to anger, to despair—but there was a difference to losing to her uncle and all the rage that brought her, and that loss against Uub, which seemed to send her over the edge so easily it almost worried her. When she fought her uncle, it was brutal, evil, just like she wanted. Her uncle didn't go easy on her, he didn't hold back, she remembered well that time—a month ago— when they had fought last time and how they had expended an entire afternoon trading blows as hard as they could. She didn't care about dumb things like her wellbeing or the field of grass they were cleaning, all it mattered was the fight, the rush—the feeling of the fists crashing against each other lifting dust like storm and the sensation of the pressure splashing her hair away like a tornado, that was what it was all about—the rush of successfully landing a hit in someone else's face and how it's cheeks would sink in as the knuckles kept going and going through the maxilla and zygomatic bones, the exhilarating movement of adrenaline going through the veins, heating up everything like an oven at full strength, propelling her forward like an ICMB heading towards the earth—and the clash, that furious and massive battle of blasts that shine harder than the sun, and where the whole world seems to have turned to an evil color of blue and fire blows everywhere, and then, the explosion—that roar—that ball of glowing KI that grows and grows and it seems to expand forever and beyond, extinguishing and morphing every bit of land into something alien from a time where the universe was nothing more than a pit of indescribable warm, and the only thing there was a sphere that held everything that would ever be.
Then, after everything, they would sit resting in the remains of what was once a field, and let the feeling wash over them until they'd eat and go home—that lovely feeling like when you eat just the right amount of food, and you go to take a good night of sleep.
To say the girl liked fighting would be an understatement. If you asked Pan where she would see in ten years she'd say fighting in a heartbeat. She couldn't understand how her father disliked it. How could anyone who lived and breathed didn't think that having an all-out brawl to the death wasn't the coolest thing in the world?
Pan suddenly stopped, and raised from the ground and stood with her knees on the floor. Her heart beat so quickly it threatened to shoot right off from the chest into the void above, the sound splashed all across her interiors and ears, she could hear it inside the brain, bouncing, beating. A terrifying realization dawned on her, first bit by bit, and then like a bucket of freezing water. With the weights still on, the girl got up and rushed towards the stairs and jumped down making a loud bang noise as her bare feet impacted the hard beige ground and her knees squatted to absorb the impact. Quietly, she rose, watching Uub, who had tilted an eyebrow from his old and large book which had a dark cover and the pages smelled like a faint bath of vanilla.
His eyes squatted with a mix of doubt and interest, like when you hear a bird yapping at twelve AM, and you wonder what the hell is he doing awake at that hour.
—You—Pan said in between heavy breaths. —Why didn't you punch me?
The boy quietly observed her, maybe trying to find a proper answer or simply doubting the sudden event that had unfolded. Quietly, he shrugged, as if it really was just that simple for him.
—I don't punch women.
He said, not like throwing a weight off his back, but like someone who has a daily routine and is simply doing it again.
—Then what do you call those last thirty minutes? Why even fight me then!?
She said out of breath, trying to ignore that growing feeling of doubt that was now presenting again, but this time she couldn't not so easily, for like last time there was an immobile, untouchable proof of what she refused to admit out loud.
—I was teaching you a lesson.
He said softly, smugly. Almost as if he was expecting this moment all week and by the time she had climbed down those stairs Uub already had the entire conversation planned out in his head, just like he planned that fight, knowing full well he would win without hitting her one time. Because why would he hit her? him that was so much better than her, why even waste energy?
—Let me rephrase that for you, it's called humiliation, piece of shit, so get down from your high horse you stupid bastard, because not even you believe it.
Uub smiled, like everything was alright.
—Seems like you learned your lesson.
Uub said that full well knowing an outburst could happen—he didn't care nor he was afraid—he wanted it. So when Pan turned around and left for her room the boy tilted his head to the side, almost astonished that his bedroom/lounge didn't turn into a battlefield. He watched her leave and climb up, and the boy quietly returned to his book, wondering what was up with her.
To Pan was the same thing. There's a fine line in a person's mind where they are aware of how they are, so even if they lie or are simply not aware of the true extent of their psychic they know when something will piss them off, when something will throw them out the roof into a crazed frenzy. The girl, as tired as she was, as angry as her blood boiled, was fully capable of recognizing that those words would be the equivalent of a nuclear device being exploded in her brain—That she wouldn't care about the fact that they were traveling at speeds faster than the speed of light and the slightest touch kill them all, that she wouldn't care that Uub was so much stronger than her that the odds of even landing a hit where billions to one—the only thing that would matter, is that Uub got what he deserved, and if they all died, then maybe that was a fair price to pay.
So it surprised her, when the explosion didn't occur, when the rage that was supposed to overpowered her and sent her lunging towards him simply became a thought that got lost. Instead, what happened was something that would make her father proud, something she would rather hide for the rest of her life than ever admit in public that it happened. She took it, like an order being delivered, she took it and walked away. Because he was right, she had learned a lesson, a horrible but truthful lesson. That despite everything, every bit of blood that had leak through her mouth or nose, that every afternoon expended training with the body covered in sweat and dirt, that all her fights and struggles so far all accounted to one painful truth that hurt her harder than any hit she'd ever took; Son Satan Pan, was not of a good enough fighter in her grandfather's eyes. That's why he had chosen him instead of her to go into the endless expanse of the universe, that's why he had left that fateful tournament years ago with him instead of her—because despite everything, she wasn't good enough to be with him.
The girl quietly put both hands on the ground, and lowered herself towards the beige floor.
—One thousand hundred eighty—One thousand hundred eighty-one—One thousand hundred eighty-two.
She was two thousand a hundred eighteen pushups away from the record. She wasn't going to stop, not now, not anymore.