CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO: ABOUT GOHAN
"Look
Daddy, a spaceship!" Gohan cried out, pointing up to the sky.
"Daddy" boosted the boy up on his shoulder and smiled. /They're
here,/ he thought to himself as the saucerer ship landed in a field near the
Son family House.
"Heh,"
Bardock smirked, "I was wondering if they'd be back."
"Wanna
go see them, Gohan?" Gokou asked before taking his son on a piggyback ride
throught the woods.
***
Chichi
ran out of the Son House, with a second realization dawning on her. How she
didn't notice this one bugged her the most. Gohan didn't have his tail either.
Gohan and Bardock were missing their tails! Someone had hurt her little boy, and
taken away his beautiful tail!
Why was
everybody running off into the woods?
Chichi
saw the ship begin to land and decided that if they were going to ignore her
over something as insignificant as an alien spaceship landing, they had another
thing coming!
***
Piccolo
looked up from his meditative slumber at the landing ship, and at the group of
Sons going to meet it. He grinned to himself in an expression more fitting of
his demon days.
Somebody
was going to get a talking-to very soon. Somebody with blue skin and green
hair.
***
"What
do you think, Zangya?" Zarbon asked rather sarcastically, "Do you
think they missed us?"
"For
their sake I hope not," Zangya replied with a similar tone, cracking the
first smile that she had in weeks.
"Then
let's dampen their day," he said, grinning, as he flipped the switch to
open the door. Zarbon's cheerful demeanour belied the thoughts that were racing
around in his head. he was wondering how the hell he would be able to get Gohan
off Earth and over to Capitol without bloodshed and war in the meantime.
***
Piccolo
forced a smile as the hatch to the ship opened. It made him look positively
demonic. He had to try to hide his current thoughts, though. Were the two
aliens who left anything like the one they left behind? Deceptively amiable,
but dark on the inside? he calmly read their power levels. Zangya's was easy to
recognize- it hadn't risen much and was now only at 40,000, but the other one
was too high to belong to the pretty boy. it was at 70,000, easily. When they
had left earlier, he had been at 35,000-40,000. How did it-? Piccolo did not
want to know the answer to that. All that he wanted, as he saw the door fully
open and the two inhabitants stepped out, was peace for Gohan's future. And
nobody had better try to take that away from him. Nobody.
He thought
all of this in the short expanse of time between when the ships' door began to
open, and when Zarbon stepped out, smiling and waving.
Three
seconds later, Chichi burst out of the woods like a raging bull, screaming
about "My baby's precious, beautiful tail!!!!!" and "What did
you people do to him!!!! I'll kill you!!!!"
Life
was normal again.
***
Later,
at dinner, actual conversation started for real, and the heart of the matter
was reached: Gohan's immediate fate.
"What
did you say?" Bardock asked, absently chewing on a mouthful of food.
"You need Gohan? What for?"
"I
need him to come back with us to Capitol."
Dead
silence filled the dinner table. Even the usual sounds of Gokou snarfing up all
of his food had ceased.
"Absolutely
not," Chichi said flatly, not even turning around from her cooking to face
them. "My Gohan has too much studying to do. isn't that right,
Gohan?"
"Yes,
mom," the boy said rather dejectedly.
"Then
we'll bring his books and keep him on a tight schedule," Zarbon answered, "But
if he doesn't go before Cold and Vegeta, Earth won't be declared Safe, and it
won't be long before you get a full extermination squad here."
"I
don't care about that!" Chichi shouted, still not turning around. "I
want him to become a scholar, not a space traveler! And besides, what if he got
hurt while he was gone?"
"He
won't get hurt, and I don't think that he can do much studying if somebody
blows up his home planet, yes?"
"That
doesn't matter. Discuss it with the boy's father. I'm sure that he'll agree
with me."
Zarbon
turned to Gokou. "Well? King Cold said that I had to bring Gohan for a
little visit before Earth could be declared Safe. What do you think should
happen?"
"I
don't see why he can't go," Gokou said, his mouth full of food. "In
fact, I'd love to go with hi-" he was cut off as a large frying pan came
down on his head, knocking the food out of his mouth and onto the table, while
simultaneously making a dent in the pan so huge that Bugs Bunny could not do it
any better.
"He's
not going," Chichi growled, still holding the mangled pan in her clenched
right hand, "And that's final."
"If
planet earth gets destroyed, there will be no more studying."
Chichi
did not have an answer for that.
After a
while Zarbon spoke up again. "So it's agreed? The boy comes along?"
"But
what about me!" Gokou chimed in, busily re-stuffing his mouth, "Don't
I get to go?"
Zarbon
gave him a classic "Now why didn't I think of that?' look, then answered.
"...Isn't that expected?"
"Aren't
you forgetting someone?" came a rather surly voice from outside the
window.
Zarbon
turned around to see Piccolo standing directly outside of the sun house,
letting the rain fall on his grinning face. He looked like an ogre out of a
children's storybook.
"What
about you?"
Piccolo
forced the window open and stuck his head in, now REALLY looking like an ogre.
"I'm like a second father to the boy- he'll tell you himself. I think that
it would be reasonable for me to come along with your merry little band."
"Sure!"
GOkou started to say as the frying pan came crashing down again, denting it
even further.
"NO!"
Chichi screamed, "I won't let that... that MONSTER go alone with my little
baby in outer space!"
"Monster?"
Zarbon asked, "You think he's bad? Look at me," he said before
transforming.
Chichi
took one look at the bulky, semi-reptilian monster in front of her and fell
silent again.
"Besides,"
piccolo added, still not quite entirely inside the house yet, "I've been
proven to be trustworthy with Gohan. Haven't I, Bardock?"
Bardock
muttered something incomprehensible about some fight or another, and said no
more on the subject. Zarbon went back to his normal form and turned to face
Him. "You just want to come to protect him, don't you?"
"it
seems that you DO have a brain, after all," Piccolo remarked back sarcastically.
"After what happened last night, I don't trust any of you. If Gohan has to
go with you, then so do I. As for his father, I couldn't care less about if
Gokou comes or not. I just don't want you doing anything to him that I wouldn't
do myself."
Zarbon's
eyes widened. "I'm not that perverted!" he shouted at the Namek.
"What?"
Piccolo asked, now totally confused. "I just don't want you people pulling
a Bardock on us."
Zarbon
calmed down when he realized that, being asexual, Piccolo had absolutely no
comprehension of what he was implying.
"Someday
you have to tell me EXACTLY what it was that Bardock did that cost the two of
them their tails."
"I'd
rather not talk about it," The older Saiya-jin growled in a tone more
befitting of Piccolo.
"Fine,
then. Both of you can come. I'm only making one exception, though."
"What
is it?" Gokou asked curiously.
"Chichi
stays home. I don't want to have to stand several weeks of her screaming at
every turn. She might make King Cold destroy the earth anyway."
This
time it was Zarbon who got the frying pan on the head.
***