Contradicting Mission

Part 14

Bojack, Son Gohan, Freeza and Garlic half-walked, half-ran out of the Tahch-jin prison/fortress. Panting, they stopped once they had passed through the hole Bojack had torn in the enterance and turned to look behind them. They watched for a moment, waited to see if they were persued. No one came after them; from withing, neither Gohan or Garlic could feel more than a handful of living beings withing a hundred feet. Despite, Bojack raised his hand and blasted a bright, golden ball of chi in through the enterance.

As they started walking back to Sunow's home, the complex began to explode behind them. Once Bojack's blast had detonated, it caused a chain reaction, causing the circuts within to reach melt-down and explode. One after another they sounded off as they blew.

Boom! B-boom! Krrrr....BOOM!

None of them looked back. Bojack chuckled in an almost giddy way. Garlic scowled. Freeza smirked. Gohan's face was unreadable.

Not counting the three he had faught at Backlash, or the four he had faught while getting Forester and Eesei at school, or the eight he faught while on his way to rescue Freeza and Garlic, Gohan had killed or maimed thirteen Aeesu-jin, all along their escape.

Twenty-eight Aeesu-jin in all.

Bojack had killed fifty-six.

In all, there was a bloody body count of eighty-four. A mass-murder far greater than any Gohan had ever participated in, nearly a hundred people dead in one day. Strangely, he only numbly felt the guilt and self-loathing he usually did after killing. It was a dull ache in the back of his mind, a sharp edge jabbing him from somewhere deep in his cloudy subconscious.

And yet, on a different scale, one far clearer and more rational and somehow more ruthelss, it was somehow justified. Tousan would understand. He had killed off the entire Red Ribbon army, hadn't he? There were more than eighty-four people in the Red Ribbon army. There were hundreds. Thousands. Yes, Tousan would understand if he were here. Piccolo-san would understand, too. The cause did justify the means, or so argued half of Gohan's mind.

Kuririn wouldn't have understood, though. Or Yamcha. Choutzu, Tenshinhan, Muten Roshi-sama. They wouldn't have understood at all. His mother, Okasan, would never have understood. The Earthlings, all in all, wouldn't. Was it just the Earthling nature to not be quite as good at comprehending and accepting death? Piccolo-san, Tousan, and Vegita-san seemed far more capable in that respect.

Strange. Was it up-bringing or heriditary? Both Piccolo and Son Goku had been raised on Earth, never known anything other than what the other Earthlings knew. Were Saiya-jins and Nameksei-jins naturally born with a keener knowledge of life and death, just as they were born with a keener fighting sense and ability to manipulate chi?

Gohan didn't know. At the moment, his Saiya-jin instincts were flaring like they never had before, he wasn't sure whether he was Earthling or Saiya-jin or something all together different. Somewhere, lurking in the shadows of his conscious, he felt regret. Given the time and peace of mind to think about it, he probably would feel ashamed. Not yet, though. Like so many things, it was not the time to think about it. Action. A time of action.

A warm wetness that struck his arm informed him that his cheek was bleeding again.

This whole fiasco, as enlightening as it was, sucked.

The four of them--the original four that had arrived on Aeesu-sei together--did not attempt to communicate as they walked. Niether Freeza or Garlic asked how Gohan and Bojack had found out they were taken prisoner. Neither Bojack or Gohan asked why they had allowed theselves to be taken. Conversation was the last thing they needed at the moment, especially with eachother.

As Gohan mentally counted down the turns it would take to get to Sunow's, he planned out what he would do when he got there. A long, cold drink of water. Ice water. Then a bath. A warm one. He would scrub away all the blood, both his and the Aeesu-jin's, then tend to the ache in his side that he feared might be a cracked rib. He hoped it wasn't; he couldn't afford to be seriously injured in this situation.

He purposely walked with his shoulders swept back and his long brown tail lashing confidently behind him; broken rib or not, he couldn't allow these three to know he was hurt. He just couldn't.

3......2........1..... the number of turns went.

And they were there. Sunow's welcoming door was just ahead, and relief was lapping at Gohan's tensions, wearing away at it like wind on a rock. Given time and security, Gohan knew he would be able to handle this insane, overwhelming task. Somehow. A warm bath........

The door swished open for them and Gohan, in the lead, entered with a weary smile. Strange how he was already starting to consider Sunow's apartment as home. He was home. Not the home he'd like to be in, but it was still close, and that was all the luxory he could afford. Home.

"Son Gohan!" Sunow's voice--though normally possessing the trademark Aeesu-calm--was shrill and loud, grating on the Saiya-jin boy's ears, "Thank Heng you're back! There is an urgent call to you from Dr. Koda! He's been waiting to talk to you since you left!"

Gohan blinked as his mind jumped from zero to sixty in two seconds, "The doctor called?"

"Is calling, er, waiting."

"Where?"

Sunow, though limping heavily and favoring one arm, seemed pretty much recovered since Gohan had brought him home, strong and resilant. The Aeesu-jin were a warrior people like the Saiya-jin, Gohan supposed. Still in a daze from all he had to soak up in a single day, Gohan allowed Sunow to lead him across the room to the computer console. Bojack, Freeza and Garlic lingered behind them, curious despite themselves.

Sunow asked his computer, "Is Dr. Koda still on the line?"

"Dr. Koda is," the neatral computer voice answered.

"On screen," Sunow took hold of Gohan's shoulders, positioning him infront of the screen as it blinked to life, displaying the good doctor as he talking to someone they couldn't see.

"....and so I told him--Son Gohan!" The doctor took note of the boy, "There you are! Where did you go after you left my office? I thought you would go straight home so I could contact you......is that blood on your cheek? Good kami what happened? ."

"I was...," Gohan paused, covering the cut with his palm. I was attacking Backlash headquarters? Breaking into the top-secret Tahch-jin base?

"Nevermind, this is too important for excuses. I've managed to get ahold of you, so all is not lost. Do you remember before you left my office? I told you I would try to get a hearing with Heng so you could inform him of the threat to our planet."

"Damn brat must have told everyone he met--uff!" Freeza started to mumble before Bojack elbowed him in the stomach so he could hear what was being said.

"As soon as you left," the doctor continued, "I pulled every string I had to contact Heng immidiatly. I got through and told them there was a chrisis. Since I have some sway, they listened to my words and want to speak with you right away. If there is a threat, they want to know about it."

"Right, I understand," Gohan said, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck.

"Good, come to my office immidiatly; we mustn't keep Heng waiting."

The screen went blank, Gohan barely clamped his teeth down on the moan climbing up his throat, "He wants me to go, now?"

"Yes, this is Heng we're talking about!" Sunow said and started to lead him back across the room to the door, "I didn't know it was this important....oh, dear, oh, dear...."

His mind in an uncooperational blank, Gohan could only sputter, "Wait, I....."

"Hold it," Freeza said, "You're not seriously thinking whoever, or whatever Heng is, they'll take the word of a boy are you?"

Sunow paused from shoving Gohan out the door, "What are you suggesting?"

"I'm going, too," Freeza said, lifting his chin, daring the other to challenge him, "There isn't an Aeesu-jin alive that hasn't wondered what Heng was. Besides, chances are an off-planet Aeesu-jin will be easier to listen to than a little alien boy."

Sunow hesitated, considered, answered, "I have no say in what you can and can't do, but are you aware of the risks--"

"Risks?" Bojack interjected, "What sort of risks?"

Sunow forced his mind to weed fantasy stories of awesome, immortal power and raw energy he learned as a child from the facts he had dug up during his bouts off free time and curiosity, "Heng, supposedly, has over five million Aeesu-jin at his (or its) beck and call day and night; I'm not just talking about the average trainee. From what I've dug up, these could be Aeesu-jin bred for power and cunning--generations of superpowered giants striking death to all that defy them.......or so they say. Not even I know everything, but caution is something one should stress in this situation."

"I'm going," Bojack said, "That bozu seems to magnatize trouble everywhere he goes, and I don't want to suddenly drop dead just because he was being stupid."

Sunow gaped at him, then turned his head to look at Garlic, as though expecting the gremlin to suddenly pipe in and say that he, too, wished to go. Garlic said nothing.

Swallowing whatever argument he might have, Sunow answered, "Like I said, I have no say in what you do. But go now, Heng is waiting."

Gohan left the apartment first without a word, Freeza following behind him and Bojack last.

Looks like a warm bath was, once again, out of the question. When Gohan swallowed a lump of emotion in his throat--he wasn't sure if it was fear, anxiety, anger, annoyance, dissapointment or something else--his throat felt scratchy. He wished he had at least paused for a sip of water before he left.

The doctor paced nerviously back and forth before the enterance to his office after releasing his secretary early, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Son Gohan. In truth, he had only personally met Heng on two occations, and even then he wasn't sure it was the real guy. There were probably hundreds of decoys ment to represent the real one to avoid assasination attempts, especially in this time of turmoil.

Now that he had everything set up, he started to feel doubt. Not so much doubt as about Gohan's story--that boy certainly looked like he was telling the truth; the doctor was an excelent judge of that--but would Heng believe him? After getting to know the boy, it was obvious that he had an honest heart, but what if Heng couldn't see that? What if he was accused of lying and wasting thier time, or worse, what if they thought the boy was mad and confined him to an asylum......or simply killed him?

The doctor blew air out his lips, too many bridges to cross; it would probably be smart to not start counting them.

The door opened, and the swish sound that went with it sent a shock of adrenaline up his body, making him realize just how edgy he was. In the door way stood the awaited Son Gohan.......and behind him stood the unawaited Freeza and....what was that other guy's name?

"I got here as soon as I could," Gohan said as he straighted one of his armbands.

The doctor looked him up and down. One of his pant-legs was torn wide open, the edges slightly stained by blood that was obviously his own. Though the rest of his clothes were pretty much in tact, there were worn looking, dog-eared and stained with blood--Aeesu-jin blood, the doctor recognized with horror.. His hair was even wilder than it was before, though the doctor didn't know much about hair behavior patters. And of coarse there was the gash on his cheek.

"I don't know what happened, but I can only say you look like a ragamuffin. Son Gohan, what went on after you left here?"

The boy tugged nerviously at the hem of his gi, straightened his belt, curled his tail around his hip and fingered its tip nerviously, "Alot of things.....but it would take a while to explain. Heng is waiting, isn't it?"

The doctor crossed his arms, looking at the boy sceptically. His years of expiriance listening to student's excuses for why their homework wasn't done, years of listening to why fat patriots didn't take their vitamine supplements, years of listening to why his secretaries were late for work; none of this expiriance was exercized to see this kid was either lying, or hiding something probably bad if not illegal.

The Aeesu-jin blood splattered on his gi was an upleasant hint about the latter. Dr. Koda could only hope it was self-defense.

"Son Gohan, come into my office for a moment. I have a sink in there, you can wash up--cleanliness is important amoung Aeesu-jin. You two wait out here, we'll be back out in a few minutes. Be ready so we can leave immidiatly."

Freeza and Bojack nodded minutely to him--for some odd reason taking orders from this particular man didn't seem to compramise their pride. He just seemed so....genial.

Gohan and the doctor vanished into the back room; at a last glance, Bojack watched the last few inches of Gohan's tail vanish, and the door close behind him.

*

Inside, Gohan quietly crossed the room, rounded around the patient's chair, and turned the water on in the sink. Holding his hand under the running water until it almost felt hot enough to almost burn the skin, Gohan turned back to the doctor, "Do you have a washcloth I can use?"

"I'm sure I have something," the doctor said, rumaging through a drawer and pulling out a roll of gauze, "Will this work?"

"Yeah," the boy took it.

The doctor leaned against the counter, his arms crossed over his paunchy stomach and watched quietly for a while as Gohan carefully wetted the gauze and started blotting at some of the larger spots on the front of his gi, scrubbing at them until the dried blood moisened again and began to stained the white material.

"Some fight, huh?" The doctor commented pointedly.

The boy looked up from his task, caught the look the doctor was giving him, looked down at the running water a moment, darted a look at the doctor again from the corner of his eye and started wringing out the wet gauze. His tail seemed alive and wild, coiling around his thigh and hip like a snake then uncoiling and doubling and tripling over itself in perplexed knots.

"It was nothing."

The doctor sighed, another truth evasion. To him, it was nearly as bad as lying, "Son Gohan, I trusted your word about the threat to this planet, I believed you to the point that I accually dragged Heng, Heng, into this. I want to trust you very much but the only way for me to do that is if you tell me the truth."

"The truth is.....," Gohan said, "The truth is that the Aeesu-jin people as a whole seem to hate aliens like me for no other reason than that I'm different. Ethnocentricism. Bigotry. Racism. I've seen it before, it happens on my planet, too, but it's never really happened to me before." That's right, draw attention away from the real problem with a different one. "I was attacked because they thought I did something I didn't."

The doctor didn't say anything as he studied the boy up and down, taking note of the evident damage the fight had left.

"Son Gohan, I know you have good intentions and high hopes. Your daring intelligence in this warrior's world is commendable, but even I have to admit that it's doubtful that you, a mere Saiya-jin boy, could hurt any Aeesu-jin. Our kind is naturally incredibly strong."

Gohan didn't say anything as his devoted his attention to washing the blood off his face and neck; some of it was his, some of it wasn't. Kami, he didn't remember there being this much blood squirting off the Aeesu-jin when he faught them. Evidence, remains, reminders.....he was glad to wash it off.

"But obviously, somehow you've managed to hurt at least one of them to the point of bleeding, while you remain nearly unscratched. Son Gohan, tell me another story, a true one. Tell me how you managed to attain your kind of power at your tender age?"

There was an audible snap that filled the room as Gohan's tail involuntarily cracked like a whip. Gohan knealt down and started washing the crusty, oozy, dark-red off of his gashed leg. He was breathing through his teeth in deep thought, "I've been in......hopeless fighting situations before. Alot of them. Some came unexpectedly, but a surprising number I knew were coming from years in advance."

The doctor stroked his chin in thought.

"Alot of the time it really seemed like there was simply no way to win, where you feel like you only have a year left to live and you should just try to enjoy it while you can," he untucked his pantleg from his boot, then retucked it in, trying to fold and crease it to hide the tear that ran up to his knee. It was still evident, but not nearly as bad as before, "But I guess we just couldn't accept it. If we even had just a week, we would put our very lives on the line to try to get strong enough to survive. Strange as it is, it's worked so far....more or less. Some of us always survive."

The doctor opened his mouth and asked, "Who's 'we'?"

Gohan gnawed at a piece of loose skin on his lip, "My friends and father."

The doctor caught the momentary flash of pain that crossed the boy's eyes at the mention of the latter, "Where is your father, now?"

"Dead."

And the weight of that one word was enough to end the conversation.

"Well, I suppose you look as good as you're going to wearing those clothes," the doctor said as he watched Gohan stand up straight again. With his tail lashing behind him and his tuffy, wild hair haloing above him, he was nearly the very image of vitality, strength and youth, except......"When we get back I want to put some stitches in that facial wound, it looks deep. I want to look at your leg, too."

"I think there's something wrong with my side, too," Gohan caught himself adding. He hadn't intended to tell anyone that he was hurt, why had he been blurting things out so much lately?

The doctors eyes narrowed with concern and he said, "Hold still for a second."

Gohan did as he was told, even when the Aeesu-jin doctor approached him and started gently probing his ribcage with his long white fingers. There were few things that really bothered Gohan.....but he was extremely possessive about his personal space. Since the age of four he nearly always found that physical contact lead to pain; years of such association resulted in heavy hesitancy to allow anyone but the most trusted of people to accually lay a hand on him in any significant way. He just barely kept himself from shying away from the goodly-intentioned doctor and holding his side protectively.

But it was a childish notion and he would not allow himself to behave juvanily; his mother had taught him better than that. Still, he closed his eyes to avoid having to see the large Aeesu-jin body so close to him. It didn't matter, he still felt him. He felt like a caged animal.

Of coarse, the doctor could see all this written across the boy's face. With his face scrunched in expectation and his eyes squeezed so tightly together that they were watering; his little body was trembling slightly with subconscience fear, as though he were expecting something horrible to happen to him. The doctor had seen it before, surprisingly it was most evident in the Saiya-jin children he evaluated. Though Son Gohan was a great, sophisicated cry from the primitive little brutes that came in each week, he still seemed to retain some of their natural instincts, one being, namely, clausterphobia.

Gohan winced when the doctor's hand found the sore spot on his side, and as much as he tried to control himself, he instinctively pulled away and backed up a few feet.

"Son Gohan, you have a cracked rib and heavy bruising. You shouldn't be up and walking around in your condition. I'll call Heng and cancel the meeting. They won't be happy, but you should let me tend to those right away before you worsen your condition."

"No, I'm fine. Really. I heal pretty fast, and I've been through worse before and had to endure it for way longer. Don't cancel."

The good doctor pushed his lips into a thin line. He didn't like this, "Do you promise you'll let me take a better look at your side when we get back?"

Gohan hesitated, "I might be pretty much healed by then."

"That does't matter, I still want to check for internal injuries."

Time was wasting, and Gohan could almost hear the sound of ticking as he finally said, ".....alright."

"Good," the doctor said with a nod, "Now let's go."

By the time Henning Le'Armont made his way through the rubble that used to be his main office, most of the wounded Aeesu-jin had already been taken to emergency rooms, while the dead had been carted out in little black bags. Pushing his way past two Aeesu-jin medics, Henning started to shout.

"Out of my way. Where is my brother? Joru, where are you!?"

It didn't take long before he was pointed into the right direction, a small room off to the side. Within, Joru Le'Armont sat in a large chair, talking to an Aeesu-jin homocide detective. He continuously wrung his hands together, so hard that he had already developed a slight bald patch on his knuckles and inner palms--the fur simply rubbed away.

"....and then the kid left. Just like that--brother!"

Joru leapt to his feet in sheer joy at seeing his brother again; he always felt so vulnerable when his tougher sibling was missing, "Where were you? Do you know what happened? Oh, kami, it was terrible!"

Not knowing everything that had happened, but feeling slightly disturbed by his normally composed brother ranting like a maniac, Henning asked, "Did you get what happened on record?"

Grasping at his nerves after his close encounter, Joru nodded, "I got it all. The detectives are studying it now, but I made a copy so you could see in in private as soon as you arrived."

"Uh, Le'Armont-san?" The homocide detective asked from behind them, "I need a statement and any other information you might have on these four perps."

"Later," Joru said, ushering him out the door, "I have to update my brother. Go watch the recording with the others."

He shoved the Aeesu-jin out the door and closed it behind him. Leaning his back against the door, he turned to face Henning.

"Show me the recording," Henning said.

Gohan thought he looked familiar, though in an odd way. And right on the heels of that first thought came the second. He looked like the old, giant Nameksei-jin elder he met when he was five. His face was lined with age, and he was indeed huge. Bigger than the Namek elder, perhaps. And fat. Life must have been good to him, for from the point where his brow hung heavily over his eyes, he was nothing but rolls of skin. Under his heavily lidded eyes, rolls of bags spanned down his cheeks. Deep lines traced down his chin from the corners of his mouth. His cheeks sagged down on either side of his neck, while under his chin the rolls vanished under a thick, purple robe.

Yes, very much like the Nameksei-jin elder. But colder.

In fact, his chi was down-right chilling. Cold and calculated and nearly unreadable, he sat on a huge throne with his huge, droppy tail hanging over one arm, surrounded by perhaps six other Aeesu-jin, all of which were larger than Gohan had ever seen them, though not nearly as large as he was. They were perhaps twice the size of Bojack, while he was nearly the size of an oozaru.

It was Heng. Though Gohan didn't know if the huge Aeesu-jin in the middle was Heng, or all of them together were. Either way, they were inconcievable strong, and impossibly large, and Gohan suddenly felt horrifically dwarved by them and longed for his Super Saiya-jin form. Their combined power accually sent a chill of fear down his spine. Real, hard-core fear. He hadn't felt that in years.

To be continued............