Meeting the Families

Part 5

Horrified from his recent encounter with Granny Feeple, Son Gohan decided that it was time to brave forth to get food. One glance at the grill, however, swamped with hunger driven Saiya-jins with little Vegita at the helm, handing out uncooked meat while Krillian sat on the ground rubbing his throbbing temples, Gohan decided to try to find some OTHER source of food.

His ebony eyes landed on a large bowl of salad. He wasn't surprised the Saiya-jin had over looked it in their haste to get to the meat, so it was virtually untouched. At the thought of carrots and mangarine oranges with lettus, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and those little marshmellows with a light dressing of vinegar, his mouth watered. He was further thrilled to find the bowl was somewhat separated from the other food, safe and away from the raging mass of Saiya-jin with stomachs the size of Great Brittian.

He carefully picked his way around the other Saiya-jin, and as he approached the bowl of vegetable-ly goodness, he saw that Radditz's girlfriend--Dayna was her name, he recalled--was also thinking of going for the salad. He got the sudden, irrational (though unignorable) notion that she would eat all the salad before he got a chance, leaving him to starve and die while he was forced to watch everyone else eating uncooked meat.

He quickened his pace.

Dayna darted her green eyes up from her ultimate goal: the untouched salad of seeming paradise, to see Gohan heading after it. She seethed with hatred toward the sick, child abusing bastard and became determined to get that salad before he did if it was the last thing she did. She broke into a run.

Seeing her quicken her pace to an all out sprint, Gohan's stomach howled with rage even as he realized that she was much closer to the salad than he was. That wouldn't stop him. That salad was HIS, dammit, and no one was taking it from him now that his stomach had made up it's mind. He ran, too.

They reached the three pronged salad fork sticking out of the bowl at the same time. After a brief bout of tug-of-war, both of their grips slipped on the large, wooden utensil and it flew up into the air. Both Gohan and Dayna swipped at it, grabbing and smacking and grabbing for it again, yet some how it always evaded their grasp. Finally, with a faulty slip of the wrist from Dayna, the fork went sailing over the table and into the stacks of inedibles: among a heaping collection of used styrophome plates, chicken bones, apple cores, used plastic spoons and forks and an over flowing tide of bits and pieces of left over rice and chicken fat.

"Guess we both lose," Gohan said with a mild appologetic grin. He hoped the smile covered the excruciating ache in his stomach.

Dayna didn't say anything, but gave him one of the evilest, hate-filled glares he had ever seen.

He winced and backed away a few feet.

"Nichan!" both Gohan and Dayna's locked eyes broke contact to turn and see little Goten scampering toward them. At the moment, Trunks was no where to be seen.

"Goten, what happened to your eye?" Gohan asked when he saw that one of his little brother's eyes was puffy.

"Like you would care........," Dayna hissed sharply. Gohan winced from her stinging words again. What was her problem? She wasn't acting like this the first time he talked to her. He sighed at his inability to understand women.

"Vegita-" Goten started to say, but when he saw that Dayna was near, he grabbed his big brother's hand and dragged him away.

"Goten, what?" the elder halfling asked, confused as ever. He was getting annoyed at being confused so much recently. All he wanted was a flaming salad!!

Once Goten had dragged Gohan out of Dayna's hearing range he pulled him down to his whispered, "That lady is crazy!"

Gohan almost laughed and agreed, but he clamped down on it with his teeth and took on a stern face, "Now, Goten, that's a very mean thing to say. You shouldn't be so judgmental, she IS your uncle Radditz's girl friend. I hope you've been nice to her so far."

"Oh, me and Trunks have been very polite, but she's still-"

"Goten, don't talk bad about her before you know everything. I'm sure she has a perfect explanation to all this."

"Don't ask her!" Goten quickly interupted.

Gohan couldn't hold the stern face any more, and he broke into a sneaky smile,"What will you give me to keep my mouth shut?"

The little boy carefully considered, rubbing his chin, then, he, too, developed a sneaky smile, "If ya don't, then I won'd bite you!"

"Bite me?!" Gohan found the thought of his little brother biting him, little teeth latched onto his leg, extremely funny. He laughed as, before Goten could react, Gohan kicked his legs out from under him. The little boy crashed to the ground on his back and didn't have a chance to get up before Gohan had him pinned down with tickles.

"Who's gonna bite me? Huh huh?" Gohan taunted as he tickled Goten hard in the ribs, under his arms, his neck, his back, and anywhere else that was unprotected.

"HaahahahahahaI mean-hah, Gohan, stop I-hahaha-I will bite you!-hahahaha," Goten's peals of laughter echoed across the yard. He took a deep breath and screamed, "Gohan, stop! I'm gonna pee!"

Satisfied, the older demi-Saiya-jin got off the younger and rocked back on his heels.

"Well," he said jovially, "I guess you've had eno-"

"Back! Back, you sick bastard!"

Gohan nearly jumped out of his skin when suddenly Dayna had jumped between him and his brother, wildly brandishing the three pronged salad fork in his face. Goten 'eeped' and scooched back away from her while Gohan froze lest she accidentally (or purposly?) jabbed his eyes out.

Dayna had been carefully watching the two brothers as they walked away, and though she had been unable to hear anything they were saying, the instant she saw Gohan knock Goten down that the kid was in trouble. She turned to the table in search of a weapon. She frantically shoved the used plates and food aside, knocked the salad off the table, threw dirty plastic forks and spoons over her shoulder until, low and behold, she came across the salad fork she and Gohan had been capering over minutes earlier.

She grabbed the fork in her hand and leapt at the two, reaching them just in time to hear Gohan saying, "I guess you've had eno-"

She jumped, swinging the only weapon she had at the child abusing monster before he could hurt the little boy again, "Back! Back, you sick bastard!"

Gohan was, in the least, at a loss for words.

"Dayna, what-"

"Shut up, sicko, don't you take a step toward me or that poor little child of so help me I'll-"

"Dayna, what the heck are you doing?!"

Goten, Gohan and Dayna all turned to see Radditz come toward them.

Radditz had been searching for Dayna for the past fifteen minutes. He searched around the whole Capsule Corps compound, had even pulled Drinkin' Lincoln aside to see if he had seen her. Now that he did find her, however, a long, sharp, wooden, salad fork thrust in his oldest nephew's face, he almost wished he hadn't found her.

"Radditz!" she said to him, never taking her eyes off of Gohan incase he.........what was she afraid he would do? "Do you know what sort of sick things this.....this MONSTER does to your little nephew? He's sick! He needs to be institutionalized!"

Radditz cast a disbeliveing look to Gohan, who shrugged confusedly back to him.

"Dayna, what are you-"

"I'm not surprised you don't know. I've read alot of psycology books, and there's more domestic violence out there than were ready to accept. I bet our dear, sweet, innocent Gohan here has been able to cast a smoke screen around his sinister actions. But just ask the kid. Little Goten will tell you."

Goten jumped when she said his name, "Tell you what? Gohan's never mean to me!"

"You don't have to lie any more. It's okay Goten, your big brother can't do any more harm to you. We'll sent him away, get him help and maybe in a few years he can come back-"

"RADDITZ, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!!"

All of them jumped at the sound of Vegita's angry voice, which was soon followed by the angry Saiya-jin Prince himself. He landed on the opposite side of Dayna, Gohan and Goten, so they stood between him and Radditz. He had murder in his eyes.

"Vegita, could you yell at Radditz another time?" Gohan asked, darting his eyes back and forth from the Prince to the fork and the angry woman behind it, "We're kind of in a crisis at the mom-"

"Shut up, brat, or I'll kill you once I'm done with your uncle! Radditz, how dare you send me to talk to," Vegita paused to shudder, "That.....that.....perverted old woman! I feel dirty just thinking of it!"

"Is he talking about my grammy?" Dayna asked.

"Oh, kami," Gohan moaned, "And you were wearing THOSE pants?" The thought of that old woman getting her clutches on a man like Vegita with spandex pants on..............

"Yes," Vegita said, his face a darker shade than it should, "So if you'll excuse me and Radditz, we have to-"

"Wait-a-minute," Dayna lowered her fork half a millimeter, but raised it again when Gohan relaxed. She turned her murderious glare on Vegita, who, still shaken up from his shocking confrontation with Grandama Feeple, winced. "YOU'RE Vegita?"

Trying to build back up his thoroughly mutilated composure, the Saiya-jin Prince snapped, "Of coarse, you idiot."

"Then," Dayna looked pitifully at little Goten, who was still slowly scooching away from her, "You're the one who hit that poor innocent little boy?"

Vegita narrowed his eyes as he tried to figure out what she was getting at.

"Then YOU'RE as bad as this monster here!" She gestured at Gohan, who jumped when she waved the fork in his face again.

"I really think you've made a mistake here," Gohan said, desperatly trying to settle this matter before SOMEONE (himself especially) got hurt.

"Be quiet, hell spawn!" Dayna threatened, then swung the fork around to point at Vegita, who was about to attack Radditz, "And you better not lay a hand on Radditz, or I swear-"

"Oh, kami, what the hell is going on here?!"

The five of them jerked their heads to see that suddenly they were surrounded by both of their families-the Sons, Briefs and Feeples, who had come running when they thought they heard a commotion. A whole throng of wide-eyed gawkers trying to figure out what in Heaven or or Earth was going on.

"Ye gods," Eli Feeple exclaimed.

"What are you doing to my husband?!" Videl shrieked, clutching Pan for dear life.

".......," For the first time in his life, Lincoln Feeple was speachless.

"Maybe you should just put the fork down...," Krillian tried to say soothingly.

"Gouge their eyes out!" little Vegita exclaimed, shaking the cooking spatuala he was still holding in the air like a macabre rattle.

"Shaddap," Glenda Feeple said, holding one of her huge, muscular fists threateningly. The little Saiya-jin Prince immidiatly became silent.

"Are all these Earthlings this insane?" Bardock asked, smiling at the hilarity of it all.

"Woo, it's a regular five-some!" Granny Feeple's scratchy voice echoed, "Lemme in! Lemme in!"

Everyone standing near her backed away five paces or more.

Trunks wondered if he should laugh or run while he still could.

Aunt Fanny brandished her knife at the prospect of blood shed.

Gohan wondered if it could possibly get any worse.

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