good loser

by mareza

Summary:

Gohan says, “I want one month.”

They both stop. As one, they turn pale blue eyes down to where he stands in the wreckage they have made.

They’ll never agree to one month. It’s too high. Seventeen is going to take the offer back and they can all pretend this never came up.

But it would be one month to train Trunks in safety. One month for Bulma to do her work without the threat of death from above.

They’ll never, ever agree.

Seventeen comes up with new games to ease his boredom. Gohan tries to give Trunks, and the world, more time.

Chapter 1: proposition

Notes:

Amorekay made an edit for Future Gohan/the fic!

While I drew from different canons (Japanese- and English-language animes, manga, etc.), the DBZ: Kakarot Warrior of Hope DLC (English dub) is the main source for several details, especially Seventeen’s and Eighteen’s dynamics with Gohan.

Warning: This is fundamentally a character study for Future Gohan and Future Seventeen, and a little of Future Eighteen. This story explores the dynamics of sexual coercion and how this type of abuse affects those involved. The subject is used to explore questions of agency/bodily autonomy and is treated with respect. No explicit content is depicted. I’ve chosen “&” over “/” for Seventeen and Gohan to indicate that despite the sex, it's not a ship.

Sorry to Universe 7's MVP. This is another timeline.

Fennel City goes dark with smoke and bright with fire. Here in the remains of what was once a charming coastal town, Gohan spends another weekday losing against the apocalypse.

“Don’t give up so fast, Gohan. I’m sure you’ve got another ten minutes in you.”

“Just look at him, Seventeen. We’ll be lucky if we get five.”

Gohan is good at losing. He has been mastering the strategy since he was four. You take the hits, you go down, you get back up. You do it, over and over, muscle and sinew and blood and bone, until you can’t.

Always a bit of a pain digging himself out from under buildings, though. Before Gohan's lungs can start choking on the dust of catastrophe, he has to deal with the former skyscraper bearing down on his chest.

“Fighting this guy is getting stale.” Even under buildings, he can always pick out their voices. Eighteen’s familiar flat cruelty strikes lower and more directly than her counterpart. “Let’s just end this and get rid of the rest of the humans here.”

“Hey,” Seventeen says. “Fighting is what he’s good at. Well, okay at. What are we going to do, game with him?”

Seventeen raises his voice to call through concrete, like he’s being considerate. Asshole. “Hey, Gohan. Tell me how your gaming is.”

Gohan braces his hands against buckled steel and plaster and tries to steady his lungs. Forcing his ki through his arms, he manages to lift the weight from his chest.

“Seriously? With you two around?”

“Okay,” Seventeen answers, “Not good at video games either. Maybe you’d give a decent fight in Go.”

A hundred little flames of life still burn in the city. Most are fading quickly—people under the rubble, not survivors, just the not-yet-dead. Gohan can’t do anything for them.

But there are a dozen or so making their way to the edge of the city. There’s a chance for them, as long as the androids don’t hunt them down. They just need time.

Muscle, sinew, blood, bone. It’s just about getting back up. Gohan inhales, centers himself, and pushes again. The wreckage rises and Gohan gets his feet under him. With a shift of his grip, he has the structure up in the air, throws himself to the side and out of the way as it collapses in scattered dust and screeching metal, scans fast for the enemy.

Eighteen floats a foot above a collapsed department store sign. Seventeen perches on the edge of the twisted, broken glass of the facade.

They let him get to his feet. Gohan wipes blood from his mouth.

“I’m actually not half bad at Go,” Gohan says.

“Figures,” says Eighteen

“Yeah,” Seventeen adds, “Kind of predictable, Gohan. And boring. What about sex?”

It almost startles Super Saiyan out of him. Gohan reaches for the flame of his rage before the shock can snuff it out, catches that feeling and feeds it on memories both new and long held close—

“Holy shit,” Eighteen says.

“Yeah,” Seventeen continues. “That’d kill some time. How about it?”

“Oh my God. That is insane. Just end him.”

“Nah, we can still have some fun with him.” Seventeen shifts to rest his chin on his fist. “What do you say, Gohan? Let’s hook up.”

“You—” Gohan’s hands twitch with a force he can barely control. Gohan recites a litany of dead friends, doesn’t let his fighting stance falter. Piccolo would never tolerate a lapse.

He says, “You’re my enemies. I’m going to kill you.”

Eighteen usually laughs at his 'macho bravado.' She is silent now.

“Well,” Seventeen says. “It’d be a chance to relax.”

“So, you’re saying, what, that I—help you kill time, or you’ll kill me?”

Seventeen doesn’t have Eighteen’s harshness. When he talks to Gohan, it’s always with amused patience, like an older kid with a slow, useless tagalong.

“Gohan,” he says. “We’re going to kill you anyway.”

Gohan clenches his fists until he feels blood.

Then Seventeen gets to his feet, perfectly balanced on the edge of the shattered store front. He stretches out an arm. “I’ll sweeten the game. You like protecting these humans, right? I’ll promise not to kill anyone for a few days.”

Eighteen is suddenly right beside her partner. “What. You’re kidding.”

“We can find something else to do,” Seventeen says.

“That is not the issue here.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Gohan doesn’t think I’m unbelievable.”

“Who gives a shit what he thinks? I think this is stupid.”

Gohan says, “I want one month.”

They both stop. As one, they turn pale blue eyes down to where he stands in the wreckage they have made.

They’ll never agree to one month. It’s too high. Seventeen is going to take the offer back and they can all pretend this never came up.

But it would be one month to train Trunks in safety. One month for Bulma to do her work without the threat of death from above.

They’ll never, ever agree.

Seventeen’s slight, cruel smile widens. “Look at you, Gohan. You’re playing for keeps. One month?”

“In advance. You don’t kill or hurt any humans, for one month, in advance. You need to keep your side of the deal first.”

“This is absolute bullshit, Seventeen,” Eighteen cuts in. “Stop being disgusting.”

“How am I being disgusting?”

“Eighteen can’t hurt anyone either,” Gohan adds. “Not one person, do you understand?”

Eighteen could scuttle the entire deal. She could refuse it. She should refuse. And is Gohan failing as a protector for not being grateful for that she might?

A real protector wouldn't need to resort to desperate bargains. A real protector would win.

Gohan hopes the eyes of Otherworld are turned away.

“You know what, Gohan?” Seventeen has glanced down at Gohan often enough over thirteen years. But this time is— “This is going to be an even better game than I thought.”

On Namek, Gohan had been a footnote to Frieza, right until Frieza gored Krillin on a horn. Then the flip had switched—Frieza was in front of him, Krillin was in the water, and Frieza would not get out of the way.

So Gohan made him.

But Frieza rose up again, wiped the dirt from his face, and truly looked at Gohan for the first time since they crossed paths. And Gohan knew: he was going to die far, far from home.

Gohan can't move under Seventeen’s gaze.

Then Seventeen turns to his partner, and Gohan remembers how to breathe. “Okay, Eighteen,” Seventeen says. “Let’s go.”

“You’re kidding,” Eighteen says. “We’re not done here.”

“A deal’s a deal. I’m gonna go clear that new save on Big Larceny Vehicle IV. You can help.”

Seventeen glances back.

“North side of Poppy City. See you in a month, Gohan.”

Then he’s gone.

Eighteen lingers a moment longer, arms crossed and lips furled in irritation at where Seventeen just stood. But when she looks down at Gohan, the expression on her face is unfamiliar. Not half-bored disdain but hard, visceral, unmasked disgust.

Eighteen flies away.

Gohan stands in shattered concrete, still wreathed in the rage that Vegeta once believed would be the salvation of his people. The broken window where Seventeen had perched is frozen on the edge of collapse. A spiderweb of fractures, held by the weight of all the pieces interlocked. If someone touched it, it would remember itself and break.

Nearby, someone screams for help.

Gohan has time to reach them.

“Hang on!” he calls “I’m coming!”

Gohan spends the next hour and the last of his strength digging survivors out of the rubble as they wait for the emergency teams to arrive. They’re badly wounded, on death’s door, but if they make it to a hospital, they could survive this.

It feels like he is only saving them to die another day.

 

 

It isn’t going to happen, obviously. Seventeen lacks the patience, and Eighteen isn’t getting anything out of the deal. The androids will never keep their word.

Still. Gohan knows he needs a battle plan. The whole concept is—a risk. A risk he can’t refuse to take, but a big one. Seventeen could kill him just because it would be an amusing final joke in the long farce that they’ve made of his life. Piccolo would have never put up with him walking into enemy territory outmatched and uncertain without even having a contingency.

So he goes to Bulma.

The remaining labs of Capsule Corp are less hidden than tucked out of sight. Gohan has been suggesting for years, as politely as he can, that Bulma could relocate somewhere a bit more distant from the main compound. But Bulma has been insistent: the things she needs are here, and the androids have already done damage to West City. They’re only taking potshots at it now.

She has a point. Gohan would just feel a little more comfortable if she wasn’t sitting under the most obvious target in what was once one of the biggest metropolises on Earth.

“Bulma? Do you have a minute?”

He walks cautiously through the mess of parts, tools, and unknown liquids that decorate the overlit floor of Bulma’s workroom. From under a plate of curved yellow metal, Bulma sticks out her head.

“Gohan! Are you looking for Trunks?”

“For you, actually. Do you have a moment?”

Her eyes widen, and she immediately drags herself out from under her current project. She shoves her wrench into her tool belt and meets him halfway.

“What do you need, Gohan?”

Gohan pulls the manila folder (borrowed, he has to admit, from the abandoned admin rooms of Capsule Corp above ground) from under his arm and holds it out to her. Grease smears the cover where she takes it in hand.

“Huh,” Bulma says. “So, can I look?”

He can’t resist a small grin. “Would anything stop you?”

“Wow. Harsh, Gohan! I can respect a secret.”

She immediately flips it open.

“It’s for Trunks,” Gohan explains. “Just a few things I thought he might need to know. Things about our mix that aren’t really covered in the medicals, a few things Vegeta told me about himself or Saiyans that you might not have heard…”

Bulma is no longer looking at the folder. “Gohan. What are you doing?”

“There’s some advice on training too,” Gohan continues, “and on reaching Super Saiyan.” He smiles at her. “For when you decide he’s old enough to train.”

“When I decide that, huh. And what do you think is old enough for training, Gohan?”

“I guess I’d say, younger than old enough for the battlefield.”

The answer doesn’t leave her impressed.

Gohan brightens his tone. “But—no reason to worry about that now. I’m not going to let anything happen to Trunks any time soon. It’s what I’m here for.”

Her knowing look softens. She never used to wear expressions like this when he was a kid. She shouldn’t have to.

“You should have stayed short, like Vegeta.” Bulma puts her other hand on top of his head. Grease is definitely going to get into his hair, but he just bends down to help her reach. “I think you’re taller than your dad now.”

“Not likely. My father was a giant.”

“Come by for dinner more, okay? It’s nice having you around.”

“Are you sure about that, Bulma? You might not have a budget for wrenches if you get into the habit of feeding two Saiyan appetites.”

“That’s why you’re going to catch the entrées with Trunks. Besides, it’ll be good for you to spend more time together. Not like you have anything else to do together, right?”

Gohan laughs. “I’ll try. Just keep these safe for me, okay? And thank you.”

Gohan turns—speaking of dinner, he really should start hunting down his own right now—and starts back towards the exit. Work-tacky fingers catch around his wrist.

Gohan stops and looks back over his shoulder. Bulma meets his eyes.

“Be careful out there. Okay? We need you too.”

She deserves better than this. He has to give her more time.

Gohan smiles. “I won’t let you down.”

 

 

“Maybe they just… died.”

“Trunks.”

With no fights to run to or recover from, Gohan has been able to increase the frequency of Trunks’s training. The boy has thrived under the extra attention, progressing so quickly that Gohan has had to adjust his planned timetable for his lessons.

Super Saiyan remains out of reach. Gohan isn’t surprised. But he lets Trunks try.

Trunks, sweat covered from his efforts and sprawled out on the beach at Gohan’s side, nudges the dial of the radio. On this channel, as on all the others, there is only music and radio personalities, just as there has been for the past three weeks.

“Maybe their power ran out.”

“Trunks.”

“It’s why they never get tired, right? So maybe—maybe it’s not infinite, it's just that they run at full power until it’s all gone. So maybe it finally ran out.”

“That doesn’t seem very likely.”

“It could happen, though, right? They’re machines. Machines can run out of power.”

“Do your mother’s machines run out of power?”

“Well, no,” Trunks says, “but that’s because she knows fuel is scarce so she makes it so they charge themselves by taking energy from their environment.”

Then, he says, “Oh.”

Gohan uncurls an arm from around his bent leg to give Trunks a proper pat on the head. The kid has a good head on his shoulders, and Gohan isn’t going to begrudge him hope. He’ll need it. But Gohan doesn’t want to feed misplaced optimism.

“There was a time,” Gohan says, “I think when I was around twelve, when they went dark for three months. No one knows why.”

Gohan stops. Then he forces himself to clear the thought away.

Instead, he looks across at Trunks and taps him on his crown. “They came back. Besides, what have we been doing all this training for? Are you really going to let bad engineering take your chance to defeat the androids from you?”

“Well.” Trunks frowns, scrunched mouth and wrinkled nose. “If I had to, if it would end it, then yeah. But…”

“But what do you want, Trunks?”

Trunks takes another moment for thought. His eyebrows flatten, and his mouth sets in a line.

It’s there, Gohan thinks. The fire. A rage that burns you like the surface of the sun.

“I want them to feel what they’ve made us feel.” There’s a full-moon beast under that voice. “I want to make them pay.”

“And we’re going to use that feeling. You’re getting close, Trunks, I can tell. You just need more time.”

Gohan gets to his feet, dusting the sand off of his gi. He extends his hand out to Trunks.

“Ready for round two?”

“Yeah. Definitely! Don’t hold back on me, Gohan!”

 

 

There is an android attack on the outskirts of Saffron Town.

It comes through on the radio when Trunks is back in West City with his mother. Gohan couldn’t be more grateful. He exhales—four weeks isn’t long, but it was something—and makes the best time to Saffron that he can without wasting fighting energy.

It's a smaller town focused on agriculture and the processing of plant goods. The smoke that betrays android presence rises from the town’s west outskirts. Gohan moves low, holding his aura close to hide Super Saiyan’s glow, as he approaches the likely location against the current of the fleeing population.

The sound of metal being blown to bits heralds Android Seventeen, perched on top of an old farmhouse, taking potshots at empty cars. Eighteen is nowhere in sight. In the shadow of a silo, Gohan waits for her to reveal herself.

She doesn’t come. So Gohan takes the best odds he has had in thirteen years.

Gohan drops in with a kick that sends Seventeen through splintered roof into hay-covered dirt. He follows on him quick with a rain of ki attacks. There’s a low hum against the roar of fire—Seventeen’s shield. Gohan dodges to the side just as an energy blast flies his way.

Then Seventeen is on the roof of the burning farmhouse. No damage. Gohan drops back to the silo and resumes a ready stance.

“Wow, Gohan.” Seventeen tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear. “That’s coming on a bit strong for you.”

“Out here alone, Seventeen?”

“I finished my game early.”

“Am I supposed to congratulate you?”

Seventeen is not making a move towards Gohan. The flames lick up the old and rotting building while heated metal and plastic from the cars toxify the air.

Seventeen says, “A month is a pretty long while to wait around. Playing with humans kills time.”

This is an inhabited city. Gohan can feel every life that could be snuffed out here with a lazy wave of Seventeen’s hand. But he can handle Seventeen on his own better than he does the pair. The people here have a chance.

Gohan has a chance.

“You wanna fight, Seventeen? Then let’s fight. We’ll see how well you do when the odds are fair.”

Seventeen’s smile quirks, and he hops from his farmhouse to land on Gohan’s silo. Gohan holds distance with a backstep. He has spent thirteen years facing down that cold, implacable smile. He has never flinched from it.

Seventeen says, “Like I said. Fighting you got old years ago. I wanna try a new game.”

Gohan takes another step away. He almost misses his footing.

“The deal was a month,” he says. “Not four weeks.”

“February is a month.”

“Not what you agreed to, Seventeen.”

“Right. But I’m bored now.”

No. No. Gohan gestures widely—bad move, an opening anyone would take—back to burning cars and empty streets. “Too bad. You broke the deal.”

“Check again, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “No one got hurt.”

Gohan’s mouth has gone dry. He doesn’t lick his lips. He puts his hands back in ready position, just like Piccolo taught him, to catch or deflect any strike.

No one is dead. No one is dead.

Gohan rushes out, “Why should I trust you to keep your part of the deal if you can’t even wait until the end of the term? You could kill people the second I follow through. Or Eighteen could.”

“Well, yeah,” Seventeen says. “You’re going to have to take that risk anyway.”

The androids’ eyes are the blue of glacier water, still and shallow and so, so cold. Gohan searches them now for anything that would give ground.

If Gohan says no, Seventeen could act out. Gohan has gotten to know the androids well enough in a decade and change of having every bone in his body broken, and he knows they’re immature at best and volatile at worst. Like a kid told he can’t have the toy he wants, Seventeen could throw a town-massacring tantrum, and Gohan could only delay him for so long.

But if Gohan gives in now, Seventeen will know that Gohan can’t hold him to a deal. And then what?

Three more days. The best he can do for Earth is buy scraps at gouged prices. Then it will be over, and how much will it have been worth?

Three more days with his father would have meant everything.

Gohan sets his expression. “One month. That’s what the people of this world are going to get. Find a new video game.”

“You’re being a real stick in the mud, Gohan. It’s just a couple days.”

“We made a deal, Seventeen. Break it or keep it. But I keep my word.”

Seventeen gives him no reaction and no reply. Gohan paces his breaths like he was taught and does not let himself choke on poisoned air.

Then Seventeen smiles, and Gohan does not like the way satisfaction looks on that face.

“Okay,” Seventeen says. “A deal’s a deal, I guess. Poppy City. See you.”

He goes. The people of Saffron Town are left with a burned out old farmhouse, a few destroyed cars, and the terror of not knowing when the monsters will come back.

Gohan retreats to the Break Wastelands and tries to sleep.

 

 

Three days later, the sounds of 8-bit violence greet Gohan on his approach. Seventeen sits on a flipped over car, legs kicked over the edge and fingers occupied with an orange handheld.

“Hey, Gohan,” he says. His thumb moves rapidly across the D-pad. He doesn’t look up.

The car is in front of a capsule house. Its patio is surrounded by a wealth of freshly watered flowers, well-tended and full-bloomed.

Gohan’s throat constricts.

“Whose house is this?”

“Don’t know,” says Seventeen. “Didn’t catch the names.

“We had a deal.”

“I didn’t hurt them, Gohan. They can come back later.”

People lived here, today. Gohan is taking their home from them. Gohan is taking it, and letting it be used, and it was their home.

They will never come back here.

“This is wrong,” Gohan says.

“I can find somewhere else.”

“No.”

The handheld plays a short tune in a major key. Seventeen presses a button.

“Wow. Playing hard to get here.”

He snaps the handheld shut and finally looks at Gohan. The slash of his smile widens.

“Don’t worry, Gohan. You’ve already got my attention.”

Gohan could just leave.

Gohan could just leave.

Seventeen says, “It’s like a silent movie all of a sudden. Ready to go?”

He knows what monsters do when you try to take their fun away. And his father would have kept his word. Even if it was to a monster.

Humidity keeps the air thick and hard to breathe in, even this late in the day. The sun bleeds out on this family’s stolen home. Gohan cannot give it back to them.

Gohan is good at losing. You just take the hits until you can’t.

 

 

“I didn’t think any manufacturers of this kind of thing still existed. Do you make them yourself?”

There was no such thing as “the worst part” of their fight with Frieza. But Gohan thinks, more than he wants to, of the bright white of Frieza’s tail wrapped around Vegeta’s throat like an overfed tapeworm. Of how Vegeta did not resist, but gasped limp and hopeless through this final humiliation of his misused life. Of the way Frieza looked at Gohan and Piccolo and Krillin and invited them to intervene.

But they didn’t.

“I thought the symbol was supposed to be your teacher’s. Weird choice, Gohan.”

And then, in a flash of orange and blue, his father was there. And he put his hand on Gohan’s head, solid and warm, and told him he was proud of him for enduring this far.

“Orange isn’t really your color. It’s more mine.”

Then his father promised he would handle the rest.

"Earth to Gohan? Man. You should try Ritalin. If Big Pharma is still around.”

Something touches Gohan’s shoulder—Gohan blasts it on instinct and steps back. Seventeen, shrugging off the direct hit to his face, stands calm and still in the middle of this stranger’s home with all his clothes back in place and not a hair disturbed by Gohan’s attack.

He is holding Gohan’s shirt, Turtle School orange, in his idle, curious hands.

“Don’t touch it,” Gohan says.

“A little late for that.”

Gohan looks flat at Seventeen. He holds his hand out.

“You’re supposed to ask nicely,” Seventeen says.

Gohan does not move.

Seventeen shrugs and throws the shirt at Gohan’s head. “You’re so sensitive, Gohan.”

Gohan’s hands turn to fists in his shirt. He forces them to unclench and pulls it over his head.

“Anyway.” Seventeen wanders over to the kitchen. It's open concept, with the oven embedded into the kitchen island. Seventeen plays with the dials. “What do you want to eat?”

Gohan stops. “What?”

“That’s the part that comes next. Don’t worry. I’ll walk you through this too.”

If Gohan punches him, Seventeen will just catch it, again—

“It isn’t your food,” Gohan says.

There’s a painted wood bench in the front hall, with cubby holes for four pairs of shoes. Gohan sits on it to pull his boots on. His fingers can’t quite manage the ties on his boots. He forces them to steady.

Seventeen hasn’t come closer. Gohan’s instincts tell him not to trust that empty space where a life should be.

They’ve been saying it for an hour now.

Stop.

“You were doing pretty good for a while there,” Seventeen says. “You could take the chance to win for once.”

“We had a deal.” Gohan wraps the tie around his left boot. Crosses it. Makes the loop. Ties it. “I followed through.”

“You did. You’re a real boyscout.”

Wrap, cross, loop, tie. Gohan gets back to his feet. He does not want to see the look on that face.

“Good game, Gohan. Stay for food next time.”

Gohan’s head snaps towards Seventeen. Seventeen is leaning back against the kitchen island—and there it is, blue eyes tracking Gohan’s reactions. Idly nudging to see what he gets. Just how he—

Stop.

Instincts say don’t turn his back on the monster, but Seventeen has more than had his chance to kill Gohan, so what does it matter? Gohan crosses the hall over a paw-print doormat and grabs the door handle.

Only one city has been hit in a month, and that one barely. But anywhere you go, the acrid scent of burned rubber and shattered concrete still lingers.

He should go. He should take this chance. He needs to end this. He can’t.

He can’t do this again. Gohan turns the handle.

How long would it take for that smell to go away?

Gohan lets the door handle go. Seventeen is still leaning back against the kitchen island. He is a blank space where Gohan should feel life, a cold and curious attention closing like fingers around Gohan’s throat—

Stop.

Besides, he listened when Gohan knocked his hand away.

Gohan does not laugh uncontrollably. He grits his teeth, mouth shut tight, until the pain in his jaw grounds him in sinew and bone.

He can’t be a pampered brat anymore. Is he going to protect this world or not?

He says, firmly, “I want another month.”

“Getting greedy, Gohan. But okay. I’ll give you a week.”

“I said a month.”

“Right. And now you say something lower.”

“Fine. Four weeks.”

“So you have a sense of humor. Cute. But you’ll have to go lower than that.”

“It’s your turn to counteroffer.”

“One week.”

“That isn’t a counteroffer.”

Seventeen pushes off from the kitchen island. He takes three steps into Gohan’s space.

“You have to think about your strategy, Gohan.” Blandly helpful. This is the part where you take your shirt off. “What do you think I’m willing to give you for what I’m going to get?”

Beyond Seventeen, on the fridge, there is a chaos of magnetic picture frames. The space is drowned in it, no art or order to the arrangement. At this distance, Gohan can’t make out the details, but he knows it's a family. Scared out of their home, but still alive. For a few more weeks, Gohan could make sure they stay that way.

He has Piccolo’s training. He knows how to take a hit.

“Two weeks,” Gohan says. “Android Eighteen can’t hurt anyone either.”

“Well. Guess you’ll know if the deal’s off.”

“And—no more stolen homes.” Gohan meets Seventeen’s eyes. “Anywhere we meet better have been abandoned at least three months before you found it. I’m not doing this again.”

Seventeen only smiles.

“A deal’s a deal. East side of Purple City. See you soon, Gohan.”

Notes:

Huge thanks to amorekay for the developmental support and beta read. The summary of SombraSaiyan’s The Wicked Contract inspired a lot of questions in my head of what agency and bodily autonomy mean for a child soldier on one hand and a human experiment on the other. After spitballing at poor amorekay about the different roles that Seventeen, Eighteen, and Gohan might take, and how they would differently understand the situation, I ended up with too complete an outline to not follow through. The fic would not be the same, and probably would not have been written at all, without amorekay's support and suggestions.

Next chapter: Welcome to Game Changer, the only game show where the game changes every show.

Comments are always welcome!

Chapter 2: renegotiation

Summary:

Gohan adapts, Seventeen innovates. Trunks tries meditation.

Notes:

Chapter-specific warning:

Victim-blaming.

Seventeen keeps his part of the deal.

Little villages are rarely targets the way the larger cities are, but they’re not spared. Ten solid weeks of peace has the people of this small village in North Valley more lively and cheerful than Gohan has seen in a long time. Although Gohan is in base state, the cloth seller he is trying to buy fabric from recognizes him as the Golden Defender. It happens, sometimes—with survivors who he’d dug out of the rubble when there was nothing left in him to burn, with medics who helped him move when he couldn’t anymore. The reactions vary.

This time, the merchant tries to give him cloth for free. Gohan refuses, the merchant rejects his refusal, and Gohan laughs quietly in surrender. After tucking the blue fabric under his arm, he leaves money behind on the table too quick for most eyes to catch.

A few people overheard their conversation. The grocer in the neighboring stall asks Gohan if the androids are finally dead.

“It’s a reprieve, that’s all,” he says. “They’ve done this before. It’s just a question of when they’ll come back.”

Gohan likes these kinds of villages. He overhears siblings bickering; spots a child playing with an over-enthusiastic mutt; stands in line at the convenience store behind a mother with her son on her shoulders. The clerk tries to overcharge Gohan, with his outsider accent, for the bento box he picked out. Gohan doesn’t protest.

He meets Trunks in the mountains south of West City. The second Trunks senses Gohan, he leaps to his feet like he’s ready to start training right then. It’s impossible not to smile.

“Gohan!”

“Hey, Trunks.” Gohan holds the bento box up in front of him. “Got a prize for you this time. You think you can land a hit on me?”

Trunks pumps the air—Trunks is always motivated, but there’s a shine in his eyes—and draws his ki around him. Gohan sets the bento aside and gestures for Trunks to start his attack.

Gohan won’t return to that village again. Anonymity stopped being an option the first time he failed to kill the androids, but it’s still better to be careful.

Ties are a weakness, Vegeta once told him, and Gohan should better guard himself against the danger they pose in battle. Gohan had disagreed with him then, vehemently. He still does, in most ways.

But these days, Gohan thinks he understands what Vegeta meant. A tie is a bridge, and a bridge gives access. There are times when that’s a risk you can’t take.

Still. He thinks the villages around Mount Paozu must feel something like the one in North Valley now. It’s a nice thought.

Trunks gets his hit in. He grins without reserve as he devours his reward.

 

 

Four weeks ago, Gohan had walked out of the shattered arcade that Seventeen had met him in and seen Eighteen loitering in the parking lot. He held his rage at the surface of his thoughts, ready to be released at an attack, but Eighteen just shoulder checked him as she strode past to the front door.

He had kept walking, at first. Then he stopped and turned around. “All this time,” he asked. “What have you been doing?”

Eighteen glanced back over her shoulder. “Why? Gonna offer to help me ‘kill time’ too?”

He’d frozen.

Eighteen’s lip curled. “You don’t even fight back.”

She turned away from him without waiting for an answer.

 

 

“You’re getting boring, Gohan.”

They’re done. Seventeen hasn’t let him up from his seat, and the movie is still playing to an empty audience on the large theater screen, but they’re done. As soon as Seventeen moves, Gohan can grab his shirt and his belt and get out of here.

“It’s kinda sad. You weren’t doing half-bad for a while there.”

Seventeen didn’t give him the space to fold his clothes. He never does. It’s so annoying.

That’s probably why he does it.

“It’s like you’re not even interested in the game anymore.”

Gohan makes himself look Seventeen in the face. It’s too close. He has to fight himself to not hit it, to just put his hands on the armrests, flat and steady.

“What do you want, Seventeen?”

Seventeen shrugs. Instead of getting off of Gohan, he picks up Gohan’s left hand and turns it over. Idly, he tugs at his fingers, testing how far they’ll bend before he meets resistance.

Gohan braces himself. If Seventeen is bored with this, there is no reason for him not to kill Gohan now.

There’s also no reason for Gohan not to try to take Seventeen down with him.

Seventeen turns Gohan’s palm over in his hands. He traces over a line.

Gohan yanks his hand away.

“We’re done. Get off me.”

“Hey. Gohan. Where do you live?”

“No.”

“It’s gotta be the wilderness. ‘Living off the fat of the land’ or whatever. It would explain your gaming skills.”

Gohan pushes Seventeen off of him. Seventeen follows the direction and drops to his feet in the narrow strip of aisle between their spot and the empty row before them.

Gohan stands and elbows Seventeen in the gut to get past him—Seventeen doesn’t so much as fake a wince, which Gohan supposes is a mercy—so he can grab his things from the aisle floors where Seventeen had tossed them. The years-old spilled soda is too hard and dried out to ruin anything, but Gohan will still need to wash it all.

He feels rather than sees Seventeen shift to lean against a seat in the aisle in front of theirs.

“I guess it’s kinda impressive you can survive out there. You’ve got a real city boy accent.”

Gohan opens his mouth to correct Seventeen—he is a country boy if anything, his mother was just particular about his pronunciation—and then he closes it. He looks at Seventeen.

Seventeen’s detached attention is fixed. He knows Gohan was going to talk. And he knows Gohan knows he knows.

Gohan cannot give him that bridge. Seventeen can’t ever be allowed to so much as wonder where Gohan grew up.

Gohan reties his belt first.

“I know how to handle it.”

Seventeen doesn’t move. The shifting light of the film projection illuminates him inconsistently, makes it look like his expression is changing. Gohan knows it isn’t.

He looks away.

“I was left in the wilderness as survival training when I was young. So it isn’t hard for me.”

“Huh. And you wear your old man’s uniform why?”

It’s such a baffling question that Gohan can’t stop himself from saying, “My father didn’t train me, it was—” that’s another bridge, he can’t give that “—my mentor.”

“Cool. You should look up ‘child neglect,’ Gohan.”

“What? It wasn’t—that was training.”

“When you think about it, this explains a lot. Your social skills, for one. You were how old when you did this?”

“It wasn’t like that. I needed to learn to survive.”

“And the way you don’t know anything about anything. Wild that your dad let this guy just leave you to die out there.”

“He didn’t leave me to die, he was teaching me to be strong!”

“Oh,” Seventeen says. “Sorry it didn’t work out.”

“We’re done. I don’t want to see you for two weeks.”

Gohan doesn’t wait for a reply. He yanks his shirt on and heads for the bright red EXIT sign that must lead outside. They’re for fires and maybe earthquakes, he thinks—someone explained that to him in a rescue once. Gohan hits the release bar too hard and the door slams wide, letting in the blinding afternoon sun.

“Hey.”

Gohan stops. On reflex, he raises a hand to keep the door from swinging shut.

“Northside Yahhoy,” Seventeen says. “And it was fun getting to know you. Stick around longer next time.”

That night, Gohan struggles to get his dinner down.

 

 

Seventeen had insisted on dragging Gohan through the old, abandoned school first. It was a surreal tour of a foreign world: baseball fields and lecture halls, music rooms and administrative offices.

In the last, Gohan had blurted out, “Why a vice principal?”

“You’re painting a real sad picture here, Gohan,” Seventeen said. He patted him on the back.

 

 

“Woah!”

“Pretty cool, huh?”

Even without its Guardian, the Lookout is tranquil. Warmed by the sun, absent of wind—still, calm.

But it is uncanny. Like looking through a basin of clear water only to realize the bowl is just empty.

Trunks walks across the scorch marks without even looking at them. Gohan leads him to the center of the platform and guides him to sit in the same meditation posture that he had seen Piccolo take long ago. He tells Trunks to use his ki to keep himself steady one foot above the tiles.

After a few small corrections, Trunks settles properly in place.

“We have some room now,” Gohan says, “so it’s worth taking the time to slow down. That’s why I brought you here.”

“‘Slow down’?”

“Did you ever learn to meditate, Trunks?”

Gohan is pretty sure he knows the answer, but Trunks frowns like he thinks he might have been taught without knowing about it. “Well. No? I don’t think so.”

“We didn’t have a lot of time for meditation back when Piccolo was training me, either,” Gohan says. “Our enemy was coming, and he only had a year to turn me from a spoiled crybaby who didn’t know even the basics to a warrior who would survive his first battle.

“But Piccolo never really slept, so half the time, when I woke up, I’d find him nearby, sitting just like this, with his ki stilled and steady. A little like this place, actually. It got to the point where I could always tell when he was meditating, even when he was out of sight.”

“So… You want me to learn to make my ki feel like that?”

“Super Saiyan is an outpouring of rage.” Gohan feels rather than sees the sharpened focus, the hunger in Trunks for this power. “It’s a fire that catches in your soul and spills through your body. But that fire is a lot easier to control if it’s lit over a still pool. If you can center yourself, gain that mastery of your ki, I think you’ll have a better chance of making the leap—and controlling it when you do.”

“Okay…” Trunks says. “Okay, I’ll try.”

“Just try to clear your mind. If a thought comes to you, let it go. We’ll start with thirty minutes. Got it?”

Trunks nods quick and determined. Then he closes his eyes and breathes.

Gohan does the same, but he looks outward rather than in. Across from him, Trunks’s ki wavers, passionate and uncontrolled. He can feel its distraction, its bumps and flickers, the erratic jumps and unsettled lows.

So it isn’t exactly a surprise when Trunks peeks open an eye and speaks.

“Hey. Gohan?”

Piccolo would have snapped at Gohan for the defiance, or maybe hit him with his eye lasers. Not that it ever stopped Gohan.

Gohan gives Trunks a light flick on his forehead.

“Hey!” Trunks rubs where he was hit, but it's pure protest for the sake of it. Gohan doesn’t let himself smile.

“Has it been thirty minutes?”

“I just wanted to ask something.”

“Ask. And then, nothing for thirty minutes.”

“It’s just, I still don’t understand it. Why do I have to figure this out to go Super Saiyan? The thing with making my ki steady.”

“It will help you with the leap. Like I told you. A clarified center is better for the rage.”

“Yeah, but… Your ki doesn’t feel like that.”

Gohan takes his ki in hand. He does not let it slip from its paced and constant rise and fall.

With careful patience, Gohan says, “It’s not about how it feels to someone else. It’s about how it feels for you.”

“Do you meditate?”

“Yes, Trunks, I meditate. I wouldn’t ask you to do something that I don’t do myself.”

“So why doesn’t your ki ever feel still?”

“I said that’s how Piccolo felt. But I’m not Piccolo, and you’re not me. Meditation, and Super Saiyan, are going to feel different for you compared to someone else.”

Trunks’s frown is so earnest. He looks right up into Gohan’s eyes.

Piccolo would probably tell Trunks to just be quiet and do as he said. But Trunks is trying, and Gohan doesn’t think it would help.

Gohan says, “I’m just asking that you try this out, and see how you feel after. Okay?”

“You really think this will help?”

“I know it will. Thirty minutes, starting now.”

Trunks does try. Gohan can feel that. But his eyes flicker under their lids, his ki stutters in his core—he even starts to drift a little from his place, first slowly and then more quickly. Gohan has to interrupt him to recenter, and Trunks looks so upset over the idea of starting all over again that Gohan cuts their next try down to fifteen minutes.

With that try, Trunks’s ki begins to steady. Still, there’s an off-centered quality to it, like a bowl tilted to the side. Gohan would guess that he’s too busy wrestling his own thoughts to find any true equilibrium.

So, when fifteen minutes hits, Gohan rises from his position and silently moves behind Trunks. He gathers strength into his hand. Trunks doesn’t notice the shift in ki.

Gohan shoves Trunks right off the edge of the Lookout, so hard and fast that the boy is a good twenty feet out and down before he catches himself.

“Gohan!” Distance mutes the protest. Gohan peers over the edge. “That wasn’t fair!”

Gohan just grins at him.

“Your enemies don’t play fair. But if you weren’t so distracted when you were supposed to be stilling your mind, you would have sensed the attack coming.”

“Is that what meditation is for?”

“Centering yourself has a lot of different applications. Now, I’m coming down there after you, so you better be ready to show me what you’ve got.”

“I’m going to get you back for that, Gohan!”

Trunks lasts longer in this little match than the one before and tracks Gohan’s movements better, with an enthusiasm that was decidedly lacking during meditation practice. Some of his strikes even sting.

Then Gohan tells him he wants another thirty minutes of meditation from him. Trunks, to his credit, only sighs a little. “We’re going to practice this again tomorrow, aren’t we.”

Gohan can’t help himself. He has to ruffle Trunks’s hair.

“You’ll get it, Trunks. You just need time.”

Trunks heads back to his mother before sunset to avoid suspicion. Gohan waves him off. Once more the Lookout returns to itself: still, silent, and empty.

Gohan decides not to linger.

 

 

In the dusty backrooms of a long-abandoned shopping mall, Seventeen had said, “Wow, Gohan. Didn’t know you had it in you. I guess we finally found something you improve at.”

 

 

An android has been sighted blowing up the wreckage at the edge of Gingertown. There is no mention of casualties, but Gohan has a guess.

Gingertown is never a pleasant visit. The age of the wreckage, uncleared and unrepaired, serves as proof of the androids’ unchecked dominance over this world. Rust coats metal beams, and smashed roads expose the abandoned sewers underneath. Incinerated concrete coats city streets in blackened muck.

Gohan had to be dragged out from under a parking complex after that one.

He finds Seventeen in the middle of using a finger laser to carve his number into a rusted water tower. Far below, inaudible under the wind and invisible at the distance, a couple of humans cower under its shadow. Gohan only knows them by their quiet, fluttering ki.

He looks over to Seventeen. Seventeen continues with his signature.

“I thought I said I didn’t want to see you for two weeks,” Gohan says.

Seventeen pauses, floats back a foot or so without turning, and puts his hands on his hips. After a nod to himself, he finishes his signature off with a dot.

Finally, he faces Gohan.

“Hey, Gohan. I decided the game needs a change.”

“No.”

“We’re gonna switch it to being six hours.”

“Six hours? I’m not going to—for six hours!?”

“That’s funny. You wouldn’t have the energy,” Seventeen says.

Instead of taking the bait, Gohan folds his arms and stares Seventeen down. The androids might outclass him in combat, but when it comes to patience, Gohan wins every time.

What’s annoying about Seventeen is that he finds Gohan’s refusals funny too.

“Always the wet blanket,” Seventeen says. “Okay. You give me six hours, I decide what we do. Maybe we can get you a little civilization. Like teach you to play Marco Party.”

“You… want to hang out?”

“You could put it like that.”

I decide what we do. It's such an obvious trap. But Trunks has been doing so well without the androids killing people. The world has done well.

Gohan says, “You can have six hours if I get a month.”

“Nah. Way too long to wait around.”

“Okay, three hours for fifteen days.”

“Nice try. Five hours, two weeks.”

“Three. And every other time, I decide what we’re doing.”

“Yeah, the problem with that is you’re boring.”

“I can’t trust you if you can’t compromise.”

“You’re pretty weird, Gohan. Okay, five hours, two weeks. You can suggest something every third time. And I get to pick something else if your idea’s boring.”

He can almost hear Piccolo chiding him: Strategy, kid. Seventeen could overrule Gohan’s suggestion every time. It makes the entire concession pointless.

But Seventeen wants to renegotiate instead of throwing away the whole arrangement. There’s something in this deal, something that isn’t murdering humans, that Seventeen wants to keep.

Piccolo and Vegeta had been lonely. It was obvious. And then, they changed. Vegeta was a comrade. Piccolo was a hero. Gohan’s father had given them both that chance, and he’d been right for it.

It’s a risk. But it’s a risk that only Gohan has to hazard.

“Three hours,” he says. “I get three suggestions every third time. And no hurting people.”

“Do you count?”

The snarl slips from Gohan so fast he only realizes he has made it by Seventeen’s smirk. It doesn’t help him draw it back.

“Every person on Earth counts,” he says. “Except me, you, and Android Eighteen.”

“Look at you. Maybe your training wasn’t a waste after all.”

“Shut up.”

“Four hours, two weeks, the suggestion thing. No hurting ‘people.’”

“Eighteen can’t hurt anyone either,” Gohan reminds him. “That rule still holds.”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to her.”

Seventeen’s attention shifts; with his new game settled, he’s going to leave.

“Seventeen,” Gohan starts to say, and Seventeen stops. He looks at Gohan. Through him.

You’re too soft. How many times did Vegeta tell him that? Give your enemies even a hint of what they might use against you, and they will see you pay for it.

“Forget it,” Gohan says.

“Huh. Well, whatever. See you, Gohan.” Seventeen blows the water tower to scraps with a gesture and is gone. Hot metal stays suspended in the air for just one moment before gravity begins to win.

Below, those two fluttering sparks of life still burn, unable to run fast enough to stop Seventeen’s off-handed destruction from snuffing them out.

Gohan drops down to earth at top speed and pulls the humans—two children—close to him. He throws his ki out as a shield as quick as he can: only a little metal comes through before the shield is up, and he can take those hits himself. The children tremble against him as burned scraps shower over them.

When the wreckage at last settles and he is sure that it’s safe, Gohan eases off his shield. The two children’s eyes are fixed on him. A boy and a girl. They’re terrified.

He bends down to their level and smiles like his father and Krillin used to smile at him, like how Gohan used to wish all adults would. “My name is Gohan. We should get you somewhere safe. Will you tell me your names?”

 

 

As he was getting dressed again, Seventeen asked, “Who’s that brat you were with before?”

Gohan said nothing and left. For half a week, he’d avoided Trunks just to be safe, but he had to take the risk eventually.

Still. He was careful about being followed after that.

 

 

“Okay,” Bulma says, once she has Gohan sitting on the examination table. “Any recent injuries to report?”

Four hours. The next one will be four hours.

It’s just muscle and sinew. It’s just blood and bone.

By the third time, Gohan had a sense of how things would go. He let his mind wander. Seventeen said, “Don’t get boring on me now.”

Something flicks Gohan’s forehead. He startles and sees that Bulma is frowning at him.

“Gohan, are you spacing out again?”

“Sorry, Bulma.” Gohan rubs the back of his neck. “What was the question?”

Bulma peers closely at him. He smiles.

She asks, “Are you okay?”

“Is something wrong with my bloodwork?”

“No, it’s all fine. Weird, because of the hybrid thing, but weird in the normal way for you. Just… How are you doing, Gohan? Have you seen Chichi lately?”

Oh. Gohan still smiles. “It’s not the right time.”

“Big disagreement here, but, well. Trunks barely listens to me. No way you’re going to.”

“I always listen to you, Bulma.”

She laughs and turns back to the data. Gohan is the oldest of only two part-human, part-Saiyan hybrids in the world. Data on his health and development, Bulma told him the first time she tried to get him to have a physical, could be a guide for Trunks’s future. If there are any risks or predispositions arising from their unique heritage, better to find it in Gohan so they’d have advanced warning for Trunks.

Well. He couldn’t say no when she put it like that.

“I mean it,” Gohan says. “You’re incredibly intelligent. And brave.”

“You are so right, but you definitely want something.”

“You were with us on Namek. And you came to see Frieza and King Cold when they arrived. And when the androids appeared—”

Bulma glances up from the data to watch him.

Gohan says instead, “Even Vegeta respected you.”

“Well, he better have.” Bulma grins and gives him a little pat. “You know, you were the only one who didn’t make a fuss about that? As if I didn’t know how to make my own choices.”

“Huh,” Gohan says. “I guess I never really thought about it. You were the smartest person I knew, so I just thought you had to have decided this was what you wanted.”

“You’re a charmer, kiddo. Also totally wrong about how the kind of thing works. Don’t worry, you’ll learn one day.”

“Yeah. So are the scans looking alright? I should head out soon.”

“I’ll need a real doctor to look at them, but it seems all normal… Better than last year, even. I guess because the androids are giving us a break.”

“Haha. Probably.”

He curls his right hand around his left and presses, firmly, against a palm line.

Four hours.

Gohan says, “It made me kind of happy.”

This time, Bulma doesn’t look up. “What did?”

“Vegeta always seemed really lonely. I used to think he was only really hanging around to wait for his chance to defeat my father. But when I saw Trunks, it seemed like… you obviously loved Trunks, and maybe Vegeta was also finding something he wanted, here. You know? It was nice. Especially then.”

A tie is a bridge. Those days, Vegeta’s greatest tie to Earth was fraying fast.

Gohan had just liked that the baby smiled at him without pity or grief.

“You’re a sweet kid, Gohan,” Bulma says. “I’m glad Trunks has you.”

“I’m happy to be here for him. And I promise: I won’t tell him too many stories about Vegeta.”

“Thank God,” Bulma says. “Somehow, he still thinks we got married.”

 

 

"Since you're so shy," Seventeen said. Gohan can't call to mind what Seventeen did next.

 

 

Gohan goes to the Break Wastelands in the late evening. He hunts down a dinosaur. He retreats to the shadow of a peak, makes a fire for warmth and for food, and watches it flicker in the wind.

Four hours.

He’s pretty sure he trained with Piccolo in this spot. He has sense memories: his fingertips bleeding as they dug into dirt, his arms aching with strain. His boots, worn from use, unable to get traction in the steep cliff walls. The heat of his own frustration burning wet down his cheeks.

A hand on his head. An apple from nowhere. A begrudged, heavy cape thrown over him when he shivered too obviously.

The moment Piccolo had looked him over and said, No—you wear my colors now.

He must have learned to make fire here. He didn’t know how before, but he did after. Piccolo didn’t teach him—he’d remember Piccolo teaching him, he thinks—so it must have been the cold that compelled him to pull power into his palms to burn away the threat of night.

Four hours.

Gohan could sear this place to nothing. Piccolo had wanted to tame the rage in him, and Gohan has. His ki ebbs; then it rises, and rises, and rises, seeking a golden crest. Gohan gathers that strength all into the palm of his hand, concentrates it into a pinprick of power—a mote of dust that could be dropped through Earth to its core and destroy the whole world.

But it isn’t enough.

Gohan lets the energy disperse. The half moon shines down on him. He breathes calm and steady, an ebb and flow in his core, and lets the gold fade into black.

Four hours. Two weeks.

He can do four hours.

He sleeps under furs that lack the comfort of a teacher’s training weights, shielded from the worst of the winds.

Notes:

Once again, as a beta, amorekay doesn’t let me get away with anything.

Next chapter: Public transit, disguises, and ice cream.

Chapter 3: navigation

Summary:

Seventeen takes Gohan out for burgers.

Notes:

Chapter-specific warning:

Emetophobia (referenced), victim-blaming.

Four hours. That’s all. Four hours for two weeks.

Before the first time, Gohan gets himself a watch.

 

 

Seventeen wants to go racing. Gohan doesn’t know how to drive, and Seventeen isn’t oriented toward road safety. After the race, Gohan refuses to get in a car with Seventeen until he turns off the engine.

Seventeen calls him a spoilsport, but he does at least turn the car off. So Gohan plays along.

 

 

The second time, Seventeen suggests burning off Gohan’s fingers. Gohan just rolls his eyes—Seventeen knows Gohan won’t agree to anything that will hinder him as a combatant—and refuses.

“Okay,” Seventeen says. “Then let’s do something that won’t stick. Let me break your bones.”

Gohan tries to read how serious Seventeen is. He can’t. He tries to figure out how long it would take to heal. It depends, he knows—which bones, what kind of break. Saiyan heritage offers an advantage, but the androids can and have left Gohan hospitalized for weeks.

If Gohan says yes, Seventeen could just kill him after with no resistance, or break the deal the next day with Gohan in no state to stop their violence.

If Gohan says no, Seventeen could end the deal and start the killing now.

Gohan swallows, asks how many bones, and is answered with, “Don’t know. We’ll have to find out.”

So he says yes.

Seventeen laughs, then, and pats him on the shoulder. “Relax, Gohan. We’re just gonna play some games or whatever. It’d be boring if you just took it.”

Super Saiyan floods Gohan. He punches through the bedroom wall to keep from hitting Seventeen in his stupid, unflinching face.

 

 

The third time, Gohan gets to make suggestions. Seventeen rejects fishing (too boring) and video games (did it last time), until, in a desperate last effort, Gohan suggests one-on-one basketball.

“Huh,” Seventeen says. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Gohan says. “Okay, good. Just—give me five minutes to find out how to play.”

Seventeen cracks up. Gohan is pretty sure that's the only reason he gets away with nothing but basketball that day.

 

 

Four hours. It isn’t that long. Seventeen breaks Gohan’s watch during their basketball match, and Gohan keeps forgetting to get a new one.

Gohan trains Trunks. He helps Bulma find supplies. He goes into villages, trades for what he can’t make or forage, and leaves.

Rumors spread of the androids’ possible locations. The radio plays music and reports on the weather.

 

 

“No,” Gohan says. “Absolutely not.”

Seventeen says, “It’s my pick.”

It’s the second of Seventeen’s turns for the cycle. They met up in a dust-covered, half-tilted apartment in a suburb destroyed years back. Leaning back against a moldy couch that makes Gohan want to sneeze, Seventeen announced that they were going into Myrrh City to play some games.

Gohan can’t allow it. Myrrh still stands full of living humans. Even if Seventeen keeps his word—

Gohan hates this part of the game.

“I refuse.”

“It’s not your turn, Gohan.”

“If we stay here, I’ll… play along with whatever you want. We can do the thing you suggested, that time at the school.”

“Wow, feeling bold today. But no, this’ll be more fun.”

“Then—fine. Fine, then give me a chance to get changed.”

“You’re on the clock, Gohan.”

“Then add the time I’m gone to the end.”

“I spend enough time waiting around for Eighteen to pick her outfits.”

“I just need twenty minutes. Ten.”

“You’re not that badly dressed. Just come on.”

Faster than Gohan can react, Seventeen is in Gohan’s face and has his arm in hand. In a flare of gold, Gohan yanks out of Seventeen’s grip and away from him.

“Don’t.”

“Huh,” Seventeen says. “Didn’t figure this would be the dealbreaker.”

Gohan tries to grip his hair to steady himself—he can’t get his fingers in, the transformation changes its texture—he instead gestures at Seventeen to hold the distance. “Shut up. I’m not breaking my word, I just want to wear something else!”

You’re too open, Vegeta used to tell him. It makes you weak.

Piccolo would say, Don’t let your opponent dictate your moves. Control the flow of the fight.

It’s far too late for that.

“Okay,” Seventeen says. “You can wear whatever you think passes as casual. You just have to tell me why it matters to you.”

“If someone recognizes me—”

Gohan stops. Seventeen holds his gaze.

Just hold on, Gohan, Krillin said to him. We can make it through.

It’s not a lot to give up. It’s fine.

Gohan says, “What do you think this is going to look like to the people I’m supposed to be protecting?”

“Huh,” says Seventeen. “That’s it?”

The world goes dead. There is only that blank face, and the distance Gohan has to cross to smash it in.

He holds himself still completely.

Seventeen says, “When you think about it, this is the best job you’ve ever done protecting them.”

Gohan walks past Seventeen. The front door frame cracks and splinters under the pressure of his aura as he passes through. He doesn’t look back—if Seventeen wants to stop him, he’ll do it.

When Gohan gets back forty minutes later in new clothes, sunglasses, and a cloth wrapped around his hair, he finds Seventeen sitting in the wreckage of the apartment building and taking idle shots at the little infrastructure still standing. It’s all just rubble and dust.

Seventeen hops down to meet Gohan on the ground.

“Wow,” Seventeen says. “No wonder you just wear the one look.”

“Shut up.”

“If I let you go out like that, you’ll ruin my reputation.”

Seventeen grabs Gohan’s arm again, and Gohan yanks back on instinct. Seventeen doesn’t let him go. He wrenches the cloth from Gohan’s hair.

“Stop.”

“Don’t worry, Gohan. I got you something else.”

Seventeen drops an orange trucker hat on top of Gohan’s head. He lets go and steps back to survey his work. Gohan tries to settle the hat without disturbing his sunglasses.

“This is still pretty sad,” Seventeen says. “Oh well.”

Then he says, “You ever take the bus?”

 

 

Gohan is sure that public transit is not supposed to be like this.

This is a standard city bus, including their lack of seatbelts, which baffled Gohan until the first time he had to get twenty people out of a burning bus fast. And while Gohan has never had much opportunity to catch anything but the overpowering scents of burning metal or shattered concrete in rescues, he has to assume the strange mix of chemical cleaner, body odor, and dirt is what buses usually smell like.

But even he knows you don’t normally get empty seats on either side of you on a full bus.

Seventeen has taken Gohan’s left hand to idle with again. Gohan doesn’t know how long the route is or even where they’re meant to go. When Seventeen traces a scar, Gohan has to fight the urge to crush the metal rail under his right hand.

“Huh,” Seventeen says. “Is this one of ours?”

Gohan stares out the wide, dust-tinted window and filters out the warmth of Seventeen’s skin. Tracking street signs, he still can’t really map how far along they are.

Everyone is watching them. Their eyes are unwanted fingers up the back of his neck.

“You’re kind of a bad date,” Seventeen says. He presses against the knuckle on Gohan’s thumb to push it straight. “This is called small talk. It’s for getting to know each other.”

If Gohan pulls his hand away from Seventeen, Seventeen will find other entertainment.

There are too many people on this bus.

“I don’t know,” Gohan says. “Maybe. I don’t keep track.”

“That figures. It’s not like it’s gonna be anyone else.”

Seventeen’s finger is so light over a metacarpal that Gohan’s lungs seize up—his hand is safe and clenched against his own chest before he knows what he’s done.

Gohan looks at Seventeen. Seventeen watches him.

Gohan offers his hand back, and Seventeen doesn’t take it.

Gohan lets his hand fall limp into his own lap. The hat and the sunglasses and the strange clothes all feel too warm—synthetic materials, plastics spun out and woven in distant factories, not the smooth and breathable cotton of his gi.

Seventeen says, “Want me to get you off?”

“We should leave,” Gohan says.

“Don’t get upset. It was just an idea.”

“Can you just stop?”

“Stop what?”

The bus chimes. The doors open.

Gohan stands. Seventeen does not.

No one else moves.

“Maybe you’re confused,” Seventeen says. “This isn’t our stop.”

They need to leave. They need to get out. But Seventeen watches him with those cold unblinking eyes and Gohan knows the game, knows that the more he wants this, the more Seventeen will make him give it up or offer something else to get it. He never should have shown just how badly he wanted to get out.

“We should go,” Gohan says. Too weak, too open.

Fingers brush against the back of Gohan’s hand.

Only the comforting flicker of life at his side keeps Gohan from a reflex attack. He anchors himself on that fragile ki, exhales, and looks to his right.

An older gentleman, supporting himself with a walker, has set trembling fingers against Gohan’s hand. His eyes and mouth show the creases of a fully lived life.

“It’s alright, son,” he says. “It’s alright. You have to do your best to get back to your family.”

A house in the mountains. Fresh-cooked meals and a pile of books, and a world of little adventures just outside his bedroom window. His grandfather brought him a new present every visit. His mother, so much weaker than him, held him safe and kissed the top of his head.

His father walked him home.

The cold, still attention of Android Seventeen tracks everything Gohan does. Gohan blinks twice, breathes, and reaches his senses towards those thirty four sparks of ki around him, so tiny they are almost invisible. All precious, all deserving to go home.

It’s alright. He is Piccolo’s student. He is his father’s son.

“Thank you for the kind advice, sir,” Gohan says.

He bows his head politely. As Gohan steps back towards Seventeen, the man gives his hand a final pat. Gohan pauses.

Then, he resumes his seat. He looks past dust to the city slipping by and ignores the hand that takes his back for its idle entertainment. A finger traces a vein. The doors shut.

And then a bang puts Gohan back on his feet.

There is yelling, a scream—passengers scramble for the now-shut doors, retreat to the back of the bus—a woman at the front shouts and fires again with her gun. She is five feet tall with dark hair that frames a sobbing snarl, and Gohan's eyes catch on a scrape at the corner of her cheek that will burn to nothing with the rest of her when Seventeen attacks. She is going to die. Everyone here is going to die today.

“Seriously?” Seventeen says.

He opens his fist and lets crunched bullets clatter to the city bus floor. Energy starts to form into death in his open palm.

“No,” Gohan says.

Gohan is between Seventeen and the shooter. He is between Seventeen and the thirty four lives on this bus. He presses his palm to Seventeen’s and takes the pain against his skin and looks unflinching into that too-familiar face.

“You will not hurt a single human here, android.”

Gohan’s palm blisters from the heat. He keeps his rage kindling under the surface and does not let it catch on his skin. Seventeen stares back. There is nothing in Seventeen's expression: nothing to reach, nothing to feel. It watches him with an emptiness that will never be filled.

And then Seventeen shrugs.

“Man,” he says. “Public transit is a drag. Let’s go, Gohan.”

The heat disappears. Seventeen walks past him, tears open the doors, and steps outside.

Gohan curls his hand in on itself and looks back to the shooter. She is still raging. The bus driver has taken her gun into his terrified hands, while the old man holds her back through breaking screams that echoes with something in Gohan's chest.

If she had been born of another line, she might be burning gold.

He hears a name.

From outside, Seventeen says, “You coming?”

Gohan steps through the warped doors onto the city streets. All around them, people see Seventeen and run or seek cover. Seventeen just glances back at Gohan.

“So,” Seventeen says. “Burgers?”

 

 

Burgers are surreal. Minigolf is worse.

Seventeen decides the game should have stakes. The loser, he says, has to answer a question until the winner’s satisfied with it. Gohan grits his teeth and accepts the terms, just like he bears through Seventeen putting more effort into destroying the course than hitting his targets. When he’s left standing in the wreckage of this course with his putter in hand and the better score, it feels more like a joke than a victory.

Seventeen says, “Look at you, Gohan. Congrats. I’ll get us ice cream.”

He walks out of the destroyed course and back into the city streets without a glance at the cowering staff. Gohan can do nothing for them but try to keep him from coming back.

Seventeen gets them ice cream from a street cart. The seller’s hands tremble as she passes over two soft-serve cones. Seventeen hands Gohan one and starts on his own, and they walk down a short pier to the river in silence as Gohan thinks.

Gohan still doesn’t have a question by the time Seventeen is done with his ice cream. Seventeen says, “Kinda boring waiting for you to figure this out.”

At the burger place, Seventeen had noticed Gohan eating with only one hand and finally clocked the injury. “Getting soft, Gohan,” he’d teased, then called the staff to get a first aid kit for the blisters. Gohan couldn’t look anyone in the eye after that.

He wonders what happened to the shooter. If she is a survivor of a past encounter. If the name she had spoken was someone lost before. He wonders if she had kept that gun in her bag all this time, waiting for the day that death came back.

Gohan asks, “What would it take for you to stop?”

Seventeen just glances at him.

“All this death and terror,” Gohan says. “All the suffering you cause. I want to know if there’s anything that would make you stop.”

“Huh.” Seventeen takes a moment. His eyes flicker up and left, like he’s thinking it through. “Probably.”

“Really?” Focus, kid. “What would it take?”

“I don’t know. It’d just be weird if there was nothing.”

Gohan’s ki tries to surge. He takes the fire in his grip and keeps it simmering far below his skin.

He just has to run down the clock. Then, he’ll have two more weeks.

“Fine,” Gohan says. “What’s next?”

“Well, it’s the end of a date.”

“We’re done?”

“You’re still such a virgin,” Seventeen says. “This is the part where I take you back to my place, Gohan.”

The ice cream is melting over Gohan’s hand. He holds his arm in front of him, a line Seventeen won’t cross.

No, he would cross it. He’d take that hand, and open his mouth, and—

“Ha ha… Oh…”

Seventeen watches. He’s waiting for his move, wanting something to amuse him, because monsters always want to be amused, and Gohan knows by now that Seventeen will give him space if he finds it funny enough. That’s the real game: Gohan just has to find the right thing to say, to play along until Seventeen is satisfied.

So play.

Gohan says, “I’m not really a first date kind of guy.”

“Okay, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “What kind of guy are you?”

A drop-you-off-before-curfew kind of guy. A flowers-and-chocolates kind of guy. A wait-until-marriage kind of guy, for better or worse, till death do you part—

He imagines he would be that, anyway. He’ll never know.

“A respectful one,” Gohan insists.

Seventeen doesn’t react. It’s not good enough. Gohan really, really doesn’t want Seventeen to think about the ice cream on his hand.

“I guess—a parting kiss kind of guy?”

“Wow,” Seventeen says. “You really are a nun.”

Seventeen is too close. He holds Gohan at his wrist, missing the mess that’s getting into the gauze across his palm—Gohan will have to clean that later—and pulls his arm out of the way. What’s left of the ice cream hits concrete.

Seventeen takes a step in and kisses him, the simple way.

Then he’s out of Gohan’s face. Gohan still doesn’t breathe.

“See you, Gohan. South side of Juniper City.”

He releases Gohan, gets airborne, and is gone.

Gohan stares at the concrete. His ice cream is just liquid now. Wasted food. Between the cracks of pavement a foot over, there’s an ant hill swarming with lives so little that even after all these years, Gohan cannot sense this mass. They’ll smell the ice cream and bring it back to their nest.

Seventeen is gone. Right?

Gohan returns to the ice cream stand and places money on the counter without looking at the seller. Then he finds a public restroom, unwraps his hand, and washes the mess out. He pulls off the hat and the sunglasses and sets them down on the sink counter with a silent apology for not taking them to a lost and found.

Gohan steps outside, makes sure no one is around, and bursts up and away from Myrrh.

 

 

“Psych,” Seventeen says.

Midair over the outskirts, Gohan chokes his ki to stop himself from flying into that face, right in front of him—

“A deal’s a deal, Gohan,” Seventeen says and grabs Gohan’s hand.

The wick catches on wildfire and turns him golden. He flips Seventeen over his hand, throws him by the hold—aims his Masenko at where Seventeen is going to be, lunges through the heat of his own attack to grab Seventeen’s throat—he has to kill him, just kill him—

Seventeen catches Gohan’s hand in his palm.

“So the blond thing is anger,” Seventeen says.

The fire gutters and dies.

“That isn’t how it works.”

“Come on, Gohan. You can lie better than that.”

Gohan yanks his hand back—Seventeen lets him, leaving Gohan tripping in the air and shifting ki to catch himself.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Gohan says.

“Let me guess. You make yourself mad by thinking about people who throw trash out car windows.”

Gohan lunges in. Seventeen slips aside and catches Gohan in the stomach with a fist. It leaves Gohan breathless and doubled over, with no defense but his ki flared against an opportunity attack.

Seventeen doesn’t bother.

“Guess there’s a limit on how far anger can take you,” Seventeen says. “Or you’re just not mad enough.”

Gohan looks Seventeen dead in the eyes.

“You could not possibly make me any angrier.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

Gohan strikes again. Seventeen catches his forearm, twists it behind him, and grabs his throat. He squeezes.

“We can end the night like this if you really want. But I can think of something more fun to do.”

Gohan tries to breathe, to fight, to break free. He can’t. All he can do is burn his rage to keep the hand on his neck from crushing it.

Seventeen says, “Let’s go fishing.”

 

 

They do.

There is always a cruel twist. Gohan waits for it. They sit by a river, and Gohan waits for it. They fish with rods Seventeen stole from who knows where, and Gohan waits for it. When time is up, Seventeen disappears to wherever the androids go when they aren’t ruining lives.

Gohan waits for it, but Seventeen doesn’t come back.

Muscle and sinew, blood and bone. The heat builds under his skin.

Once, Vegeta scolded him for not seeking outlets. You are Saiyan. Your blood needs battle as your stomach needs food.

Piccolo said, Your ki’s nauseating, kid. There’s no point teaching you meditation when you’re this far in.

But then Gohan’s father had come home. It didn’t seem that important. And now—

His ki rises and falls in a relentless tidal motion, building with every cycle. It wants to crest.

Gohan rises into the night sky, high above the wasteland. He lets go. Super Saiyan catches on the rising wave of his ki and sears right through him, the beacon-bright apotheosis of a dead race.

He needs to spar. He can’t. Trunks is a child. If Bulma touched Gohan now, he would kill her.

There’s a beast in him. It needs blood like his lungs need air.

Gohan inhales the cool night air. The wind fills his lungs with oxygen, traces of dust and pollen, the ozone from a thunderstorm miles away. Here, he outburns the full moon.

He stays and keeps the fires lit.

Then comes a shift of the wind, and the roar of air cut through at superhuman speeds. He turns towards it. In another time, he’d feel the warm flicker of a friend’s ki. He’d smile and greet them, and they’d fly at his side.

That time is gone. Now there is only a void, and blue eyes that catch on the gold of his aura.

Android Eighteen says, “You look like you need the shit beaten out of you.”

Trunks is a child, and everyone else is dead.

Center mass lowered. Shoulders squared. He needs to lead her down to the ground as soon as he can. It will mitigate damage if he hits dirt and will give him more control of the fight.

“Fine,” Eighteen says.

He strikes first.

It’s better than the two-on-one battles. He is still outmatched. Super Saiyan burns through him with a reckless heat that Piccolo would never have tolerated, that Krillin would have warned him about, Vegeta alone would have understood—and his father?—but it doesn’t matter: an android is a well of gravity, and not even Saiyan rage can escape its pull. Android Eighteen absorbs all he has to give and then pays him back for it thrice over.

Gohan is left bruised and breathless in a crater, dizzy and gasping in a body of future bruises and present pain. The fire dies out. There is nothing left in him to burn.

Eighteen kicks his side, and he swallows the urge to gag.

“You’re not even any fun like this. I don’t get what he’s thinking. And you’re so pathetic, you just let him do it.”

She’s hard to see clearly now. It’s dark, and he thinks his vision might not be as good as when he was younger. But he can make out the shape of her, standing above him in this night.

Gohan presses into the dirt with hands that sting where they’re torn. He pushes himself up on legs that beg to be left to rest. He gets to his feet.

Placing his palms together, Gohan bows like Krillin taught him to on that long trip to Namek.

“Thank you for the match,” he says.

Eighteen snorts and tosses an energy blast at him. He keeps his posture.

“Whatever,” she says.

He rises from his bow and watches her fly away.

 

 

Gohan patches up the injuries with his own supplies. Then he visits Bulma.

“Hey, Bulma,” he says. “I wanted to ask if you needed an extra pair of hands today.”

Bulma pulls up her welding mask. She walks to him, looks him over—takes in bruises, scrapes, gauze-wrapped hand—and says, “You better be staying for dinner, young man.”

“Krillin always told me not to argue with you.”

“I knew you were a smart kid.”

She pulls him close with arms wrapped gingerly around his body. He can answer her in peace.

And when she pulls back, she flicks him right in the chest as if there isn’t a thing wrong with him. A fist around his lungs begins to relax.

“You are so sturdy now,” she says. “It’s ridiculous how you Saiyans get.”

“That’s not fair. Tienshinhan and Yamcha and Krillin were really sturdy, too.”

“I’ll give you Tien and Yamcha, but not Krillin.”

“What? Why not Krillin?”

“You were basically the same size as him, so I get how you’d miss it, but he does not count.”

“No, he was sturdy,” Gohan insists. “He held his own against Frieza, you know.”

“Gohan,” Bulma says. “That’s not really what I meant.”

The echo of footsteps from the entrance of the workroom catches their attention. Trunks’s silhouette stops at the door.

“Mom? Who are you talking to—Gohan!”

Trunks runs, skids to a stop right in front of Gohan, and has to be caught by a gentle press of Gohan’s hand against his forehead. He grins up at Gohan, wide and unguarded.

The fist in Gohan’s chest unclenches fully, and Gohan breathes.

Then Trunks’s eyes go wide. “You’re hurt! What happened? Are the androids back?”

“Just overdid it training,” Gohan assures him. “Hey, after I see what your mother needs, why don’t you and me go catch our dinner?”

“Yeah, totally!” Trunks says.

Gohan smiles and puts a hand on Trunks’s back. He steers the boy around to face his mother. “Well, Bulma? Tell us what you need.”

Notes:

Thank you always amorekay for the beta. You fixed the temporal problem! You’re a hero.

Next chapter: What do a park ranger and an entomologist have in common?

Chapter 4: intermission

Summary:

Four hours in the wilderness.

Notes:

I watched a lot of nature documentaries for this one.

Chapter-specific warnings:

Briefly referenced animal death, brief description of fish gutting. Some off-handed fatphobia from 17.

umbrellarequiem did an excellent fanart for the last chapter!! Go look!

It’s Gohan’s turn. Seventeen accepts his suggestion.

They go to the Northwest Plains.

 

 

“Roseberries can grow almost anywhere, even cities,” Gohan explains. “Though they’re technically an aggregate fruit made up of drupelets. See?”

Seventeen peers over Gohan’s shoulder to the cluster of berries climbing up the cliff wall. Gohan keeps his muscles relaxed, focusing instead on the wind that whips at their clothes and the warmth of the ki that keeps him aloft this far up the cliffside.

“You’re a real nerd, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “I can't tell if you’re in it for the nature or the fun nature facts.”

“I can like both,” Gohan says. Seventeen snorts and nudges his shoulder. Gohan stills, then moves out of the way

Seventeen takes up the space he had occupied to look closer at the berries.

“So,” Gohan starts. He tries again. “So, roseberries are bitter, but nutritious. The problem is, they tend to grow alongside spinelberries, which are toxic to humans. They can cause sickness and even death. And they’re only really distinguishable from each other by their drupelet patterns.”

“Huh,” says Seventeen. He curls his hand around a cluster and yanks it from the vines.

“Wait—” It's stupid, trying to protect Seventeen is stupid, but Gohan reaches to stop him on instinct even as Seventeen pulls out a trio of berries from the dangerous mix and pops them into his mouth.

Gohan freezes. Seventeen grinds his teeth down on the berries with comfortable indifference. He swallows, then lets the rest of the berries fall to the earth below.

“Didn’t know you worried about me,” Seventeen says. “Sweet.”

Gohan draws his hand back and searches Seventeen's expression. The wilderness had been a brutal teacher, and Gohan respects each lesson it taught.

Seventeen carelessly licks red juice from the corner of his mouth.

Gohan says, “You… you can tell them apart?”

“You’re not the only one who had to figure this kind of thing out,” says Seventeen.

Seventeen pulls out another cluster. He plucks the spinelberries out of the batch and holds the remaining roseberries out to Gohan.

“How sick did you get?” Seventeen asks. “While that guy who said he’d train you just left you to it.”

“You don’t know a thing about him,” Gohan insists. “He gave me my potential as a gift. What did you mean about figuring it out?”

“You’re being rude, Gohan,” Seventeen says, and pushes his hand towards Gohan again.

The berries stand out, bright red and intricate, against his open palm. They wait for him. Curling ki around himself against the chill of the wind, Gohan wonders if Seventeen even feels the cold.

Gohan could knock the berries aside. But it’s food. He shouldn’t be a spoiled brat about food.

Gohan takes the berries from Seventeen’s hand and puts them in his mouth. They burst, bitter and cool, between the pressure of his teeth.

 

 

The sloping shorelines of these lakes offer a perfect growing ground for tall reeds. A wealth of birds, insects, and mammals find shelter in their thickly clustered stems. Gohan flies carefully over the wetlands, scanning for the distinctive purple-blue flare of thistleheart flowers, while Seventeen hovers over the tips of cattails and cane with hands behind his head and eyes turned up to the clouds.

Gohan asks, “When did you have to learn about roseberries?”

“You pick things up when you’re on your own.”

Thistleheart flowers grow in tall reeds. When ground into a salve, Gohan had explained to Seventeen, their petals can be used to numb bruises and breaks. Seventeen had asked if Gohan was driving them extinct.

Now, Gohan glances over towards Seventeen. But Seventeen’s eyes are still up on the sky, and there is nothing to read in his expression.

Gohan asks, “You mean after Dr. Gero activated you?”

“You’re kind of an airhead sometimes, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “We didn’t have to eat after that.”

“What do you mean, ‘after’? What about before?”

“If you tell me who your mentor was, I can tell you how long he took to die.”

Gohan straightens in the air. He’ll have to come back when he can focus. His supplies are lasting longer these days anyway.

“There are some caves around here,” Gohan says. “Let’s check them out.”

“Wow, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “Didn’t think this conversation is what’d get you in the mood.”

The blast Gohan launches at Seventeen startles birds into the air. Gohan leaves without bothering to watch Seventeen shrug it off.

 

 

This deep into the cave system, the only light around comes from the energy orb cupped in Android Seventeen’s palm. The light beams too brightly off wet cave formations and casts too-deep shadows where it can’t reach. Seventeen reflects it like a lighthouse.

Gohan watches a star beetle, no larger than his fingertip to his first knuckle, carry a dead millipede up the cave wall. It loses its grip and falls; the millipede drops from its pincers in its tumble down. The beetle rolls back and forth to get the momentum to right itself, picks up the millipede, and tries again.

“The star beetle doesn’t get any sunlight,” Gohan says. “That’s why they have no pigmentation. They spend their whole life cycles in cave systems.”

The cave is quiet. Just the skittering of animals, the drip of water. The strange, cool echo of their voices in a hollow space.

Seventeen says, “So Son Goku never trained you, huh.”

Gohan does not have to look at Seventeen at this angle. The beetle falls and tries again. Gohan tries to make out the translucent pattern on its shell, but it’s too dark here.

“Your moves look wrong,” Seventeen says. “The ones that are his, I mean. It’s like you worked them out from memory.”

Other insects scuttle across the cave floor. The star beetle has to fight off one of its own kind to keep its millipede prize.

“I’m just curious,” Seventeen continues. “Seems weird he wouldn’t train his own kid if you had some secret potential.”

“Seventeen. Were you human?”

“Relax, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “You can just say you don’t want to talk about your daddy issues.”

One of the most difficult parts of strength like Gohan’s is keeping it where it belongs. With utmost care, Gohan sets his hand in front of the beetle. He waits. Millipede safely in its pincers, the beetle climbs over his fingers. Gohan places them against a little wall ledge and stays there until the beetle climbs off. It scuttles into a hole barely larger than itself. A tunnel to its nest, probably.

Seventeen balances himself with a hand on Gohan’s shoulder. Gohan keeps perfectly still while Seventeen brings the light closer to track the beetle’s escape.

 

 

“I’m not trying to get information to use against you. I’d just like to understand.”

“You’re a weird guy, Gohan.”

The skipping stone Seventeen gave him is too sharp at the edges. Gohan thumbs over its corners with only a fraction of his strength to add a better curve. Seventeen tosses a rock across the lake so hard that it cuts straight through the water surface on first hit and shatters on the distant shore.

Seventeen picks up another stone from the ground. A brief wave of his energy cuts it flat.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Gohan says.

“Yeah. Because you’re weird.”

Gohan resettles his grip on his now-smoothed stone. With the gentlest gesture he can manage, he sends it skipping. It hits fifteen times before sinking. He’ll have to try another angle.

Seventeen tosses him the stone, still hot from the energy that shaped it. Gohan fixes its edges.

Seventeen asks, “Hey. Is the blond thing innate?”

“I’m not going to talk about this.”

“Must be weird staying angry for the whole fight. I wanna hear what it feels like.”

“It’s not your business, Seventeen.”

“Aren’t you trying to connect with me?” Seventeen says. “You know, so you can find the humanity in my evil machine heart. Change my wicked ways.”

Gohan throws his stone. Twenty-two jumps.

Seventeen’s throw leaves a crater.

“Oops,” he says.

Picking up a stone of his own, Gohan says, “It isn’t about being human. Everyone, no matter who they are, deserves the opportunity to become better. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Nah,” says Seventeen. “Some things should just be smashed.”

 

 

Humans with guns navigate the edge of the plains. Gohan and Seventeen track their progress from the sky. Seventeen had said, “Poachers should be stopped, right?” Gohan reminded him of the deal, and Seventeen just smiled.

Gohan really hopes they’re not poachers.

Seventeen says, “If it’s not innate, your teacher owes you a refund. You’re really bad at controlling it.”

“Don’t talk,” Gohan says.

“You’re so touchy, Gohan. Your mentor should have programmed that out of you.”

The poachers enter a low growth of bushes and younger trees. Gohan leans more into ki sense to track them.

Doubtless bored of waiting, Seventeen takes Gohan’s left hand in his and starts idling with it. By now, Gohan can almost filter out the feeling of those fingers on his skin. It’s a rote repetition: heat without life, contact without consideration. It’s nothing.

The sun blankets him in steady warmth that soothes across his limbs. A gentle wind wicks away moisture and discomfort. Bird calls fill the air with a pleasant white noise.

One of the humans stumbles, and the others don’t stop to help him. Their wide-brimmed hats hide their faces.

Gohan asks, “Did Dr. Gero give you a choice?”

Seventeen laughs at him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gohan sees the hunters, or poachers, freeze in their tracks. He feels the little sharp bite of panic in their ki. They run back to their vehicle.

“Come on, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “Even you aren’t that stupid.”

Seventeen gives Gohan’s hand two pats. Gohan pulls away and looks to the sun’s position to judge how far along the time has come.

 

 

The Northwest antelope cluster closely together across open plains. At the periphery of their group, a pack of wolves lurks in the tall grass. Sitting on a cliff overlooking the plains, Gohan can’t quite make out the wolves’ shapes, but Seventeen tracks them with ease.

“That’s gonna be rough,” Seventeen says. “You sure your hero thing is okay with this?”

“We don’t have the right to decide which one most deserves to live. You know I know that.”

Watching Seventeen’s eyes, Gohan can tell the wolves are just at the edge of the grass. None of the herd has noticed, but they’re not naive to the threat, either, with the younger animals clumsily grazing at the center of a protective circle of adults.

“You said that some things deserve to be destroyed,” Gohan says. “Does that include humanity?”

“No,” Seventeen says. “You’re just fun to kill.”

The wolves stop moving. Then, they launch into plains. A cry of an antelope starts the stampede.

Seventeen raises himself into the air to watch them go. Gohan stands. The antelope dive and dodge; the wolves bait at the edges, nipping and yelping to harry the antelope. The strongest of the herd take the lead, and the young are flanked by adult protectors. Others lag. Even this early, it’s clear which are most likely to fall to the wolves’ desperately hungry jaws.

Seventeen doesn’t seem thrilled by it, not the way he gets when he’s running over humans or blasting up office buildings. He just looks curious.

Gohan says, “The Red Ribbon Army was destroyed. Maybe they still had secret recruits, but that’s not what happened to you, is it?”

“Connecting some dots there, Gohan.”

“He kidnapped you. He took you from the people who loved you.”

The natural drama still rages on below Seventeen’s aerial box seat. But his attention shifts.

Gohan braces himself.

“Okay,” Seventeen says. “We can play this if you want.”

“I’m not playing,” Gohan says.

“We’ll trade information. It’ll have to be something fun to be worth it.”

“No.”

“Hey, I’ve got it. You can tell me about the first time you went blond.”

“No.”

“You’re so sensitive all the time. It’s anyone’s guess what made you snap.”

“I won’t discuss this, Seventeen.”

“I’m not looking to use it against you,” Seventeen mocks. “I just want to understand.”

An animal screams, and Seventeen’s head turns. Gohan doesn’t let his focus slip one inch until the moment has gone on long enough to become a change in the flow of battle. Seventeen flies closer to the kill to see the wolves at work.

Gohan exhales and sits. Seventeen will come find him when he’s done.

 

 

Upriver, a bear seeks a salmon dinner in shallow rapids. It comes up empty handed and drags itself back to shore. Like a dog would, it shakes the water from its fur, spraying droplets everywhere. Then, it tries again.

“Bears are pretty cool,” Seventeen says. “Nature in general. Save the planet, you know.”

Here in the branches of the trees, they have a good line of sight and decent enough distance not to disturb the bear. The canopy throws Seventeen’s expression into shadows—the softer curve of his smile, the wider focus of his pupil. It’s almost… okay.

All his life, Gohan realizes, he has only seen Seventeen focused on things he hates. Out here is the first he has ever seen Seventeen watching something different.

Seventeen catches Gohan watching. Every feature sharpens. A deep instinct tells Gohan not to move.

Gohan overrules it. He’s getting good at that. He turns from Seventeen towards the bear, fixes his eyes on its pursuit, and tries not to hear whatever comes next.

“You knew them all, right? Those guys who tried to fight us back then. One of them did your blond thing. Vegetation or Vegetarian or something.”

The bear makes the plunge into foamy white waters again and turns up empty handed. It whines in protest.

“No, my bad. It was Vegeta. Piccolo was the green guy. Tienshinhan and Chiaotzu were the freaks. And the weaklings with your outfit were Yamcha and Krillin. And then there was the guy with the sword. The fat one.”

“Yajirobe,” Gohan says. “His name was Yajirobe.”

“Yeah, that was it. Thanks.”

Gohan doesn’t know if Seventeen is pretending to forget or not. He doesn’t know if that information is in the chips of a computer or the neurons of a human brain. It occurs to him, then, that Seventeen might not know either.

Gohan says, “Yajirobe fought with us when the planet was invaded. He was scared, but he still risked himself and saved my father’s life.”

The bear navigates across river-slick rocks. It catches the spray of water across its paws and chest.

“When—there was a time when he took me aside. To make sure I ate. He said…”

It was freaky, Yajirobe told him, to see Goku’s kid ignore food. So Gohan better fill up, or what would his dad be thinking up there in Otherworld?

Gohan says, “His name was Yajirobe. He was a warrior and a friend.”

“Huh,” says Seventeen. “Well. He didn’t last that long.”

“You should remember his name.”

The bear, tired of the salmon hunt, wanders towards a nearby berry bush. The red juice spills indiscriminately over its maw.

 

 

The waterfall breaks out from a gap in the cliffside to cascade into rocks and mist. A branch sprouts out from unsteady rock high above the cave mouth.

Gohan says, “Once, when I was three or four I think, I went over a waterfall kind of like this. My father dove after me as fast as he could on Nim—he flew after me. But he couldn’t see me anywhere.”

Seventeen has excellent hearing, but Gohan still talks as clearly as he can over the fall of the water. He tries to judge the tone of Seventeen’s attention.

“Then he heard me crying. Somehow I’d gotten above the waterfall and grabbed onto a branch hanging out the side of the cliff. My father didn’t understand how, back then. He was just glad to see me safe.”

Piccolo liked to meditate near waterfalls best. In that year after Namek, Gohan used to come play near him. It must have been a distraction, but Piccolo never sent him away.

“Cute childhood story,” Seventeen says. “Is it my turn?”

“I would listen, if you wanted to talk.”

Seventeen flies closer to the branch. Gohan doesn’t follow, just observes Seventeen looking it over. Then Seventeen calls back, “Hey, nature boy. Did you destroy any of these with your miraculous potential?”

Gohan comes closer to follow his line of sight. At the point where branch meets rock, a nest of robin hatchlings sits precariously. The chicks cry out for food inaudibly over the rush of water, a sea of open mouths begging for their parents’ attention.

Gohan tries to remember anything of the incident—the feel of the branch in his hands, a flash of beak or feather, his father’s reassuring presence. There’s nothing. Just a story, told years later, in the shelter of a home still warmed by the greatest hero Gohan has ever known.

“I don’t know,” Gohan says. He’s not sure if his voice carries over the roar.

Seventeen claps a hand on Gohan’s back.

 

 

“Who was the first person you killed?”

“No.”

“I’ll go first. Mine was Gero.”

“No.”

“Come on, Gohan. I thought you played fair.”

“Against you?”

“It’s your turn.”

“No.”

“Don’t feel bad if it was an accident. Humans are really easy to kill.”

“Back off, Seventeen.”

“Unless it was the first time you went blond. That’s scary. Hope you made it quick.”

“I’m not like you.”

“So you planned it out. I guess—”

“You, Seventeen. I’m going to kill Eighteen and you. I don’t need anyone else on this planet dead.”

“Oh. I get it. That’s pretty sad, Gohan.”

“Shut up.”

“You should try it sometime. Maybe it’d help you relax.”

The fire catches and transforms him, and it is all Gohan can do to just clench his fists and keep still and not start a fight he can’t win.

Seventeen says, “You really need to work on controlling that.”

He pats Gohan’s jaw, and Gohan knocks his hand away. Seventeen just laughs.

 

 

Dressed again, Seventeen says, “I don’t remember much from back then but my sister. So, not that different, I guess. Whatever the old geezer did to us, it must have wiped all that clean.”

“Oh,” Gohan says. They’re siblings. The androids were human siblings. And of their life before, they are all that each other has left.

He brushes grass off his shirt before pulling it over his head. There are wrinkles from Seventeen’s thoughtless handling, but Gohan can’t do anything about that now.

“I’m sorry,” Gohan says.

“Yeah,” says Seventeen. “You’re stupid like that.”

 

 

“The Northwest orange butterfly is a brood parasite. Like cuckoos.”

Gohan points to the caterpillar crawling along the edge of the flower stalk. Based on the size, it looks like it will be descending soon.

“In their case, they drop to the ground on a silk thread. They release chemicals that mimic the scents of ant larvae. That way, nearby ants will bring them back to their nest and raise them as their own until they’re able to pupate.”

“I can see why you were a virgin,” Seventeen says.

Seventeen peers at the little caterpillar. They watch as it builds a thread—Gohan can track the movements, if not the details. It begins its descent.

“And touching it won’t ruin its whole parasite strategy,” Seventeen confirms. “With our scents or whatever.”

“No,” Gohan says. “See?”

He extends a hand out. The caterpillar lands on his open palm. It stops, raises its head, and then its little legs tickle across his skin as it tries to determine what has interrupted its path.

Gohan holds the caterpillar out to Seventeen, and Seventeen sets his palm under Gohan’s fingers. Gohan gently tips the caterpillar into his hand.

“Huh,” Seventeen says. He raises it up his eyes.

“We just have to set it back down on the earth when we’re done,” Gohan says. “The ants will do the rest.”

“Sounds like you’re sacrificing the ants to the butterflies.”

“I told you. It isn’t our place to decide.”

Seventeen sets his hand down in the earth. The ground is undisturbed. He lets the caterpillar wander down across the side of his palm and into the dirt, and then they both step back and wait for it to be found.

 

 

“You know,” Gohan says, “if you kill all the humans, there won’t be anyone left to make video games.”

Seventeen, sprawled out under a tree, nudges Gohan’s leg with his shoe. A single leaf has caught in his hair. “That’s a new one. Good try.”

 

 

“Were you programmed to kill humanity?”

“Oh, we’re doing this again.”

At the lakeshore, Seventeen and Gohan wait with fishing rods. No bites. But it’s dinner, and Gohan is Saiyan. He really needs to eat.

“I just want to understand,” Gohan says. “Is this a choice for you?”

“I don’t know, Gohan. Is this a choice for you?”

“Don’t play that game.”

“Sorry. It’s just hard to take you seriously right now.”

Gohan just shakes his head and gets to his feet. The water’s surface is perfectly still. He isn’t ever going to catch anything this way. He pulls off shirt and boots and pants and walks to the lake’s edge.

His father taught him how to fish with a rod. Before that, Gohan only knew diving deep and wrestling for dinner with his own hands. When he’d admitted as much, his father had ruffled his hair and told him, “That way’s a lotta fun too! It’s good to try lots of different techniques so you can choose the one that works best.”

Seventeen says, “Didn’t you ever just want to smash his head in?”

“Huh?”

There’s a flicker of movement just below the lake’s surface. Gohan shifts, braces himself to dive—

“Your mentor.”

Gohan loses his footing on the rocks. He shifts to turn back to Seventeen, and Seventeen is there, right in his face, forcing Gohan to set a foot back for balance and throw out his arms to keep steady. Heat without ki makes his stomach turn.

Seventeen says, “He took you from the people who loved you. Right? Hey, where was Son Goku for that, anyway?”

“You don’t get to ask about him,” Gohan says. “You don’t get to ask about either of them.”

“I bet you didn’t even go blond on that guy. You’re so naive, Gohan.”

“What are you talking about?”

“But that’s been obvious for a while, I guess.”

Seventeen pushes Gohan into the water. The plunge sends all the fish scattering, and when Gohan pulls himself to the surface, Seventeen is back at the shore, his line cast out to waters that have been scared clean. It’s like he never moved.

Gohan drags himself out, flares Super Saiyan to burn off the water, and then settles in place to wait for the fish to return.

 

 

“Seventeen. What was your name?”

“You really don’t learn, do you.”

There’s no rancor to it. It almost sounds like how he looked watching that bear.

 

 

Settled down by a fire he built with deadwood and ki, Gohan gills and guts the first of three fish. Seventeen seems grossed out enough by the process to keep his distance, so Gohan falls comfortably into the old routine—gill vent lifted, a careful cut with ki. Then another cut from vent to maw to give access to the insides.

One of the fish had been given to him by Seventeen. Gohan tries not to think about it. A decent few feet away, Seventeen seems content to spend the little time they have left laying back on the grassy hilltop and watching sunset bleed into the clouds.

Cicadas call their presence. The wind whispers through the grass. The bugle of elk reaches them, rising up from the plains below.

“You know you’re not going to win against us,” Seventeen says.

He tells Gohan, “You were getting stronger for a few years there. That was pretty fun. But you’ve plateaued now. Whatever potential it was that Piccolo saw in you—”

Gohan stops, and he knows it’s obvious—weak and open—always the coward freezing when he needs to act—he just thought he could keep to himself at least that name—

“—You hit its limit. You’re just not gonna get any better than this.”

At Gohan’s side, the fire crackles with warmth. Gohan stares down the insides of this fish, still waiting to be pulled out from beneath its ribs. The moving light throws shifting shadows over his hands and arms.

What Super Saiyan feels like is burning up from within. It’s a beast of flames licking at the inside of your bones, begging to be released. It tells you, You could burn it all down if you let go. They all deserve it.

So just burn.

“I will end your cruelty,” Gohan says. “Nothing else matters.”

“Well,” Seventeen says. “You put a pause on it, I guess.”

 

 

Two weeks later, Gohan meets Seventeen at an empty roller derby. Seventeen hands him a bundle of thistleheart petals, and Gohan can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a threat. He thanks Seventeen anyway.

Gohan says, “I’m sorry. For what Dr. Gero did to you. It shouldn’t have happened.”

Seventeen scans over his face, and Gohan isn’t sure how to read the muted edges of his mouth.

“Good thing Eighteen isn’t here,” Seventeen says.

Later, staring up at a cracked mirrorball that no longer spins, Gohan tries to imagine what it would feel like to have your body and mind taken apart and remade to someone else’s design. To be normal one day, and something else the next, and to never be able to go back.

He feels only the sinew and muscle stretched across his own bones, the blood running through them to the rhythm of his still-beating heart. All this body’s familiar aches.

“Skates on,” Seventeen says as he throws Gohan’s shirt at his head. Gohan sits up. “I’m picking the song.”

Notes:

Thanks, as always, to my excellent beta amorekay.

The Alcon blue butterfly is a brood parasite that tricks ants into caring for its larvae. Its larvae are themselves hosts for the parasite larvae of the Ichneumon eumerus wasp.

Next chapter: You’re not a boy, you’re a monster.

Chapter 5: lightning

Summary:

Enough is enough.

Notes:

happy10thousandyears did an incredible comic of a scene from the last chapter!

Chapter-specific warning:

Emetophobia (non-descriptive), off-screen torture, aftermath of sexual violence, victim-blaming.

Gohan doesn’t really set time aside for haircuts, but they’re nice. He likes the quick whisper of scissors through his hair, the light touch of a brush over his scalp. It’s a simian thing, Bulma had explained to him when he was much younger. C-tactile afferents.

C-tactile afferents, she explained, are low-threshold mechanoreceptors (she caught his look and promised to explain ‘mechanoreceptors’ after) activated by slow skin-temperature contact. Apes have a lot on their scalp and the back of their neck to encourage them to remove parasites from each other’s fur.

“Huh,” Gohan had said. “I guess I must have some. Do you think Saiyans have them too? I bet Namekians don’t. Do you think, when Saiyans became Great Apes, they ever groomed each other?”

Vegeta had then interrupted to remind them that the Great Ape transformation was a war form for Saiyans, that it made them the terrors of the galaxy, that their people wasted no time on “social grooming”—they were warriors and conquerors, and if Gohan had such useless cells, it was courtesy of his weak, human side.

Gohan doesn’t really remember what Bulma said to make Vegeta flush and stomp off from the conversation, but ever since, he can’t shake the image of Vegeta as a Great Ape plucking the world’s biggest flea out of another Saiyan’s fur and eating it. He’s not sure who he imagined the other Great Ape would be. Maybe Nappa? It definitely wasn’t Gohan’s father.

“What are you laughing about?” Bulma asks.

“Just remembering a conversation with Vegeta.”

“Oh, yeah. I have a few of those I laugh about myself.”

She catches him for haircuts, sometimes. He’ll be by to help with one errand or another, and she’ll complain about the disaster of a hairstyle he’s created for himself. Then she’ll make him sit down and let her work.

Gohan doesn’t mind. There’s something soothing about feeling the familiar flame of her life safe at his back as she talks him through an old story or a new project. It reminds him of the spaceship, and Mount Paozu.

“He respected you, too, you know,” Bulma says.

Gohan tries to turn to look at her; he’s scolded with a rap of the comb against his skull so weightless even in his base state that he has to remind himself to react. Bulma resumes her trimming.

“What do you mean?” Gohan asks.

“The thing about Vegeta is he complained about everything all the time. It’s like he thought that if he didn’t have a chip on both of his shoulders, he’d lose balance and fall on his face.”

“That’s… definitely a way to describe Vegeta.”

“I have a gift. Anyway, he used to complain about your dad not training you more. I always thought it was just about the rivalry thing—you know how he got about your father.” Gohan does. “But one time, a little before Trunks was born, he said something about how you could have become a Super Saiyan if you weren’t forced to spend all your time on—” She drops her voice to mimic Vegeta’s “—‘Earth schooling.’ That it was an insult to you as a ‘Saiyan warrior’ to not push you to reach it.”

“Oh,” Gohan says.

Bulma tips Gohan’s head forward to get at the back of his neck, and he looks down at his open palms. They are an uneasy pattern of smooth skin and interrupting scar tissue, less than they could be, thanks to healing tanks and senzu beans, but more than before.

He doesn’t really know anymore which scars are the androids and which are earlier battles. It doesn’t matter, he supposes.

Quietly, Gohan says, “I liked studying.”

“I told Vegeta that,” Bulma says, “and he bitched about me missing the point. Anyway, he fought beside you on Namek—and against you before, and who knows how he counted that. And sometimes, I wonder if he wanted you to be proud of being Saiyan. One of his people. You know?”

The comb sifts out loose strands of hair. C-tactile afferents. Bulma whistles to herself as she turns his head left to start on the side.

The androids think Gohan and Trunks are human, as far as Gohan can tell. They wouldn’t care even if they did know.

But Vegeta cared, very much. And Gohan’s father cared more, after Namek. Because of Vegeta.

“Bulma? Could I look at the photo album after?”

“Of course, Gohan. Any time.”

A little later, to the hammering of metal and the soldering of steel, Gohan settles down at a worktable with Bulma’s book of photographs. Turning through the pages of old adventures, known to him through memory or vivid retelling, he traces faces with his fingertips to reteach his mind their fading shapes.

 

 

Gohan thinks Seventeen is joking when he says he wants to break Gohan’s bones. He isn’t.

“You said it was boring if I’m not fighting back,” Gohan says.

“Well. It’s more boring,” Seventeen says.

“Then what’s the point?”

“No point. I just felt like it.”

In the front hall of this abandoned police station, Seventeen holds his hand out: palm up, neutral expression. Like Gohan would just hand himself over for Seventeen to hurt however he wants.

“No,” Gohan says, and then, “Four hours? You can’t even play one video game for four hours.”

“Well, if it’s got a good gameplay loop,” Seventeen says, then glances at Gohan’s expression. “I’ll explain later. A deal’s a deal, Gohan.”

“No,” Gohan says. “It won’t even be fun for you.”

“Don’t get so freaked out about it,” Seventeen says. “It’s not like it’s the first time.”

“I’m not freaked out.”

But Seventeen just waits with his lazy, open hand.

It makes no sense. Seventeen had said he wouldn’t. He’d said it wasn’t worth his time. Now he’s standing there, casual as anything, acting like this is a game worth playing and that he’s not changing the rules, and Gohan can’t figure out why.

There has to be something. Something he wants from this. There’s always at least a poisoned choice. That’s the game.

“I want to pick the bones,” Gohan says.

“Good try, but no. The surprise’ll be more fun.”

“Fine. Let me pick the type of break.”

“Yeah, not sure I can control that.”

“Then just tell me why.”

“Don’t make a big deal out of this,” says Seventeen. And then he says, like he always does, “You can always walk away.”

And like always, when Gohan looks at that cool, dispassionate expression, he knows: Seventeen really thinks it’s true.

Gohan sets his forearm in Seventeen’s open palm. Those too-familiar fingers close around his limb, loose enough that Gohan could easily pull free. He fixes his eyes on a point in the middle distance, halfway between him and a bulletin board of out-of-date wanted posters.

“Oh yeah,” Seventeen says. “Do the blond thing. I want to have to put at least a little effort in.”

There’s a fire in Gohan’s soul. Gohan calls to it. It brightens and grows.

It wavers. It retreats.

It never retreats.

“I’m waiting, Gohan.”

“Just—give me a second.”

The wanted posters come into focus. Gohan can make out faces but not the crimes. All those people are dead, probably, or will be soon. Gohan knows that most of the time, when he tries to draw back, Seventeen lets him, knows that Seventeen finds it more amusing that way. If Gohan tried to break away now, Seventeen would let him go.

And then he would wait for Gohan to hand himself over again. And, eventually, Gohan would. That’s how the game works.

A deal’s a deal.

“Performance anxiety, Gohan?”

“Shut up.”

“I can get bug facts wrong if it helps.”

Seventeen has his arm. His fingers press warm and gentle indents into Gohan’s skin.

Seventeen has done worse. He has done so much worse.

Why can’t Gohan get angry?

They left their bodies mangled. He found Vegeta with broken arms, found Tienshinhan’s charred torso three yards from Chiaotzu’s crushed skull. Krillin had looked terrified, but he was still there, still died there, like he died on Namek, like he’d run into every battle they couldn’t win, loyal and brave and clever, and they’d burned him straight through—Krillin never let Gohan fight alone, not once, and they murdered him—

“Harvesters are a type of spider. Butterflies can’t fly if you rub the scales off their wings.”

“Shut up.”

“Beetles don’t know how to fly. Termites are related to ants.”

“I said shut up!”

Piccolo had been—and Gohan hadn’t—

He didn’t last that long.

The androids killed them. This thing on his arm killed them. They killed them, and they don’t care, never have, and Gohan knows the real reason he’s the last one standing—it’d be boring, if they had no one left to play with—if he were stronger, he could have ended it, like his father would have, but there's only him left—

He’s a child. He’s a pampered, useless child who can’t do any better for the world than this.

So he should just do it.

“That’s the spirit,” Seventeen says. Gohan’s arm breaks.

 

 

It’s not the full four hours. Turns out torture is pretty boring after all.

 

 

“Let’s take it easy on the sparring today,” Gohan says. “First, we’re going to practice a little more meditation. Then I want you to show me your forms.”

Every time they meet to train, Trunks practically vibrates with an enthusiasm so infectious it’s hard not to laugh. Today, his eagerness has him about two seconds away from blasting the beach into a mess of sand on pure aura alone.

“Are we going to practice trying to go Super Saiyan again?” Trunks asks. “I was thinking, if you attacked me like you really meant it—”

“Thirty minutes of meditation. I know you can do it now.”

“But we’ll spar after, right?”

Trunks’s eyes are so wide you could fit Namek in them. Gohan stretches out his arm with slow, deep breaths, easing out a sensation that has subsided into little more than a steady burn. Lucky Saiyan genes.

“We’ll see,” Gohan says.

Trunks always struggles more with meditation at the start of lessons than at the end, but he makes the effort and gets through the allotted time. Gohan deflects the sparring request again and tells Trunks to show him his forms. They’re more fluid and precise than before, and by the end of being put through his paces, Trunks’s body and his ki read as nicely aligned.

“See?” Gohan says.

“Woah… So, it really does help?”

“Did you think I was lying?”

“Of course not, Gohan!” Trunks protests. “Just… It felt like a distraction. You know.”

“I promise you,” Gohan says, “Super Saiyan will come. When it does, you’ll be stronger than if we didn’t take this time to slow down.”

Trunks looks down at his shoes. They’re messy with wet sand, probably enough that it’s gotten into his socks. Maybe Gohan should stop picking beaches for training. “Yeah…”

Gohan ruffles Trunks’s hair, and the twinge through his arm is not harsh enough to make him wince.

“Hey.” Trunks makes a half-hearted effort to bat Gohan’s hand away. “I’m not a kid anymore, you know. I’ve faced the androids.”

“Your father had a really hard time going Super Saiyan. Did you know that?”

Trunks’s head shoots right up. “Really?”

“Really,” Gohan says. “We never really figured out what got him there. It just seemed like he couldn’t do it for a long time, and then suddenly, he could. Krillin said maybe it was because he’d been angry for too long. That only when he came to Earth and started relaxing was he able to experience his rage as a need.”

“Is that what you think it was, Gohan?” Trunks asks.

“I’m not sure,” Gohan says. “For me and my father, it just took one—event to push us over the edge. But your father had a complicated life, before he came to Earth. Maybe he needed something different.”

Gohan wonders what his father would have thought of Vegeta’s ascension. But by then, they couldn’t ask.

“Something different like what?” Trunks asks.

Vegeta told Gohan that a tie is a vulnerability. But there was Bulma, and then there was Trunks. Somehow, Vegeta became a Super Saiyan, and sometimes Gohan wonders.

He knows he is responsible for half of what Trunks believes about the father he’ll never meet. But there are some answers he just doesn’t have.

Gohan says, “Who knows? Now come on. If you have time to sulk, you have time to train. Do you think you can do even better on your forms this time?”

Trunks pumps his fists and nods quickly. He has the fire; all Gohan has to do is guide him to control it.

“Yeah. Yeah! I’ll show you what I can do!”

 

 

It’s Gohan’s turn. They meet outside what was once a nightclub in the destroyed outskirts of Gingertown. Seventeen shoots each and every one of Gohan’s suggestions down before he’s even done saying what they are.

“Bad luck,” Seventeen says. “Guess it’s my pick.”

Gohan’s fists curl at his sides. He takes his ki in his hand and stops its flow from cresting.

“Anyway, I changed my mind,” Seventeen says. “It’d be kinda entertaining to see how long you can last.”

“You already know how long I can fight y—”

Seventeen clocks the realization, and his smile widens.

“Hey, good job, Gohan. That’s pretty quick for you.” Seventeen steps back and holds the door open for Gohan, inviting him into the dim space beyond.

Four hours.

Four hours.

Four hours of heat from a void. Four hours of Seventeen testing for the interesting response. Four hours of trying to hold his ground, and losing, fighting for every boundary, watching every single refusal turned into a different concession—four hours—four hours—

He whispers, “I can’t do four hours.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” says Seventeen. “Maybe you’ve got hidden potential.”

There is no appealing to pity. Monsters have none. Seventeen leans back against the open door, a hand in his pocket, and watches the dilemma play out across Gohan’s face.

“Are you sure—” Gohan starts. He breathes in fresh air, swallows stale spit. Tries again. “Are you sure this is what you want? Seventeen. Whatever you’re trying to get out of this, it won’t work. You’re going to get bored. Like last time.”

“Well. Can’t be sure until we try,” Seventeen says.

A deal’s a deal.

He can always walk away.

This is the best he has ever done protecting them.

Gohan walks out of the daylight and into this dead and shuttered club.

“Go blond,” says Seventeen. “It might help.”

He lets the door fall shut behind them.

 

 

Gohan doesn’t know how long it takes. It’s not the full four hours, he’s pretty sure. The game got boring, like Gohan said it would, but somewhere in there, after he—when Seventeen—

Anyway. Gohan lost track.

So Seventeen is gone, but the dim, dusty club ceiling isn’t. Gohan isn’t either.

He can always walk away.

He stays lying back on the sticky fake leather of the abandoned booth, muted lights above him and his cut up shirt on the ground at his side. Stupid choice, stupid, he should have just used the takeback Seventeen gave him to switch. What was he even saving that for? Did he even use it?

It doesn’t matter. It’s just a lost fight. Gohan is good at losing fights.

Later, he drags himself to the bar, refills the shot glass with whiskey, and drinks. It’s his third drink the day, he thinks. Or fourth. It’s the third or fourth drink of his life.

Whiskey or rum?

Mouth or hands?

Gohan finds the abandoned restroom of this abandoned club and vomits in the toilet to avoid making a mess. The mirror tells him he should clean himself up, too. He does.

Play or walk, Gohan. But this is the best he has ever done protecting them.

It’s too dim in here to tell the passing of time. No windows. It might be daylight still.

He lies back down on the booth, still warm from when he left it.

Vegeta would call him pathetic right now. The idea is a comfort he takes with him as he cuts his thoughts adrift.

 

 

The ceiling collapses in a rain of energy and debris. Gohan gets to his feet and throws a shield around him: no ki, it’s them. Gohan drops into a ready stance and searches up through the dust made by disaster.

“So you’re still alive,” Eighteen says. “If you can call it that.”

The settling dust reveals her: arms folded, sneer set, hovering above the roof she destroyed.

Some ancestral snarl escapes him to set sinew and blood ablaze. “Are you here for a rematch?”

“You’re really pissing me off,” Eighteen says.

“It’s mutual, android.”

He has to get better ground for the fight. A building like this just gives her opportunities to box him in. But she’s alone, so he has a chance. He might be able to at least do some damage.

“God,” Eighteen says. “You’re too weak to be worth it. You need to get put out of your misery.” She turns away.

She’s going somewhere else. Gohan can’t let her. In a burst of golden speed, he puts himself between her and her exit route.

Eighteen says, “What, do you want me to kill you?”

“I won’t let you hurt people,” Gohan says.

“Oh my God,” Eighteen says. “Did Seventeen give you a concussion? Don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear about it. Look around, dumbass.”

It makes no sense, and Piccolo taught him better than to take his eyes off an enemy, but—

He extends his ki sense.

There’s nothing. It’s a dead city. She was only trying to leave. They made a deal.

He is supposed to be protecting people.

“You’re pathetic. This is happening because of you.”

Eighteen spits at him. He’s too slow to react.

Gohan wipes her spit from his face—warm, like S—

Stop. It’s just that they were human once.

She shakes her head, then leaves without another word. Gohan doesn’t move an inch. There where she left him, Super Saiyan still eats away at his core, too wild to be doused.

He has to burn it out. If he doesn’t, he’ll kill someone.

It’s just a dead city. No one is left.

Gohan drops back down to earth. He screams this city’s ruins into plains.

 

 

When it comes to mechanics, Gohan excels more at theory than practice. As a result, Gohan is put on calculation review duty (there are never errors, but sometimes there are badly written numbers), while Trunks’s tinkering skills are commandeered for assembling something meaningful from the parts.

For both of them, their real duty is to carry heavy things and tell Bulma how smart she is. Gohan is happy to serve.

“I can’t believe they’re still missing,” Trunks says. “Are you sure they’re not dead?”

“I told you they did this before,” Gohan says. “Bulma, do you remember that? Maybe a decade ago now?”

“Oh yeah,” Bulma says. “A couple of months of radio silence, and then back like it was nothing. Gosh, that was so long ago… I was a beautiful, youthful twenty five back then.”

Gohan, who learned not to comment on the number of candles on Bulma’s birthday cakes well before the androids halved the human population, tells her, “You’re still a beautiful and youthful twenty five, Bulma.”

“Has anyone ever told you what a smart young man you are?”

“Mom,” Trunks whines, “you’re being embarrassing.”

“What’s embarrassing is that you’re using a flathead when you should be using a Phillips,” Bulma retorts. “You should know better, Trunks.”

“You’re using the Phillips, Mom!”

“Oh. Whoops. But don’t scold your mother. Gohan, can you—”

“On it,” Gohan says, a multihead already in hand. He passes it over to Trunks and shares a grin with him that they hide from Bulma. Luckily, she’s too busy working on a bolted joint to notice their conspiracy.

“You know, though,” Bulma says. “It’s not like they’re totally missing.”

Gohan glances over at Trunks. The boy’s attention is completely back on his mother: wanting the news, wanting to fight.

He needs more time.

“They’re not?” Trunks asks. “Where are they?”

“No one knows where they are,” Bulma says. “But there are rumors about them popping up in different cities. People claim they saw Eighteen on a shopping spree as close as Bridgetown. You know, the kind you don’t have to pay for because you’re a murderer? And Seventeen supposedly destroyed a game center in Myrrh City because he lost to some poor hostage at table tennis.”

No one’s paying attention to Gohan. Trunks is looking at Bulma, and Bulma is looking at her work.

Gohan breathes like he saw Piccolo breathe. Like he used to put himself to sleep matching his breathing to the rise and fall of his father’s chest.

“Really?” Trunks asks. “I didn’t hear anything about that.”

Now, Bulma is fully paying attention to Trunks.

“And why would you be listening for news of androids, Trunks?”

“Uhh—”

“Gohan. Do you know why Trunks was listening for news of androids?”

“No, Gohan doesn’t!”

Gohan says, “It’s good to be informed, Bulma. Weren’t you the one who said you wanted to see Frieza before he blew the planet up?”

“So you're on his side,” Bulma says.

“I always thought it was really brave of you,” Gohan adds.

“That’s not charming. You can’t charm me into ignoring a betrayal. Just for that, you’re going to have to stay for dinner, young man. And you’ll be taking my trouble-seeking son with you to catch the main dish.”

Gohan laughs and holds his hands up in surrender to her indomitable will. Trunks just sighs with a theatricality only available to teenagers and flops back against the dirty workroom floor.

Bulma nudges him with a foot and tells him to get back to work, and he sulks his way through following her command.

 

 

On the outskirts of the destroyed Papaya City, in a house that is so long abandoned Gohan can’t figure out how Seventeen even got electricity for the game console, Seventeen says, “Let’s go to Clovetown.”

Gohan looks at him numbly. Seventeen smiles. He always does, except when he’s bored.

“Give me half an hour to get something else to wear,” Gohan says.

“Nah. You can go like this.”

“I refuse.”

“So you wanna stay in?”

Gohan steps back—center mass lowered, shoulders squared—

Seventeen tilts his head.

"Oh, yeah, I see it now,” he says. “That’s definitely the green guy. You really were well-programmed, Gohan.”

All at once the fire catches.

“You have no right to talk about him. No right!”

Gohan strikes. Seventeen blocks Gohan’s right fist, and Gohan swings his left, looks into his eyes and—

No.

Gohan pulls away. Seventeen doesn’t stop him. Super Saiyan doesn’t leave but flickers, a fire choking in his core.

He has to do this. It’s the best he has ever done. And, maybe—if there’s any chance of stopping them, any chance that what he saw out in the plains could be something—

They killed Piccolo. They killed Krillin. Some things should just be destroyed.

His father would extend his hand. Right?

Gohan closes his eyes and exhales. He knows Seventeen is watching; Gohan’s efforts are part of the entertainment. When Gohan opens his eyes, he has turned them back to black.

Gohan says, “Seventeen. You don’t have to be programmed. I could find someone to help you.”

“Yeah, nah,” says Seventeen. “The survival rate on your whole ‘reform’ thing doesn’t look so good. Just ask Piccolo.”

Super Saiyan surges again, but he forces it down. Gohan turns his back on Seventeen and walks to the door.

“Four hours, Gohan.”

Gohan stops with his palm wrapped around the door handle.

“Tell you what,” Seventeen says. “We don’t have to go into the city. You can just stay here for double the time.”

He’s Super Saiyan and he isn’t. He burns and he gutters out. Gohan covers his face with his hands, and he can feel himself, how pathetically erratic he is, flickering between states, and he can only pray that Trunks is as inattentive to ki in moments of calm as Gohan used to be—so much for meditation—the rage and its choking is so exhausting—

He can’t do this. How can he keep doing this?

Gohan is a coward and a spoiled brat, and this is the best he has ever done protecting them.

The hand on his shoulder startles him into knocking it away, but it’s just Seventeen, and he stops himself.

Just Seventeen. He starts to laugh.

“Uh, okay,” Seventeen says. “So, what’re you gonna choose?”

Gohan presses at his eyes with the heels of his hands and lets the strange dull ache of that pressure slap him into the present moment. He is so, so tired of making Seventeen’s choices.

This is a dead stranger’s house, and Gohan has never brought anyone to account.

“We’re not going into the city,” he says.

“Okay. Add four hours to the clock.”

“No.”

“So you’re walking.”

Gohan’s hands drop and he snarls. The fire crackles through his eyes, his skin—

“No. The deal’s on. The games stop.”

Seventeen is too close, like he always is. There’s that edge in his eyes, and Gohan thinks—he must’ve made a wrong move somewhere. Bad strategy. They’d be so disappointed in him.

Then Seventeen just tucks a few strands of hair behind his ear.

“Man,” he says. “It’s obvious you’re going to be boring about this. I’ll make you a deal instead.”

What can Gohan do but wait for it? No one is going to make this stop.

Seventeen says, “Get me past this boss fight, and we can forget about everything else.”

Gohan hasn’t gotten better at video games. They both know that. He walks past Seventeen to the couch and dully holds his hand out for the controller. Seventeen passes it over, sits beside him, and watches him play.

Somewhere in the first six losses, Gohan’s able to drop back to base state. His breathing settles.

He gets the Game Over screen, flicks the control stick down, and selects ‘Try again.’

Eventually, Seventeen takes the controller from him—Gohan is never getting past this boss—and clears the fight. Then he keeps playing. He chatters about the game with the same disinterested brutality he has for human lives, but he doesn’t demand that Gohan answer him, so Gohan just listens and watches the game.

After a while, he gives up the fight to keep his eyes open. It’s not like Seventeen couldn’t kill him anyway. It’s not like they couldn’t have killed him for years now.

He’s not boring enough to kill just yet.

Gohan lets his body slump against a human warmth. Time slips away.

 

 

The energy blast hits Gohan in the face before he has time to rouse himself. He takes it full on, ki only just taking the edge off the heat, and throws himself to his feet, but Eighteen isn’t looking at him. She is glaring with folded arms down at Seventeen—her brother—who hasn’t bothered to get up from the couch.

“‘Four hours.’ You’re so full of shit,” Eighteen says. “Enough.”

“Hey, Eighteen. I was kind of busy.”

“With your stupid game, yeah. I’m sick of it. Get a new one.”

“I can grab the go-karting one if you want. Hey, Gohan. Put Marco Kart 8 in.”

“Not the game I meant, asshole.” Eighteen gestures to Gohan at her left.

Oh, he thinks. It’s him. The androids are fighting about him.

Suddenly he remembers his mother yelling at his father about distractions from his studies, and his father sitting blithe and oblivious at the kitchen table with chopsticks full of rice shoved into his mouth, and Gohan cannot stop himself from bursting out into laughter here in front of the monsters he is supposed to kill.

They both stare at him. He sinks his face into his hands to try to shut himself up, but there’s nothing to do to block their voices out.

“Look at him,” Eighteen says. “He’s done. Just kill him already.”

“He’s just having an off day. It’s a human thing.”

Eighteen throws another energy blast at Gohan; he deflects it on reflex through a side wall. Gohan regains his breath and resettles his stance, drawing his ki to his muscles and skin as a shield. But Eighteen just growls her frustration, aims one last glare at Seventeen, and storms out the front door.

“Uh-oh,” says Seventeen. “Well. See how far you can get without me.”

Seventeen hands Gohan the controller and leaves after his sister. He doesn’t bother to shut the door behind him. For a long moment, Gohan stares at the controller, warm from Seventeen’s once-human grip.

Then he puts it gently down on this dead stranger’s television console and goes outside to watch the monsters fight.

Gohan has not been back to Papaya City in thirteen years. It resembles a tornado’s aftermath: a monument of broken buildings and shattered streets juxtaposed with strange islands of untouched infrastructure. Ground Zero of the apocalypse.

No one even tried to build it back. Gohan buried corpses in this dirt.

Here, in the place where they started all this, the androids are yelling at each other. Or rather, Eighteen is yelling at her brother, while Seventeen calmly and annoyingly fails to pick up on why.

“You’re being gross and boring, and I hate it,” Eighteen says. “We should just kill him now. All this just proves he’s too weak to be worth fighting anyway.”

“Well, maybe,” says Seventeen. “But you never know.”

“No, I’m done with this. How long do you expect me to wait around while you play this disgusting game?”

“It’s not like we can play against the same guy. That’d be gross.”

Gohan keeps his eyes fixed on the place equidistant between the three of them. His mother gave him books on how to calculate it, a long time ago. He thinks he remembers practicing in the dirt during his training so he wouldn’t fall behind.

“And it’d be fucked up to ask the other humans,” Seventeen continues. “They’re too weak to say no.”

“What?” asks Eighteen. “What are you saying? You think he’s not?”

“Hey," says Seventeen. “Wait a sec. What about that brat Gohan was toting around a few months ago?”

No.

“Gohan’s training him to replace him or something. I bet he’ll be a decent enough fighter to play the game eventually.”

There is a fire in Gohan’s soul.

“Oh my God,” says Eighteen. “I can’t do this with you.”

Seventeen says, “If you wait on killing humans until me and Gohan are done now, I’ll wait until you and that guy are done then.”

There is a beast. It needs blood like his lungs need air.

“Stop! You're my brother. You’re not supposed to be like those men!”

“Like who?”

Gohan tells the monsters, “You are never, ever getting that child, do you hear me? Never.”

Seventeen barely glances towards him. His hands stay in his pockets, idle and slack.

“Don’t get so worked up about it, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “It’s not like you’re training him to win.”

There is lightning.

The beast is on the doorstep. Then it is in Seventeen’s face. It registers Seventeen’s widened eyes—Good—then takes his throat in hand and throws him through the house walls. It chases, catches Seventeen before he hits the patio and slams him into it, pins him down in shattered concrete to block escape. It knows on instinct it isn’t strong enough to drag this out, but if it could—if it could kill Eighteen first and kill Seventeen slowly, kill him second—

It strikes Seventeen’s face in unsteady bolts, again and again and again and again and—

Seventeen catches the punch. He holds it. With his other hand, he wipes blood from his mouth.

“Huh,” Seventeen says. “That actually hurt a little.”

Then Seventeen pats its face.

Hands or mouth?

Since you’re so shy.

This is the part where you take your shirt off.

“Look at you, Gohan. Looks like we can get you madder after all.”

Gohan’s face.

My turn. Right, Gohan?

Lightning falters. There is screaming.

Something grabs Gohan by the back of his head. The beast fights it, snarls and tries to twist around to stop it—it can’t—he—

Eighteen pins Gohan down with a knee in his back and slams his face into the ground. She smashes it into the dirt, over and over, until all the fire dies out and Gohan collapses into base state.

Then, she keeps going.

“Hey. Eighteen. Enough.”

The beast howls a full-moon rage, but its tail was cut off a long time ago. Gohan isn’t sure he can breathe.

“Eighteen. You’re gonna kill him.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well, don’t.”

The grip on his skull releases. His face hits bloodied dirt.

He has to move. He has to stop them. He can’t.

Spoiled brat. You can still fight. Get up.

“Fine.”

Eighteen kicks him in the ribs. He can barely gasp through it.

What are you, a coward? Are you going to let all those people die for nothing? Get up!

Gohan presses his hands into the dirt. He pushes. Muscle and sinew, blood and bone. His arms collapse underneath him.

He tries again. He falls.

“Huh,” Seventeen says. “I guess we’ll call that four hours. See you in two weeks, Gohan. East City, west side.”

Gohan hears but doesn’t see Seventeen fly away. He only has a spinning view of the ruined ground. Eighteen’s footsteps grow distant, then stop.

Gohan looks up.

It’s dark and unsteady and his vision is failing him more every year. He can’t see her expression. He only sees the blurred shadow of her head turning to look down towards him.

Then she’s gone too, leaving Gohan alone in a crater made by his own beating.

He has to move. The city is destroyed, and no one is coming to save him. He has to get up.

Gohan gets his knees back under him.

He crawls to the ruined home. The living room is just debris now. Leaned back against crushed plaster and broken wood, his unfocused eyes settle on the game controller, knocked to the ground beside the smashed up television set.

Gohan lets the pain run itself down to a detached aching. He knows the routine. All he has to do is wait until he has the strength to get back to his camp.

 

 

The next morning, Gohan lets the radio play as background noise. It’s all endless chatter, local news and old hits. He has two weeks to heal, and this is not the worst he’s experienced. Settled down in the grass by the ashes of his campfire, he grinds up thistleroot petals with his stronger hand.

Breaking news interrupts.

An attack on Clovetown. An android was sighted on the east side. They’re on the lookout for the other. Skyscrapers are down already, and the death toll is climbing fast.

Through the tinny radio speakers, he can hear people scream.

Gohan places the pestle in the mortar. He sets it gently down on the earth beside him. He covers his face with his hands.

This is the best you’ve ever done protecting them.

You can always walk away.

Just hold on, Gohan. We can make it through this.

Gohan breathes in. He sobs until he is left gasping for air.

 

 

Then, Gohan inhales the wasteland winds, cool and clean and familiar. Then, his eyes set on the sapphire horizon and his bruised skin takes warmth from the morning sun. Birds call out for each other, for warning, for the pleasure of the song, and a wolf joins its howls to the chorus.

There is a fire in his soul. It is a gift from the people who loved him.

Gohan exhales. He stands up and eats his second last senzu bean. He heads to Clovetown to do what he was made for.

Notes:

Epilogue: Making promises, keeping them.

Thank you to amorekay for the beta. When I am fed up with my writing, you make it good again.

Chapter 6: epilogue: tomorrow

Summary:

Is it losing?

Notes:

To my beta, amorekays, thank you. You didn’t just make this fic better. If you didn’t find value in the story, I don't know I would have gone through with it in the first place.

Chapter-specific warning:

Canonical character death.

So Much (for) Stardust / Hypoxia / Welly Boots.

Eighteen is alone when Gohan gets there. He finds her easily, a still point hovering high above the chaos. Death in the sky.

Below, department stores and office buildings blaze. There are no survivors in those flames. Elsewhere across the city, he feels the flickering ki signatures of the besieged: running, hiding, standing their ground, here in the face of the inevitable.

Gohan stops at a few yards’ distance from his enemy. They meet each other’s eyes. They don’t speak.

Gohan lets the fire inside him catch.

He strikes fast; she answers with a sweeping kick. He dodges left and blocks a punch with his open palm. She throws her weight forward to unbalance him and he cuts his flight to drop fast and pepper her with ki blasts from below.

The androids’ endless energy always gives them the advantage eventually, but in grounded close combat, he wastes less ki and can better control the battle’s flow. He leads her down to the streets and closes the distance between them before she can make the battle ranged. There, he takes a hit on the chin but earns the satisfaction of her enraged shout when his strike sears a hole through her sleeve.

She slips past his guard with a punch that throws him through a glass storefront. Gohan is picking himself up from the shattered glass and trying to shake off the dizziness when—

“Not cool, Eighteen. We had a deal.”

Nausea kicks through his gut. Gohan feeds the rage in his muscles and bones to burn the feeling out. Left hand in smashed glass, the other on a steel support beam, he pulls himself to his feet.

“You did,” says Eighteen. “I got bored of waiting for you to come up with something less disgusting.”

Gohan steps out from the shadows of the ruined building, but the androids are too busy scowling at each other: Seventeen with a hand on his hip and Eighteen with crossed arms. All around them, sirens blare and buildings with cracked supports begin to crumble.

With a huff, Seventeen tucks his hair behind his ear.

“You’re a real bad sport, you know that, Eighteen?”

“And you’re a real brat, Seventeen.”

Gohan shakes off the last of the dizziness. Feet on the ground, controlled breaths, just like Piccolo taught him. If Gohan keeps them in the ring of destruction they’ve already made, the survivors will have time to get out.

Gohan lets his aura flow out. The gold reflects in familiar eyes that barely flicker his way.

“Hey, Gohan,” Seventeen says. “You’re looking pretty good after last time.”

I guess we finally found something you improve at.

“No more games, Seventeen. I’m going to kill you both.”

“See that, Eighteen?” says Seventeen. “Gohan’s going to kill us both. I told you he wasn’t done yet.”

“Like this is a fight. We should just kill him today.”

“Aw, give him a chance. He was really getting somewhere yesterday.” Glancing away from his counterpart, Seventeen calls, “Hey, Gohan. Think you still got it in you?”

The parking lot behind the androids starts to crumble on its cracked supports. Ignoring the unsteady groan of shifting concrete and steel, they turn towards him.

Tens of thousands of flickering lives all around. These people are going to die, like everyone. It’s just inevitable.

But it doesn’t have to be today.

“See for yourself, android,” Gohan says.

He shifts his back foot and braces himself with ki in his feet and his hands. He’ll blast the parking lot for dust cover and lure them deeper into the wreckage.

“Okay,” says Seventeen. Blandly indulgent. This is the part where— “Give us a show, Gohan.”

Gohan loses, obviously. But he’s good at that.

People get away.

 

 

It’s slow moving getting into Capsule Corp, but injuries like these aren’t worth more than numbing salves and improvised splints. Gohan takes the descent to the labs by flight to avoid jostling his right leg, touching down only when he hits the bottom step. A level floor’s pretty easy to manage, and in all honesty, his ki is exhausted enough that he’s better served by the walk.

Bulma reveals her location by the sound of a hammer on metal and the acrid scent of a blowtorch. She glances up at his approach, calls, “Hey, Gohan!” and then turns back to the metal plate.

Then her head shoots up again. She stares.

“I have something for Trunks,” Gohan says.

“You should sit.”

“It’s okay. I’m fine.”

Bulma has her face shield off in no time and closes the distance faster than Gohan can get to her. When she tries to touch his arm, he gently pulls away.

“This first,” Gohan says. He tugs his folder out from under his stiff left arm and offers it to her. “Please keep it safe for me.”

Bulma accepts the folder. She thumbs over the top—no label, he’ll leave that to her—and then her eyes return to search his face. She keeps her tone light. “What’s in this one?”

Plain manila. Nothing to grab attention. It was difficult to write it out cleanly with his head still dizzy from the fight, and he maybe should have tried a few more drafts, but he needed to get this done.

“...Gohan?”

He blinks a few times and refocuses.

“It’s for him,” he explains, “but I wrote it to you. If something happens to me, I want you to read it. Then, just… you have to figure out how to tell Trunks to protect himself. Alright? Don’t tell him anything else, Bulma, just find a way to warn him. And I’m sorry.”

“Gohan.” Bulma steps closer. Her voice rises in pitch. “Gohan, what is this?”

“He shouldn’t have to know what happened,” Gohan continues, “but I can’t let him make the same mistake. You understand? He can’t know, but he has to be warned. I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out how to do that myself. But you’re the smartest person I know. I know you can make it work.”

“What’s going on?” Bulma asks. “What has been going on? Did—Did they do something to you? Did something change?”

“Nothing changed,” Gohan says. “Everything’s okay.”

He knows he can’t lie to Bulma. And her frown is so deep, such a heavy furrow that it brings out all her hard-won wrinkles. She breaks her eyes from his to look down at the folder he has given to her care.

She slips her thumb under the edge. It wedges open slowly.

Gohan puts his hand over hers, and she stills.

He has always liked the blue of her eyes. A rich, complex ocean of intelligence, vast enough to fill him with wonder. He trusted those eyes to keep him alive for long months in the cold void of space. If he tries, he can almost remember first meeting them on Kame Island.

It’s probably just a constructed memory, but it feels real. He can picture the way she smiled at him.

“Please, Bulma,” Gohan says. “Don’t read it. Not until—unless Trunks is the only one left to fight. Let me have that.”

Her lips part for a question. Her brows shadow her eyes. If she asks, he can’t refuse, not with the weight he is asking her to take on for him.

Bulma withdraws her thumb. The folder closes.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, Gohan. I promise.”

A fresh soreness blooms across his shoulders as he relaxes them, and he shifts his weight to resettle some of the pressure. He regrets Bulma’s wince.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Just don’t ever let me get around to reading it, okay?” The corners of Bulma’s mouth resist the effort of her smile. But she’s always been stubborn. “A girl has to keep a few mysteries in her life.”

“I won’t let you down,” Gohan promises.

“Gohan,” Bulma says. “You never have.”

 

 

One day, Gohan will collapse in the rubble. His dead will speak to him: Get up. Get up!

But he’ll have burned through everything he has. And this time, he just won’t be entertaining enough to spare.

No one will be coming to save him.

 

 

“Gohan!”

Trunks rushes to meet him on the cliffs outside of West City with ki so bright and clear that Gohan would know it anywhere. Landing with a shattering of rocks and bounding forward to close the distance, Trunks calls out, “Gohan, they’re back, they were in Clovetown, they—oh no.”

Gohan smiles at Trunks. But Trunks stares at the splint holding his right leg straight, at the shoulder sling supporting his left arm.

Honestly, Gohan thinks he looks decent. Bulma refused to let him leave Capsule Corp without taking advantage of their supplies. The sling she gave him is a dashing dark blue.

Trunks’s eyes return to Gohan’s face, and now with a deepening frown they search across his cheeks and jaw. Gohan realizes the bruises have to be coming in.

“Hey, Trunks,” Gohan says. “Got you something.”

With his good right hand, he tosses Trunks a convenience store bento box. Trunks catches it on instinct, but his attention wavers for only a moment before it’s back on Gohan’s face.

“Gohan, are you okay to train?”

“Do you think I’m going to let you skip out on a lesson?” Gohan asks. “Meditation, then forms, and then you’re going to spar against me. We’ll see if you can beat your personal best on landed hits.”

“But Gohan—”

“If you think you’re going to have an advantage, think again.”

After Namek, Gohan knew that his father was invincible. Son Goku was a legend, a hero. Nothing fells a God.

Trunks has his mother’s wit and his father’s will. Gohan admires those in him. He worries, sometimes, what he might have given Trunks of himself.

“Right,” Trunks says. His nod affirms his certainty to himself. “Totally, Gohan! I know you won’t make it easy.”

Trunks puts down the bento box on a nearby rock. With far less resistance than usual, he settles into his meditation posture a foot above the ground and closes his eyes, pacing his breathing.

Gohan lightly raps on his head. Trunks looks up at him.

“Am I doing it wrong?”

“I wouldn’t have tossed that bento to you now if I wanted you to wait,” Gohan says.

Trunks looks down at the box, then back at Gohan.

“Really? It’s not a prize for doing better?”

 

 

Gohan will try to gather what strength he has left. Sinew and muscle, blood and bone. You take the hits until you can’t.

Will it be losing?

The heat will come closer. He will pull his remaining ki to his skin as a shield, and that will make it worse, he’ll know, but he is Piccolo’s student and his father’s son. He won't make killing him easy.

Is that losing? All his life, was it always losing?

Ever since he stood terrified and outmatched under a giant’s shadow, ran a gauntlet of the cruelest soldiers in the galaxy—ever since he threw himself hopelessly against a tyrant who took delight in seeing them all gored, burned, broken and weeping—

Ever since he was nine, and all his heroes went away.

He couldn’t win, but he could deny the monsters a final victory. He could get back up.

He’ll lack the arm that would remember broken bones or too-human warmth. He’ll be scarred across a face once touched, once smashed.

And, gone, too will be that clear, still moment that could have been connection, out there in the chorus of living plains.

How could he not? You only lose when the fight ends. And, always, after him—

The heat will reach him. He’ll fight it. It will hurt.

He will think of Trunks.

 

 

Under an indifferent sun, on a cliff off the coast of what was once among the greatest cities on Earth, Gohan sets a hand on Trunks’s shoulder. The air is cool and sharp with the taste of the sea, and he welcomes it into his lungs.

His father used to hold him up to the sky. Flight itself couldn’t compare.

“No need for that,” Gohan says. He smiles down on Trunks. It’s weightless. “I know you, Trunks. You’re going to win.”

Notes:

DBZ:Kakarot Warrior of Hope spoilers

I think a lot about DBZ: Kakarot’s student-mentor Masenko. I think about the last thing Seventeen sees before he dies being a ghost.

“You know you can't win. You can't destroy what I really am. Even if you manage to kill this body, I’ll live on in someone who will become stronger than me. And he will be the one to stop you.”

Chapter 7: coda

Summary:

A letter.

Bulma,

If you’re reading this, thank you. Whenever this comes, you and Trunks meant the world to me. I hope that the time I was able to give you will be enough.

I’m not sure how to explain this. Trunks can’t know what happened, but he needs to be warned. I don’t know how to do both. Asking you to do it for me was the only solution I could find. I’m sorry.

I made a deal with the androids. Specifically I made a deal with Seventeen, although I made Eighteen hold to the terms too. Seventeen agreed not to kill humans for two weeks at a time, and in exchange, we’d meet up to play his game. That was sex at first. Good thing you gave me that talk all those years ago, right? Haha.

Anyway, the deal changed after he got bored with it. Instead of a set activity for however long it took, we agreed to a set amount of time for whatever activity Seventeen wanted. I made him agree to a few concessions, but that’s basically how the deal remained until it ended.

There are a few things worth understanding about the situation. First, the deal was a whim. They were bored of fighting the same fight, so Seventeen suggested a different way to kill time. That’s all it was to him. And Seventeen wasn’t threatening to kill humans if I didn’t cooperate; he was just delaying the inevitable to make the game more appealing to me. We both knew he would get bored and kill again eventually. I could always walk away.

The only point was amusement. It’s why he let me negotiate terms and why he changed the game. He just wanted to be entertained.

I don’t think he ever thought too hard about me, but he paid attention. He liked getting information out of me that he could use to provoke a reaction. I didn’t tell him anything about you or Trunks, so you don’t have to worry about that. Unfortunately, though, they understand now what triggers Super Saiyan. Seventeen was especially interested in how the anger works. Hopefully, they’ve already had their fill, and Trunks won’t be at risk from their curiosity, but keep an eye out.

That said, Seventeen wasn’t the only one paying attention. For however useful it might be, here’s what I learned:

• They aren’t true androids. They were human. Dr. Gero kidnapped them and reconstructed them into cyborgs.
• At a surface level, they still seem physiologically human.
• They’re siblings.
• They have very few memories of what happened before their kidnapping.
• Dr. Gero was the first person they killed. Seventeen seemed sure about that, despite the memory issues he had about before.
• They must have had recordings of my father, potentially all of his fights after he destroyed the Red Ribbon Army. It’s the only explanation for some things Seventeen said. I don’t know what other information they had from Gero.
• Seventeen said that killing humans wasn’t a matter of us deserving it; it’s just fun to them. But he also wouldn’t give me a straight answer about how much of their behavior was programmed.

Seventeen seemed lonely, even empty, like all these games were an attempt reclaim something that had been taken from him a long time ago. Maybe there is something that could change them, like there was for Piccolo and Vegeta. Maybe my father would have been able to find it. Or maybe, if it is their programming that drives them to this, you’d be able to reverse it if we could only get the chance.

But Trunks can’t take the risk of trying. Bulma, right before it stopped, Eighteen was angry with Seventeen over it, and Seventeen suggested she could make a similar deal with Trunks when I was gone.

We can’t let that happen. However you have to make him understand, don’t let Trunks ever make deals with them. They only care about each other, but there is a whole world that can be leveraged against Trunks. Once he gets into a deal, he won’t be able to get himself out. We can’t let him even consider it.

They’re the enemy. He has to kill them. That’s the only relationship with them he needs.

I hope some of this information helps. I’m sorry I couldn’t think of any other way to explain the stakes. Please, don’t let Trunks know. Just teach him to stay alive and stay safe.

Tell Trunks that I’ve always believed in him. I know he’ll save this world.

Tell my mother I love her. Tell her that I’m sorry.

Thank you for everything, Bulma. If anyone can change the future, it’s you.

I’ll say ‘hi’ to dad for everyone.

Always,
Gohan

Notes:

This is the last piece in this fic, but there are a few ideas I want to explore (e.g., an androids b-side from Eighteen's perspective), which I'll post as part of my future timeline series. You can subscribe if you want to be notified when it is posted.

Thank you as always to Kay for the beta.

And thank you for reading to the end. I would love to hear any comments, no matter how late you come to this.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of future timeline stories