Chapter 2: Anger Unrequited

  Everything inside Gohan felt like it couldn’t keep still as he sat in his chair. As he leaned against the wall, bullets were firing off inside his gut, ricocheting against the inside of his skin. One projectile would hit against the inside of the boy’s rib cage before firing against his heart, finally landing against his lung.

  The fact that one bit of movement had ceased was no consolation considering he felt the sensation in more than two dozen areas in the pit of his stomach alone. They buzzed back and forth in Gohan’s gut as he watched the colorful strobe lights above, purposefully not making eye contact with anyone. He couldn’t handle if one of the other kids thought his gaze was an inviting one rather than a paranoid look of apprehension and tried to talk to him or worse, asked to dance. It was even worse in his arms and legs.

  While they also had the similar feeling of a spray of bullets let loose, bouncing inside each limb, they were ultra sensitive to touch. They would jerk at the slightest provocation, like someone bumping into Gohan or stepping on his feet as they walked to get some punch or dip. His arms and legs hated the sensation of being still more than the rest of him, itching to start hitting and kicking someone. He couldn’t keep still the way his body rejected sitting down despite the boy’s best efforts.

  I can’t really move. He thought. I feel frozen…no that’s not it. I feel both paralyzed and perpetually in motion. I want to hit something, I want to break something…

  This inability to sit still and attack something had been building within him since Namek. For half his life, all he could see were the faces of the Saiyans killing everyone around him, Freeza’s soldiers slaughtering anyone who their master told them and the tyrant himself. His anger ebbed and flowed dangerously as he had no target to inflict his wrath upon.

  And with that conflicted feeling of rage and wish to sit still, he was reminded of when Gohan asked Piccolo to train him when Vegeta gave them three hours to rest. He remembered how crushed he was when Piccolo told him that’d be pointless and Gohan should run home for being so useless. The deaths that followed, from Nappa killing Piccolo to Freeza and his soldiers killing Namekians then burdened him so great it was hard to breath. Their deaths weighed on him like boulders.

  If I was not such a coward…Gohan thought, his hands tightening so forcefully around the edges of his chair it was beginning to crack. I could have saved Piccolo…not had to go to Namek…that trip…it was my fault for Piccolo jumping in the way of Nappa’s attack to save me…

  A stray strobe light from above shined against Gohan’s face. In that moment, Freeza’s face flashed in his mind, the expression of the tyrant lit alive by the reddish-purple qi of his attack. His fingers instantly curled into fists as anger and fear flashed through him. Gohan could feel his power rising through his body as he was reminded of how helpless he was when Dende died.

  Freeza…He seethed. If only you were here…I would…I would-!

  “Gohan!”

  He jumped at the sound of his mother’s voice. She was looking down at him with a stern, domineering gaze. Chi-Chi was dressed in her most formal clothing, an indigo dress with a white ribbon at the front. Her harsh tone and scolding look snapped Gohan right out of flashback to the battle on Namek. He was legitimately surprised he could hear her over the loud music before remembering she was usually this way when she was angry.

  “Why are you not interacting with anyone?!” she said. “You’re supposed to be having fun and learning to socialize with your peers! Why are you sitting over here alone when everyone's having a good time?! Are you trying to embarrass me as a mother?!”

  The anxiety pulsating throughout his body was temporarily forgotten about as fear of his mother overrode every other sensation.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I…I’m just nervous-”

  “Nervous?!” Chi-Chi barked. “About what?!”

  “About…” Gohan said. “About…I just…don’t think the kids here would…would understand me. Would understand what I went through.”

  “Gohan,” his mother barked. “That is not what you should be worried about. What you should be worried about is what kind of opportunity this is you might royally screw up. Do you not know that?”

  “Uh, well-” he said, trying to remember. “I think, I think that-”

  “Well let me remind you in case you forgot,” Chi-Chi said. “Orange Star Middle School only takes in the brightest of students. I was able to get you in because I’ve agonized over the fact I don’t want you to be like your bumpkin of a father and you’re almost eleven. They’ve put together this dance to get to know your fifth grade classmates better and if they see you were not socializing with your peers, they will mark that as suspicious. You will be thought of as an anti-social delinquent and not liked by your teachers.”

  “Uh-” Gohan said. “Mom, I-”

  “Get out there and dance!” she barked.

  “Yes ma’am!” Gohan said.

  He stood up and shuffled off to find the nearest girl in the crowd of people. The boy stared down at his feet plodding through the cafeteria, tile floor as he brushed shoulders with the other ten or eleven year olds. Gohan circled his head around, looking for anyone who might be the least interested in associating with him.

  No one caught his gaze, the other children turning away. It was like they were trying to ignore him. Gohan couldn’t really blame them.

  He had been sitting nervously in his chair for the duration of the dance. Gohan hoped no one saw him so he could get through one of his spells of anxiety without knocking someone’s lights out. He felt no malice to anyone in the room, merely unable to control the river of unresolved anger in himself

  Come on, Gohan. He told himself. Just find a random girl and dance with her. Dance as much as possible with her and only her for the rest of the night. Make Mom feel like you’re trying at least.

  The feeling of bullets bouncing off his insides only grew more frenzied as he approached a lone girl toward the end of the room. She was slightly shorter than him, her teal eyes showing a similar lack of confidence that he felt. Her brown hair was tied in two pigtails that fell across her shoulders. Her pink dress fell past her knees and had two wide ruffles for arm sleeves.

  Perfect. Gohan said. Just…just get her to talk to you. Or better…dance! Mom will think I’m having a good time doing that!

  He turned around to find that his mother was standing against the wall, glaring at him.

  “Hi,” he said as he turned to the girl. “What’s your name?”

  “Lime,” she answered. “Why?”

  “Well, um, wanna dance?” Gohan asked.

  “No,” she said. “I brought my date with me. He’s in the bathroom and I’m waiting out here for him.”

  He winced in pain. He shook in distress, unable to think of what to do. Again, Gohan’s first instinct was to punch something.

  It was not only due to anxiety swelling up in him from thinking of the Saiyans and Freeza but his autopilot. From being in so many battles where his life was at stake Gohan was forced to react to danger. But in a situation like this where fighting was not an option, Gohan felt as if he’d hit a brick wall.

  Try making small talk. He thought.

  “Oh,” he said. “That’s…okay!”

  He tried laughing off the minor rejection, hoping she would understand he felt no malice toward her. It was the only thing Gohan could do to not flail wildly in frustration. The level of movement swirling around him from the kids dancing, sound of brash, garish music and the random lights made his world chaotic.

  “I…uh,” he said.

  Do your best to act normal. He thought. Do your best to act normal!

  “I just thought it’d be fun,” Gohan said. “I really just wanted to talk to someone. So, um…where do you come from?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Chazke Village,” she answered. “It’s out in the sticks but due to my high grades my parents wanted me to come here.”

  Good! Gohan thought. That’s similar to me! This may go sooner than I thought!

  “Oh!” he said. “Same here! We’re rural, too! I’m…I’m kind of smart for my age too! What do you do for fun?!”

  “Mmm,” she said, her eyes sliding to the right. “Honestly I like to take care of my parents' farm animals for the most part. That and hiking in the woods with my grandpa. What do you like to do?”

  Gohan smiled, about to answer, before he flinched at the notion. His smile vanished. He looked down at the tile floor, unable to answer.

  I don’t know. He realized. Nothing…really.

  He tried to think of something that gave him joy, that he liked to do just for the sake of doing it. And he found nearly nothing. Gohan’s life was divided into two strict camps: his mother burying him under homework and study material or training with Piccolo and the others.

  The first he hated and only bothered so he didn’t make his mother upset. She was easily angered and would bark at him for the slightest hesitancy in doing all that she demanded of him. Gohan often lost sleep doing so much work, his tests something even third year college students would struggle with. The homework never ended, a never ending monotonous tedium of boring facts and numbers he would be more happy to discard than anything else.

  The other was more of a cathartic necessity than something he enjoyed. Gohan’s body would grow so overwhelmed with anxiety from the memories of harsh battles that he needed to physically exert himself to get that energy out. Sitting for hours doing school work only bottled up and exacerbated the sensation. Sparring was his only outlet for that unreleased tension and besides…no one else would understand how Gohan felt.

  “Well?” Lime asked. “Do you even do anything for fun?”

  He sighed, unable to give any other answer than what followed.

  “I did,” he said. “When my dad was around.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Gone,” Gohan said, too exhausted to keep up the facade.

  And then he just stood there awkwardly. He didn’t want to move away, lest he get close to his mother and she chew him out. But he also didn’t want to move closer to Lime lest she think he was trying to make a move on her.

  In all honesty, Gohan wanted to leave more than anything. Leave and hide. No, he wanted someone to know what he was experiencing. Know what he was going through. The bizarre thoughts of wanting to hurt people just because they bumped into Gohan. The tension of knowing one’s life could end in a single instant, from one strong attack. And if he could not find people like that, he wanted to hide from anyone who didn’t understand that sensation.

  “Do you know what it’s like to watch someone die?” he asked.

  “What?!” Lime asked.

  “Do you?” he asked. “I mean…seen it? Seen the death of someone…someone you really, really don’t want to die? And then…and then they do? Like, does it feel like it should have been you? Like…they were the one who took your place? Like, you should have died or could have just as easily died? And…and-”

  “Okay,” Lime demanded.

  She looked at him as if he had just pulled a knife out on her. Lime held both her hands up and backed away slowly. She shook with fright a little, looking scared to even open her mouth.

  “Stop,” she said.

  Gohan’s apathetic expression and slothful posture immediately straightened and changed as he gritted his teeth, sorry that he had scared this girl.

  “Oh no!” he said. “I-I-I’m sorry, I just-! It’s just that-!”

  “Gohan!” his mother’s voice came. “I heard that!”

  He didn’t have time to turn around as he felt Chi-Chi’s index finger and thumb clamp down onto his right ear. She forced him to turn around and glared down at him. Gohan looked out of the corner of his eye to find Lime was dumbstruck at this turn of events.

  “What did I ask you to do?!” she yelled. “I told you to get a dance partner and you start talking about if she’s ever seen someone die?!”

  Gohan realized that he didn’t consider that his mother might have been sneaking up on him. It’d seem like something she’d do, slowly making her way through the crowd at a non-linear angle, hiding to make sure he was behaving correctly. Normally he wouldn’t let someone get the drop on him so easily but his life was now divided into two clean halves.

  The first part was when Piccolo ruled him. Under the Namekian’s tutelage all social graces and book smarts were thrown out the window as his objective was to get hit as little as possible while hitting as much as possible. While one person might think Gohan avoided and hated it more than merely doing tests, it was the only place where he could cathartically release all his pent up rage and anxiety.

  The second half was where his mother ruled him. That was the time he was either studying or going to social gatherings and at no point was he allowed to use qi. This included sensing it. Gohan subconsciously shut off anything that had to do with fighting or martial arts to make his mother happy. And since he didn’t allow himself to sense qi, his mother could get the jump on him anywhere.

  “You were supposed to be socializing with your peers in a friendly and normal demeanor!” Chi-Chi screamed. “Not talking about all that terrible stuff from five years ago! Thinking of all that won’t get you into a good college or school! How are you supposed to become a scholar if all you talk about is death and fighting with other people?!”

  Gohan finally wrestled his ear out of Chi-Chi’s grip, the frenzied bullets of anxiety riddling his soul just a bit more. Gohan looked everywhere for a clean exit, wishing with all his might to get out. But the children dancing, the adult chaperones standing against the walls and strobe lights obscured his vision. He couldn’t handle the overwhelming urge to start hitting something until it broke.

  No! Gohan thought. No, no, no, please! I…I can do this! I can dance with some other girl! I can talk to someone else! I…I can do what my mother wants! I can be a good son! I-I don’t need to make her stress out!

  Just as he tried to explain himself to his mother, a boy pushing his way through the crowd of dancing kids made his way to Lime. He had long blond hair that came midway down his ears and looked rather muscular for a prepubescent child. He glared at Gohan as he stood beside Lime.

  “Who’s this guy, Lime?” he asked.

  “Some really freaky kid whose mother won’t stop following him around, Sharpener,” she answered. “He asked me to dance before started talking about death…and, killing? I don’t know…he’s just really odd and I couldn’t tell what his problem was.”

  It was at this point Gohan started crying. He couldn’t help it. His eyes were watering from the harsh words. The way she called him a freak stung like a wasp striking his heart. His mother’s words were even worse.

  “See what you did Gohan?!” Chi-Chi shouted into his ear, making him cringe in pain. “You embarrassed me once again! Just like your hick of a father! Is this the kind of future you want to have?! Where everyone thinks you're odd and doesn’t want to be around you?! No scholarship in the world is going to accept you if this is the way you act!”

  It was at this point Gohan couldn’t help but break down crying. His entire body went jittery with nervousness, unable to move beyond the awful shaking. The way Sharpener glared at him only made him feel worse. He positioned himself in a combative stance, getting close to Gohan as he raised his shoulders. The blond kid was readying to beat on him, his teeth clenched in anger.

  “Is this what you wanted, Gohan?!” Chi-Chi shouted. “To make everyone mad?! Was that your plan?”

  The shouting, the anger, the sight of someone moving toward him with a wrathful expression as he stood scared and unsure of what to do. As the scene played out in front of Gohan, he didn’t see Sharpner. He saw Nappa.

  The ugly, bald Saiyan’s face plastered across his memory, the sight of him hurtling toward Gohan after being thrown downward by the combined effort of Krillin and Piccolo. And Gohan, to his chagrin, remembered he ran. He fled like a coward when his allies needed him to strike back.

  Coward. He could see Piccolo calling him that now.

  “No!” he shouted. “I’m not a coward!”

  He then punched Sharpner across the mouth, aiming at his clenched teeth as Nappa’s face plastered over the human kid’s in his mind. Everyone in the room turned at the sight of Sharpner flying across the cafeteria before he crashed into the punch bowl. The table he landed into broke from the force as Sharpner moaned in pain, laying flat as the punch poured across his face. Gohan breathed a sigh of relief as catharsis flooded over him.

  I’m not a coward. He thought. See, Piccolo? See?

  “Sharpener!” Lime shouted.

  She raced toward her boyfriend, her arms outstretched to comfort him. Just as Gohan breathed a sigh of relief at finally releasing some of his pent up aggression, his mother continued yelling. He jumped at the sound of her shrill voice.

  “What was that?!” Chi-Chi screamed. “You just assaulted one of your future classmates! Do you-!”

  “Agh!” Gohan shouted.

  Upon instinct he turned and yelled at his mother. Gohan was running on complete instinct at this point, his body treating this as a fight. The simple kiai blew his mother across the room.

  Chi-Chi slammed into the wall at the far end of the room, moaning in pain much like Sharpener. The bun of her black hair was undone and spread across the tile floor. His mother was breathing hard, sighing deeply as she looked at Gohan with fear and apprehension. Even from this far away, he could tell his mother was more afraid of him than angered. From what he could make out of Chi-Chi’s expression, she was hurt that her child would strike her more than anything.

  Just as Gohan breathed a sigh of relief, the bullets ricocheting in his body seemed to stop. He almost felt happy, the catharsis relaxing his soul. His emotions seemed more manageable now.

  That was until he saw everyone staring at him. The children backed away in fear, clearly scared to get too close to Gohan. The adults were using whatever phone or communication they could to call any authorities they could get their hands on. He turned to see that Lime was helping her boyfriend up, Sharpener looking dazed and as though he could barely walk.

  “You…” she said. “You’re a monster!”

  And at that Gohan remembered his tears. He remembered her rejection of him as well as her belief he was endangerment to her. And that was compounded with his mother’s disappointment.

  She’s right. He thought.

  He looked down at himself, remembering the actions he was capable of performing. Gohan was far stronger than any normal human, powerful enough to crush mountains with a single command, buildings no more than sand castles to him. He had fought monsters far scarier than anything you’d find in the woods on Earth and learned of ways to kill. To kill so many.

  I am…He thought. A monster. Just like…like Piccolo…

  Sobbing, he raced out the building as fast as he could run, building up his qi field as he did. Gohan quickly caught his mother standing up from her position laying down, reaching an arm out towards him. She followed him just as he left the building of the middle school and shot into the air, aiming skyward into night.

  “Gohan!” she called. “Gohan, Gohan no! I’m–I’m sorry!”

  It was too late and he could barely hear her as it was. After ascending directly up, Gohan then flew horizontal. He was now deliberately seeking out Piccolo’s qi signature as he headed to where the loner Namekian usually trained at this hour of the day.

  I don’t belong amongst humans anymore. He realized. I am no child anymore. I am a warrior. And because of that…I will never realize true happiness again.