Fumetsu no Senshi-tachi Prelude: A Storm is Coming
~An Interlude in Three Parts~
1) Bulma
2) Koneko
3) Gohan
On a stormy, summer night, each in their own rooms, Bulma, Koneko and Gohan reflect on their lives.
It was raining the night I lost her, too.
Just a month before, the Jinzouningen had arrived. All of the Z warriors were killed except Gohan. He helped me bury them. He buried Vegeta, because I couldn’t bear to. Then he went home to his mother, and to be honest, I forgot about him.
It was raining. The thunder moved off to the south. Then it seemed to come back. It was the beginning of the attack that would practically level the Western Capitol. Capsule was one of the first buildings they hit. I ran down the hall when I heard the report on the TV. I made it to the nursery with only seconds to spare before the roof caved in. Then there was nothing.
A month later I woke in a hospital in the suburbs. My leg had been crushed horribly and set improperly. It would never heal correctly. My face had been badly lacerated, by some falling debris perhaps, and my nose had been broken. Aside from other cuts and bruises, I was all right. I was lucky, they said. I was alive. Hardly anyone had been saved from what they were calling a “cleansing sweep”: a rather sick way to describe a holocaust, in my opinion.
The first thing I did (after I stopped screaming in pain) was to ask about my daughter. They said that I had come to this facility a few weeks ago, unidentified and alone. It would be another month before I could leave the hospital, but in that time I did manage to discover that my parents were killed. I had kept myself from crying constantly by imagining that they had saved Bra and were looking for me, but now I didn’t even have my fantasies.
As soon as I had crutches, I began to make my rounds to area hospitals. Each time I got the same answers: “The sweep caused such chaos…” “Yes some children and babies were saved...” “No, they had all been claimed...” or “No, they were moved from this facility already...” The babies were moved to safer locations.
That last phrase irked the hell out of me: ‘safer locations’. My arms weren’t safe enough?
So I widened my search. Some orphaned children from this and other attacks had been moved north, some to the west. I visited each location. Most of the time, the staff that had processed the children was no longer working there or they had been too stressed to remember a lavender-haired baby. I told them about the necklace her grandmother had given her: a gold trinket with the letters BB on it. Mom thought it was cute that she and I had the same initials. That didn’t seem to jog anyone’s memory, either.
Three years later, I fell into a deep depression and gave up. I stayed in the lower labs where there was an old fall-out shelter. I listened to the radio. I plotted the points of each sweep on the map. One particularly bleak day, I thought about getting on a ship and heading to New Namek-sei. The thought made my heart soar and I started drawing up plans for a spacecraft. Then I heard that someone else had had the same idea. They had been shot down instantly.
So I was trapped in my lab, crippled, with no family, no friends and no child. I stopped eating. Just as I was beginning to hallucinate, I imagined I had a friend. She was pale and nice and she convinced me to build a ship so fast that it would escape Earth before it could be shot down.
I woke up and started working on Spaceship Hope that morning. For the next decade or so I worked on the ship and tried my best to help other survivors like me.
May 12th, several years later, I decided to visit the Z warriors’ gravesite. I didn’t want to, but something in me said I had to. I brought some wild roses for them all. I remember when my aircar came up over the ridge, tears just about leapt out of my eyes. There was a man standing by two fresh graves. I wanted him to be some random stranger so badly.
Gohan wiped tears from his face with the back of his dirty hand. He was leaning on a shovel stuck into the ground. We didn’t speak for a moment.
“I’m so glad you’re alive!” I shouted.
“I’m sorry, Bulma...” he whispered. “I sort of forgot about you...”
“It’s ok...” I was staring at him. He had to be almost 20 by now. He looked just like his father. “I sorta forgot about you too. I’m sorry.” I had to ask. “Why are there...?”
“Two?” he finished quickly. “My mother... and my wife.”
I had to clutch my cane to keep from falling down with grief. “Oh Gohan...”
“You’re lucky, Bulma,” he muttered. “You have a daughter. We didn’t even have time for that.”
“No...” I lost my composure, but tried to hide it. “They never found her body...”
Gohan looked shocked and horrified. It made me want to run away. “Bulma...” Then he noticed my cane and face and fell silent.
“Why did they have to leave us?” I sobbed. He hugged me like I was going to blow away in the breeze.
Gohan came home with me and lived at Capsule for two years.
Although I was more than old enough to be his mother, I grew to love Gohan Son with all my heart. He loved me too, I know, though we never said it.
I knew he was half-Saiyajin. If he was anything like his father or Vegeta, I knew there was nothing I could do to keep him from fighting. I had only one request. Every time he would go out to meet the Jinzouningen I forced him to say good-bye to me. I wouldn’t have anymore people I loved going away without saying good-bye.
The last day I saw him before he was killed we seemed to know he wasn’t coming back. He had nearly died the last time. They had severed his arm. If it weren’t for that last senzu bean, he would have lost it permanently. Now there were no more senzu and the Jinzouningen were showing no sign of weakness. That day, Gohan kissed me good-bye.
I buried him next his mother and wife, Videl. For the next eight months I tried to keep my chin up and be civic minded. The more I helped others, the less I thought about myself.
Occasionally, as I had for years, I would see a girl about the right age with about the right hair color. I would always ask her if she knew her parents or how old she was. It was never my Bra. I wondered what she would look like. I couldn’t imagine Vegeta’s features being very pleasing on a woman.
I would visit the gravesite when I felt like I couldn’t go on. I would jokingly wish for a massive coronary so I could just lie down next to the others. There was no one left to bury me.
I almost did have a heart attack the day I heard from Vegeta. Somehow, he managed to speak to me from the beyond. He told me that Bra was alive! She was fighting the Jinzouningen and that we would be together one day. Needless to say, even if I didn’t believe that had actually happened, it bolstered my courage, and I went back out to help those in need, confident that Vegeta was telling the truth. Why would the ghost of my lover lie to me? To make me happy? He never seemed concerned about that when he was alive, why would he start now?
One afternoon, after a round of aid relief in the region, I sat down for a rest at a fountain. Just across the square, I saw a lavender haired girl walking towards me. I smiled and imagined that she was Bra, just walking over to me as if we had never been apart. She introduced herself as Koneko, but the bracelet on her arm told all. It was the “BB” initial necklace she wore as a baby. I silently thanked my mother as I hugged my daughter for the first time in 15 years.
Only two months later, I hugged Gohan again; this time as a young, healthy, 25 year old woman. Now, I’m sure our lives will be peaceful and easy...
...Yeah right.
060602
Koneko [back to top]
I don’t know every place I’ve ever been. I was too little when they were moving me around. The first place was an orphanage, I guess, called Brookhaven. It was in the Northwestern Territory. I was about three or so when they moved a whole bunch of kids out. I don’t know why. I don’t remember it being dangerous or anything, but maybe I was too little to realize it was dangerous. Then we went to this place called Midland in Central Capitol. It was a home for juvenile offenders but they changed it after the holocaust ‘cause they needed more space for orphaned kids. It was all right, clean, sort of fun, but the kids there were usually really sad. Most of them had lost their parents more recently than I had.
I never even thought for a moment that my parents were alive. Sure, I HOPED they were. Everyone did. After you see like a hundred kids who are all orphans you start to realize that it’s not really that possible that your parents could have survived.
When I was about eight, the Jinzouningen attacked the Central Capitol. We were in the basement at the time playing ping-pong. The whole building collapsed on us, but we were in this section where the structure crumpled, but formed a pocket. Five of us made it out alive. We were just about the only survivors in the whole city.
When relief crews came and found us, the adults took us to a neighboring city. We were so afraid and everyone else was so panicked that we escaped. I spent the next seven years on the road; homeless and free.
In the summer, we traveled in the north and the winter we’d go south, like the birds. Our group would always grow and shrink depending on how close to cities we got or what time of year it was. Sometimes it was only a few of us. Sometimes it was 30 or more. Most of the time we’d trade labor for a barn to stay in or food. Most of us were over six or so. For three winters we went down to these apple orchards that had been abandoned. It was great. We’d just lounge around all day and stuff ourselves with apples.
It wasn’t fun though. Everybody had responsibilities. My job was to repair broken stuff and to help protect the other kids. I was always good with electronics and with every Capsule I took apart and put back together again, I got better. I was also a lot stronger than even the boys. Now I know it’s ‘cause I’m a Saiyajin. Kids liked to stick around me because of that. We avoided lots of nasty situations with other gangs and adults fairly easily and we were never bad or bullies to the other kids. A lot of kids came to us ‘cause they wanted to get away from the gangs they were in. We were more like a family. That’s what we were called, too: the Family.
‘Cause we stayed away from cities we hardly ever saw attacks, at least not while they were happening. One time, I’ll never forget, it was cold. Fall, I think. My shoes were falling apart. We went towards this town to find some people we could do jobs for. Turned out it had been swept clean years ago by the Jinzouningen. The place wasn’t totally destroyed, but there were skeletons in the streets and stuff. We were starving too, so we had no choice. We went into the houses and stores that were still in one piece and scavenged for stuff. On the second floor of this one house I found a pair of boots that fit and left my old ones in their place. It may sound silly, but I whispered to no one that I’d return them later. It was really hard, especially on the little kids.
Having little kids around was hard, but the five of us from Midland were all really nice. We’d travel really slow if we had to, sometimes carrying kids if we were low on vehicles. We treated their wounds and made sure they got fed first. It felt good to me to really work hard for someone else. They got sick so easily it seemed. I saw at least 10 kids die of starvation and sickness before I was even 12 or so. And that’s not counting people I’d seen die from holocaust-related injuries.
They looked up to me, I guess, the little kids. Some of them called me Oneesan and some even said they loved me. I guess they needed to. I don’t know. It made me sad. It seemed to me that every time I got close to them, they’d leave… or die. So I didn’t want to love them back.
When I was about 15… There was only one kid left who I’d been with from Midland. Two were dead and a third had gone her own way. This kid, Masa, he said he loved me.
It was this one really stormy night, like this one, only worse ‘cause we were homeless. We finally got everyone a place to stay. We were in a city along the coast in the wharf district in this big warehouse they made ships in. You could hear the rain slamming into the metal walls. It was loud but we were so tired… Some of the little kids had colds, so I stayed up with them till they fell asleep. They made me tell them a story. I told them this one about this girl who sleeps on a bed with a little, hard pea in it and she turns out to be a princess. They fell asleep before I finished which is good ‘cause I suck at telling stories. Then Masa pulled me over and told me he loved me. I couldn’t tell him the same thing, even though I felt it. He begged me to try. I promised him that I would try and we went to sleep.
Then the Jinzouningen showed up and the whole damn place fell in on us. I walked out with a few scratches. Everyone else… ALL OF THEM died. I cried for the first time in a long long time and pulled them all out of the rubble. It took me three days to bury them all. I wanted to die too so bad, but instead I decided to put myself in the worst possible situations. I wanted to see the Jinzouningen. I had never seen these murderers face to face. I wanted to see them, piss them off, try to fight them and maybe they’d kill me, too.
That’s not how it went, and I’m really glad.
Every day when I wake up in my nice, clean bed and every time I hug my mom; normal stuff that I never had when I was growing up, I thank the heavens that things have worked out they way they did. And every chance I get, I tell those I care about that I love them.
061302
Gohan [back to top]
My mother had great expectations for me to do really well in school, but my father never pushed me to fight. I think that’s why I pushed myself so hard. When he died, I pushed even harder. I trained with Piccolo daily. My mother needed me too, but I couldn’t help her like that. I had to be strong. There was no way I was going to drop dead and leave her like my father had. Like everyone else, I couldn’t understand how someone so strong could die so easily.
On May 12th, all day I thought I was still sleeping. As if in a waking nightmare, I saw my friends and heroes fall one after another. I knew how much stronger Vegeta had become since my father died, so to see him killed was mind-bogglingly terrifying. When I saw Juunanagou use his arm to lance Vegeta through the heart, I froze. While I was off guard, Juuhatchigou blasted me into a building and it collapsed on me. When I crawled out, I saw Bulma holding Vegeta and crying. I still really thought that I’d wake up in my little bed in my house and cry out for my mother any minute. At the end of the day, I buried them all on a hill outside the Western Capitol where they had buried my father years ago.
I went home to my mother and tried to pretend like nothing had happened, but she was different after that day. When Dad died, she grieved heavily for months, but after that, it was almost like nothing had happened. I think she was just used to him always coming back. Now she didn’t believe that anymore. Too many of them had died, and too many innocent people all over the world were dying every day.
She refused to let me go out and fight them. So I trained on my own. I didn’t want to face them till I was at least up to Super Saiyajin anyway. It was in May the year I was 22 that I finally broke through. I was thinking about something my mother said about how much I looked like my father. I realized that the picture in my head of him was getting fuzzy. I was remembering him more from photographs, and that drove me crazy. I wouldn’t let him down. I would protect my mother and save the world, just like he would have done.
I thought it odd when they didn’t kill me. It didn’t take long to figure out that they were just toying with me. I had to tell myself that one day I’d do it, but I knew it was impossible.
One day I was buying some groceries in the neighboring town and I collided with this girl. We got to talking. She wondered why I needed so much food. Did I have a family? I told her I lived with my mother and she got sad. Her family was long dead. I offered her to come live with us. She never left. Videl and I were married that winter when I was 24. She knew all about me. I never kept any secrets from her. I don’t think she really believed I was half-alien, but when she saw Super Saiyajin, she stopped vocalizing her doubt.
One day, I heard a report on the radio and went out the fight the Jinzouningen. Videl loved that I was fighting them. She was proud of me, unlike my mother who was too afraid now to have pride. The report was false, or maybe I was wrong about the location. Anyway, when I came home there was nothing left of my house. My wife and mother’s bodies were almost unrecognizably burned. They must have died quickly, because they were in the center of the kitchen. They didn’t even have time to get out of their chairs. I could tell my wife from my mother by the rings they wore. I buried them next to the others.
While I was finishing up, not ever wanting to leave, a car arrived. It was Bulma, who I hadn’t seen in years. She was in rough shape. Her leg was lame and her poor face… Having just lost the only two people left in the world who I loved, I clung to her. I went back to Capsule Corp. and kept her company. She, like Videl, understood that I needed to fight. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about her, or my own life. It was just something I had to do. Bulma knew my father longer than anyone. She understood. I didn’t want to leave her but I didn’t want to let her down. My heart broke when I left that last day.
When I came back to life, I crawled out of the earth in the graveyard completely puzzled. I sat very still for a while and listened. Then I prayed… then cried for a while. Then I flew as fast as I could for Capsule. Very quickly I saw that the Spaceship “Hope” was gone. She had made it to New Nameksei and the dragonballs. I’m glad no one saw me screaming and dancing around through the house.
I stayed there at night and roamed around all day. It seemed like I wasn’t the only one out of sorts after coming back to life. Some people thought that it wasn’t over. I told as many people as would believe me that the Jinzouningen were no more. I assumed that Bulma had escaped and wished them gone. Little did I know, baby Bra had grown up into an amazing young woman and done it all herself.
The only crimp in the plan is the fact she converted one of the Jinzouningen and now she lives under the same roof that protected Bulma and I. I can see she has changed. I believe Koneko, but I can’t help but see a merciless killer who destroyed my friends and family and beat me into unconsciousness hundreds of times when I look at her sitting across from me at the breakfast table. It will take time to lose that feeling, but I will try; for Bulma, I will try.
061402
END
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