DBZ - Bday Lea 2014 Part 2 - Come with Me

Marcia rocked her head back and let the sunlight play across her face. Sometimes, she found herself wondering if this was really how humans felt, that soft warmth on the cheeks, and that brightness that forced her eyes narrow, until she could see only the faint flecks of gold filtering through her eyelashes. It was the same as when she ran her fingers through the grass she was sitting on. Cool, needle-fine, but smooth and pliant, just a touch of dampness.

How had he known? How had Gero known to calibrate her nerves and link them up to her brain so that everything felt the way it would for a normal human?

Maybe he hadn’t, and her senses were a poor approximation of the real thing. She’d never know how it felt to be like the flesh and blood things around her. Not for certain. But she’d lived this long with what she’d been given and she’d done alright.

It was just that sometimes she wondered.

“Piccolo came back the other day,” she said, crossing her right leg over her left and bouncing her foot idly, “you know how he goes on those journeys sometimes? Here, there and everywhere. I never know what he’s looking for, and he won’t tell me no matter how many times I ask. And I do ask. I imagine he gets sick of it pretty quickly, but he never lets on. I’d like to think his temper’s gotten a lot better, but I know that’s probably not it.”

She folded her arms behind her head like a cushion. Her fingers caressed the stone, rough and mossy. She closed her eyes and basked, waiting for something else to say. It wasn’t like they were on a timer.

“Don’t think I told you what happened after that earthquake, did I? We decided not to use the Dragonballs in the end. Tough choice, considering ten people died, but we figure we need to keep them, just in case something worse happens. It’s Dende’s call, in the end. And if nothing happens for the next few months, maybe he’ll think again. I helped them put their village back together though. That was pretty cool. People are just ... crazy appreciative sometimes. There hasn’t been a lot of call for fighters recently, but I don’t hate being a builder. It’s nice to make something for a change. Like the bakery, remember that?”

She smiled despite herself. Sometimes she just couldn’t help it, thinking about noses covered in flour and late night bake-offs and dipping fingers into mixing bowls so that nothing went to waste. They’d had so much fun. Probably the happiest days of her life.

“I don’t see the kids so much anymore. Is that selfish? I mean, I’d still be there for them if they needed me, but...” She pursed her lips. The feeling was strong and definite, but she couldn’t articulate it. Words just turned to excuses. “Eighteen’s the same. She’s never said it, but I think she feels the way I feel. She doesn’t really talk a lot at all nowadays, but you know what I mean?”

She rolled over, restless, propped her head up on her hands. This position felt a little more like talking to Kandy directly, even if it was just her name she could see.

“I’m sorry. I feel like I should have tried harder to find the off-switch after you... After it happened. But I kept telling myself there was more for me to do. Maybe it’s just the way I was programmed, and Gero disguised it to look like free will, but I don’t feel ready yet. I don’t know if I ever will.” She sighed. “I think I’m scared, Kandy. Because machines don’t have souls. If I stay alive forever, at least then we both still exist. If I shut down then that might be it for me. I don’t think I’ll be able to follow you.”

She kicked her feet behind her. It wasn’t always like this. Sometimes she came away from this place feeling energised, with a head full of the good times. But there were those other times, when she left so heavy she couldn’t even fly afterwards.

She knew she wasn’t the only one who came here. Someone other than her was scraping off the moss and renewing the inscriptions. Maybe it was Piccolo. He had family here too. Or Eighteen, even if she’d never voiced an opinion on the matter. They’d all lost people.

Looking around at those stones, those dozens of stones, was the only time she ever realised how many.

And if the four of them stayed on that watchtower, if they vanished from the world, if they never made another bond again, they’d never have to add another.

Marcia stood up and placed her hand on top of the one bearing Kandy’s name, just like she’d touched the girl on the head when she’d been shorter than her waistline.

“I’ll drop in and see them on my way back to the watchtower. Everyone loves Great Aunty Marcia.”

She stretched and looked skyward. It was still a nice day. And those stones might have been people she’d lost, but they’d also been people she’d loved. She’d had a life full of that love.

It was the one thing she didn’t question. Because she was pretty sure that when it came to programming in feelings of love, Gero wouldn’t have known where to even start.

=x=x=x=

The gang was all together when she touched down at the watchtower. Piccolo was meditating three feet off the ground, and didn’t so much as crack an eyelid when she arrived. Eighteen glanced at her from where she was standing, leaning against the doorway. She tossed her head in that way that was distinctly hers, setting her blonde hair swaying, and looked away.

Dende was standing at the edge, looking down at the clouds that spread out beneath them like rolling white plains, seeing through them to the world and its troubles below.

None of them ate, or slept, or felt discomfort, or had any need of any kind of sustenance, save the nameks’ occasional thirst for pure water. Without those things to mark the passage of time, it would have been so easy for them to pass a century on that floating disc without so much as even realising it. That was why they looked downwards. The clocks moved on earth. Things happened. It kept them occupied, invested, involved. It stopped them from losing touch.

“How are they?” Eighteen asked. Marcia raised an eyebrow. “You always come home smiling when you’ve gone visiting. So how are they?”

“Good. Better than good. They’re all happy and healthy and they all have so much to say. I actually don’t think I could wish for any more.”

The visits always made her wonder why she didn’t stop by more often. Usually, she only remembered the reason when someone passed and she was hit by the rush of pain and loss that she’d felt every few years for the past century. It always put her into full retreat, and for a while she fell out of touch. Kandy would usually remind her not to let it stay that way though.

It was nice to be among family again. Even if she only saw them fleetingly every so often, the kids who’d become parents had fond memories of her from when they were young. Her reappearance was always a happy occasion and she liked to be that for them. She supposed it was kind of like a holiday.

And there was no sense in downplaying her affection for them. Maybe it would remind Eighteen of what she was missing by living a hermit’s existence up here on the watchtower.

She didn’t answer, and stood staring at the floor instead.

“Leave her alone,” Piccolo insisted. It was odd to hear him speaking up voluntarily, especially in the defence of another. “Whether she’s ready yet is her decision.”

“I was just telling her how my visit went.”

“You were trying to guilt her into going back. That’s not your call to make.”

She’d liked to have fought Piccolo’s assessment, but it was pretty accurate. She had been attempting to get a rise out of Eighteen. But surely the fact that she was doing it for her own good had to count for something.

The blonde herself seemed to think so. She nodded to Marcia and took off like a VTOL jet, fast and without warning. Her wake kicked Marcia’s hair into a blizzard around her face, and almost obscured her victorious smirk from Piccolo.

He’d told her a few times already that gloating wasn’t a sign of someone who’d matured. She liked to respond that she’d been programmed to be immature by Gero and there was nothing she could do about it. Then stick her tongue out at him.

“Something’s happening,” Dende announced, joining them at the entrance to the watchtower’s temple, “I’m sensing a sudden spike of power heading towards the earth. Like a meteor made of living energy. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

He was a good kid. Since coming aboard the watchtower and taking over from Piccolo’s better half as guardian of the earth, he’d been doing a pretty steady job. He was out of his adolescent phase now, and was looking more and more like Piccolo every day. It might have been hard to tell them apart, if Dende hadn’t insisted on wearing healer’s robes rather than the fighter garb favoured by his mentor.

He was more like a guardian than the rest of them. He was slow to anger, quick to forgive, and steady in thought. He didn’t make rash decisions or condone rash actions. That pretty much made him the missing piece for a team made up of herself, Piccolo and Eighteen.

Piccolo nodded. “It isn’t especially powerful, but its strength seems to be growing the closer it gets to the planet.”

“Come on, guys. No fair. You know I can’t sense power levels. Help a girl out here. What is it?”

“That’s just it,” Dende said, “we don’t know.”

“Whatever it is, it’s heading towards the Southern continent. If I’m right, it’ll crash down there any moment.”

“Someone better make sure it doesn’t land on anyone then. Dibs.”

Piccolo opened his mouth to protest, but her tongue was already protruding, and her feet were already hovering off the ground.

“Tell Dende to keep an eye out. I’ll signal if I need help. See you later, Green.”

She shot skywards and arced through the air, making a beeline for the Southern continent. Air drag snapped at her clothes and hair, but it was an oh-so familiar rush.

It had been so long since anything this interesting had happened. She wasn’t about to miss out.

=x=x=x=

It was a shooting star. Or at the very least it kind of looked like one.

It came streaking out of the upper atmosphere, a solid sphere of flame leaving a smoking wake as it scorched through the air. She contemplated just plucking the thing out of the air, but she didn’t fancy going back to the watchtower naked and scorched black. She could get a change of clothes there, and it wasn’t like they gave a shit how she was dressed, but still, it was a little embarrassing. She didn’t want to have to admit she’d gotten her ass kicked by a meteor.

But then, there’d been meteors before. She’d helped to deflect a couple. This was something new. Something alive. She really hoped it wasn’t some kind of alien invasion. Those tended to have nasty ripple effects that caused moron scientists to create douche bag bioweapons that were just no fun for anyone.

She contemplated bouncing the thing - whatever it was - into the ocean, but decided against it. Power level sensors she might have been short on, but she could tell that there were no life signs down below. In fact, she could already tell from the elevated heat patterns of the ground that they must have been travelling over a fault line, one with an opening nearby.

She followed the wake of heat and acrid smog down and watched as the meteor vanished into the bowl of an island caldera down below. Smoke was rising from the interior of what she guessed to be an active volcano.

It didn’t scare her off. Even without her energy shields, her skin had been designed to withstand considerable temperatures. It would be like standing on the beach at Kame House for her.

She touched down on an outcropping of porous, volcanic rock, scorched black by the heat. The haze of thick, dark smoke couldn’t hide the glow of the lava bubbling and rolling at the bottom of the bowl, like dusk sunlight behind a cloud on the horizon. Her eyes dialled down the light intensity automatically so that she didn’t have to squint.

It was just as well. Something shot out of the pool below, a streak of burning light splashing liquid rock behind it, sizzling like bacon fat on the ledges between it and her perch. It circled her with eye-blink speed and then disappeared behind her.

Marcia turned and then jerked away when she realised there was a face thrust right into hers. It was a round, chubby face, female if she had to guess, which she did, with stubby horns growing from its forehead and a thick, crackling mane of what was both fire and hair at the same time.

Its skin was grey and covered over by what looked like armour plates. They put her in mind of images Bulma had captured of the Arcosians, Frieza and King Cold. Only different. Significantly different. Enough so that hostility wasn’t her first port of call.

“Hi,” the stranger said.

“Hi yourself,” Marcia said, without missing a beat, “so what are you?”

“Me? I don’t know. What are you?”

“I’m a...” She paused. She’d been about to say that she was human, only she wasn’t the best ambassador for that species considering that she wasn’t made of quite the same stuff. “It’s complicated. What do you mean you don’t know what you are?”

“What do you think I am?”

Riddles. That was never a good sign. Of course, it was also possible that she actually didn’t know. And while weird, Marcia could work with that. It was a hell of a lot better than ‘I am here to conquer your planet, puny humanoids’.

“We thought you were a shooting star.”

“Really? Maybe that’s what I am then. I think I’d quite like to be a shooting star.”

“Did you ... come here for a reason? That you can remember?”

She thought it was best to ask. All she had to do was hope that the answer wasn’t ‘conquest’.

“Nope.”

“Alright. This is all a little outside of my pay grade. I think you should come with me and meet my friends.”

“Okay. Can I be your friend too? I think I’d like to be your friend.”

Marcia looked back at her and smiled. Whatever this thing was, it was kind of cute.

“I tell you what. If my friends give you the seal of approval, you can definitely be my friend. Can you fly?”

It nodded. “Firanna. My name’s Firanna.”

“Alright then Firanna. Come with me.”

=x=x=x=