— 𝔏𝔲𝔪𝔬𝔰.

Gohan discovered that there were consequences to obtaining forbidden knowledge; the end-to-all-existence kind that forced the gods to put a bounty on his head.

Abominations. Savages. Demi-gods.

He learned that the skeletons of a dead race were better left buried. That perhaps the divine had their reasons for driving them to extinction, despite the way his brain refused to wrap itself around what he could only call mass genocide. For the first time in his life, even his father was too disappointed to look him in the eyes. And for the first time, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

But maybe that was just the heartache talking because he was determined to wilt in the flames of his rage.

When Gohan looked out of the window of his assigned room, he did not see the Planet Vegeta that he’d done his research on; the blood sky and the constant desert heat that made it impossible to maintain successful agriculture. The one that he’d only heard fleeting whispers about growing up, so insignificant to his kid-self that he’d left it in the back of his memory for years until he became obsessed with his saiyan side. No — the world beyond was devastatingly beautiful, like something out of a dream.

Sadala, they’d said. A planet he’d only seen on essay paper.

Instead of a scarlet sky lit like an active bomb, above was a night sky the color of soft, lilac flowers and a moon that hung so low and close that Gohan swore that if he had the nerve to reach out and touch it, he could. But for now, his onyx eyes jumped from star to star and couldn’t help but think of them like dropped diamonds scattered in a sea of clear lavender. Below, between what little settlements and stolen Capsule Corp houses he could see, grass so deep a green that the blades took him back to when he looked at life through the eyes of a child; when colors were vivid and the future felt far away.

This world was breathtaking; and according to the so-called King-In-Training, it was all his and all he had to do was say the word.

With his knees drawn up to his chest, leaning against the corners of the

bay window, he watched a random saiyan woman just beyond the castle gates haul mounds of lumber over her shoulder like it was nothing and make her way up the hill. He focused on her, because he had nothing better to do for once, even when he heard the sharp, yet cautious knock to his door.

“Go away. If it’s dad or Piccolo, I meant it when I said that I’m never coming out. If it’s you, Kabocha, damn you; go to hell.”

He didn’t bother looking until the door opened anyways. Instead of his father coming to try and convince him to come out, it was a woman that looked both unusually gentle and yet intimidating at the same time; a gaze like aged wisdom with hair and eyes a deep onyx like his. Something about her was familiar, but he knew for certain he’d never seen this woman before in his life.

Gohan’s limbs suddenly felt stiff. He slid halfway off the bay window, his focus lingering on her tail, wrapped around her traditional saiyan uniform like she was on high alert despite the peace he knew she’d had since being revived.

But the woman just did a slow, curious scan of him from top to toe. He could see the way her breathing became more shallow the longer she stood there. Then her eyes lifted to his.

“I don’t. . .I don’t think you understand,” her voice sounded like glass. “How amazing it is that I’m actually standing in front of you right now.”

She took a cautious step forward. “Gohan, is it? My Kak— my. . . Goku’s boy?”

There was no time for the words to sink in; to process the way her tail immediately unraveled as she flew forward with her arms wide for a hug. And for some reason, Gohan let her. He let her because his body didn’t seem to register that he was in any danger, despite the way he could hear the relentless drum of blood and adrenaline in his ears.

When she pulled back, holding him out at arm’s length, she looked him over a final time. “I can’t believe it. I-I had to see it with my own eyes to believe it, I told them I was far too young to be a grandmother.”

Gohan found himself fixing his face. “. . . Grandmother?”

His “grandmother” looked not much older than him, but then again saiyans aged slowly. And even if they didn’t, they were all only a year older than when they initially died.

She folded her hands behind her back and inclined her head slightly, almost showing a shyness had it not been for the absolute assurance in her energy. “Forgive me,” she said more calmly, but barely. “Forgive me. But the second I heard your father was here. . . and you. . . I had to meet you.” She seemed to reset herself, taking a deep breath before offering him a bright smile. “I’m Gine. Your —”

“Father’s mother.” Gohan finished, almost breathless for a moment before his eyes knitted again. “And he sent you here to get me out of this room, didn’t he?”

“He did no such thing.”

He couldn’t decide if it was unnerving that the finality of her tone could still sound sweet.

“As a matter of fact, the opposite. He told me to leave you alone.” She moved to stand out his side, looking out of the window. “But there was no way that I could knowingly be this close to my grandchild and not have the chance. . . I. . . never thought I’d ever have the chance.” she gave him a smile that looked proud. “And it’s all because of you.”

Gohan scoffed. “Please.”

“His majesty, the prince,” Gine went on, and his chest tightened. “He says that you’re a genius and brags about you non-stop. That if it wasn’t for you, none of this would’ve been possible.”

He said nothing. He didn’t need to. The way his face scrunched must have been telling, because his grandmother tipped her head to the side.

“You’re. . . angry with your mate?”

“I,” his face darkened a shade, “am not his ‘mate’. And I told him to stop calling me that.”

Gine allowed her eyes to drag around his room then; from the crackling logs in the black granite fireplace to the rosewood four-poster-bed with silk sheets of deep violet. “Really? These quarters are incriminatingly beautiful. Fit for a royal, even.” Briefly, she eyed the assortment of unique-looking flowers overflowing the table in carefully crafted bouquets nearby. “And I think it would be rather hard to convince the rest of the kingdom of that; you smell rather strongly of him.”

Gohan hadn’t been with him in a year.

He wordlessly turned back to the window. “Are you sure you weren’t sent here by someone? If not my dad, then him?”

Though deep down he knew it wasn’t true. She came and sat by the window, staring at him with the natural fascination of a woman getting the miracle chance to meet her grandchild for the first time.

“No.” she said, reaching out to take his hand. “I just needed to . . . know that you really exist.”

She ran her thumb over his knuckle.

“Although,” she added, softly. “Since you strike me as the kind to value honesty, I must admit that I do want you to come to dinner, as convenient for the prince as it may sound to you. All I can do is assure you that my reasons for asking are purely familial; a mother and grandmother that wants to sit down with her family for the first time.”

It sounded convincing enough, but Gohan didn’t think he was ready to look at Kabocha without wanting to break something over his face.

Still, he supposed he was weak for a woman that vaguely reminded him of his mother; whom he was starting to miss after a week of being here. Despite how nice and massive the room was, the walls were beginning to feel like they were closing in.

He didn’t get to reject nor deny her invitation. Gine pulled away and stood. “I won’t force you, though. I was told that you needed ‘space’ and that I ought to respect that.” She said, crossing the room and hanging halfway out of the door. “But you look too thin for my comfort. Get out of this room and eat. Please?”

How could he possibly tell her no?

Gohan wasn’t sure how long he’d paced the floors, listing the million and one reasons why it’d be safer for everyone if he chose to stay away. He was unstable. He was unprepared. The sight of a man that once promised him the world made him violently sick.

All his, and all he had to do was say the word.

Step, step, turn. Step, step, turn.

He paused at the door; and maybe it was temporary insanity that made him yank it open, ready for something but unsure exactly what for, coming face to face with not one, not two, but three unfamiliar saiyan guards in total leaning against the wall opposite to him. Two had daggers on their hips, sheathed in silver holsters attached to those dreadful uniforms they’d been forced to wear during Frieza’s regime and, for just a moment in his dolent pity, he’d forgotten why he was mad at this. Freedom for a race destroyed by the wrath of the divine; people who never got to experience what it meant to form an independent nation. He hated that they still wore those uniforms. Maybe it was all they had, at least for now.

The one in the middle, though, was dressed like he was from earth. He wore dark-blue jeans that pooled at his black sneakers and a hockey jersey from some random earth team tucked beneath his cordovan tail; wrapped around his waist like a belt.

Gohan stepped out fully and closed the door behind him. “What’s your name?”

A pause, then, through gritted teeth as he inclined his head, the middle saiyan replied, “Morrow, your grace.”

“Did your prince tell you to call me that?” Gohan could’ve gagged. “Don’t call me that. What are you doing outside my door?”

Another pause, longer than the last. “He told us to, the prince. For your protection.”

“My protection?”

The humorless laugh that left him was entirely involuntary as he turned on his heel and started down the hallway without another word. Gohan didn’t know where he was going, but he refused to stop and ask anyone to guide him to the dining hall. He didn’t need to; because the entirety of the court seemed to gravitate towards the only set of large wooden double doors at the center of the castle; towering over the saiyan noble population like a divide between the north, south, east, and west wings. That, and he could sense his family’s energy humming from the other side of the massive white oak.

Those who noticed him coming made room for him to get to the front. The guards, two of them who stood like a fortified unit glaring down at those who got too close, had at once stepped aside to let him pass and, as he did, Gohan caught the faint wave of familiar energy, one he hadn’t had the misfortune of sensing since he was a small child standing to defend a world he’d only been in for five years; Nappa did not look as he remembered long ago, that impetuous brute with the savage grin. Now, he stood like somebody who hadn’t spoken in a very long time and had not acknowledged Gohan’s presence other than the instant wave of tension he felt when he paused at the door with his knuckles resting on the wood like he meant to knock.

But they knew he was here. They could probably feel his rancorous aura; already preparing themselves for things to go very wrong if he didn't turn around; and yet, he must have been insane. Or had something to prove. Or, perhaps, for once he was itching for a fight.

Voices dropped and heads turned when he walked in, but further down the long granite dining table, beyond a feast grand enough to satisfy the relentless appetite of a warrior race, the amber eyes of a traitor burned into his like an inferno that never stopped yearning to consume him whole.

Kabocha had the only empty seat next to him, expectant, but Gohan was certain that part was deliberate. Instead his eyes surveyed the seating arrangement and the row of guards positioned along the walls, landing where his best friend sat between Piccolo, whose plate lay untouched and pushed away a good distance, and Goku, who looked to be working on his fifth bowl already.

He didn’t have to ask; Lime, ever so loyal she was, had read his mind and stood as he rounded the table and avoided the bemused quirk of Kabocha’s inquisitive brow as he sat across from him.

Nobody spoke for a good while, and he wasn’t sure why that stocked the logs of his fury; the idea that tension filled every room that he and Kabocha were in together.

“Don’t stop on my account.” Gohan insisted, peevishly. “What’re we talking about?”

Gine, bless her, said at once, “what we’re going to do about Beerus when he wakes up. Your father’s only plan seems to be to just. . .”

Goku swallowed his food. “Fight him.”

“Fight him, he says.” Vegeta hadn’t touched his plate, either. “Assuming it’s just that easy to keep up with the strength and power of a God. A destroyer, at that.”

“I never said it’ll be easy,” Goku knitted his brows in that measured way he did when he was putting something together in his head. “But I’m assuming that he ain’t the negotiating type. That means we don’t have a lot of options.”

A destroyer god. It sounded like a damning title. Like Gohan should fear it, but didn’t. After all, what did someone with nothing left to lose be afraid of? He spent the last few days fantasizing about the god of destruction putting an end to his misery; the remedial karma he deserved.

King Vegeta Senior, who’d been unusually quiet from the head of the table up until this point, leaned forward in his throne and tipped the silver rim of his metal goblet, filled with what looked to be a red wine, in Gohan’s direction. “You, boy.” he said, and the room seemed to stop. “Your research said something about a Super Saiyan God. That we can achieve divine energy. If there’s even a fraction of truth to that then I think we might have a chance. Explain.”

“Y’don’t think there was a more grateful tone you could’ve picked?” Kabocha gave his father a sharp side-eye.

With a faint, mirthless huff, the King appeared entirely apathetic as he tapped his now empty cup on the edge of the table. It was only after one of the guards came to his side with a metal pitcher to refill his glass that he spoke again.

“We have a little less than a year to either fight or negotiate with a destroyer. What tone I use with your mate is the least of my concerns.”

Gohan gritted his teeth. “I am not his mate.”

Senior’s eyes snapped to him. “You — know more about us than we were ever allowed, and that’s leverage that we didn’t have before. The reality is that if you refuse to help, then everyone will die and I’m certain that your planet will meet a similar fate just by association. Beerus is not known for his patience, and you’re the sharpest mind around from what I've been told. Therefore, you’re our only hope. Whatever lover’s spat you had with my son on Earth, leave it there.”

“Honestly.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. S’there somethin’ you wanna share with the class?” Kabocha tipped his head at his brother. “Daddy’s boy?”

Vegeta sneered. “Grow up.”

“Old fuck.”

“Kabocha.”

Gohan stared him down until he silently sat back in his chair; his fists were balled in his lap, his jaw was clenched as he turned to the King.

“I was just curious about my saiyan side, when this started.” He explained. “It. . .” He swallowed, anxiously rubbing the surface of his thumbs red and raw. “It started when I realized how weird it was that an alien race possessed the ability to transform into a species known to be entirely telluric and also share a common ancestor with human beings. The first clue was my initial wish with the Dragon Balls; a book that could fit all saiyan lore into one hardcover. But Shenron refused to answer. And because Vegeta shut down when I tried to ask, I made the mistake of wishing back your son just for him to turn out to only be a lying, deceitful little demon who snuck behind me to wish back his precious crown.”

Before kabocha could argue, Bardock cut in casually, “Are you calling us human?”

“Not really. I’d say, you know, human-adjacent in a way.” Gohan replied. “In that the common ancestors saiyans share with humans originate from Earth. Neanderthalls, Homo Erectus, Denisovans; they’re all pre-evolution human species that’d gone extinct ages ago, but there’s something called The Missing Link; the last common ancestor that ties us together. Humans and Saiyans being able to reproduce,” he paused and gestured to himself. “Is proof of that.”

King Vegeta frowned. “What does this have to do with the super saiyan god, boy?”

Tarble, who sat a little distance away, sat up a little straighter. “And that doesn’t explain how we ended up planets away.”

“How you ended up planets away has everything to do with the super saiyan god, actually.” Gohan snapped. “It was a dead end at first, but I can admit that I got lucky when I did a DNA test with my best friend here,” he nodded towards Lime. “and found out we were cousins, which led us down a rabbit hole of finding her real mother, which, long story short, led us to a woman claiming to be Turles’ daughter.”

There was a pause as Bardock pushed the remainder of his food away from him. “My brother, Turles? He survived?”

“Dead now.” Goku seemed to then stare through the table rather than at it. “We thought he came to Earth just to plant the tree of might. Turns out he was there for his daughter, too. Never found her, and I’m glad he didn’t.”

“Kabocha’s mother kept a diary.” Gohan added. “Long story short, she overheard something she shouldn’t have and Beerus forced her to take a vow of silence, but she wrote everything down before shipping it off with Turles before Frieza blew up Planet Vegeta; whoever The Missing Link is, they must have reproduced with a god, or an angel, or maybe even a Kai to create the saiyan race. They don’t want us to know that we’re demi-gods because they’re scared of what we could do with divine power as a race. She knew everything and so did he.”

Abruptly, he stood from his seat. Kabocha stood, too, but said nothing. Like he was waiting for Gohan to give him a cue. He didn’t. He tore his focus from the red-haired saiyan and looked to the King.

“Is that all you need? Can I go now?’

“Gohan.” Piccolo spoke for the first time. “Can you not control yourself through one dinner so we can figure out how we’re all going to survive this?”

His eyes found Kabocha’s from across the table. “I lost my appetite.”

“Really?” Kabocha tipped his head. “I made sure they made your favorite tonight. Sort of. The animals and grain we have here kinda taste similar to chicken and rice. So, same thing, right?”

Gohan shared a look with Lime, who pursed her lips, before directing a flat look back at the red-headed saiyan beside her. “I’m good. Really.”

“You haven’t eaten in days.”

“It’s hard to eat with a knife in my back.”

“Well, then, just let me walk you back to your room.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. Unless you want me to save Beerus the trouble of killing you himself.”

Several pairs of silverware could be heard dropping to glass plates.

And somehow, Kabocha found it funny. Because for reasons that’d forever remain to Gohan a bedeviling mystery, he lived for moments like these; lapping the violet, heady flames of their cathexis like a man starving, so hopelessly besotted, like there was no greater thrill that existed than to see how far he could go before he choked on the smoke of his fury.

There was something about it that he could never let go.

“Genuinely, what is wrong with you?” Gohan demanded. “Why are you laughing? ”

“Gohan.” Goku stood up, too. “Let’s take a walk.”

“I’m laughing because you’ve been threatening to kill me since you got here and yet, here I am. Nobody’s stopping you, s’far as I’m aware. If you don’t make your move soon,” Kabocha teased. “I’m gonna get the wrong idea.”

“Do you think this is a game? Do you think everything is a game?” Gohan gestured between them, his lip curled. “I just threatened to kill you. What exactly do you think is going on here?”

“Foreplay?”

A pause.

Gohan aimed his pointer finger right between the eyes; Goku was only fast enough to yank his arm down to the table just as something sharp shot out like a bullet and burnt the copper hair near Kabocha’s ear before hitting the wall behind him. The tapestry, once a detailed embroidery of gold, black, and navy blue, now had a clean smoking hole where the head of the legendary super saiyan used to be.

The guards moved to draw their swords.

“Touch him and you all die.” Kobacha warned, with unusual stillness.

“You’re a pig!” Gohan shouted. “And you’re delusional!”

“I love you, too, baby."

“Ugh!”

It took the last bit of restraint he had to shake his father’s hand from his shoulder, to ignore the silently desperate look from his grandmother that wanted him to stay but couldn't force him. Gohan made it to his hallway in what seemed to him like a quick blur, pausing at the saiyans still waiting by his door. In the chaos, he’d forgotten to bring up how insulting it was that they were here in the first place. Like he couldn’t put him and everyone else here in the dirt.

“You three can go.”

The one on the left pushed himself up from the pillar. “But the prince —”

“Please.” Gohan repeated, heavier as he waved them off. “Go.”

They didn’t move at first, like they were deciding whose wrath they’d rather face as they shared wary looks between them. But Gohan’s eyes narrowed until the leader began walking away with the other two following close behind him. It was only when he couldn’t see them anymore than he turned to his door, and froze.

Flowers to which he'd never seen before on Earth laid at his feet, a species entirely to Sadala and yet they shared a striking visual similarity to lavender roses of varying shades and saturation. Gohan must have been delusional, too, for carefully picking them up and turning them over, hoping, for some odd reason, that there would be a card attached to it.

But all he found was a heart and a smiley face drawn into the side of the wrapping paper.