Chapter 37: Ch. 37: Family
"Hello down there! Krillin! Goku! Everyone!" They heard Roshi shout as the Capsule Corp. plane came down to land in the middle of the crater. Hearing Roshi's voice made everyone smile, but the next words I heard instantly turned my smile into a scowl.
"What are you waiting for! My babies need me! Open that door!" My mom was here. I gathered my energy to fly away, still not willing to talk to her, but Goku grabbed my hand as I lifted off the ground, shaking his head at me. I scowled at him, but he stayed firm.
"You don't get it, dad." I muttered to him.
"She's your mom, Hanna." He reminded me.
"I'm not going to sit here and listen to her force her own decisions on me." I told him.
"Just talk to her." King Kai must have told him about the fact that I hadn't been home all year. Stupid telepath. Shay never would have betrayed me like that.
'You've got that right, Mistress!' She beamed, hearing me praise her in my thoughts.
"Fine." I agreed reluctantly, dropping back down to the ground. No matter what my dad wanted, though, if she started treating me like I was in the wrong, I'd be gone in a flash.
"Gohan! My baby! Are you hurt? Mommy's here!" Chichi ran to Gohan, who was clearly perfectly fine, and wrapped him in a tight, long, suffocating hug. He spluttered, but accepted his fate. "Oh! Mommy's here! I'll protect you from all those bad men from now on, so you'll never have to fight ever again!" She told him in her usual overbearing way.
"Moom!" He protested, "You're suffocating me!"
"Ohh! My Gohan!" She said, ignoring him as usual.
"Mom! Let me go!" He shouted. Stunned, Chichi unexpectedly released him.
"What's wrong, Gohan?"
"I don't want you to protect me, mom. Pigero protected me! Krillin protected me! Hanna and Piccolo protected me all year! They all suffered in some way, because I wasn't strong enough to pull my own weight!" Gohan shouted.
"Gohan..." Piccolo and I both said at the same time. While he wasn't wrong, it wasn't that simple in our eyes.
"Gohan, you're still a kid." I reminded him.
"So are you! But you didn't turn into a giant ape and kill someone, did you?!" Gohan shouted at me.
"You didn't kill Pigero, Gohan. I taught him that technique." I reminded him. Pigero wasn't even supposed to be here. He was supposed to be an extra... One who disappeared after a single episode, never to be seen again. I'd been the one to bring him in and teach him all of the things that had inevitably gotten him killed.
"I made him use it! Because my mind wasn't strong enough to stop itself!" Gohan shouted. Finally, Goku walked up to him and kneeled down.
"You think you're the only one who accidentally killed someone in their giant ape form, Gohan? You're not." Dad told him.
"Daddy...? You?" Gohan realized what Goku was saying immediately.
"When I was a child, my Grandpa Gohan told me to never go outside at night, because a giant ape would wreak havok. That giant ape was me, but I didn't realize it. One night, I apparently disregarded my grandpa's warning. I transformed, and my grandpa was killed by my hand. I didn't even realize that it was me who'd been the one to kill him until I saw the other Saiyans transform." Goku told Gohan.
"How can you just... move past it?" Gohan asked his father.
"Because my grandpa forgave me. I've met him two times since his death, and both times, he treated me with just as much love and care as he did while he was raising me. He never blamed me, not once. I'd be insulting his memory if I were to beat myself up over something that I couldn't control. I just have to do whatever I can to avoid letting it happen again." Goku told his son. Tears welled up in Gohan's eyes for the nteenth time since he woke up, as he processed his father's words.
"Daddy..." He cried into Goku's arms.
"It's okay, son. All we can do is try to do better next time..." Goku repeated.
"Hanna..." Chichi called to me once the guys' moment was over. I braced myself for a scolding. Maybe a screaming match... That was how my mom and I communicated, if you can call it, after all.
"What, mom?" I asked, anger evident in my voice.
"I'm sorry. Had I listened to what you wanted, Goku probably wouldn't have died, because you're strong... Stronger than I could have ever imagined, and I'm proud of you. From now, I'll support whatever choice you make, no matter how scared I get for your safety." She said something that I'd never have expected my mom to say, even in my wildest dreams. For as far back as I could remember, my mom and I had always had a nonexistent relationship. We were both far too stubborn for our own goods. I was never going to be the perfect little girl that she wanted me to be, and she was never going to accept that. I didn't know how to interact with her in any other way. I was at a loss for words.
"Mom... I..." I didn't know what to say.
"That's all I want, Hanna. Can we try to be mother and daughter, again?"
"Were we ever, mom?" I wondered, before continuing, "But I want to try." I walked toward her, and she scooped me up in a hug. I didn't know how to react to this. I'd never had anything similar to love in my previous life, but I'd learned about the concept in this life from dad. He accepted whatever I wanted to do, and helped me out with a smile whenever I asked, no matter how stupid I was being.
Meanwhile, I considered Gohan to be kind of like my own child, rather than my twin brother. I looked after him and taught him whatever he'd need in the future. That was our relationship, and I'd never known that Gohan wasn't satisfied with it. Lastly, I'd never even considered Chichi family at all. We didn't communicate, and nothing that we wanted ever lined up, nor were either of us willing to concede on anything, so all of our interactions usually began with a screaming match and ended with me walking away before I got so mad that I just punched her in the face. In the anime, Chichi hadn't changed much over the course of Gohan's life. She was the same angry bat in her elderly years as she was in her early twenties, in the anime.
But I'd left home of my own volition. Just walked away, because I couldn't stand her. It'd been clear that I hadn't had any other reason behind it, and it had clearly gotten to her. Maybe she'd actually changed...
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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