Chapter Text
Mount Paozu. Ages away from anything that even resembled civilization, a stretch of land practically untouched by man. All manner of predators and wildlife roamed absolutely uninhibited.
Adventure kicked off with a bang out here.
Bang! Bang!
In my case, quite literally.
Granted, I wasn’t on the scene when it happened, but the acoustics in the mountains were impressive. Not a chance in Hell that I wouldn’t hear a gunshot, let alone two.
Sure enough, I saw two immediately recognizable figures walking the path toward the house not twenty minutes later. The taller of the two, wearing long blue hair in a braided ponytail and clad in a pink dress, dark gloves and sneakers, I knew to be Bulma, who I’d never met.
The other, dragging a fish several times his size behind him
“Hey, Mirin!”
Was my little brother, Son Goku.
“Nice catch, kiddo,” I said as a greeting, ignoring Bulma for the moment. “I’ll start cutting it up.”
From her spot beside Goku, Bulma blinked. She looked a little put off at the idea that she hadn’t immediately stolen my full attention.
Well, I felt a little put off that the first human interaction I’d get since Grandpa died had to be Bulma Brief.
Speaking of.
“I assume,” I said, eyeing her. “You have a damn good reason for hitting my brother with a car and then shooting him in the face?”
Bulma didn’t even have the decency to look guilty; instead, she looked scandalized.
“How—were you lurking?”
“No,” I said. “I just know things.”
Goku laughed and hauled the catch of the day over to me.
“Mirin says that a lot!”
“Cause it’s true.” I said with a shrug, patting my little brother’s spiky hair. “Show her inside, huh?”
“Ossu!”
Goku waved at Bulma and trotted into the house. She made to follow, still regarding me oddly.
“It’s not an accessory,” I said in a low tone as she neared the door. At the look she gave me, I continued. “My brother’s tail. It’s real. And no, I don’t have one, Miss Brief.”
I put a little emphasis on her name; the name she hadn’t given me yet. She stared, wide-eyed and opened and shut her mouth several times. Had I been dealing with someone else, I might’ve felt bad for unsettling her.
I wasn’t, though, and so I didn’t.
Just because Goku could tank bullets to the face didn’t mean he deserved any. Bulma's reaction warranted a little guff on principle.
“Ooh!”
Goku gave an excited exclamation from inside the house. Bulma walked in to investigate and I followed after her.
“Mirin, look, Grandpa’s talking!”
Grandpa Gohan’s only memento, an orange orb baring four red stars inside, glowed on its mantle. I knew Bulma’s arrival heralded change in our lives, and I liked to think Grandpa gave us his blessing from the next world.
I couldn’t help a small grin. The adventure would be legendary.
“Move it!”
Bulma barreled past Goku and snatched up the ball with naked glee.
“It’s really here! I found it!”
I yanked our heirloom back from her, not that her excitement dimmed much.
“Don’t just grab other peoples things.” I muttered, passing the ball to a frowning Goku.
“Why’re you calling it Grandpa?” Bulma asked, with a tone that indicated only cursory curiosity. “Wait, you have no idea what this is, do you?”
“It’s the only thing Grandpa left us!” Goku said.
Bulma smirked and reached for the bag on her hip.
“It’s called a Dragon Ball, Goku,” I said, stealing the floor out from under her. I might’ve taken more pleasure in the way her expression changed from shocked to put-out than I should have. “Bulma will tell you about them.”
With Goku’s curiosity aimed squarely at Bulma, I walked back outside to deal with the fish. I caught snippets of Bulma’s exposition; upon gathering all seven Dragon Balls together, Shenlong, the Eternal Dragon God, answered your call and granted any single wish.
“Unlimited strawberries is tempting, but I’m going to wish for the perfect boyfriend!”
I rolled my eyes and wrapped the best cuts of fish in a cloth bundle. I carried the rest away from the house for the animals to find.
Provisions in hand, I walked back into the house to hear Goku’s staunch refusal to relinquish Grandpa’s ball.
“No! It’s ours!”
Bulma looked more impatient than anything as I walked by them both to kneel beside the futon.
“Oh, I see,” Bulma said in what she probably thought was a saucy tone; it merely sounded like another rendition of bratty to my ears. “I know what you boys want.”
I turned my head to look at her. She stuck out her hip toward us and lifted her skirt with a knowing smile.
“Go ahead. You can even touch if you want!”
I blinked. Twice.
Unfortunately for Bulma, I had exponentially better control over my hormones than most teenagers. I turned back toward the futon, rummaging underneath until I found my notes.
“I don’t wanna touch your dirty butt.” Goku said plainly.
I suppressed a snort at Bulma’s offended outcry. Undeterred, she quickly changed tactics.
“You’re a man, aren’t you? Don’t you wanna see the world? It’s a whole lot bigger than just these mountains, you know.”
Goku’s face went blank, clearly considering. I had to give Bulma credit. She’d appealed to Goku’s sense of masculinity from a different angle by rousing his curiosity. That, and she marked him as the weak link in negotiations right away. I loved my kid brother, but he sucked at handling any kind of manipulation.
Thank God he had his absurd strength to compensate for that.
In Bulma’s case, she was at least doing us a favor by taking us off Mount Paozu.
“Why not come with me?” Bulma asked, all smiles. “Collecting the Dragon Balls will take us all over—you’ll get to see the ocean, dinosaurs and even monsters!”
Goku smiled, all but taken in. I sorted out my notes and put them into a separate bundle. My little brother turned his head to look at me. I gave him the universal ‘OK’ sign, and he grinned.
“I bet there’ll be all sorts of strong guys!” He exclaimed. He paused and turned back to Bulma.
“I’m not gonna give you our ball, though. I’ll hang onto it.”
“Of course,” Bulma agreed easily. “Just let me borrow it once we have them all.”
Implying that she’d give the four-star ball right back afterward.
I didn’t comment.
“All right,” I said. “No time like the present.”
“Let’s go!”
Bulma led the way outside and asked us to stand back. She pulled out a small case from a pouch on her waist.
“What’re those?” Goku asked.
Bulma smirked almost imperiously. She tossed a capsule down in front of her without a word. In a bom of smoke, a motorbike with a glass dome roof appeared.
Goku nearly tripped backward with an alarmed outcry.
“They’re hoi poi capsules,” Bulma said, mounting the bike. “Any civilized person knows how to use them.”
“Sorry for being a couple of hillbillies.” I muttered.
“Oi, are you a witch?” Goku asked, armed with his Nyoibo, the mystical red staff Grandpa gave him. He poked the vehicle warily, suspicious.
“Do I look like a witch?” Bulma asked, offended once again. Of course she’d taken it as an insult to her appearance.
“This is called technology, kiddo,” I told Goku. “Might look like witchcraft, but there’s no evil involved.”
Bulma’s problematic personality, sure. Evil? No.
Not inherently, at least.
I assessed the space we had to work with for seating. I adjusted my baggage so I wore everything across my torso, leaving my back free.
“C’mon, let’s go!” Bulma said, impatient.
“Okay. Goku, jetpack.”
Goku smiled and stashed his Nyoibo. He loved when I called for jetpack. Didn’t know what a jetpack was, but he didn’t need to. He hopped up onto my back and secured his arms around my neck.
That done, I took a seat behind Bulma. She eyed me a second.
“Hang on, but watch your hands!”
I put my hands on her waist, bemused. She tore off down the road, and thus the small Son clan left home.
“Whoa! This is way faster than I can run!” Goku exclaimed. “We’ll have all the balls in no time!”
I laughed.
“Even if we keep this pace, finding them all will take days.”
“Really?”
“The world’s an enormous place, Goku.”
“That’s right,” Bulma said. “Do you have any idea how hard I worked just to get the balls I have?”
‘Pretty sure one of them was just gathering dust in the back of one of your huge rich-people closets.’
I kept that thought to myself. No need to antagonize her too much—she did get us off the mountain.
“Ah!”
We suddenly left the ground altogether, cresting a hill with a deceptively steep decline on the other side. Goku, being Goku, whooped on the way down. The impact once we landed rattled my entire skull.
I strongly considered nominating myself as designated driver for the journey’s duration. I made a note to tactfully bring it up later on.
“That was cool! We were flying!”
“Ah. . . heh! I’m just that amazing!” Bulma boasted, covering the fact that she was still a bit shaken.
“I need a second.” I said, stepping off the bike.
Goku hopped off my back and gave me a concerned look. I took a deep breath and gave him a thumbs up. He nodded.
“You boys wait here,” Bulma said in an oddly coy tone. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where ya going?” Goku asked.
“When a lady says that, she’s obviously going to the toilet!” Bulma snapped, storming off the path behind a rock and a tree.
“She’s silly,” Goku said. “She could’ve just done it here.”
“Some people are shy about toilet stuff,” I explained. I’d have to check myself. Peeing and pooping were fine with just Goku for company, but I’d get some modest reactions out of other people if I didn’t shift my vocabulary. “Grandpa didn’t get to tell you, but it’s polite to give girls privacy for that stuff.”
“What’s polite?” Goku asked point-blank.
“One of several things I gotta teach you.” I said.
“Mirin?”
“Hm?”
“What’s privacy?”
“Well…”
“KYAA!”
Bulma’s scream cut off any further conversation.
“What happened?” Goku called, already running over. “Did a snake bite your wiener?”
I sighed and followed after him.
“That’s another conversation for the list.”
Behind the tree, a huge, tubby pterodactyl had Bulma in his clutches.
“Who’re you?” Goku asked, somehow utterly unsuspecting. “Are you a friend of hers?”
The pterodactyl, henceforth Ptero-san, laughed.
“Yeah, that’s it! We’re real good friends!”
Seeing as Bulma couldn’t formulate words just yet, I corrected him.
“He’s lying, Goku.”
“Huh? How can you tell?”
“Does she look happy to see him?”
Goku considered Bulma’s distressed… everything.
“Keh! Shut up!”
Ptero-san went for a tail sweep to knock me aside. Goku intervened and smacked the appendage back.
“Oi! Don’t bully Mirin!”
Ptero-san, alarmed that someone Goku’s height could handle him so readily, took off straight away with Bulma in hand.
“AAAH!”
“If they’re not friends, where’s she going?”
“Better question,” I said, cutting off his train of thought. “How do you think dinosaur tastes?”
My predictable kid brother perked right up, clearly curious and always hungry.
“Go take him down.”
“Ossu!”
Goku watched Ptero-san for a second, thinking, then ran back to the motorbike. After a few seconds imitating Bulma to get it started, he streaked down the road toward another hill’s peak. The bike, and consequently my brother, went flying.
I legged it on the ground to avoid being left behind.
Goku hooked an arm on the bike’s glass dome and climbed on top of it. The vehicle had reached the apex of its flight, already falling away from Ptero-san. Undaunted, Goku leapt up, Nyoibo in hand.
“Extend!”
The staff grew longer and longer. Even as he fell, Goku swatted Ptero-san in the neck, breaking several things in the process.
“SAVE ME!” Bulma screamed as all three went into free fall.
“Huh? Okay.”
Goku let the Nyoibo recede to its usual length, then hurled it like a javelin at Bulma. It pierced her dress and speared itself into the side of a cliff.
“Hup!”
Goku grunted on landing, none the worse for wear. I caught up a minute later.
“Mirin! I think it’s dead!”
Goku pointed down into a canyon where, indeed, Ptero-san lay unmoving.
“Sure is,” I agreed. “Don’t think we’ll be tasting dinosaur today, though.”
“How come?” Goku asked, disappointed.
Personally, I felt a little uncomfortable eating anything that could speak. I’d posed the question earlier to motivate Goku more than anything. My brother clearly didn’t share my reservations.
Though I did have another reason.
“Because Bulma’s peeing on it.”
Goku looked back up at the suspended teenage heiress. A… tinkling stream fell from beneath her skirt directly over the canyon below.
“GET ME DOWN FROM HERE!”
—————
The work of half an hour saw Bulma in a new wardrobe and all three of us on a new motorcycle. We managed to maintain a decent clip without any further interruptions until evening.
Grrwl.
“I’m hungry.” Goku said from his spot on my back.
That was our cue to stop for the night. Bulma once again blew Goku’s mind—and mine a little bit, I’ll admit— with a hoi poi capsule containing an entire house.
“Are you sure you’re not a witch?” Goku asked.
“Would you rather sleep out here?” Bulma asked. She walked inside without waiting for an answer.
I nudged Goku toward the door. His mouth fell open immediately on entering, gawking at everything.
“It’s daytime in here!” He exclaimed, pointing at the lights in the ceiling.
Adorably, he cast wide eyes at the entire main room, awed at the shock of modernity after a life in the boonies. I could’ve watched him for ages, but…
“Goku,” I said. “C’mon, bath time. This’ll all still be here.”
“What’s a bath?”
“It’s how city people clean themselves.” I said, opening a door on the left side of the room.
“They do it differently?” Goku asked, following me into the bathroom. I shut the door behind us. Bulma surprisingly didn’t complain about us going first, though probably just because she didn’t want us stinking up the house.
Once again, Goku’s forward progress stalled, staring at the tile floor and the ceramic tub.
“A little,” I said. “Get undressed.”
He took off his blue gi without much comment. At times it felt a little surreal that the future’s greatest fighter would listen so readily to me. Then such moments would pass and leave behind regular Son Goku, my goofy little brother.
I toed off my shoes and got myself undressed before I tested the water nozzles. Once I hit a warm temperature that wouldn’t scorch us, I had Goku step into the tub with me.
“Ain’t it just water? We use that too.” Goku said, possibly disappointed and definitely unimpressed. His tune quickly changed once he actually touched the water. “Whoa, it’s warm!”
I poured some over his head, and his huge spiky hair drooped with the weight of the moisture.
“City folk can choose the temperature of the water they use,” I explained. I looked around for soap—I found it beside a few brightly colored bottles. I weighed the risk of bathing Goku with a scent that he’d consider unmanly against the potential bubble bath I could give him, which would blow his mind. I decided to try that another night.
“Keep your eyes shut or this stuff will sting.”
I washed his naturally spiky hair, rinsed him, and then handed him a brush.
“Scrub your back while I wash, okay?”
Goku took the tool with his tail, absently scrubbing himself while I took my turn with the water and soap.
“Hey, Mirin,” Goku said. “How do we figure out where the other Dragon Balls are?”
I could’ve told him, but really, Bulma deserved to do it. She did invent the Dragon Radar after all.
“Ask Bulma.” I said. My eyes were shut as I rinsed the soap out of my hair. The sound of pattering wet footsteps was my only warning that I’d made a mistake.
“Oi,” Goku said loudly. “How—?”
“WHY ARE YOU NAKED?!” Bulma shouted.
I went still in stunned disbelief. Apparently my suggestion to ‘Ask Bulma’ had, to Goku’s ears, meant ‘Ask Bulma now.’
I took a deep breath and sank down in the tub, hoping I hadn’t just flashed a teenage girl.
“Goku,” I said as calmly as possible. “Take a towel with you to dry off and then get dressed. Close the door on your way out.”
“Okay.”
I sighed. I’d have to cover where he’d gone wrong later. I privately bid a fond farewell to the simpler days; used to be my biggest concern with Goku was that he washed his hands before meals. I had to teach him the finer points of interacting with people.
“Thank you, Miss Brief.” I mumbled.
—————
“Are you two really brothers?”
Bulma asked me some time later. I’d managed to squeeze in a couple more lessons since Goku and I bathed.
(“If she wanted a bath, why didn’t she come in with us?”
“Girls usually prefer privacy for their baths.”
“What’s privacy?”
“. . . Tell you later. Just, unless a girl invites you inside, let her bathe alone.”)
The concept of privacy would be a much longer conversation, I suspected. Grandpa hadn’t enforced many rules before he died, and since then, Goku had only ever left my side for food or to perform number two. The latter because of the smell and the former because he did the hunting.
Barring a similarly practical reason, I didn’t know how to explain why privacy was important.
Still, I think I made a positive step in the ‘polite’ lesson.
(“Why can’t we just dig in?”
“It’s like bowing to your opponent before a match. Instead of thanking them for the fight, you say thank you for the meal to express gratitude to the person who made it.”
“Oh!”)
Relating anything back to martial arts helped things stick in his spiky little head. I knew he’d still need several reminders—I wasn’t delusional.
“Not by blood,” I said, answering Bulma’s question. “Grandpa found me wandering lost in the mountains when I was little, and we found Goku abandoned as a baby not long after that.”
I started clearing the table. Goku, predictably, hadn’t been satisfied by a dinner lacking in meat. I’d rationed out the fish pretty well during the trip, but his appetite won out. Hence he’d gone out hunting for something more filling than bread—which he thought too soft—and coffee—which he described as bitter soup.
“He was probably ditched because of his tail.” Bulma surmised. Having seen his bare bottom, she’d been convinced of its authenticity.
She might’ve been missing a few finer details, but if you swapped out ‘abandoned’ with ‘orphaned’, you ended up with a pretty accurate summary.
I didn’t tell her that, though.
“What were you doing in the mountains, though?” She asked.
Typical that she felt entitled to our origin stories without sharing even a hint of her own background.
“Dunno,” I said honestly. I had a couple guesses, neither of them pleasant. “Can’t remember much of life before I ran into Grandpa.”
“So you weren’t exiled from the city for being an ugly child?”
I blinked. Twice. I turned my head and stared, too shocked at her boldness to feel insulted. I shouldn’t have been so surprised; Bulma possessed dizzying confidence, bordering on narcissism, regarding her own looks. Why would she pull punches on her opinions about anyone else?
Or maybe she just didn’t appreciate the unfortunate side effects puberty had on a young man.
Regardless.
“No,” I said. “I think I came from some unknown village.”
“No way,” Bulma said. “You’re too used to running water and working a stove. You don’t react to things at all like Son-kun.”
She’d picked a pet name for my kid brother pretty quick.
“And you knew my name,” she said, accusing. “You must have lived in a city at some point.”
I didn’t feel up to being pestered until Goku returned. Instead, I chose to dissuade her from the topic.
By telling her the unadulterated truth.
“Actually,” I said. “I know your name from a previous life.”
Bulma’s face went blank.
“My first life was in a different world,” I said. “None of the world’s kings were dog people, parrots were the only animals that could speak, and dinosaurs had been extinct for about sixty-five million years by the time humans appeared on Earth. Anyway, the events of this world were”
“Sarcasm really isn’t cute.” Bulma said, annoyed. She left the room and stomped upstairs.
I let out a sigh. My life would be simpler provided that she didn’t believe me, or pursue the question any further. I honestly didn’t know anything about the kid whose body I’d woken up in. I didn’t even remember whether or not I died in my old world before I ended up in Toriyama’s. I had to assume I’d been reincarnated, though, and since I started this life at around three years old, it followed that at one point my body was…
I shivered and did what I’d always done: put off thinking about it.
I didn’t realize I was in Toriyama’s Dragon Ball until I recognized Grandpa Son Gohan. Naturally, it fucking blew my mind and several neuron circuits fried on the spot. Thankfully, Grandpa mistook my state of dumbstruck, awed silence for the shell shock of a small child hopelessly lost in the middle of nowhere.
The rest was history.
Despite being a nerd living in the most impactful Shonen story in history, I only had two goals; raising Goku, and introducing Toriyama’s universe to the divinity of a grilled cheese sandwich.
“Oi, I’m back!”
Those were enough to keep my hands full.
“Don’t bring carcasses into the house!”
—————
“We’re not sharing the futon?” Goku asked, the very picture of innocence.
“Of course not!” Bulma snapped, blind to said picture. “Who knows what kind of things two boys might try with a delicate beauty like me?”
She tossed a pillow and a blanket off the bed.
“You can sleep on the floor.”
She left us to brush her teeth. Goku looked at me, head tilted.
“Why would we do anything to her?”
I sat down on the floor and arranged the blanket.
“We wouldn’t,” I said. “But that’s not the point. The point is that she doesn’t know that we wouldn’t do anything.”
“Oh…” Goku scratched his head, looking a little less confused. Knowing my straightforward brother, he probably didn’t understand why Bulma couldn’t take us at our word. I knew he’d never lied to me or Grandpa, and I did my best to be honest with him.
“C’mon, kid.”
Goku slipped off the bed and lay next to me with his head on the pillow. He blinked once or twice before he conked out completely. One of his simultaneously endearing and annoying traits. I made sure he had some covers before I lay down with him. I noticed Bulma looking askance at us.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Bulma huffed, sliding onto the futon.
“Oh,” I said. I suddenly remembered something extremely relevant. “Does the name Jaco mean anything to you?”
Bulma frowned at me.
“You just made that up, didn’t you?”
“Yep,” I agreed easily. “You caught me,” I said, settling in again. “Good night.”
I ignored the scoff Bulma obviously wanted me to hear. I couldn’t wait to burn a certain section of my notes.
Goku’s tail slipped around my leg—a habit he’d developed in his sleep after Grandpa died.
Thus ended my first day in the canon. By my estimate, that left me with only about. . . fifteen thousand to go.
I fell asleep with a grin on my face.