Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Dark Shift ❯ Harvest Season ( Chapter 1 )

Dark Shift

Chapter One: Harvest Season

Radditz planted the seeds in the soft, fertile ground of a pure soul. Nappa and Vegeta watered the seeds, administering just the right amount of life liquid for the seeds to grow. Frieza cultivated the seeds, seeing that they grew well. Cell readied the seeds for harvest, nearly fully mature. Now it was time to reap.

*****

Beeeeeeeeeeeeee-click

The doctor quickly grabbed the wrist, checking for the gentle pulse of blood through veins. Nothing. Perhaps the neck, with its throbbing jugular? Still no movement. He shifted uneasily by the stretcher, unnerved by the presence of death, though he was around it every day. Shaking his head in pity, he lifted his eyes to the nurse across from him and removed a clipboard from his lab coat pocket.

"Time of death?"

The woman he spoke to shifted her gaze from the patient before her to the clock on the opposite wall. "6:27 pm," she choked out.

The man nodded grimly, jotting down the information onto the paper he held, then gently placed it into the slot at the end of the hospital bed.

"Let's cover her up, nurse; I'll call an aide in here to bring her down to the morgue." She nodded slowly, her eyes brimming with tears, and assisted the doctor in pulling a sheet snugly over the corpse. "C'mon," he said, beckoning her out the door, and she complied, switching off the light as she exited the room.

"G'night, Miss Videl," she sniffed. "We'll miss ya…"

*****

No, it wasn't his fault, surely…no, no, no. It couldn't have been his fault. And yet…why had he let them take her? Why? Why hadn't he collected himself and immediately flown them both straight to Dende? Hind sight… is 20/20.

B-but! He hadn't known! How could he have known? How could anyone have known it would be so fast? He hadn't even realized it was serious until that doctor had approached him out in the waiting area with that news…the news.

"Miss Videl, she's…she's beyond our help. She's slipped into a coma, unlike one we've seen anyone recover from. She may…" He dropped his voice, "She will most likely die within the next hour."

Gohan violently pounded the barren ground before him, streaks of yellow licking the tips of his hair like flames, his eyes flashing pale blue. A crater formed from the impact of his tantrum, and miles away the citizens of a town stood shakily, unsteadied by the earth's movement below their feet.

No, instead of caring for her, as he would have done had he been thinking, his thoughts had turned to Dragonballs. Dragonballs! As if the small yellow spheres could bring back those who had died of natural causes! He'd placed Videl, Videl of the raven hair and fighting spirit, he had placed her in the doctor's care and rushed off on the quest for the wish-granting balls.

Halfway through his search, though, a sharp sensation had ripped through his entire being, striking first his heart and then spreading. Not a pain, but an alarm, a call, a reminder; he immediately had rushed back to the hospital, and the whole time not once did Dende even cross his mind. Not once. If only it had…

"I'm sorry son, but…" The doctor beckoned Gohan over to the side and dropped his voice so as not to startle the patients surrounding the two. "The young woman you brought in, Miss Satan, she… her EKG flatlined just a moment ago. There was…no hope."

He went on mumbling something about "cerebral hemorrhage" and "time" and "loss," but Gohan had slipped into a coma of his own, a state of shock where time stopped. She was gone. She. The next day at school, she wouldn't be there. Nor the next, nor the next. For the rest of his life, she would not be there.

He remembered, at this time, being there, walking with her through the halls during class changes. They were going to Chemistry, that's it. There was going to be a quiz on redox reactions that day, and they were both doing a bit of last minute cramming. That's what he remembered.

Then she dropped. Just dropped, slipped to the floor right in the middle of the breezeway. He would've thought she'd merely tripped, if he hadn't seen that look of shock and horror plastered on her face as she fell, limp as a rag doll, to the floor. Like all her bones had been suddenly sucked from her body.

Then, oh then, they'd all crowded the two, pushing in for a glimpse. "What happened?" some had asked, false sympathy coloring their voices. He knew they were all rubber-necking fools looking to catch a glimpse of Hercule's daughter at her weakest.

"Go…" he'd growled, but instead they'd insisted she be taken to the hospital. Then he should've disobeyed the lot of them, but no. He should've flown her to Dende then, but no. He waited, let her be taken to that human hospital. Let her die.

Suddenly, he realized it. Oh, oh, it was such a simple conclusion, so simple. They had done it. The Kais. Those gods and demi-gods who rested smugly in the next dimension, controlling the fate of the universe and all its inhabitants. They were to blame.

It was they who had taken away his Videl, they who had refused to give him time. Time to even say goodbye…

Gohan lifted his eyes to the heavens, and thought about what lay beyond them. Somewhere up there was Videl's executioner, the being who, like one of the Fates of ancient Greece, had snipped short her life thread, separating the two by the boundary of death.

That was how the Kais played with their mortal children? This was his reparation for all the good he'd brought to his planet, all the deeds he'd done on others?

He momentarily flashed again on Videl's expression as she lay helpless in his arms in the hall, the life fleeing from her body, and his convictions dug in for a long, drawn out battle. If the Kais thought they could treat him like this…

Well, if they took away his most precious thing, then he'd just take away theirs: the universe, and all life in it.

The fruit is ripe for the picking.