Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Sing No Songs ❯ Finding the right direction ( Chapter 13 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chapter thirteen

Levi slowly stepped up to one of the control panels. He did it awkwardly, since he might just as well have stayed where he was. He sighed, pushed his hair away from his forehead and glanced at Bra.

His aunt was clearly busy, staring at the columns on the screen in front of her. Her fingers wandered over the keyboard with an unfaltering ease that never ceased to amaze him. A small clicking sound could be heard every time she pressed one particular button. As he watched, he saw her raise her hands to rub her shoulders. She rolled her head back and forth, relieving some tension.

She should take a break, he thought. She hadn't left her seat for hours. He was hesitant to disturb her though, not just because he knew she was doing something important, but also because he was puzzled by own thoughts. He had never felt concerned for an adult before. Besides, this was his aunt, his cool aunt, who always did what she wanted, no matter what anyone said. He still couldn't get over how she had let him come with her, just like that.

He cleared his throat. “What are you doing?”

“I'm trying to widen the reach of the bass-space receiver.” She didn't turn around as she talked, and she kept pressing that one clicking button.

“I see.” He didn't, really. She knew so much, more than seemed possible for one person. The other day he had tried to tell her how amazing it was that she could find her way around the myriad of buttons that littered the ship. There were buttons on the walls, for crying out loud. She hadn't thought it was much to talk about, though. She just shrugged, and muttered something about her mother being able to do it ten times better.

Levi sauntered over to the middle of the room and plunged down into one of the large, stuffed chairs. He glances at the chair next to him, and raised his eyebrows when he saw what was lying on the seat. It was a small book, leather-bound, with the word `Photos' written in golden letters across the front. Old and worn. It must have come with Bra's private stuff.

He saw his chance when she leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head. Before she could start working again, he hastily held up the diminutive photo album. “What's this?” Not that he was interested. In his experience, looking at photos was mind-numbingly boring, not to mention embarrassing as heck.

He remembered his mother showing him photos from her childhood, getting all emotional and teary-eyed. He hadn't known whether he should just leave her alone, or pretend to be interested. Unfamiliar faces, smiling at him from an endless line of birthday parties and beach outings. Ugh. He was pretty sure though, that most people loved to show off their photos.

As he had hoped, Bra, after just a moment of hesitation, got to her feet and left her place by the console. Accepting the album, she turned it over it a considering manner. She sank down in the large chair and pulled her feet up. “Say it in galaxian,” she yawned.

Levi found himself grinning. She just never quit.

The first day of their journey, she had constructed a program that could translate the alien transmissions. Personally, he though it worked splendidly, but Bra kept insisting that they should learn to speak the language themselves, without the computer translating it for them. So far, neither of them were doing a very good job of it.

“I…” He searched for the word for `see' and ended up pointing at his eyes, one finger for each eye. He knew he didn't know the word for `picture', and improvised with, “You are teacher.” Meaning that she should tell him about the photos.

“Good.” She smiled at him and opened the album. He saw that each page consisted of a single plastic pocket that held only one photo. She didn't start at the beginning, but haphazardly opened it in the middle, skipping several pages.

He leaned over to get a closer look. The photo showed a group of people, sitting at a table. It looked like an outdoor cafÃ©. He singled out Bra, holding a small cookie halfway to her mouth. Her hair, he saw, was long. It hung in thick, wispy strands, well past her shoulders. Levi remembered her hair like that, back when he had lived with his parents. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. At some point she had chosen to cut it, and wore it short ever since.

“Here…” Bra paused, hissed and sputtered aimlessly as she tried to find the right words in the alien tongue. Levi looked down, pursing his lips to keep from smiling.

His eyes fell on the picture again, his interest caught by the background. He squinted at the hazy city outline. It was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't really place it. Ah. The tall, thin building in the left top corner gave him the clue he was looking for. It was the famous television mast of East City, long since made into a museum. East City. All gone now. Kind of cool.

“Here.” Bra held the album closer to him. “We… all of us… school. Not now. Long ago.”

Levi glanced at the other people in the picture, one man and two women, and a sense of unreality came over him. They had gone to school with Bra? They looked so much older then her. The man had grey in his hair, while the woman at his side smiled merrily, a thousand of wrinkles all over her face.

Feeling a bit shy, Levi stared at Bra. She had one arm loosely wrapped around her drawn-up legs, and she seemed very relaxed. She didn't look middle-aged. She didn't look like she was twenty either. There was something… undeterminable about the curves of her features, about the way her straight hair was shining in the florescent light. She glanced at him, a faint question on her face, and he gave her a tense smile before he returned to the album.

The next picture showed mountains and glaciers. She turned the page, and his heart skipped a beat. A close-up on Bra, next to a tall dark-skinned woman, their arms thrown over each other's shoulders. A world of snow surrounded them, far peaks drew chalked lines against the icy sky.

“Me…” She pointed. “And Monique,” she moved her finger to the dark-skinned woman. “We go. Big… tall.” She gave a frustrated huff and gestured widely with her free arm.

“Mountain?” he guessed, honestly forgetting that he was supposed to say it in `galaxian'.

“That's right.” She smiled slightly to herself. “Have you ever heard about Mount Kaisejaur?”

“Sure! You climbed Kaisejaur? I never knew that.” It seemed like the lesson in linguistics was over for the time being.

“I did. Me and Monique… That's how she pronounced her name, you knew. Moniq-ue.” Bra rested the album on her knee and let her thumb glide lightly over the plastic that covered the photo. “She used to call me Snow Princess, can you believe it?”

He could, actually. In the photo she was wearing a white fur hat and a heavy blue scarf was wrapped around her neck. She was grinning like she had never been happier.

“You know…” Bra said. “We were the first women in the world ever to reach the top, but we never told anyone. It was kind of fun, climbing Kaisejaur just for the hell of it.”

“Mhm.” He wasn't sure how to respond. Something about what she was saying had struck a chord within him, had made some part of him raise up in recognition. This was the way he wanted to be. He felt… powerful. Inspired. I have nothing to prove, I can do anything I want.

Bra said something about having to wear dark glasses and sweating a lot. He wasn't really listening. It was so strange, what he was feeling. Strange and new. Why hadn't he realised it before, how free he was, if he wanted to be?

He had a brief fantasy about beating something up, say a snarling, bloodthirsty alien who was attacking a house filled with innocent people. Bloody and defeated, the alien monster would turn towards him and ask, `Why did you do this?' and he'd say, `Because I wanted to!'

“Hehe…” Levi snickered under his breath. What? he defended himself from an invisible sceptic. It could happen.

“Well…” Bra slowly closed the album. He glanced at her, seeing a distant look on her face. “Father would have…” Her voice trailed off, and she didn't continue what she was going to say.

Levi didn't say anything either. The momentary amusement left him, and he leaned back in the chair, rested his head on the soft cushion. Stillness settled over the room. He closed his eyes, heard Bra sink deeper into her chair and make a drowsy sound at the back of her throat. The light on the other side of his eyelids grew dimmer. He could fall asleep like this.

A brief melodic noise, “beeba-bipp”, roused him from the onset of slumber. He blinked grudgingly. What was that?

Bra sat bolt upright. “It's the automatic scan!”

She rushed to one of the consoles and started to press buttons.

Sigh.

“Hey, it's for real this time!” Bra called out the words over her shoulder, he caught a glimpse if her nervous, flushed smile before she returned to the buttons.

It slowly dawned on him what she was saying. It wasn't just another false alarm, this could be the very thing they had been looking for. He stepped up to her side, excitement at the pit of his stomach. And to think, his first reaction when he heard the signal had been nothing but a slight feeling of annoyance.

“I put a tag on father's name,” Bra murmured. “Wow, a very strong signal to this message. Lots of info. Oh! Visual.” Her fingers flew furiously over the keyboard. “Look over there.” She turned towards the big screen, one hand gripping Levi's shoulder.

At first he couldn't make it out. The screen was dark, but it wasn't the darkness of space. It was a room, the plain walls shrouded in shadows. Someone was sitting in that room, leaning against one of the walls. Levi recognised him immediately.

“Dad,” Bra whispered.

It was really him. He moved, crossed his legs and lowered his head so they could no longer see his face. They still stared though, at the small signs of his breathing, stared raptly when he lifted his hand to lightly touch the back of his neck. He felt so close, breathing and moving right in front of them.

Abruptly, with an audible gasp, Bra turned back to the console. Figures flickered while she stared at the small screen. She raised her hand and wiped at her cheek, and when she returned her hand to the buttons he saw a trace of moisture on her slim knuckles. Levi looked away, waited in silence while she worked.

“I think…” Bra finally spoke. “I think the message is coming from a planet. Not terribly far from here, actually.” She looked at him, and for a second a disturbingly helpless expression crossed her face.

“Well,” he fumbled. “That's good news, isn't it?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath, her eyes going back to the large screen that showed the image of her father. “I can't say for certain,” she murmured after a while. “There's something strange about the signal. It's… echo-y.”

“Oh.” Levi cleared his throat. “How long before we get there?”

“At this speed? More then a month.”

He wasn't falling for that, he heard the light teasing that had suddenly entered her voice. “A month? Okay.” He shrugged nonchalantly.

“At top speed, however…” She gave him a sideways smile. “We could be there within 48 hours.”

“Cool.” He smiled back at her. “Hey, can I ask, if we're that fast, how come we have been going so slow the whole time?”

“Easy. The faster we're going, the harder it is to pick up the transmissions. Besides, we had no idea which way to look.” She rolled her eyes. “For all we knew, we might have sped off in the wrong direction entirely.”

Levi snickered.

“We'll lose the signal, once we're on our way.” She turned to the large screen, Vegeta hadn't moved from his position by the dark wall. “Better save as much as possible, I want to hear some of the translations. Get some clue what we're up against.”

Levi nodded, wide-eyed. This was really it. 48 hours.

“Alright!” Bra clapped her hands together. “Alright! I'll program the destinations. Before we go, we have to tell everyone, perhaps Pan and Goten can catch the signal as well. Levi!”

“Yes?” He felt like he should have been standing at attention.

“Get the others on the line!” She turned to him, and grinned widely. “They'll be glad to hear this.”