Tears of Blood: It Begins...

It Begins

 

Gohan hadn’t slept well Thursday night. He kept having dreams that woke him up yelling and sweating something fierce. The problem was, the only thing about the dreams was the face that owned that gentle yet commanding voice that sang or said: “Like the Angels who have no sense of mercy, rise now, child, take up your fate and live.” The eerie verse was repeated in each dream, like a reminder, like a recording of the past. Both times, after he’d finished screaming, he’d gone into the bathroom and looked in the mirror to make absolutely sure that he wasn’t sick. He’d see himself, healthy and whole, then go back to bed, only to wake up two hours later and repeat the process.

 

Across the street, a Half-Demon girl with the alias Caracal had had a similar experience simultaneous with Gohan’s, but she remembered two things: the verse, and a face. All five dreams repeated the spoken verse in a voice that sounded like Raditz’s voice but was a bit more… authoritative. More commanding of respect, like the owner of the voice had been important in his time. The face she knew, though it had only appeared once and only as a flash. The face was that of Goku’s father, Bardock, and he had been speaking the verse. She knew where the verse came from, too; The Book of Dragonology had a poem both in Latin and in English that went like this:

 

O child with power that none have ever seen

I see in the mirror your dreadful plight.

There lay in the darkness creatures of evil;

Rise now, child, ready your claws to fight.

 

O youngling with the gift of the healing springs

Prepare yourself, for the battle is near.

Like the Angels that have no sense of mercy,

Rise now, child, take up your fate and live.

 

<But what does that have to do with me?> Caracal wondered curiously, <What does this mean?> She couldn’t push that familiar image of fire out of her mind; she didn’t need to be angry right now. She needed to be hurrying up to meet her friends out in the fields on the other side of the forest. But she kept thinking about that strange dream, even as the boiling hot waters of the shower soothed her bruises from the fight she’d had with Salina the day before. Not even when her dog, Princess, accidentally tripped her in the hallway did Caracal stop thinking about the message. <I’m going to figure it out,> she vowed, <I’m going to figure out what this means.>

 

“Yo, Gohan!” Goku said, shaking his son’s arm lightly, “C’mon, it’s time to get up! We’re sparring today, remember?” That woke him up instantly; he was headed to the bathroom before his dad had even finished the sentence. As the warm shower water hit his skin like a soothing, heavy rain, he couldn’t push the image of the girl’s face out of his mind. It was soft and pure, but there were strong undertones of wariness, recklessness, and cunning to it. It was as though her eyes held more than the glitter of life; they held secrets, dark and supernatural secrets. He shook his head wearily; he was a seventh grader, and he didn’t need to focus on girls, even if they were pretty.

 

They would be sparring in the fields on the other side of the forests behind Team P.A.C.K.’s house. Team P.A.C.K. was the team of Half-Demons who usually cleaned up the streets. Gohan had only met one: an Australian Terrier/Labrador Half Demon named Dustin. He was kinda cool, but he had a very trashy sense of style, and his language wasn’t much better. But, that didn’t mean that the entire team was like that. Gohan knew that based on how colorful his own team, the Z-Senshi, was. His father’s voice broke into Gohan’s thoughts. “C’mon Gohan! Hurry before your mom wakes up or we’ll never get out of the house!” Worry about it later, Gohan scolded himself, Dad’s right. Mom would throw a fit if she knew we were going to train today. She hasn’t let dad train me for the last week!

 

Deep in the darkest corner of Hell, a new evil was stirring. A tall, pale skinned man dressed in an ancient, black-white-and red Japanese kimono and flowing teal hair that ended two inches above the ground stood with his arms crossed across the his chest, flicking his two black cat ears as he listened, uninterested, to his Half-Demon spies report their findings. His ears perked up at the mention of a team of six powerful Half-Demon younglings that all could unlock the Angelic Half-Demon form and that all but one of them could control their Werewolf (or Lunar) Forms.

 

An evil grin spread across his face. In an smooth and flattering voice, he said, “Collect as much information about these six as you can. They just may prove useful to our cause.” “Yes sir,” the two spies chorused. The black smoke that made up the screen disintegrated, swirled around the Demon, and vanished. “My escape is at hand,” he said, “soon all the world will know and fear my name. The reign of Rantu’ono has come.” His cruel laugh echoed through Hell for several long moments.

 

Meanwhile, on the alien Planet Ancaria, the young and beautiful Queen Faria was preparing to go to Earth to meet the Saiyan Elite. Even though the Saiyans (who had been wished back by Faria’s mother, Talia, five years after Freeza destroyed it) had betrayed the Ancarians when Faria was six, the ensuing war had been short, and the Ancarians got their revenge when a meteor struck Vejita-sie and destroyed the planet. Thirteen years later, Faria had a dream of chaos ravaging the Earth. Since the Ancarian race was in alliance with the Earthlings, Faria, knowing that the reduced populace of the Ancarians wouldn’t be enough to help, had to make a heartbreaking decision: to wish the Saiyans back was to bring back a painful past, but to not wish them back was to condemn the Earth.

 

She decided that she would have to put the Earth before her peace. At the sacred grounds of the Violet Maiden (the Demon of Life), Faria swam to the bottom of the sacred Lake of Life, where the Violet spectral goddess waited patiently for wishers. <Mighty Violet Maiden,> Faria thought spoke, <I humbly wish that the planet Vejita-sie and all that was on it be brought back.> “It would drain your energy to a Human’s level for three hours,” the haunting voice said, “Are you sure you wish to do this?” <It has to be done,> Faria had replied, hoping she sounded much more sure of herself than she felt. Glowing violet light filled the water, and Faria, suddenly extremely weak, had only had enough energy to climb to the surface and drag herself onto the soft green grass, where she had collapsed into a deep, dreamless sleep.

 

Meanwhile, in the fields beyond the forests, four Half-Demons sat or lay in the grass, staring at the sky, reading, or diddling their thumbs. When Caracal came riding up on her stallion, Mocha, everybody was instantly saddling his or her horses. They would all race at the same time, and the winner would collect two dollars from everyone else. Caracal was the first to notice the space pod craters. Ever the adventurous one, Caracal said, “Let’s go check it out. It could turn into a fight; I haven’t been in a good brawl in a long time.” “Yah,” the kid with spiky blue hair, said, “The last thing we fought was those stupid ogres over in Sacramento.”

 

Unknown to anyone on the Eastern Hemisphere, Team P.A.C.K. didn’t just deal with street trash; they mainly dealt in getting rid of any mythic creatures (werewolves, ogres, giants, demons, elves, dragons, ect.) that posed a threat to Humans, directly or indirectly. Usually, this meant fighting and killing (as with ogres and giants) whatever they were sent to get rid of. They all enjoyed fighting, both physically and verbally. It was a way to blow off steam, as well as a way to train and make or learn new techniques. So nobody objected to the idea of going over and checking the mile-long crater out. From his Hellish domain, Rantu’ono watched the black smoke screen relay the events. Grinning so that one wolfishly large fang hung over his bottom lip, he chuckled and said, “It begins.”