Chapter 02
Hunter was not amused. She hurt all over, and here was that most stubborn and overly smothering, motherly, old woman trying to push more food down her gullet. She sighed in disgust. Mrs. ChiChi meant well, but it was truly annoying to be treated like a five year old when she had been on her own as long as she could remember. If it weren’t for the bone deep gash, that ran from her inner left thigh, to below her knee, which rendered her practically immobile, she would have just left without a backwards glance she snarled to herself silently as Chichi tried once more to spoon feed her.
Of course then there was the big burly guy who the much smaller lady called father. He had the ‘powers’ and she sensed them with her partially trained inner hearing. She wondered if he even really knew he had them. She couldn’t help but wonder if he had been using them on a fluke when he had scared off the last four raptors that had been as set on eating her, as she was on not being eaten, a few days earlier.
‘Curiosity kills the cat.’ she flippantly reminded herself silently as she tried to keep up the stony, silent treatment she had leveled on the small, overbearing woman all morning. Talking to the woman was of no use, she had already discovered. ‘She has to be crazy,’ Hunter decided as she turned her head away once again from the proffered spoon. She still had one good arm she fumed inwardly, as the salt and pepper haired woman tried again to feed her.
“You need to eat or you will never get better. So come on and stop being such an immature brat, young lady.” ChiChi snapped at her recalcitrant patient. She was practically glowing with excitement at having the younger woman under foot, or more to the point, under heavy bandages and immobilized for Chichi to take care of. She hadn’t had so much to challenge her since Gohan had died battling the androids against her wishes so many years before. This young woman was definitely proving almost as challenging as trying to keep Gohan out of the terrible war with the androids. This young girl was almost as difficult a challenge to keep under wraps, and one ChiChi was adamant to win.
ChiChi clucked in disapproval at the raised eyebrow the teen shot her. Fiery irritation flickered in green rimmed, golden-eyed depths, before her irascible guest could hide it. “I appreciate your concern for my person, but, I do not require it.” The bitten out phrase, through clenched teeth was decidedly unfriendly and cold. She wasn’t from these parts as had been established on her first day within the confines of Gohan’s old room. She had screeched in a foreign tongue, before slipping into the international trade language that had been favored before the androids had destroyed the planet-wide commerce.
Now ChiChi’s reticent, and badly injured guest was using the most formal form of that trade language to try and not offend, while giving her the boot, out of her long dead son’s old bedroom. “Well, you can show your appreciation by trying to be a little more cooperative.” ChiChi shot back with her own hot headed candor.
“I have a good arm, mistress. You don’t have to spoon feed me.” black-cherry waves of hair rippled as the younger woman yanked her head farther away from the proffered spoon. The long, waving tresses only heightening the set of a stubbornly set, delicate jaw.
“Good arm my foot!” ChiChi exploded. “If you call the forty-seven stitches in your right arm, a good arm, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.” She glared at her young charge in her most intimidating fashion as she tried to exert the same control she had held over her son and late husband over this slip of a girl. “Your other arm is broken in three places and you can’t use the right one without tearing out the stitches because of the swelling. So you can just stop this nonsense and eat like a good young lady should!”
The sound of girlish giggling broke the two female combatants out of their heated, staring, snarling, grudge match. Bulma was standing in the doorway, a hand covering her mouth partially, laughter dancing in her eyes. Hunter couldn’t help it. A groan issued forth with the desperate airs of one who knows she is about to be doomed to some hideous torture. “Please tell me you aren’t gonna play backup for this one?” She jerked her right arm towards ChiChi, speaking through clenched teeth, wincing as the motion stretched her already sore stitches to the limits of endurance. She didn’t scream or make a sound, only the suddenly pasty pallor of her skin giving her pain away.
“Nope. I don’t need to do backup duties for ChiChi. She’s a big girl now.” Bulma winked at the young woman who grimaced in disgust.
“Oh great just what I needed, another joker.” Hunter bit out, unwittingly showing her pain wracked foul mood to advantage.
“Hey, I’m not so bad.” Grandpa Ox stood just behind Bulma with his hands in his pockets, looking hurt. “I thought you enjoyed the funny stories I told you yesterday.” He looked shattered at the notion she might not have enjoyed the tales he had used to break the monotony she was going insane with.
“Sorry sir. It isn’t you. I’m just not used to being spoon fed, and I don’t intend to cooperate when I can damned well feed myself.” She glared menacingly at ChiChi who didn’t move an inch, nor bat an eye, at the implied threat in that gaze.
“Sure you can. I can see it now, you’ll rip out all the stitches that the doctor put in your right arm, just to prove how tough you are. Well I’m not buying it young lady. I raised a half-Saiyajin son and was married to a full blooded Saiyajin and if there were ever men who thought they were invincible it was my two. Now open up and quit being a pain in the neck.”
Hunter growled deep in her throat, animally. She had caught sight of the purple haired fellow that had been by a couple days before. He had been a great distraction for the prim, overly proper ChiChi on his last visit she recalled with glee. “Hey your nephew’s back, why doncha’,….” She never got a chance to finish the thought as ChiChi pushed the spoon into her protesting mouth before she could stop her. Hunter gagged on the unexpected liquid flowing down her throat. She coughed hard a few times and tried to get her breath back as her eyes watered from the trauma of near asphyxiation.
Bulma rushed over and pounded the dark haired teen on the back, as both men looked into the room, cringing. “If that’s your way of feeding her no wonder she’s fighting you ChiChi. I’m not even that big a klutz.” Bulma snapped over the girl’s head, glaring at her long time friend.
Hunter choked off her retort as the two older women started to argue. It was gonna be one helluva long day she decided as she closed her eyes and dropped into a healer’s trance again. The faster she tuned out the ruckus, the faster she could get well and away from these well intentioned maniacs like Mrs. ChiChi. She centered and dropped herself into the core of her soul song, well away from all the discord, and pain, that had recently entered her silent and lonely life. Her last thought was ‘Even in slavery I at least got some peace and quiet, even if it was only when I was tied up after a flogging.’
