Hakkyou chap17

When Kakarotto got outside he was hit with a freezing wind, and found himself shivering, his arms wrapped around his sides to ward off the chill. Everything was covered in a thin layer of some white substance.

Kakarotto reached out to touch some and jerked his hand back immediately. That stuff was even colder than the air! He cautiously poked at it again. It was soft and his finger left a hole where he had poked it. He picked some up and marveled slightly at how the sunlight made tiny rainbows dance over its surface.

"What is this stuff...?" he murmured as it seemed to shrink in his hands, water dripping down from where he had them cupped under the white substance.

"It’s, ah... It’s called ‘snow’ Kakarotto-san." Gohan’s voice came from back at the door of the cave. Kakarotto turned to see the young demi-Saiyajin standing there and watching him with a certain tinge of amusement in his features.

"But what is it?" Kakarotto held up the dripping chunk of ‘snow’ he was holding.

"Ah, sometimes it gets so cold that rain freezes before it lands, and tiny pieces of ice float down instead of water. I bet the lake has started to freeze over as well." Gohan explained.

"So, this is tiny pieces of ice?" Kakarotto looked at the melting snow he was still holding, the cold starting to make his hand feel like he was grasping a pincushion with all the pins pointing outward.

"Basically." Gohan nodded.

"So, this happens often?" Kakarotto looked around at the white landscape.

"In Winter. This is the first snow this Winter. There are four seasons every year, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Autumn is also known as fall, because the leaves usually fall off the trees. Most of these trees are pine though, which stay green all year round. Summer is the hottest season, people tend to swim and eat cold food a lot in summer to cool themselves down." Gohan explained, "In Winter-"

Kakarotto held up a hand for silence. "No, that’s all I need to know for now. I’ll ask you more questions later."

They sat for a while, staring off over the snowy landscape. "You really are different from my father, aren’t you?" Gohan asked, breaking the silence.

"Yes. You think I’ve sprung up from your father encountering something he couldn’t handle, right?" Kakarotto gave Gohan a knowing look.

"Uh, yeah. That’s one of the things that causes multiple personality disorder." Gohan agreed.

"Well, did you think that maybe your father might have been created from something that happened to me? I remember... I was one, maybe one and a half. I don’t know how long your years are. I had been sent to purge this planet. I wasn’t trained very well yet, I had to prove myself worthy first. I was counting on going Oozaru and stomping on you all. This... Alien picked me up. He was old, and stronger than me. I remember being shocked that he was so strong compared to what I’d been told to expect. I could still have killed him in Oozaru though. He took me away from my pod, which I’d crawled out of to get a bit of a look at where I’d landed. He babbled things at me in that weird language that I didn’t understand then, but do now. He thought I was someone’s lost baby. He called me ‘Goku’ and took me home, cleaned me, and tried to raise me. He had taken me for a walk when I ran to get away from him and tripped, falling down... Very far. I remember his face high above me, looking frightened, then a sharp pain in my head... I woke up a grown man. It was disorienting, but I didn’t have time to think about the situation, I had to deal with an attack. You probably know the rest."

Gohan was, needless to say, stunned at Kakarotto’s words. He never thought about that... But he remembered Master Roshi telling them about how Grandfather Gohan had found Goku in the woods, how he had acted vicious at first, until he hit his head. It... Made sense, what Kakarotto said.

"So... Now what are you going to do Kakarotto-san?" Gohan asked cautiously.

Kakarotto stared out over the white landscape, the last of the snow in his hands melting and dropping to the ground, forgotten.

"I don’t know."