(A/N): Hi, there! Of Miracles and Men here! Now, you may recognize me from other fanfiction on this lovely website, but this specific story is a project that I've been working on for several months now, as this is one of the first fandoms I ever belonged to, and it's near and dear to my heart. Forgive the clichéd premise of the story, but I've always wanted to create one of my own and last year I finally decided to take a stab at it, thus creating the story that you see here.

Now, a few things to say first. High school is not a pretty experience, no matter what other people may tell you, as nostalgic and glassy-eyed as they become, and I intend to go into detail with it in later chapters, developing the characters with my interpretation and Akira Toriyama's as I introduce them into the environment of high school.

With that being said, there MAY be some things that you don't like done with these characters, as I go off of Word of God and differing opinions from the fandom, as well as a crack ship or two that just seems to fit better in my mind's eye (be prepared!). I hope that you will respect my opinions and interpretation, and if you don't, this may not be the story for you to read. Remember, this is a fanwork, not an official story, and if you do not like it, do not take it to heart!

(Additionally, there are trigger-worthy events that will occur in the story, but for the sake of suspense and plot, I will not mention them unless you PM me to ask about them so that I may inform you. Thank you.)

Finally, finally, for anyone who is curious or wants to offer anything, I will not take any suggestions for major plot points as I already have the plot and format of this story completely planned out. If you feel the need to correct any discrepancies in the plot coherency or grammar, that would be appreciated, but beyond that, a polite 'no thank you' will be on my part. Thank you.

Other than that, sit back, and enjoy!

September 8th: Goku

The night was young; was it any wonder that he couldn't sleep? Son Goku sighed; it was a tranquil, peaceful noise that escaped him like the wind that whispered through the grass. He blinked, punctuating his frenetic thoughts of the future before turning his head at the soft, muted call of his name. Goku arched his neck backwards to glance at a cozy, humble, upside-down one-story house that he so affectionately regarded as 'home.' The open doorway emitted soft light where a dark, hunched silhouette stood.

"Goku, I thought I told you to go to sleep half an hour ago," an aged yet stern voice intoned as Goku groaned in unabashed exasperation. He rolled onto his stomach to right himself, and stared up at the figure that descended with a careful, practiced gait down the hill that he reclined upon. He watched with a hushed silence as he saw his gong gong eye him with a strict playfulness, and knelt to accompany him on the gentle slope.

"Sorry, Gong Gong," Goku replied, rolling back to lay prostrate and interlocking his fingers to drum a gentle rhythm with his thumbs. "I would if I could, but—"

"But you'll be exhausted for tomorrow. I won't be able to roll you out of bed, and then Bulma and the group are going to be here in the morning..." the aged Son Gohan trailed off in his brief reverie but allowed a knowledgeable chuckle to pass his lips as he amended his statement.

"But then again, it's not every day you have your first day of high school."

He raised a knotted, wrinkled hand to endearingly ruffle Goku's hair, a smile unknowingly turning up his lips. Son Gohan could do nothing but be patient audience as his grandson held up his hands in an almost frantic, barely suppressed anxiety amalgamated with infectious excitement.

"I can't sleep, Gong Gong," Goku echoed as he continued to recline in the grass, "I'm too excited to sleep. I mean, Yamcha told me about the Martial Arts Team and I can't wait to try out so that I can join them, and then Tien told me that all of the teachers over there are cool and that I don't have to worry about getting caught sleeping in class—"—at this his grandfather set a wary glance at him that he cheerfully ignored—"—and Chiaotzu said that the food is pretty good and that lunch is an hour so the whole group can just hang out like we did back in middle school before the group got split up and we haven't done that in a while."

"Goku," his grandfather arched an imperious eyebrow at him, "you just spent the whole summer with them."

"You know what I mean!" he replied as a flustered glow set to his cheeks and he conceded a chuckle. "It's different at school than it is at home."

"Indeed," Son Gohan sagely replied as he inclined his head to the ground to conceal his smile. "But you'll sacrifice your sleep because you get to see people for an hour during school that you already see every day?"

"Well, when you put it like that…" his grandson muttered under his breath, furrowing his brow in what he could already foresee was a losing battle. "Fifteen more minutes?"

"Ten," his grandfather gently yet firmly compromised, and Goku sighed, nodding his relenting assent.

"Okay."

When he awoke, it was not by the frenzied trill of an alarm that he could have sworn his grandfather had promised he had set for him. When that was prompted to awaken him, it would begin to vibrate a muted warble into his nightstand surface that would dance a mad, frantic rhythm off the surface. Assuming this dance until it clattered to the ground with a discordant jumble of noise, that routine would eventually rouse him from sleep. Instead, what woke him today was by the bang of his door that slammed into the wall of his cramped, disorganized bedroom with the placid force of a falling anvil.

Goku snorted with the elegance of a drunken pig, vision blurry as he drowsily blinked while drool dribbling down his chin at an awkward angle. He made a groggy gesture to prop an elbow as support in order to better turn towards the source of the offending noise, dimly recognizing several indistinct silhouettes that had clustered in the doorway. Light from the open hallway draped over them and set a distinct contrast to the consuming darkness that crowded in his doorway.

He didn't even possess the liberty of sitting up and truly waking himself up, before the group that ushered themselves into his room erupted in babbling conversation turn on the switch. Doing this prompted light to spill forth freely over the forms that clumsily attempted to lean on walls or push away the dirty clothes that clustered in the corners to stand.

He squinted as his vision adjusted and an unsuppressed groan passed his lips. He sat up in an ungainly movement and raised his arms to the ceiling, a supplicating gesture that prayed for sleep that did not come. But with the added presence of his friends (although thanks to their interruption of his sleep, giving him cause to seriously reconsider this titling of them), it was a prayer that would go unanswered.

"I swear to God, Goku, were you still sleeping?" Bulma, his longtime (and only female) friend asked, rolling her eyes to the ceiling as she waded further through the chaos that Goku had affectionately referred to as 'I'll clean it tomorrow' for the past three years. It took strenuous maneuvering to his dresser that bulged with unfolded clothes to complete her self-appointed task of 'finding something that Goku won't look like he jumped out of a Jackie Chan movie in.'

"Aw, lay off, Bulma, at least he got some sleep," a short, squat figure that Goku recognized as his best friend, Krillin Yūjin, retorted grudgingly as he trudged through the disorder. It took him a few seconds advance towards Goku's bed, and upon reaching it, he hopped onto it to accompany him.

"Yeah, at least he didn't have someone," Yamcha Roshi, another one of Goku's close friends, interjected as he slumped against the wall and slid down to recline on the floor, running a disgruntled hand through black, equally disgruntled hair, "come to Kame House and wake everyone up half an hour before they needed to. Ring any bells, Bulma?"

"Oh, shut up," Bulma shot back irritably as she rummaged through the drawers with a discerning air, tossing a decent pair of pants in Goku's general direction, "my alarm went off too early so I thought that it was the right time."

"So you just felt the need to make everyone else miserable too, huh?" Tienshinhan, a tall presence in the corner sardonically suggested into the conversational fray. Chiatozu, his cherubic companion and brother, released a muffled giggle into the palm of his hand to spare himself from Bulma's wrath.

After daring a quick glance at his alarm clock (it was seven-fifteen, about twenty minutes before Toriyama High started) and venturing a quick and most likely incorrect calculation in his head, Goku interrupted, "You went to Kame House at six-thirty in the morning?"

Kame House was the rundown, two-story shack that Krillin, Yamcha, Tienshinhan, and Chiaotzu all lovingly coined 'the saddest piece of crap we could ever call home.' The four cousins lived under its roof with their questionably 'senile' grandfather, Mûten Roshi, who, decades ago with Goku's grandfather, had owned a dojo weighted down with accolades and honors of tournaments and championships from long ago. Unfortunately, those days had passed and the dojo had long since closed its doors to the passing of the years, but the two of them had always stayed good friends; that was how Goku had met the motley crew of cousins in the first place.

More notably now, it was notoriously reputed for all five of the men that lived under its roof to be notorious late sleepers; even Tienshinhan, who was the most responsible of them, could be known to sleep an hour past his alarm. The fact that Mûten had trained all of his grandsons in martial arts like Son Gohan had done for Goku deemed it a death wish to try to wake them up before they were inclined to. And the fact that Bulma had done it…Goku could only shudder at what had happened when she had done so.

"Oh yeah. I thought it was our Gong Gong playing a prank on us and I was about to kick his old ass." Krillin scoffed, and Goku stifled a snort at that mental image due to the old man's tendency to pretend he was still in his physical prime (which had long ago passed just like his ability to woo women).

"Turned out it was another kind of monster altogether." Yamcha added in a scathing attempt at a stage whisper, and Goku snorted again. The laughter quickly died in his throat as a speeding projectile he recognized as his sneaker connected with Yamcha's nose, prompting his head to snap back into the wall with a sickening thud.

"Oh, will you shut up already?" Bulma snapped, turning on her heel with a crunch of garbage underneath her feet, wheeling at Yamcha with an expression of unrestrained, sleep-deprived fury. "Next time I won't wake you up and we'll all go to school and leave you lying there on the floor with drool coming out of your mouth and in your underwear like I found you this morning!"

It was Yamcha's turn to blush furiously, and he bowed his head to the cluttered floor while his skull throbbed in dull pain as the rest of the group chuckled at his expense.

"Just kiss him already, why don't you?" Tienshinhan boredly interjected, folding his arms. Bulma scoffed and her eyes searched the ceiling for the punch line as she continued to rummage.

"Been there, done that. Not going back." she dryly replied, with no further comment from Yamcha save an obligatory eye roll from him for times gone by. After another passing moment, Bulma tossed Goku the lesser of wrinkled shirts that she had discovered through her foraging and sighed, running a hand through perfectly combed blue hair.

"Take that one. I give up." She held her hands up as a testament to whatever deity was listening and journeyed to the edge of the room where the disorder began to thin and one could actually sit. Goku allowed an unmolested yawn to pass his lips, departed from the comfort of his bed, and quickly beat feet out of the room to journey down the hallway to the bathroom to hurry up and change. The low buzz of conversation that exuded from his bedroom carried on in his wake.

Gulping in desperate mouthfuls of air from the refuge the back of their new homeroom offered, Goku and Krillin slumped in exhausted victory in their seats. Their clothes were furiously rumpled and schoolbag latches popped open to prompt the papers, binders, leaflets, and half-scribbled memos for the next day to spill out in disarray on their desks.

"I—I thought—" Krillin gasped, a hand tucked behind his head for support and a bright sheen on his bald head , "—that we'd never make it on time."

"Yeah—" Goku breathlessly agreed, "—who knew—it'd be so hard to find our class."

It had certainly been a trial for the two of them; they had struggled to find them as they parted ways with Tienshinhan and Chiaotzu, who had the same Ceramics class in the morning with Ms. Baba, Roshi's sister and their great-aunt. They waved off Yamcha who muttered about supplementary classes with a certain Ms. Launch. And finally, they wished Bulma a generous helping of luck as, being the insufferable genius that she was, was a freshman enrolled in the courses that juniors would regularly take and was off to go to have a quick conference about her schedule with the principal, Mr. Toriyama.

However, as they did so, Goku and Krillin had forgotten to ask for directions. So, in the gap of fifteen minutes in which they could have leisurely strolled about the halls and taken in the new sights and ways of the expansive hallways of their new high school, they spent it scrambling up and down the rapidly emptying aisles as they searched for their first-period English classroom. Said class was a room they barely shoved through the doorway of before the bell rang and they collapsed into the closest available desks, ignoring the odd glance or stare aimed their way.

"Wh-what class is this again?" Goku mouthed dumbly to his friend, and palmed with clumsy hands for his schedule (both were nearly identical, thank the stars) and looked to Krillin as he recovered it first and looked to it with a glassy, exhausted glance that seemed to belie his current state of transcending to another dimension.

"A-advanced English," he muttered back, and then allowed himself to slump and rest his chin on the surface of a scrubbed-clean, semi-reflective desk before allowing a sigh to escape him.

"What?" Goku nearly shouted, fatigue lost to the wind in the moment, before recalling the quiet nature of the classroom (of course, until they entered it) and then remembered to whisper. "I thought you and I were going to regular English!"

"Maybe they ran out of space in the regular," Krillin said, eyes narrowing as he returned the slip of paper to his field of vision, quickly scanning over it again to double-check. Lo and behold, there was an 'advanced' in place of where they expected 'regular' to be, "Besides," he added, "what's wrong with a little challenge?"

He offered his friend an encouraging, imploring shrug and hopeful expression that went unreciprocated before Goku dropped his head into the crook of his arm and slumped on the table, muttering into it, "Yeah, in martial arts, but not in school or anything like that…"

Krillin rolled his eyes to the heavens for guidance. It was anyone's guess how Goku had passed eighth grade (though Bulma and Tien could certainly be given credit where credit was due), especially considering how much the boy devoted his time, above anything else, to martial arts. One might call it living up to his Gong Gong's legacy if he wasn't so darn obsessed about it. He certainly wouldn't let something like school bring him down, after all.

"Well, I'm actually kind of looking forward to the challenge." Goku heard as the petulant reply as he felt his attention span quickly drooping down to seconds at best, his best friend's voice quickly turning into a quiet buzz in the distance as he felt his mind drifting to other planes of existence.

The classroom wasn't his forte while the dojo was definitely so, so why bother dealing with it? It certainly didn't matter that it was the first day or that he was missing out on anything important, and he had missed out on a few minutes of sleep…maybe there was something called freshmanitis after all. The edges of his vision began to darken and blur with the familiar edges of hazing vision and comforting accompanying sleep.

Ignored was Krillin's rambling as he apparently went on to extol the virtues of Advanced English, and formed a makeshift pillow with his backpack, shoulders already slumping with the promise of rest. After all, he had missed out on a few minutes thanks to Bulma waking him up. He was snoring within seconds; Goku couldn't remember falling asleep that fast in years.

Unfortunately, when he woke up, he couldn't believe how fast he was given a detention for napping in years either.

Second period was Physics, and as boring as the first, passing by inconsequentially and peppered with a few sparse minutes where Goku could nap and Krillin kept careful watch. But third period was where Goku and Krillin parted ways; he to Chinese 3-4 and Krillin to Creative Writing. They waved goodbye to each other, Krillin with an optimistic gaze in his eyes and Goku with a small, goofy smile that mirrored his friend's as he ambled to the language bungalows.

At Toriyama High and the surrounding communities, they were predominantly Asian and so the language courses offered at the high school and middles schools preceding them provided Chinese and Japanese. Son Gohan and Goku spoke in Chinese at home already, as did the Roshi household with the occasional Japanese. The situation was common for many households and so many parents enrolled their children in earlier years to finish their in high school and receive their language credit, thus making room for other classes.

However, Goku had gotten a late start, starting only in eighth grade, and Krillin had decided to get more in touch with the less oft-used language of his house, so he was taking Japanese 1-2 at a later period. For Goku, it meant one less period with his best friend, as well as the person who would so usually cover for him in his classes.

Inside the Chinese 3-4 room, it was devoid of life save for a few students who hailed from nearby classrooms such as he, unfamiliar and conversing quietly in the language of the classroom in seats they had conferred for themselves. He himself looked for a decent seat in the pristine classroom with walls plastered with posters extolling the virtues of the native country, and settled on one in the middle. He settled into it with a sigh and leaned back to admire the ceiling—now this was a class that he actually spoke the language of, to pardon the pun, so it wouldn't hurt relaxing in here now and then—

"Goku? Son Goku?" a vaguely familiar voice asked, and Goku turned to look at the call of his name, looking up to a pretty, young Chinese girl dressed in an outfit reminiscent of Chinese heritage, but modern enough to be interpreted otherwise. She approached hesitantly, nervously, as if he might not recognize her.

Well, he didn't.

After a moment of exchanging blank expressions, the girl offered a shy smile and spoke, sitting down next to him and placing her backpack with an audible thud on the table beside his.

"I don't blame you," she said, "it's been ages since we saw each other at Kame House; the only reason I recognized you was because of your hair! It's me, Chi-Chi Qiáng."

A dim, very dim, light bulb went off in Goku's head, as he recalled his Gong Gong introducing him to one of his and Roshi's old students from years before. He vaguely recollected a giant of a man that barely fit through the doorway, and the small spitfire of a girl that protectively clutched his hand in the foreign territory of Kame House. He was instructed by his grandfather to shake hands with her as the giant, appearance made fuzzy by the progression of memory, his grandfather, and Mûten Roshi shared a meaningful glance before ushering them off to play. However, beyond there, the memory began to taper out.

"Chi-Chi?" he repeated, recognition consuming his expression. "Oh yeah! Ox Qiáng's daughter, I remember you! Didn't you trip me down the stairs?"

His innocent, passive expression, completed with a cheerful grin did nothing to lessen her immediate awkward blush, and she offered him an awkward grin.

"Yeah; I overreacted a lot back then; sorry about that. I was kind of hoping you wouldn't remember that," she flushed, and he snickered, not unkindly.

"Well, it was a little hard to forget—"

Their conversation was abruptly interrupted by the figure that sat down with a scrape of metal chair legs on tile next to Chi-Chi, giving her pause to turn and look up with a smile of familiarity. Goku followed suit, and this time, didn't hesitate in recognizing the person, who immediately reciprocated as he laid eyes on Goku.

"Oh, lemme introduce you guys!" Chi-Chi said cheerfully, unaware of the tense moment of animosity that flooded the both of them as they met gazes, "Goku, this is my friend—"

"Piccolo?" Goku asked, the cheerful expression vanished and replaced by mild confusion and blatant hostility. "I didn't know you were coming to Toriyama."

"I'm full of surprises," replied the broad-shouldered Namekian that across from him and narrowed his eyes, folding his arms over his chest. "Glad to see you passed middle school. I thought for sure you were going to be held back."

"You—you two know each other already?" Chi-Chi asked as she looked between the two, offering a nervous smile as she began to sense the growing antagonism between the two of them. She observed apprehensively as Goku's casual posture in his seat became more stiff and confined, almost as if he were ready to pounce.

That they 'knew' each other was an understatement. They had 'known' each other since the beginning of middle school, when a quiet, subdued rivalry quickly grew into a bitter and dangerous competition that on several occasions nearly evolved into old-fashioned fisticuffs no matter the time or place; whether before, during, or after school.

The fact that their relatives had come from opposing dojo certainly didn't help the matter, combined with the additional detail that they were both schooled in the individual martial arts exhorted at their respective schools made it worse. There had been several times Krillin and Tien had to physically restrain him from taking a crack at Piccolo Daimo.

And here he was, sitting across from him in Chinese 3-4, supposed friends with an old acquaintance from Kame House.

"Yeah, we know each other." Goku replied, offering a glare to Piccolo that the Namekian eagerly returned.

"Are you trying out for the Martial Arts Team, Son?" Piccolo asked, making it sound more like an insult than a question, glowering at him.

"Yeah. Is there something wrong with that?" he retorted hotly, trying to make it sound like a curse but only sounding defensive and immature in the process (after all, being nasty wasn't in his nature, even for special exceptions like his new tablemate). It didn't go unnoticed by Piccolo, who smirked and awaited a reply.

"You are? That's great!" Chi-Chi grinned, quickly trying to broach the problem before it evolved into something beyond her control; she was not oblivious to the aggression that was pervading the atmosphere and chose another, quieter route. With a sharp jab, she elbowed Piccolo in the arm to reprimand his antisocial attitude and he grunted, more irritated than injured. "Piccolo and I are too, on Saturday and Sunday. What style are you demonstrating?"

Goku was easy enough to influence from other prickly topics, as martial arts was his life (although Chi-Chi's companion didn't care much for the distraction and settled in his seat with a noise of chagrin), and replied with a broad beam of pride, "Zui Quan; Drunken Monkey Branch. My Gong Gong and I have been working on it together for years."

"It's a simple style," was Chi-Chi's reply, ignoring the scoff of disbelief from her desk companion who obviously wanted to voice his opinion beyond a noise of derision, "But it gives a wide offense and solid defense; good powerful punches and kicks. I'm sure you'll do great with it."

Goku was unsubtly impressed with her prior knowledge of the technique, and was about to ask her what style she would use to demonstrate for tryouts, but was interrupted by the bell that ended passing period and the call of the teacher in Chinese to attention. He and Piccolo exchanged an obligatory scowl between the two of them before they turned their attention to the front.

During lunch, Toriyama High roared with the sound of activity spilling from its aged marble pillars and into its expansive courtyards, out into the surrounding environment of life. It could ebb to a low buzz and peak to a crest of emotion and it ran rampant in the hour that the student population was allowed to relieve themselves of the hardships of school. Lunch became a reprieve and a privilege everyone sorely looked forward to.

"So, how's the first day of school treating you guys so far?" Yamcha asked as he leaned back in the grass shaded by the expansive tree the group claimed as their corner for lunch; Tien and Chiaotzu were on one side and Bulma on the other.

"It's all right; World History is boring. I felt like I was gonna pass out, but then I would've gotten a detention on the first day like Goku." Krillin teased, shooting him a good-natured grin that Goku returned, eyes narrowed and tongue sticking out.

"Damn, detention already? Didn't think you had it in you," Yamcha smirked teasingly, setting an arched brow on his freshman compatriot who bobbed his shoulders up in a shrug.

"I have to go tomorrow during lunch, so it sucks, but at least it wasn't for two days." Goku replied with a nonchalant smile, and began to tuck into his soup.

"But some of the teachers here seem decent, though," Krillin added, "Most of the kids seem pretty cool too."

"That's the spirit," Yamcha said, closing his eyes as he reclined on the grass to enjoy the breeze that sighed through the grass. "But the crucial thing here is finding if you want to invest your time in any of these said 'kids.'" He offered a grin, eyes still closed, that didn't spare any of the entendre he implied.

"Subtlety isn't your strong suit, honey," Bulma rolled her eyes teasingly to the cloudless heavens at his attempts to do so, but went on to add; "Besides, even if we asked you, you'd've changed your mind by the next period!"

"Yeah, especially unlike some devoted people we know," at this, Yamcha extended a hand to pat Tien's ankle, which he brushed away with a noise of exasperation, "crushing on the same person since freshman year, what a brave little trooper!"

"Oh, shut up." Tien fired back, "at least I have the courage to stay with the same one."

"But at least I have the brains to know when it's hopeless," Yamcha retaliated, with a smile that only knew he was all-too-ready for another battle of retorts, something that, knowing their need to constantly clash, could go on for hours. For everyone else, it just meant they would tune out the two of them until they decided to return to reality.

"So, anything else exciting happen so far?" Chiaotzu asked cheerily from in between the two debating, taking the helm of the conversation until it was returned to someone else.

"Nothing much," Bulma returned the prompting of conversation, "I have a few classes with this jerk, Vegeta? I think that's what his name was?"

"Vegeta?" Krillin asked, furrowing his brow in bewilderment. "What kind of a name is 'Vegeta'?"

Bulma shrugged, taking a rather pointed bite of her sandwich. "I don't know. But we had to do these dumb icebreakers in Calculus to 'get to know everyone'—"—she made air-quotes with her fingers at this point, having placed her sandwich in her lap for the moment—"—and he introduced himself as Vegeta Oji. He's trying out for the Martial Arts team next week 'cause he just transferred here—we had to say something about ourselves too—so you guys'll probably see him then."

"Well, if he's trying out for the Martial Arts team, he can't be that bad," Goku tried to amend her statement as he went to recline in the grass, ignoring Bulma's muttered jibe about 'testosterone' and 'you're all idiots,' and admired the cloudless sky. He looked up as Krillin chose to follow suit and join him.

"To be honest," Krillin said, "I could go for the extra sleep too."

Goku smiled, and closed his eyes, substituting Bulma and Chiaotzu's interference with Yamcha and Tienshinhan's impending fisticuffs for a lullaby, quietly eager for the new school year, but at the moment, more eager for some sleep.

(A/N): And that's the first chapter! Sorry for the extreme length of this, but since it was Goku's POV and the first chapter, I just figured that it would be wise to settle on explaining a few things and introducing a few more characters; don't worry, the chapters won't be so long in the future. Hopefully you enjoyed reading this; if you see anything you liked, hated, or didn't think was necessary, please let me know so I can fix it!

Thanks, Of Miracles and Men