The Yamucha Chronicle

ooxoo

Part 1: Where I came from

I'm sure that by now you know the main story. The one where Goku worked hard to save the world several times - even though Earth wasn't his native planet. So I guess I'm just here to fill in some of the gaps.

For starts the name is Yamucha. And no, that's not the name I was born with. My brain has kinda blocked out of all my early life - including whatever name my parents originally gave me. Perhaps it's for the best. I don't really want to remember how I ended up alone in the desert. I'd like to think that maybe my parents died and left me there. But deep down, part of me knows that the reasons were a lot more complicated than that. The details would probably just be painful.

My earliest memories date back to... I must have been about seven years old. Naturally I was excited to be out on my own, free to have adventures without any adults to ruin the fun. The desert was absolutely beautiful. Every day was summer and there was so much to explore. As a kid, I was convinced that somewhere under all that sand there just had to be buried treasure. Turned out I wasn't all that far off.

The desert isn't as lonely of a place as some people might make it out to be. I didn't grow up in complete and utter solitude - I don't think I would have lasted long if I had. There were always other people around. It was just a matter of finding them.

Some of the first people that I came across were scientists. Archeologists, to be exact. They were digging in the hopes of finding a lost city or rare fossils. Something like that. The scientists were surprised to cross paths with me. My existence puzzled them. How could a young boy living alone in the desert already have a basic education? They didn't know and I couldn't remember. The scientists took me in anyway. In exchange for my help that spring, the scientists provided me with all the essentials. Food, water, a place to sleep and all that. When the excavation was over - we found some animal skeletons but not much else - the scientists dropped me off at a village of desert Indians. Guess the scientists had decided that I must belong to the tribe. I admit that I probably looked the part.

The tribe was called Hinodejin which roughly translates to people of the sunrise. The Indians had no idea who I was. Nevertheless, the tribe adopted me. The elders thought it was too dangerous for a kid to live alone in the desert.

I spent the next six years with the Hinodejin tribe. My Indian name is Rosuto Sabaku which I later learned means lost in the desert. Yea. The Indians were kind of literal that way. But it was a good thing - you always knew exactly what was expected of you. It made life simple. I learned a lot during those six years. The tribal customs, the tribal language and the skills of survival. Cooking, hunting, how to build shelter, how to find water, the medicinal properties of plants - that sort of thing. A very practical education to have but kinda dull at times. That's just the way I remember it. I'm not sure how long I was in the desert on my own before the scientists found me but some of the survival skills... Perhaps I'd already learned them, the hard way. Still. The tribe had far more experience than I did and the practice didn't hurt. So I studied.

More than anything else though, I learned how to fight. The local kids viewed me as an outcast. A few of them believed I was an evil spirit or something. So I was always fighting with someone. After my first year with tribe, the elders in the village decided that I had a knack for fighting. The elders selected me to be one of the few kids allowed to study martial arts. Which was quite the honor.

See, back then, there was a martial arts tournament best known as the Tenkaichi Budoukai. There are at least twenty different translations of the phrase Tenkaichi Budoukai - Heaven and Earth tournament, Best on Earth, Best under the Heavens... The list goes on. However the most ancient, accurate and literal translation is more than a paragraph long and includes the phrase Unique Warrior Spirit Rotation. No matter how you defined it, the Tenkaichi Budoukai was huge. All the best fighters in the world competed there and competition was fierce. The grand prize included the privilege and perks of the title - any warrior that won was considered the Champion of Earth. Plus there was a reward of one million zeni.

Zeni is, as you may have guessed, a unit of money and a million is a LOT. The Hinodejin tribe wanted the prize money so that they could buy land. Specifically, so that they could buy the entire desert. The Hinodejin considered their desert a sacred place. The Indians didn't want anyone else to use the land. Not without at least getting the tribes permission first. For this reason members of the Hinodejin had been entering every tournament since the 9th Tenkaichi Budoukai way back in 677 A.D. Once or twice, a tribal warrior had come close to winning the grand prize.

Listening to stories of the tournament is how I first heard of a martial artist by the name of Mutaito. Master Mutaito, his rival, his students and their students were infamous for winning the Tenkaichi Budoukai. No one else had won in ages. Mutaito had died a while ago though and his prize student, a guy named Roshi, was rumored to be dead. Even Roshis two best students - a man called Ox and a legendary fellow named Gohan - were older now and neither Ox nor Gohan were known to have students. So with these legends fading away... The Hinodejin tribe really believed they had a chance at winning the next Tenkaichi Budoukai.

For anyone wondering, the next Tenkaichi Budoukai was only the 19th. Technically it should have been about the 30th. Sometimes politics had interfered with the tournament. Thus the Tenkaichi Budoukai hadn't actually been held every three years like it was supposed to have been.

I was a nine year old kid with just over two years of formal martial arts training. Of course I didn't fight in the tournament! Even if I had wanted to compete, my sensei wouldn't have let me. My sensei and the handful of kids selected from the tribe - they had been studying martial arts their whole lives. They were better prepared. They fought in the 19th Tenkaichi Budoukai. I was allowed to go to the tournament, though. I was allowed to watch.

Now this was back in the days when nobody flew. And the only warriors capable of shooting energy blasts were Roshi and a guy called the Crane Master - and both of them were supposively dead. Fights were plain old hand-to-hand combat. Which meant that if the warriors were equally skilled then a single battle might last for hours. The tournament itself was scheduled to last an entire month. Needless to say, once the initial awe wore off, I got enormously bored with being a spectator. So I began to frequent the outside edge of the stadium, where all the warriors awaiting battles would gather to spar. I sparred with them. I didn't always win. But I held my own fairly well. Looking back, I think age had a lot to do with my victories. Being nine, I was naturally optimistic and confident. I didn't have as many doubts back then. I didn't hesitate as much.

One day after sparring, I happened to upset a warrior - purely by accident. Just stepped on his toes while I was walking past. The guy was in a sour mood and challenged me to a duel. I told him that I had no idea what he meant by 'duel' but if he wanted to fight, that was fine. Instead of a fight, I got a lecture. Followed by a fencing lesson. I spent the rest of the 19th Tenkaichi Budoukai out behind the stadium, learning how to fight with a sword.

I practiced sword fighting along with martial arts for the next three years, training hard every day. The other kids in the tribe didn't pick on me quite so much but I was still basically an outcast.

At the age of 12, I went to the 20th Tenkaichi Budoukai. By then I had five years of martial arts training so I was allowed to compete. I almost made it to the semi-finals before I was eliminated from the tournament. Exhaustion was a large part of that. I hadn't been given a chance to recover between fights. My final opponent didn't have much trouble knocking me out of the arena. In retrospect, I wish that I'd tried harder. Perhaps with a little extra effort, I could have won the 20th Tenkaichi Budoukai.

ooxoo