Jin stayed with me for a few hours before going home, it took a while to get the swelling down on his eye to be sure his mother wouldn’t notice. She is a sweet lady, but with a very strong spirit. Very stubborn. She’d have been a good swapper, and a great painter.

But dealing with Jin getting picked on was not something I wanted for her to be put through while she was sick… or healthy… or at all. And neither did Jin. So I held the compress over his eye while we watched an old series about gods hunting sorcerers while their pervert in the group continued to try to get the attention of ladies and got smacked around for it.

It was dinner time when he left, and when my stomach rumbled he said, “I’m going to make dinner for my mom, so… how about I bring you some of whatever’s left?” He grinned a little. “It’s the least I can do.”

“Sure thing.” I said with a much larger grin. He scratched his head a little.

“Huh, I kind of thought you’d say something about leaving it all for my mom and I or, ‘No you don’t need to do that…’ or… I dunno. Something?” Jin replied, and my grin broke to become laughter.

“Hi,” I said and tossed aside the now damp paper towel that was a soaked mess from the melted ice, it landed with a wet ‘splat’ noise on my floor and I stuck my hand out, “I’m Kayobi Taida and I don’t do chores, to include cooking, how are you and who are you?” I took his hand and gave it a vigorous shake as if we’d just met instead of known each other for a few years now.

He flushed bright red, “Alright, that’s fair, I had that coming.” He said and wiped his hand on his pants, “I’ll be back in a bit with something to eat.” He answered, and I pointed toward my cabinets in the kitchen area.

“Grab a plastic bowl, you know I’m-” He shook his head as I spoke.

“Not going to rinse the dish after eating, yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve met.” He said pointedly, then went, retrieved the disposable dish, and left my apartment.

An hour later I was chowing down on some pieces of roast and steamed vegetables flavored with garlic and sea salt while watching a jobless loser become a hero.

“Hmpf, like that’s realistic.” I said, and looked at my remote, it was just out of reach… all I had to do was lean over to get it, I held out my hand and teleported it into my palm, and pressed play to watch the next episode while I finished my meal and licked the bowl clean before throwing it toward my trashcan. It missed and rolled over the floor to fall onto its top a moment later after rolling around a few times in ever smaller circles.

“Whatever.” I shrugged, and dozed off watching the show.

I was awakened the very next morning by the knock at the door after having fallen asleep on the couch. The heavy pounding was almost panicked and for a moment that ‘morning amnesia’ had control over my brain and I remembered nothing of the day before until I heard Jin’s voice.

“Hey, Kayobi… are you up?” He asked, and I grunted.

“Yeah, yeah, one minute.” I said, then stood up, stretched, yawned, bent backward and scratched my back, and only then did I open the door.

Jin, predictably, was perfectly made up, well dressed and clean and ready for school.

“Alright, just remember, I’m letting you handle all my clothes… so don’t do anything ‘perverted’ with them, and when a man is allowed to handle a woman’s clothes, he’s not allowed to say a word about it or do anything lewd to them, those are the rules.” I told him, but he clearly wasn’t in the mood to be amused.

“So… who is going with you…?” He asked, “Are you going to go see their parents or…what?”

“No, I’m just going to go have a word.” I replied, “Don’t worry about it, just be patient and get all my chores done for me, and I’ll handle this for you.” I promised.

I didn’t give him time to object, I just walked out the door in my pajamas and made a mental note, ‘It’s been like four days in these things… I should change out of them… and go to a bathhouse or something.’ I thought, magic could do the cleaning for my skin at least, but it wasn’t the same.

When I was sure I was out of his sight and I didn’t detect anyone around me, my body shifted, changed, and I was no longer Kayobi Taida, I was Jin Toriyama, I even managed the uniform look with a little obfuscation magic.

“I hate mornings.” I mumbled as I descended down the wooden steps that carried me to the ground floor and headed toward the common road that would lead to Jin’s school. He hadn’t exactly said where the bullies had picked on him, but he didn’t really have to. If they wanted to avoid teacher interference then it was most likely at the playground right off school grounds where some old equipment still lay around.

Nothing dramatic, a rusted merry-go-round, a rusty slide that burned your butt in summer, and a set of swings that would probably treat a toddler as if they had the density of a neutron star and collapse under their weight.

All that people really used there anymore were a few old picnic tables because at least the creek was nice.

I walked along the road until I caught sight of them, the wind was a little chilly, and I didn’t care for it, so I held my arms across my body for warmth, ‘I wish I’d had him swap clothes with me, his jacket would probably be warm.’ Their uniform jackets were blue and had the school insignia of a gold coin inscribed with the face of a snow monkey, the school mascot, I suppose.

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They had on straight black ties and black pants as part of the outfit, anyone looking at them would know what school they went to, not that there were many out here anyway. Small towns are nice for quiet lives.

I’d seen them first, but it didn’t take long before they spotted Jin… which is to say… me.

They were chatting to each other, I vaguely caught some amused laughter, rude gestures, and I think they were saying some rude things about Jin.

“Hey so… you came back after all…” The tallest of the trio approached front and center, hands in his pockets, leaning forward, he towered over Jin’s frame, and he was a lot stronger looking. He wore a cocky smirk on his face and said, “Hey, your eye healed up real good, real fast… it looks like you can get two for the price of one tod-”

He never saw my fist connect with his face.

But he sure felt it, and he tumbled onto his back, grabbing for his injured nose. His buddies, scruffy people with the unshaven beards of youths who hadn’t really learned how to use razors yet, but needed to, had enough time to look surprised before I caught them both around their necks and yanked them together, their heads cracked, and they collapsed in a heap over the top of their big bad.

I hopped over to the top of the heap and sat on the back of the peak of the pile, drawing a grunt of surprise.

“You sonofa- get off me!” He shouted all of a sudden, and I planted my heel on his already broken nose. He shouted with pain.

“Listen to me or the next one goes on your throat.” I said quietly in the sort of voice I used when I felt like monologuing on a painting job. He went very still.

“I got permission to fight back, I held back before so I wouldn’t kill you guys, but now I’m allowed to defend myself, so I won’t hold back anymore. I get to use my real strength and my real skills.” He was trying to wiggle free under the weight of myself and his friends, but I was quietly using a little gravity magic to increase the weight, there was a hundred eighty-one kilograms on the punk right now, and I was increasing it a little at a time so that it would be instructive without causing any permanent damage.

The confusion on his face was priceless, “So… no more of yesterday. Not for me, not for anyone else.” I frowned as he wiggled like a worm on a hook, “I’m waiting.”

He grunted and groaned as the pressure continued to weigh on him.

“Yea-gh! No more, alright! We won’t try anything anymore!” He shouted.

“Swear.” I demanded.

“I swear!” He said, watching my foot hovering over his neck was probably the most terrifying moment of his life, and I was convinced.

“Good. I don’t want to have to do this with anyone else either. And I don’t want anyone else to know what I can really do. So from now on, you’re responsible for making sure I don’t have to, and tomorrow, you’re going to publicly apologize to me and everybody else you’ve done this to. And if anybody tries to bully anyone else… you’re going to step in and stop it. You and your friends here.”

The confusion etched on his face… I wanted to laugh so hard…it was like he’d just found out that down was up and up was down after a lifetime of being wrong.

“I-” He stopped.

“Swear it!” I demanded.

“I swear!” He shouted. “Now will you please just get off! We never would have done that if we’d known you were strong in the first place! I’m sorry!”

I pushed myself off the unconscious pair and stood up, “You know that makes you super weak, right?” I asked.

“Whuh…” He stopped struggling as the spell vanished and I hauled the two unconscious friends off of him, I then held a hand down, to offer him a hand up.

“If all you ever do is pick on weak people, you’re weak too, like… who is stronger, who is braver or more impressive, the guy who stomps on a beetle, or the guy who slays a lion?” I asked, and it seemed he understood my analogy.

“That’s the difference between feeling strong, and being strong.” I said as I hauled him up to his feet as if he weighed absolutely nothing… thanks to a little gravity magic for a moment, he really didn’t.

I reached up and touched the eye on my face he’d left swollen before on Jin, “If you just want to feel tough, you’ll never ‘be’ tough. Now… I’ve got to head home and take care of my mom. She's sick today, but I’ll be back tomorrow. I won’t mention this fight to anyone. If anyone asks, I’ll pretend to be ignorant, like I don’t know what anyone is talking about. But you hold up your end of the bargain tomorrow.”

He hung his head, “Yeah, yeah I will…” He mumbled.

“Oh, and call someone to get these two, they will probably wake up in a few minutes,” I said and pointed to the still sleeping pair, “but they should be checked out anyway. Just say they had an accident horsing around on the equipment here, and fell into each other head first. That should explain it all.”

He gave a numb, mute nod, and I turned around to walk back the way I came. ‘That was easier than I thought, and I didn’t even have to listen to a monologue in order to get all my chores down today. Lucky me!’ I thought and hummed contentedly all the way back to my apartment, swaggering in just as I got rid of the shift to Jin and back to my preferred body… and dispelled the magic that disguised my dirty pajamas as his school uniform.

“Hey uh… so you’re back… are you… alright?” He asked and looked me up and down like he was searching for evidence of injury.

I smiled bright as the sun, “Yes, no problem, I gave them a firm talking to about proper behavior, they’re very sorry for what they’ve done, and they’ll be apologizing to you tomorrow, to you and everybody else too.”

“Wait… your… serious?” Jin asked me, his mouth agape, I laughed, approached, and patted his cheek with my palm.

“Yup, not to worry, they won’t bother you or anyone else again. But you still have to stay off work today and finish everything for me!” I hastened to add… “That includes going to the store and getting me some more chips, cookies, some ramen cups, uh…” I quickly began ticking things off that I wanted… it was a bit long, and when I was done he said…

“I don’t mind giving you a discount on stuff at my mom’s store, but I can’t buy all that!” He exclaimed.

“No, you use my card.” I explained, then went to my room, pulled out a prepaid card, and handed it to him. “Try to get everything on the list, will you? Now, I’ve got some shows that won’t watch themselves!” I said and flopped myself down on the couch to watch some poor sap die again and again and again while he simped over a half-elf.

It was shaping up to be a damn fine day, one full of amusement as Jin kept eyeing me as if he suspected I were some sort of alien or something. Nutty thought, am I right?