"What a poor child!"
After hearing Goku's answer, Gabrielle's eyes were already a little red.
He was abandoned by his parents because he had a tail, then picked up by an old man and raised in a mountain called Mount Paozu.
After the old man passed away, the child became an orphan, started to wander, sometimes hungry, sometimes full.
The so-called training was probably just wandering.
Looking at his dirty clothes, his hair was so long and uncut, standing up; what else could he be if not a street urchin?
At this moment, she had already imagined Goku's pitiful background and experiences.
"We'll go to the west of the city in a bit, and Auntie will treat you to barbecue."
Gabrielle secretly decided in her heart that she would adopt Goku, this wandering orphan, and go live in the mutant gathering place with him.
Goku had lost his parents, wandered here, and even offended the Facility because of them.
If he continued to stay here, it would be a dead end.
Only by following them to the mutant gathering place could he live a good life.
It just so happened that all the children there were mutants, and their ages were not too different, so they could play together.
"Mhm, mhm, mhm."
As soon as he heard there was barbecue, Goku nodded his head like a chick pecking rice.
He often barbecued tigers, wolves, and dinosaurs in the mountains, but because there were no seasonings, the taste was definitely not as good as in the city.
He still missed the food Master Roshi Grandpa used to take them to eat at restaurants in the county town when he was training with Master Roshi Grandpa.
Gabrielle tried to avoid surveillance-heavy sections of the road, driving along secluded paths towards her boyfriend's home in the west of the city.
The forces behind the Facility were very powerful, and she had to be cautious.
"So you're a girl."
In the back seat, Goku observed the quiet Laura sitting next to him, reaching out to pat Laura's lower body.
Laura tilted her head, not understanding why the other person knew she was a girl after patting her a few times.
She didn't feel any malice from him, so she didn't retaliate.
Gabrielle, who happened to see this scene through the rearview mirror, almost stepped on the brakes.
"Goku, you can't tell if someone is a girl like that, it's too rude!"
"Then how do you tell?
I know that girls definitely have butts on their chests, like Auntie.
But some girls don't have butts on their chests.
So Grandpa told me that those without a little pee-pee and balls are girls."
Goku answered with a serious expression.
He had always used this method to tell, and he had never been wrong.
However, Bulma seemed to have told him before not to use this method, but he never understood why.
It was just a pat, and he didn't use any force; he used to kick twice to confirm.
Gabrielle's mouth twitched fiercely upon hearing this; she wanted to tell Goku that he could tell by hair length.
But after thinking about it, that didn't seem very standard either, as many men had long hair and many women had short hair.
She then thought about facial features, that girls' features were softer, while boys' features were more angular.
However, this also didn't seem to be 100% certain.
Because effeminate men and masculine women, cross-dressing men and cross-dressing women, were not uncommon in modern society.
After much thought, it seemed that Goku's method was indeed the only one that could 100% confirm gender.
"Anyway, don't do that again; you'll understand when you're a little older."
She realized that this tailed mutant boy, Goku, seemed very innocent, just as innocent as Laura.
Laura was innocent because she had grown up in the Facility, with no childhood, only being trained how to kill every day.
As for Goku being so innocent, she thought it was probably because he grew up in the mountains.
"Goku, how old are you?"
"Twelve," Goku replied after thinking for a moment.
He originally thought that after eleven was fourteen, but after learning arithmetic from Master Roshi Grandpa, he realized that after eleven was twelve.
So he was twelve this year.
"One year older than Laura."
Gabrielle nodded.
A normal twelve-year-old child would understand everything.
If she hadn't known that Goku came from the mountains and his eyes were exceptionally clear, she would have really suspected Goku was a little pervert.
Shortly after Gabrielle and the others left the alley, a dozen off-road vehicles screeched to a halt on the street outside the alley.
Nearly a hundred fully armed mercenaries, led by their commander, rushed into the alley with various heavy weapons.
"A bunch of good-for-nothings!"
Seeing the seven or eight burly men lying unconscious on the ground, the commander couldn't help but curse out loud.
"You, take a team to check the nearby surveillance."
"You, take a team to search Gabrielle's house."
"You, take a small team to the border entrance to prevent them from escaping across the border."
Although he was a step late, he still methodically made his arrangements.
In his opinion, with only two people, it would be difficult for them to escape their blockade; it was only a matter of time before they were caught.
Moreover, he had also threatened Wolverine, the person Gabrielle would ask for help, and bribed Gabrielle's boyfriend.
"You two have breakfast here first; I'll go upstairs to do something and be right back."
Arriving downstairs at her boyfriend's house, Gabrielle first left Goku and Laura at a familiar Mexican barbecue restaurant downstairs.
She needed to go upstairs to borrow some money from her boyfriend.
The meeting point she had agreed upon with the escaped mutant children was at the northern border, Eden, the mutant gathering place in X-Men comics.
Due to the disappearance of mutants and the deliberate interference and cover-up by various governments,
most ordinary people now thought mutants were fictional creations from comics and didn't know that the X-Men, a mutant organization, had once truly existed.
The harm caused by mutants and the X-Men's past contributions had been erased.
But working at the Facility, she knew that most of it was true.
Of course, the mutant gathering place Eden in the comics was fake; mutants had disappeared long ago, so there was no such gathering place.
She just wanted to cross the border into Canada from there.
She had already made arrangements with relevant Canadian authorities: as long as she could bring the children across the border before Friday,
the relevant Canadian authorities would receive these mutant children there and allow them to live normal lives.
"Eat! Eat!"
Goku, smelling the aroma of barbecue in the restaurant, was practically drooling and nodded repeatedly.
Laura also nodded, sitting obediently in her seat and playing with her toy ball.
"Jean, these are my relatives' children; please get them some barbecue rice and drinks, and I'll come down to pay later."
Gabrielle greeted the bearded Boss and hurried upstairs.
The bearded Boss made an "okay" gesture and quickly prepared two plates of barbecue rice and two glasses of milk, placing them in front of Goku and Laura.
However, he had just put down the plates and turned around, not yet taking a few steps, when he heard the boy behind him shout:
"Another plate!"