Yin and Yang
(A/N: I can't leave things in their own universe. I have to cross them! MWAHAHAHAH! This is a crossover. It will be weird!)
Disclaimer: Dragon Ball Z belongs to Funimation, while Highlander belongs to Rysher. I make no money, even though I need it for my medication.
Piccolo meditated alone atop a tall cliff, with a waterfall crashing down behind him. The face that he drifted above was sheer, and made of dull red sandstone. Trees grew a good way from the rock face, and grass covered the edge. It was a temperate area, and a cool breeze was blowing off the water.
For the apparent calm of the place, though, Piccolo's mind was anything but peaceful. He was in silence of his own soul, glimpsing a vision that made no sense.
There was a fighter, standing with sword upraised against a massive darkness. For some reason, though, this didn't seem to bother the human, (that was what the fighter was). The warriors arrayed against the fighter suddenly powered up, but the face was shrouded in darkness. Still, no fear came from the mind…
No fear radiated from that mind, and an almost desperate hope. Hope that it would be over, and that she (she? How could he tell? He hadn't gotten a good enough look at the fighter to tell one way or the other!) would have rest, that some burden would be lifted. A blow struck her from behind, and she pitched forward. An axe-kick was about to hit her head, when she rolled out of the way. It was then that the entire circle attacked, viciously trying to grind her into the ground. A signal came from somewhere, and they backed away.
Another swordsmen entered the ring, and the fighter seemed to smile ironically, and knelt. The other swordsman raised his sword-
The expression of peace that settled over the now clear face of the woman was terrifying-
The sword arced downward-
He woke up.
Piccolo shook his head, disoriented. He had had this vision before, and the meaning was still unclear. True, it looked like a fight scene, something he was more than familiar with, but the way that the woman had looked, when she was about to die, was more frightening than the fact that she was going to die at all. She just didn't care.
There were other things about the vision that changed…
It was just plain confusing.
Shaking his head, he started down to the base of the falls, looking down.
He gasped.
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Karen was hiking. It was one of the few things that she ever did that kept her from loosing her mind, away from the teeming masses of humanity.
It wasn't that she didn't like people- it was that she couldn't stand to be around them, because of all the memories.
She was currently climbing a cliff, because, well, it had been in her way. Karen liked straight lines, for some reason.
~gasp~
Startled, Karen looked up, pulling her hands into a defensive position, forgetting that she was climbing for the barest of seconds, and lost her grip.
She cursed herself roundly for her stupidity, but she didn't scream.
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Piccolo was shocked at how much this woman looked like the person from his vision, and it halted him for a moment. Still, only for a moment, as the hero's instinct that had been hammered into him, first by Goku, and then by Gohan, made him shoot downwards to grab the wrist of the falling lady.
His cloak fell, draping her face before she got a good look at the great green form before her. The sun was to Piccolo's back; all she saw was a big shape. (A very big shape)
"If ya don't mind, could you swing me back to the rock face?" she yelled, rather surprised she wasn't street (or as the case was, cliff) pizza. She also didn't know that she was being suspended by a flying green alien.
"I would think that you would like to go to the top, but, you seemed to be in an awful rush to get back to the bottom," said Piccolo, amusement in his voice.
Karen frowned, not understanding what he was meaning.
"I'd like to finish my climb, thanks."
Sighing to himself, Piccolo floated upwards, and Karen gave a squawk of surprise.
"Excuse me," she asked, batting away the covering of him cloak, "but how-" she was about to ask, when she got a good view of his face. She stopped in mid-sentence, and blinked. Just when I thought that I had seen it all… she thought.
He pulled her up to the edge, with her still gaping at him. He started his familiar smirk, guessing what she was thinking. The normal reaction of most humans to the Demon King was to gape, scream, and run. And with my luck, he thought, she'll dive right off the cliff again, and I'll have to rescue her.
It was something of a shock to his system when she just closed her mouth, giving him this look of weighing, turned to walk away.
"You can scream now," he told her, and she simply tilted her head.
"Why would I do that?"
"Uh-"
"If I was to yell at everybody that had no fashion sense, I would be shrieking every time that I saw a mirror. I've met people who were stranger than flying green turban wearing ones with," she looked him over again, and shrugged, "no hair."
This had him a little off balance, but he wasn't a Z Senshi for nothing.
He recovered, but became a little more agitated when she just walked off.
"Thanks," she called over her shoulder, leaving a very bemused Piccolo behind her.
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The infamous couple was at it again.
It was morning, and Bulma was fixing herself breakfast. She had just finished pouring herself some coffee, and was looking at the paper as she sat down in front of her half a grapefruit. She had just finished going through the stocks, checking to see how Capsule Corps was doing, when Vegeta walked in from the gravity room, and snatched the paper from her grip. He began carelessly tossing the other sections away, looking for the funnies.
"What?! Hey, you, what are you going that for?" shouted Bulma, who started to pick up the dropped pages. Vegeta ignored her, as they went on, looking for his favorite comics. Bulma took a deep breath, preparing to blast his ears out, when Trunks walked in. He saw his parents acting like adolescents in front of him, which didn't surprise him one bit, and leaned over to help his mother pick up the paper. Then he noticed the headlines for that day.
"HEADLESS BODIES FOUND THROUGHOUT CITY"
"That's weird," he muttered, looking at the rather gruesome picture of a mutilated body.
"Let me see that," said his father, snatching the page from him.
"Dad," Trunks said, but Vegeta ignored him too.
"HAHAHAHAHA-" he burst out, and handed the paper back to Trunks. The Prince of Saiyans doubled over with laughter, while Trunks scanned the article.
"What is it?" asked Bulma, the rest of the paper forgotten in her hands.
"It seems that there have been all sorts of dead bodies found, all with their heads cut off. The forensics people say that except for the recent wounds from their fights, they were all in perfect condition. Teeth, skin, everything, not even scars. And-" he flipped it over, and continued to read the article, " There are no leads so far, and nothing to connect the victims except how they died."
Trunks had had to increase his volume as he spoke, his father's laughter starting to drown him out.
"Humans. You never know what they will do next!" howled Vegeta, while his mate and child sweat dropped.
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"Now, why am I thinking about that green guy?" Karen asked herself, and shook her head in confusion. Truthfully, she didn't know. Well, you didn't meet big green people all that often, but it seemed to be more than that.
"Weird," she muttered, and went along her way. She had other things on her mind for now.
The Gathering, for one.
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"This was really getting me worried," said Bulma, over the vid-phone. She was talking to the 'Great Saiyaman', and she was wondering if this was a good idea. While he meant well, and was very intelligent, almost as much as she was, he just wasn't a detective. Yet he was all she had available.
"This isn't something that I would trust Vege-chan with, knowing him, he'd go right along with this person, and have a blast doing it," Bulma sighed, and brushed a piece of hair back. "You think you and Videl can handle it?"
"You bet!" said the enthusiastic dark haired man on the other end of the line. He gave her the famous Son smile. "I don't think there is anything the two of us can't handle," he mentioned, and blazed to SSJ.
The com shut off, and Bulma's eyes became wide as plates.
"Oh, dear, what have I done?"
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Bura had been listening to her daughter's conversation with the young demi-Saiyan with trepidation. She had also noticed the recent string of beheadings, but unlike her genius husband and child, she had a good idea of what was going on. It wasn't like she wanted to know, of course.
She was standing behind a corner from her daughter, and she rubbed her wrist and sighed. Her husband had never asked why she wore a watch with an extremely wide wristband, and she was grateful. She had never wanted to be a Watcher, had never wanted to know about the Immortals or the Gathering, but it had literally fallen into her lap one day. She had gone to the store with her young daughter in a stroller, when the dress shop they were in was robbed, by an immortal.
Another one was close by, and when the shots had been fired, the other immortal had shielded Bulma with her own body. She had died, and Bura had seen her return to life, and then was introduced to her Watcher.
She scowled as she thought of what had happened later. Though she knew that she was lucky when it came to her assignment, she still resented it. She didn't want to have the responsibilities of being a Watcher!
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"Why am I doing this?" Piccolo asked himself as he followed the strange humans trail through the trees she had disappeared into.
He rattled off a mental list of answers to that question. One: She hadn't been afraid of him; that suggested that she had power, and was a possible threat. Two: She had been a normal part of his visions for about a month, and he wanted to know why. Three: He was just damned curious.
That in and of itself was kind of strange for him, because he had never been that curious about a person before-
What, under Dende-sama was he thinking?
Growling to himself, he continued on, until he found her campground. She had chosen a rather picturesque place for her camp, one that cupped a small waterfall, and an even tinier cave. Her packs were inside the cave, and she herself was balancing precariously on some of the wet and mossy stones, doing an eclectic kata.
She had stripped down into a pair of cutoff shorts and tank top, and was barefoot as she went easily from a kung fu form, to one from tai chi, to tae kwon do, then slipped into savate. Piccolo frowned, watching her blurred movements, thinking that she must simply have never learned any ki manipulation, because she was easily strong enough to fly.
He didn't notice the tiny motion of his own that betrayed him; because without warning, the woman did a back flip which carried her away from the rocks she had perched on, to the cave, where she unsheathed a sword, and before Piccolo could move-
Shing
There was a sword stuck about three inches deep in front of his face, in a bole of a tree.
This had Piccolo rather stunned for a split second, but not so stunned that he was taken by the next attack, as he blocked quickly with his feet, and stopped a ridge hand thrust to his neck.
"Gah-" he garbled out, not expecting such a fierce, or powerful attack from this woman.
He had captured her hand, and it was just hanging there, and Piccolo wondered how long he could keep his grip. The power was surprising, and if he didn't bring his ki up to stop it…
But he did.
There was no fear in the woman's voice as she said," Haven't you heard that it is rude to spy on people?"
They glared at each other; neither yielding, and Piccolo took a moment to get a good look at her. Her face was scarred on its left side from some kind of burning, shiny and ridged. The other side would never have been called beautiful, either, but it was untouched. He thought that she was lucky that both her eyes were still intact. There was a pain and isolation there that he didn't understand, and wouldn't try to. He had a feeling that if he got sucked in, he would never get out.
It was then that a look of curiosity flickered across her features, and she pulled back. Not in surrender, but in truce.
"I have never seen a green skinned man before," she stated baldly. "I never thought of myself as being interesting enough for one to follow me." She titled her head, taking him in, again, like she was measuring something he had no idea of.
"I'm Karen," she told him, putting out her hand. Piccolo just stared at her.
Pulling back her hand, Karen grunted to herself, and shrugged. "What do you want, or were you just being friendly?" she asked him, while the confused Namek stared at her. His brain was having trouble wrapping the concept of someone acting like this around it. (Unless that person was Son).
"I don't know," he finally said, trying to figure out what he was saying himself. "There are very few people who react the way that you did to me, and I was- curious." He stopped, wondering if that sounded as dumb as he thought. Again, the woman- no, Karen, shrugged at him.
"Can I ask you something?" she said, the corners of her mouth twitching.
"You just did, but go ahead."
"How, by the Gods, can you fly?"
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It was when classes were over for the day, and Gohan was looking at one of the crime scenes. He shook his head, mentally ticking off the known clues. While there were a string of bodies, there was nothing connecting them, not wealth, gender, occupation, or anything else. He turned, feeling Videl's presence come into range, and wondered briefly if she was actually distracting him… He grunted to himself, and tried to get a hold on his hormones.
He had no idea what could be causing this; that was one fact that he had no doubt. All had been killed using an extremely sharp object; all had been in almost perfect condition, male and female, no ritual to the murders, and nothing to tie them together.
"You can't have an entire group of insane head hunting nuts out there," he said out loud, and Videl shuddered.
"Don't even say something like that!" she hissed. "If this is some kind of cult thing, we may never see the end of this!"
He turned to her, and nearly fell into her eyes… Then got back to business
"It's the only thing that fits all the fact," he told her, and grinned wryly. "There is nothing, other than cause of death, that links them. No sexual assault, no robbery, nothing other than pure, random murder. Add the notion that there is more than one person…" he frowned, and Videl looked away.
"Maybe we should leave this to the police," Videl said delicately, and Gohan muttered, "Wish that we could."
"Guess the only way we can find the person is to both patrol the streets," he added, and it was Videls's turn to sigh.
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It had been a few weeks since Karen had first asked him to teach her to fly, and he had simply walked, then flown, away from her. He knew that he had been rude, and she had made no move to follow him, but she still had center stage for whatever it was that he was seeing in his dreams.
A particularly vicious one had made him awake in shock, wondering if it had been his own head that had been chopped off. This time the vision had something to do with Gohan and his girlfriend- he couldn't remember her name. There was lightening, and it was being pulled away from his student. For some reason this was bad. He had seen Karen, standing in a corridor next to him, and she had rushed to the rescue, but she didn't know how to do something, and that was also important. He had seen other people chopping off heads, and wished he knew why he was suddenly kneeling in front of the evil creature responsible for so much. Then the blade had arched down, and he wasn't himself any more, he was Karen. It was eerie, feeling the resignation and almost joy at your own death-
"Damn," he groaned, coming completely to. Wiping sweat from this forehead, he got up. He had to find Karen. That much was certain.
To be continued.