A/N: An update? So soon? Awesome! Guess I have more time on my hands at the moment than I thought(Lies. I actually should be doing homework right now, but I'm trying to procrastinate.) Anyway, last "chapter" was sort of a prologue-y thing-y because I like prologues to introduce the reader to the real story. I showed you where the story "began." Also, there is a confusing flashback-thing in this chapter. You will be able to tell that this one isn't one of Gohan's memories, but rather more of a dreamy thing that turns into one of the flashbacks. I am aiming for clarity for all reading this! Comments on my ability to do this are welcome. I am trying to improve on transitioning and story detail in my writing. That's the main reason I am doing this: as a writing exercise! I don't want to get out of the habit of writing. "Chapter 1: Everything has Changed" starts five years after the prologue. Gohan has been training with Piccolo during this time (not by choice) and has learned control over the Super Saiyan 2 transformation. Some of this training will be revealed but some won't be revealed until later if at all. So enjoy! Please review with constructive criticism!
"Ow, Piccolo!" Gohan exclaimed as his arm was grazed by an energy blast. He had just barely moved out of the way in time for it to miss doing damage. He stared at the burn in disbelief. Within five seconds, he was on the ground. "Hey! Not fair!" He squirmed under his mentor's foot. It was futile. He was pinned down.
"Will you pay attention?" Piccolo snapped. "How many fights have you fought? The same lesson, every time! What kind of enemy is going to sit there without attacking while you just stare at your injuries?"
"I'm sorry! I won't do it again! Just let me up! We've been training for twelve hours now. What do you expect? I'm hungry!"
"You're worse now than you were when you were a kid!"
"I'm growing! I need more food than I did back then!" Arguments like these were an everyday occurrence. Gohan assumed Piccolo was trying to train him to control his appetite. The pressure on the Saiyan's chest was alleviated. He jumped to his feet. Piccolo walked a few paces and sat down to meditate, levitating a few feet off the ground as soon as he was in the lotus position. That meant Gohan was free to go get food.
Gohan walked down to the riverside. Fish. One of the easiest, most dependable food sources in the area. It was a bit of a struggle to find a fish big enough to be his meal, but usually one was available. He just had to do a little searching. He went through the usual routine: find a fish, wait, snatch it out of the water, build a fire, cook, and eat. As Gohan finished his fish, he felt that Piccolo's ki was not where he had left Piccolo. They were right behind him. Two apples fell into Gohan's lap. "Hi, Piccolo!"
"Yes, hello, Gohan. I see you weren't paying attention to surrounding ki again. Even while you are eating you should be on guard."
"Sorry, I really-"
"Save your apologies, kid. How's your arm?"
Gohan blinked in surprise. Piccolo never cared about his injuries. Okay, maybe he cared, but he never asked how they were doing. How strong was that energy blast? He looked down at the burn. There was a huge welt where the blast had singed his skin. "It's fine, I guess. Not bothering me or anything," he said, absently picking up an apple and examining it before taking a bite.
Piccolo grumbled something unintelligible before taking a seat beside Gohan. That was new, too. "Gohan, what is the derivative of sine?"
"Wha-" Bam! Gohan flew through the air and slammed into a tree. He cringed as he crumbled to the ground. Mental drills. One of Gohan's least favorite parts of the day. It was the reason Piccolo had Gohan bring his school books five years earlier.
"Gohan, we're going to try a new type of training. I hate doing this to myself, but I want you to teach me some of your books. Then, as a drill, I will quiz you on the material as we fight. How fast you can answer a question correctly will dictate the severity of the day's training drill."
Gohan looked up at his mentor with a grin. "So I get to teach you for once? Cool!"
"Yeah, kid, cool. Definitely the word I would have used to describe it," Piccolo growled. Gohan ignored Piccolo's irritation and ran to get his books for the first lesson. It wasn't every day you had a chance to teach your teacher.
After the drills, training was over. It was meditation time. For that, the two always went to the waterfall to sit, eyes closed, quiet until Piccolo sent Gohan to bed. Piccolo always actually meditated, but Gohan never could. He tried his best to hide it from Piccolo, but he was sure his mentor knew something was up. Every time Gohan had tried to meditate, the flashbacks came back. He thought he'd gotten rid of those a few years ago, but a month ago, when he tried to meditate for the first time since starting training, they started up again. Worse, while meditating, he couldn't get away from them. The grip they had on his mind was too strong.
Since that day, he stuck to just closing his eyes and thinking. Recently, his thoughts were changing. He used to just think about life. Now…now they focused on his mentor. Piccolo. Everything, his laugh, his smirk of pride when Gohan won a spar, the way he held back -but denied doing so- when he knew Gohan was having a rough day. Gohan was baffled about his thoughts. They weren't just normal thoughts. He actually felt himself… sort of attracted to the Namekian. During training, he got distracted, because he let his mind drift to think about Piccolo's physique. It was strange. Confusing. He didn't know what to think of it. He wanted to ask someone what it meant, but he couldn't ask Piccolo.
Gohan opened his eyes to look over at his mentor. Piccolo was completely focused on his meditation. He never lost focus when meditating. Well, almost never. There was that one time, two years ago when Gohan was still training to control his ascended Super Saiyan form. Piccolo was meditating, and Gohan was feeling particularly mischievous. He shot straight from his base form to ascended Super Saiyan, a risky transformation, but it had the desired effect. His mentor jolted out of his meditative state rather abruptly, a sight which amused Gohan. Of course, the action didn't come without punishment. Piccolo reprimanded him and added five hours onto the day's sparring lesson. Even today, Gohan would say it was worth it.
The only sounds around were the sound of the waterfall and the sound of Piccolo's cape fluttering in the wind. It was quite peaceful. Focusing on the sound of the waterfall, Gohan felt his eyelids grow heavy. Before he knew it, he was gone.
Gohan sat flipping through a dissertation on the basic principles of quantum mechanics. He couldn't help smiling to himself as he caught flaws in the author's grasp of the subject. Closing the book, he stood and stretched. Piccolo appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Gohan didn't think anything of it. "Gohan, are you finished studying yet?"
"Of course! This guy has it all wrong anyway." Gohan ran to Piccolo, wrapping his arms around him, kissing his cheek. "Where have you been all day?" Suddenly, Gohan felt hands around his throat as he was shoved away, lifted into the air.
"Where's that anger, kid?" The cruel laugh was unmistakable. Gohan looked down at his attack to see that Piccolo had transformed into Cell. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. There was no way to get Cell to let him go. Gohan tried to scream, but nothing would come out. His vision blurred. Then, he was falling.
"Gohan!" Gohan hit the water hard. He struggled to get his head above the water as the waves tossed him. He felt too weak to move. Then, he was lifted out of the water and tossed roughly to shore. His vision faded and he was out again.
Piccolo carried Gohan over to the cave. He wasn't sure what had happened. One moment, the kid was meditating beside him; the next, Gohan's ki fluctuated wildly before dropping to almost zero and he dropped out of the sky. Piccolo blamed himself for not recognizing something was wrong immediately. He thought the kid was just up to one of his tricks.
Once in the cave, he gently put Gohan on the ground, turning to the stack of wood in the cave to start a fire. Even after all these years with Gohan, he still didn't know how to fix human -or Saiyan- injuries or how to tell what was wrong. He just knew the basics: being cold and wet was bad, being out in the sun without water was bad, going too long without eating could be crippling to a Saiyan warrior, and neither species could regenerate any limbs with the apparent exception of the Saiyan tail.
Piccolo growled in irritation as he sat across from Gohan. The kid looked so peaceful now. His breathing was back to normal. So what happened when he was meditating? This wasn't even the first time it had happened. Several times he had watched his student go through cycles like this. One moment, he would be fine. The next, it was almost as if he were in a battle. His ki would become unstable before dropping drastically from what it should have been.
It was frustrating to be helpless, to be able to do nothing but watch. Damn it, kid. I almost lost you once. Don't put me through this again. Piccolo was angry. He didn't know toward whom his anger was directed, though. He was angry with Cell still for what the monster had done to his pupil. He was angry at Goku for dying and putting Gohan through so much stress that no child should have to go through. He was angry with Gohan for getting so close and making Piccolo care about him as a result. But most of all, Piccolo was angry with himself. He did his best never to show a weakness, yet obviously the kid had become his weakness. He knew he would never forgive himself if something happened to Gohan. During the Cell Games, it killed him when Goku sent Gohan to fight in his place. Piccolo would have taken the kid's place in a heartbeat if he would have had the strength to fight the monster himself. And for just a moment, when he thought Cell had killed Gohan… And now, watching Gohan struggle with whatever problem he was facing, Piccolo felt the feeling of helplessness return.
The Namekian gritted his teeth in frustration. There he went again. Being weak. Pathetic. There was no reason for him to have feelings like that for the boy. There was no reason to actually care. It's not like the boy felt the same way about him. Sure Gohan seemed to like him and considered him a friend, but it would never be more than that. Piccolo knew he would just have to accept that fact. Love and respect were not the same thing. Love. Piccolo made a face as the word crossed his mind. No. That was foolish. He didn't love the kid. He was concerned for Gohan's well-being. He was not weak. He had no sappy, pathetic emotions toward anyone.
But deep in the recesses of his mind, Piccolo knew he was lying to himself.
Gohan woke feeling sore all over. His back, legs, arms, everything. His neck throbbed and his throat felt swollen shut. He opened his eyes, staring at the roof of the cave. He had no strength left to move. What had happened? "Piccolo?" Gohan croaked weakly, sensing his mentor's ki nearby.
"Gohan? You're awake."
"What happened?" Piccolo didn't respond. "Piccolo?"
"Don't talk. You're straining yourself. I have no idea, kid. You have some serious work to do with controlling whatever the heck that was."
Gohan used what strength he had to pull himself into an upright position, propping himself up against the cave wall. Then, he thought about something: what he had been doing before he went unconscious. "I was meditating, wasn't I?" he asked out loud before he could catch himself. As soon as he did, he gasped and covered his mouth with his hands. Too late.
Piccolo's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean were you meditating? Gohan, is there something you're not telling me?"
Gohan chuckled nervously, dropping his hands to his sides. He pondered the best way to tell his mentor that he was still having visions. And that the visions, though less frequent, were getting more severe and more abstract than just memories. "Well, there's sort of a reason I never meditate." Awful start, weak. Gohan critiqued himself briefly on the delivery before continuing, "I used to have visions all the time, memories of the Cell Games. They'd just come at the worst times. I'd freeze up and be locked into a particular memory. Most were short. I'd just hear his laugh or see facial expressions of people there. But recently, though they've been getting less frequent, they've...been getting a little worse. They usually come up when I try to meditate. Today was an accident, but the vision just wouldn't let me go."
Piccolo erupted in rage, "And you waited until now to say something about it?!"
Gohan recoiled, wincing as the motion caused a pain to shoot through his limbs. "I was going to, but I never really found the right time. I didn't want you to be mad at me."
"And you didn't think I'd be mad if you delayed telling me?"
"I just didn't see why it was important!"
"Gohan, of all the idiotic things!" Piccolo punched the wall, causing the cave to shake a little from the force. "If you have a serious problem like that, you tell me. Immediately. No exceptions!"
Gohan dropped his head to his chest. "I'm sorry, Piccolo."
"Sorry doesn't cut it, Gohan. I've told you before to stop apologizing. You almost died today because you withheld critical information." Gohan felt small. Microscopic. Lower than dirt. He couldn't stand having Piccolo mad at him. If anyone else were to berate him like that, Gohan probably wouldn't have given it a second thought. But when Piccolo yelled at him, it meant something. It meant he was a disappointment. It meant he had failed as a student.
The silence between the two seemed to last an eternity. It was at least an hour or two before Gohan finally found his voice. "Piccolo, I promise I'll never keep secrets from you again. I didn't know that would happen." The statement was only partially true. Some things in life were better kept secrets.
