The Torment 7: Morning After
Disclaimer: DBZ belongs to Funimation and Bird Studios, and Ranma ½ belongs to someone other than me, and I make no money from this, all I ever got was a cold. Like I have right now. I feel like crap, but because so many people reviewed the previous one, (I'm not Eternal SailorM, so ten is a lot to me,) I started working on this as soon as I got back to my computer.
"Oh, Kami," chanted Piccolo-chan as she flew from the house of Son Gohan, wondering how she had let herself do that. She had mated with Gohan!
An absurd, strangely logical part of her mind told her, at least you know why humans make such a big deal about it now.
Shut up! She told that part, even as she shivered with the memory.
Piccolo-chan kept on flying, and didn't look back, no matter how much she wanted to.
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Gohan sat on his bed, avoiding the wet spot, and stared out the window. His thoughts were a tornado, whirling and confused as he tried to figure out what had just happened.
This wasn't supposed to be how it worked out, a part of his mind commented. You were supposed to wake up together, proclaim love, or something like that, and get married. Or something.
You weren't supposed to find that the girl you had fallen in love with and claimed was your teacher and best friend.
What does that make it? I haven't a clue!
She (he?) had said go and ask Dende. It sounded like the only thing he could do right then.
Gohan sighed, and changed into one of his old gis. It was the same dark blue as Piccolo's were, without the white cloak, collar and shoulder pads.
Don't think about Piccolo!
He couldn't help it, as soon as the thought crossed his mind, memories of what they had done that night emerged, and he was grateful for his large pants.
Yet, the image of Piccolo, his teacher was also there. That didn't change the way the memory affected him though- He felt more confused than ever.
He growled. For some reason, any thought other than Piccolo was hazy, unreal, like nothing else mattered. Gohan looked up at the moon again, and that strange haze settled into his thoughts for a second time.
He fought it off, although the lingering scents in the room were hard to ignore. Stop this, find Dende!
Gohan fought clear again, and took to the air.
He took little time to get to the Lookout, and see what had happened.
"Hello, Gohan, how are you this evening?" asked Mr. Popo.
"I need to see Dende, where is he?" he demanded, the usual nice demeanor he wore gone.
"He will be out here shortly," said Mr. Popo, and Gohan wondered if this was expected.
It was. Dende had been watching Piccolo-chan that night in hopes that she wouldn't do anything stupid, but when it seemed that she had gone to bed for the night, he had let his attention stray. Now he cursed himself for it. He had turned back in time to see Piccolo-chan leave Gohan's. He had no idea what had happened there, and was afraid to find out.
Dende rushed out, his robes fluttering around him, out of breath.
"Gohan, how are you?" Dende asked. He shrank back from the boy's face.
"How is Clarinet Piccolo?" Gohan asked coldly.
"So, she didn't tell you?"
"No, he didn't," Gohan answered.
"Sit down, this may take a while."
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Gohan listened intently as Dende told him how he had sent Piccolo to investigate the Training Ground of Accursed Springs, and what had happened there, and that they had to wait until the Dragon Balls were active again for them to fix Piccolo's curse, and how it had became locked in the first place.
Gohan went very pale. "I did that to Piccolo-san?"
"We couldn't have fixed his curse without the ladle, and if we didn't have it, this may have been for the best-" Dende said, and Gohan burst out into hysterical laughter.
"The best? You say it was for the best? I fall in love with Piccolo, we sleep together, and you say it was for the best?"
"WHAT!" screamed Dende, his face draining to a pale green.
"I said-"
"I heard what you said, oh Enma-sama," Dende moaned, his face in his hands. "I should never have let her go out alone after what she said!"
"She said what?"
Dende groaned again, and looked at the ticked off demi-Saiyan.
"She, he, whatever, said that she was having feelings for you that she didn't know how to act on. Pretty much was that he had always loved you, and that when she turned into a girl, those feelings became something else. I told her to tell you, and see what happened. I guess she went to see you, and talking wasn't what happened."
Gohan nodded.
"Now what?"
"We wait, and see what happens," said Dende.
"Where is Piccolo-san?" said Popo, voicing the question unsaid.
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Piccolo sat in front of one of the windows in the Satan's guesthouse, on her knees, keening softly about what happened. If you had told Piccolo three months ago about what would happen to him, that he would become a human female, and fall desperately in love with Gohan, someone that trusted him as a parent, and that they would have –
Made love,
-rutted like a pair of animals; that she would have-
-stayed with him forever-
-hurt him, just by being there-
He would have slugged them into the next millennium.
She couldn't take much more of this. Gohan, she would have died for, or killed for. She knew that despite what he had told her, once he realized who she was, he wouldn't be able to stand the sight of her.
And she couldn't bear that thought.
She couldn't bear the fact that once he realized who she was, she would no longer be able to touch him, be able to be his friend and at his side the way in the way that had seemed so right, despite the strangeness of how it had happened. She had hurt him again, the way that she always seemed to hurt him, no matter what else she did. Garlic jr., Dr. Wheelo, and others paraded themselves through her mind.
She wasn't worthy of him.
Then, as she had said, she had died, and would have killed for him; it was time to do both.
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Gohan was worried when Dende was stilling looking for Piccolo after an hour. He sat there, waiting, his feet and hands tapping impatiently on the ground and table he was sitting at.
Then there was a terrified shout from the scrying pool.
"Gohan, come quick!"
Gohan was on his feet and running before he even thought about it. He stared into the pool, and felt bile rise up in his throat.
Piccolo was lying in a pool of her own blood, her wrists slashed, and still spurting.
"GOHAN!" Dende yelled frantically, "there's no senzu beans, and the Dragon Balls can't be used-"
Gohan was already gone, destination in mind.
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"BULMA!" Gohan yelled, banging on the door to Capsule Corp. The blue haired scientist groggily woke up, and pulled on a robe. She had been having a lovely dream, but had been interrupted by the loud thumps coming from the door.
"Gohan," she said sleepily before getting to the entrance. "What is-"
She opened the door, to see a very pale Gohan holding a very pale, still girl. Gohan was holding her strangely, and she realized it was to keep pressure on her wrists.
"-wrong?" She gasped when she saw what was going on, and immediately led the way to the regeneration tanks.
Trying to be in two places at once was a trick only Piccolo had mastered, and she yelled for help. There was a lot of loud grumbling, and Vegeta came down the stairs after the shouting Trunks and Goten. Chi-chi heard the racket, and followed down as well.
I forgot about Mom! Gohan thought, panicked. Then he calmed down. Right now he needed to take care of Piccolo.
Bulma started to bandage Piccolo's wrists, while Gohan held her nervously. Chi-Chi had already started preparing the regeneration tank.
Within moments, Piccolo was in the tank, and stabilized. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
During the commotion, Vegeta had stayed to the side, watching. He noticed something that everyone else had missed. The bite mark.
So, he thought, he's claimed a mate. I wonder if he has any idea what he's done?
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Gohan watched the tank anxiously; feeling like his own heart was the one on the monitor. When it had nearly stopped, and everyone had panicked, Gohan had done his best not to scream at the dead feeling in his own chest. Trying to breath, his heart and lungs seemed to take on the task of working for both of them.
Then the moment passed. Piccolo was stable again.
Reaching out to touch the glass of the tank, he closed his eyes and tried to feel for the person inside, and felt black despair.
"Gohan?"
He felt something, and tried to grab hold-
"Gohan! Listen to your mother!" said an authoritative voice, and an arm pulled him out of his almost trance.
"M- mom?" he stuttered, somehow wondering where he was and how he had gotten there. Remembering, he turned again to the tank, but Chi-Chi pulled him back again.
"Leave him alone," ordered an even harsher voice than his mother's.
They turned, and saw Vegeta, standing there.
They could think of nothing to say, when Vegeta turned and walked out of the room.
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It took several hours, full of nail-biting and nervous tension, but the tank was drained, and an unconscious Piccolo was removed. She rested, in a thin paper gown and covered by a blanket, on a hospital bed in the medical wing. Everyone else had gone back to bed, except for Gohan, who was sitting in a chair by her side. He still couldn't believe what had happened.
But regret was the last thing on his mind. He was too busy keeping his hormones in check. It perplexed him that he had never gone nuts like this over a girl before. What a minute. Piccolo? A girl?
He was having trouble wrapping his mind around the concept. Piccolo had seemed, well, so male to him, that the idea of him ever not being that seemed alien.
Alien.
Hah.
That was the problem, Piccolo didn't have a gender. It was his own ideas of him being male that were in the way. Her behavior at school had been about the way he would assume Piccolo would have acted. No big changes.
Then, there was him hormones, his instincts telling him that Piccolo was definitely female, in no uncertain terms.
Man, life was complicated; but those thoughts were for later. What he worried about right now was understanding why the hell the person that he loved had tried to kill herself!
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Piccolo-chan had trouble finding her way out of the warm well of sleep. It was safe there, no fears for others, no loves, no hates. She was in blissful oblivion.
Yet there was something on the other side of it that wanted her to come back. She couldn't understand that, but when she did, she reached out, and –
Woke up.
She just sort of, woke up.
The room was unfamiliar, but there was a very familiar ki to her side. Turning her head slightly, ignoring the vertigo, her eyes met Gohan's.
Crap, she thought. I can't feign sleep and get away.
"Why?" Gohan stated, hurt marring his features.
She blinked, trying to think about what he meant.
"Why, what?" she asked, confused.
"Try to kill yourself! Not tell me about your curse! Everything!"
Gohan started to rant then, and pace around the room.
"If there was one person I would have hoped that you would have trusted about this whole thing, it was me, Mr. Piccolo. Why didn't you tell me? Why did you hurt yourself? Don't you have any idea what would have happened if you had died? How much I- we would have missed you? How much loosing you would have hurt me? I told you that I love you, and I mean it!"
"I have a reason," Piccolo-chan mumbled, while Gohan continued to rant.
"Why didn't you trust me? Don't you love me? Or was this all some kind of- What do you mean, you have a reason?"
"I didn't think you, I mean, I have hurt you so much in the past, the idea that I might have hurt you again was so awful that I couldn't imagine-"
Piccolo-chan was cut off with a kiss.
Gohan had his lips to hers, holding her. Before she could think about it, Piccolo-chan responded, and for several minutes they just stayed where they were, until they needed to breath.
"Piccolo, aren't you the one who told me I talk too much?"
Piccolo-chan looked at Gohan, and smirked.
"You aren't going to answer that, are you?" Gohan said in exasperation.
The expression on Piccolo-chan's face was strange.
"What do you think about all this?" she asked softly, dreading the answer.
"I don't know what to think," he answered honestly. "Part of me flinches back, saying that this isn't right, and it shouldn't be happening." He saw her bow her head. "Because you are an old friend and teacher. Another is mad that you wouldn't trust me with this, and the other-"
He looked her again, and Piccolo-chan wondered when those stupid butterflies in her belly would give it a rest. They seemed to be hyperactive.
"Is a hormonal teenager that seems a very beautiful girl and is driving me crazy."
"Males," Piccolo-chan mumbled. "I don't understand you."
They looked at each other and the humor of the situation got to them both, and they fell over laughing.
The laughter was rather hysterical.
Gohan wrapped an arm around Piccolo-chan's shoulders, and sat next to her on the bed. Then, seeing what he was doing, he pulled back.
"This is awkward," Piccolo-chan commented, oddly missing the arm.
"You have no idea."
"I kind of wish that I could go back to just being Clarinet to you," she said wistfully, looking anywhere but at him. "I was nicer being your friend, instead of "Mr. Piccolo"."
"I thought you were already my friend," said Gohan in surprise.
"I had wanted to be able to just talk to you, and be able to join you in things, and being 'Clair' let me. Now, I won't growl in pain if you whistle."
Gohan winced, remembering the incident.
"I'm guess I'm just used to you being the adult, and me the kid," Gohan answered.
"Gohan, I'm only three years older than you."
Gohan felt a little dumbfounded by that. Of course he had known that intellectually, buy he also knew that she had the accumulated knowledge of Kami-sama and Ma, her father.
"I don't know a thing about being human, or love, or any of the emotions that I have been feeling. I guess that means that you'll, you will have to teach me."
Gohan was again speechless. The look on his face was so pole axed that Piccolo-chan started to giggle. She hated it when she giggled- it made her sound like a little girl.
It made Gohan want to laugh, too, and when he did, he drew her into his arms. Piccolo-chan responded by putting her arms around his neck. They kissed again.
The lights had never been turned on, and the full moon shown down in all of its pale glory, and the glimpse of it made Gohan forget who and where he was. The instincts that he had always had came bubbling up, and with a willing partner, had nothing to hold them back.
He gently led her down again, and that was that.
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The rest of the household had gone back to sleep, and by now it was early morning.
"Woman, will you stop hogging all the covers?" Vegeta demanded sleepily. He poked his mate in the side, trying to get her to move. Unfortunately, he had worn her out so much last night (yes, too much hentai) that she didn't move. She sort of rolled, then let out a loud snore. Griping to himself, he tried to shove her over, but that didn't work, because she still wouldn't move, and any more force would have hurt her.
Thoroughly awake now, he decided that it was almost time for him to start training. He got to his feet, and thought it might be time to whip that half-breed son of Kakarroto back into shape.
Vegeta dressed in his black gi, boots and gloves, and went down to the infirmary. He got the shock of his life.
There was Gohan, dressed only in his boxers, and the girl he had brought in was completely nude, and they were covered only with a thin sheet. The bite on the girl's neck was reopened, and larger than before. He smirked, noting a similar one on the brat's neck, as well.
He must have laughed, or something, because the next thing he knew he was going through a wall, with Gohan after him, eyes red.
To be continued…
(Ooh, another cliffhanger…)