"Eh, naw, not everyone. Only people who have met their match, their other half. If you don't love them with all your heart, you don't hang around them when you're dead. Heck, the afterlife'd get pretty crowded were that the case!"


Somehow, behind the cheerful visage and wide smilinh eyes, Piccolo decided the boy knew much more than anyone his age should. "You met your soul mate that early?"


More giggles, the stick drew a smiling face in the sand, it's indented eyes grinning up at Piccolo. "Oh, I'm not really this young."


"Eh?!"


"I died…um……it should be fifty-three years, last fall."


Gaping, Piccolo sweatdropped softly, trying to articulate his emotions of shock and surprise. "You were so young…"


"Oh, you haven't even figured that out yet?"


"What?"


"Changing your form, of course. Heck, I was twenty eight when I died. I sure didn't look
like this!"


"No…"


Before Piccolo's eyes the boy melted away, reforming in the shape of an elderly man who's merry eyes were framed by creases in a thousand places- the image of a human who had lived a perfect, happy life of well over sixty years. "This is what I would look like if I were alive. My wife is old, and when I'm around her I use this form, it just makes me feel closer to her….You know, to have grown old with her despite everything."


"I…I see…."


The old man raised a hand, the finger joints stiff with arthritis as he waved them back and forth. "All you are is a representation of how you see yourself. Most likely it's your body at the prime of your life, that's how most people like to be seen for eternity."


Piccolo narrowed his eyes and looked down at himself. For a namekusei-jin, and a young one that, his aging was not particularly evident until much later in his life. After living for so long alone in the wilderness he didn't have a very good sense of what he looked like, but now he was curious. "How do I change?"


The older man smiled innocently, looking quite a bit daft. Piccolo wondered for a moment if he really knew what was going on- but he would have a mind matching the one he had died with, and he had been young. "Just concentrate on yourself, on what you looked like, and then form a picture in your mind of what you wish to be. It's easy, really, once you've done it once."


Ah, that was fine, but it wasn't what Piccolo really wanted to know. He filed the information away for a later analysis and popped another question. "How can I touch the mortal world like you do?"


"That takes quite a bit more work, Piccolo-san," said Louis in an apologetic tone as he shook his head dimly. "And though I've spent a lifetime trying, I can't touch living beings…"


Piccolo's face must have fallen, because Louis was immediately comforting him with smooth words. He must have explained this a million times before, Piccolo decided. "It's alright, really, you can at least communicate….Writing, that sort of thing!"


The next second, Louis was a young boy again, about twenty eight with long hair that was pulled in a ponytail behind his head. If it hadn't been a light brown color, Piccolo would have thought he looked like Gohan.


"Show me…"


"Let's begin, then."


~~


The sun was rising behind them, and Piccolo had barely managed to alter himself. He had sucessfully paled his coloration to a peachy color (privately he noticed that he had managed
the hue Gohan's cheeks always attained when he was blushing), but physical changes took much more concentration.


"You have to sculpt it, Piccolo," Louis told him, the stick he held earlier now resting over one shoulder. "You're trying to force it. Use your imagination and picture the skin moving and where it would rearrange itself too.


"Can I hurt myself doing this?" Piccolo frowned. Shifting around his internal organs to change his shape didn't sound like a smart idea.


"Piccolo, you're dead." Louis was laughing, his light tenor floating across the beach. "You don't have anything to hurt. This is just your fixated image of 'you'...If you can see yourself looking different then you can make yourself look that way."


After another attempt, Piccolo threw up his hands in disgust. "Why is this so easy for you!?"


"When you've been dead as long as I have, it's easy to lose yourself...After being nothing for so long, you lose a sense of who you are, physically. It becomes much easier to change that once you lose the idea that your body looked just 'so'."


Piccolo decided that made sense, and mentally reminded himself that, fighter though he might be, in this new world he was inexperianced and helpless. Louis was the only person who could help him, now... Tiredly, he raised his hand and eyed the palm. Slowly he imagined the skin pulling looser, and just as he thought it might be working-


Piccolo let out a startled cry as lines began writhing across his wrist, thin, yet unclean slices. The blade that inflicted them must have been massive- they were deep and yet- "L-L-Louis...!" he said, voice cracking. The boy eyed him with wide eyes.


"You did it like that, huh?"


"WHAT!? What is this?! Please...this is...is... What did I-?"


Louis averted his eyes and cleared his throat. "Every day you will be reminded of your death...to remind you why you're here, perhaps, I'm not sure. Anyway..."


"This can't be how I died!" Piccolo cried as the wounds widened and pulled. Again it looked like he should be screaming in pain, but he felt nothing as the marks thickened. "I wouldn't kill myself! I wouldn't!" he turned to Louis, begging for the man to agree with him.


"Piccolo, you did slit your wrists, or you wouldn't be here."


"I didn't!"


"Maybe you just can't remember," Louis choked out, disturbed by the lines that were dissappearing now, the web of dark purple receding back into Piccolo's flesh as if they had never been there. "Though often all a person CAN remember is their death. Why..."


Piccolo took deep breaths, out of habit rather than a need for oxygen. He noticed that Louis, too, breathed rather than sat without the habitual motion. Now that the marks were gone, he began searching for an explanation. "That happened yesterday, too-"


"Then you died at dawn," Louis said softly, as if he knew the pain Piccolo was experiance. "Count yourself lucky. I was killed in a war, so I get a few sword marks every afternoon. Some people who drown or were hit by a vehicle...It's not pretty. You really are lucky. But I wonder why you can't remember how you died?"


~~


When Piccolo finally returned home, it was already high noon, and the sunrise experiance was almost forgotton. He had elicted a promise from Louis that they would meet again on the beach the next night at midnight, when Gohan was sure to be asleep. Louis had told him that ghosts never slept, so Piccolo was facing endless hours of life, watching the world move without him.


Gohan was awake and in his room, staring at the keyboard. Piccolo noticed that he was printing something, and hoped it was the next chapter of the story of their love. As he read the top of one page he noticed the number and a few words- yes, it was about them. He wondered if Gohan was going to show Videl this as well, and hoped not- he didn't want any girl (especially not one who had once loved his Gohan) reading about his relationships.


Gohan left the room, and Piccolo eyed the stack of paper questioningly. How could he move them enough to read all of them? Licking his lips, he reached out, but his hands went through the paper. Well, Louis had said it would take a great deal of practice and effort- Gohan had left the paper neatly stacked on the windowseat, and Piccolo managed to move the top sheet from the next, the paper moving centimeters under his grasp.


"Dammit, that's too slow," he swore, unable to stand it. Spinning around he eyed the empty room, then came across an idea. "The ceiling fan..."


It would be easier to hit the 'on' switch on the fan that it would be to move every piece of paper. Piccolo took a deep breath and closed his eyes, focusing himself. How many times had he fought in a battle and used his body? How ironic that now all the power was drained from him, the power that had sustained him while he was living was unreachable in death.
Vegeta, he smirked, would absolutely hate that. Bulma had better die first-


Catching himself he schooled his mind back into a focal point and pushed, for a moment he seemed to slip through the wall, but then there was a soft 'click' and the fan was on.


Papers scattered everywhere, some facing up, some down. Piccolo waited till all were on the floor before he clicked the fan off and began noting their numbers. Soon he had located the first five pages, though the rest were upside down. Nodding in satisfaction at his own handiwork, he began to scan the pages.