Chapter 15

"He's still in there?" Dende asked in perplexed alarm as he blinked away the haze of last night's sleep. Mr. Popo sighed heavily and looked at the sealed entrance to the tower room. Muffled sounds, somewhere between growls and a groans, emanated from behind the closed door.

"All night, my friend."

Dende bit his lower lip in concern. Some time around the apex of the midnight constellations, Mr. Popo had taken the second watch over Piccolo as the warrior tried to split himself. They knew he wanted to be left alone, but Dende wasn't about to leave him unsupervised. The procedure sounded dangerously unnatural, and the healer in him couldn't just ignore it.

His attention was drawn to the white-haired girl pacing back and forth in the corner. "How long has she been awake?"

"A couple hours. She wants to go in there. I think she knows he's in pain."

Dende blinked surprise. "What powerful instincts…"

"Oh yes."

Suddenly, the pained noises from within the room crescendoed, causing Dende to stiffen at the sound. He looked at Mr. Popo who seemed just as alarmed. Even Justice had stopped moving, and stared with palpable worry at the door.

The guttural moans exploded into outright yells, accentuated with that deep gravelly boom of the warrior's voice.

"What's happening?" Mr. Popo cried.

"He must be doing it," Dende explained, and then ran forward to stop Justice as she leapt at the door. He caught her pant leg and held tight. "Justice, wait! If you interrupt him now, you might make it worse!"

She tugged against his grip, and looked down at him with wet, violet eyes. Then she whimpered, peered back at the door, and began to hit her head with her hands.

"Mr. Popo!" Dende cried. "Help me, please…"

The black-skinned Keeper ambled over to them and grabbed Justice's hand. A symphony of roars and thrashing made them all cringe, and just as Dende was about to burst through the door himself, it ended with a wet, elastic rip, followed by two heavy thuds.

Justice broke free and went straight through the door without even opening it. Dende and Mr. Popo followed suit, stepping over the splinters, and froze.

Two warriors, not one, were in varying degrees of agony on the floor.

"NAIL!" Dende cried and ran over to the bloodier one, who was bruised, ripped, and battered as though… Well, he thought wildly, as though he'd just been pulverized by Frieza. Nail groaned convulsively and tilted his head to peer at Dende through swollen eyes. Dende imagined they would have widened in surprise had the bruising allowed.

"Den…de?"

"Hang on, brother." Bracing his hands over Nail, Dende called on the magic that Guru had released within him, and felt it flow through his fingertips to heal the fallen warrior. It only took seconds, but drained him significantly. He wanted to weep at how close to death Nail had been.

He sat up alarmed, and gawked at his hands as though surprised to find them attached to the ends of his wrists. "I…I can't sense Piccolo! What's going on?"

With great effort, Dende refrained from breaking down in tears and embracing his long lost sibling, and hurried over to the other casualty of this insane procedure.

Piccolo was curled in fetal position on the floor, convulsing and mumbling incoherencies. Justice was hovering over him like a canopy of distress, whimpering softly as she touched his face.

Dende eased her aside and placed his hands on Piccolo's form. The namekian's clothes were ripped up the back, and a large, bloodied wound stretched from his tailbone to the top of his skull. Dende shuddered reflexively, and used what was left of his energies to heal him.

As he did so, the twitching stopped, and he breathed a sigh of relief when Piccolo relaxed under his hands. But no sooner had he finished, than Justice pushed him aside and got in Piccolo's face before he could even open his eyes.


.

Piccolo felt the mind-numbing pain subside, and he exhaled a shuddering breath as his body uncurled. Abruptly, he felt two hands on his face, and a light pressure against his chest. His lids peeled open, and encompassing his entire line of vision was a teary-eyed, pretty face just inches from his own.

He gasped at how audaciously close she was. As a matter of fact, he would have jumped back three yards had the floor not been in his way. With his thoughts in a jumble, he said the first thing that crossed his mind, confusing the situation with the last time a female had so boldly invaded his personal space.

"I'm Piccolo!"

She blinked, still immensely worried, and laid her head against his neck, running her hands up and down his arms. Strands of white hair tickled his nose.

"I think she knows that," Mr. Popo said from beside him, a hint of amusement in his tone.

"Wh-what's she doing?" he asked, wholly unaccustomed to being caressed on any level.

He heard soft laughter from Dende. "I think she's trying to express herself. She was very worried about you."

The memory of who she was came surfacing back as he stared dumbly at the crown of her head. Justice - Cell-destroyer, and newest addition to the Lookout, lifted her head back up, and smiled relief in his face at what he could only assume was his well-being.

All that emotion for me? he thought wildly, as a dull squeeze in his chest made him clench his fists. He barely repressed a reflexive smile in time as he placed an awkward hand on her back. "Hmph. Just wait until she gets to know me," he said in an effort to hide how warm her concern made him feel inside.

"True. You're not a very pleasant individual." came an eerily familiar voice from behind Dende. Piccolo sat up with Justice in his arms and looked over the young Guardian's shoulder to the warrior sitting on the floor.

He choked. "Nail!"

Nail smiled back, but his eyes were also wide with confusion. He opened his mouth to say something when Dende tackled him outright, wrapping both his tiny arms around Nail's neck.

"I missed you!" he cried, and Nail hugged the smaller namekian to him.

Then Piccolo remembered. He felt his jaw drop. "I did it. I split us."

"Yes," Mr. Popo confirmed. "You did."

"This isn't a dream, then?" Nail asked hopefully.

"Nope!" Dende pulled back and smiled. "You're back. You're really back!"

Nail laughed and embraced him again. Then he pulled back, his face suddenly turning very serious. All good humor melted off his visage, and in its place was something much, much darker. He locked stares with Piccolo.

"My last memory is not a good one, Piccolo," he said lowly, dangerously.

Piccolo narrowed his eyes. "A great deal more was going on than you realized, Nail. That incident nearly cost me my sanity," he said. "But we'll talk later. As for now, there's a certain alien female that needs you."

Nail's eyes widened, and he got to his feet, the earlier offense momentarily forgotten. "Where is she?"

"Took off in hysterics last night after I told her I thought I'd wiped you from existence."

"You what!"

"Don't ask. Just go to her. Search for her at the edge of the Lookout. You'll remember how."

Nail was out the door before he finished speaking, with Dende running after.

"Nail! Aren't you going to put some clothes on?"

A split second later, Piccolo felt the ripple in the kis around him as an outfit materialized nearby. He opened his mind up to see if there was a tinge of jealousy on his part, now that Nail was off to be with the only female that he'd ever felt something for, but it was a little difficult to concentrate on anything with those expressive, large, violet eyes locked on his face.


.

Axle stepped mechanically out of the shower, and accidentally glanced in the mirror as she turned to grab the towel. A red, puffy-eyed stranger peered back at her, with a frown so deep, she could have had anvils hooked onto the corners of her lips. A residual hiccup wracked her body, and ignoring the fresh set of tears that rolled down her clean cheeks, she finished toweling off and tossed on a sleeveless, knee-length nightshirt that she'd found in one of the drawers.

She'd scouted out the vacant cabin in the mountains during those few days before they fought with Cell. Decently stocked, secluded, and quaint - Axle recognized a vacation home when she saw one.

After leaving the Lookout last night, she'd aimlessly flown for hours, as though the peeling air friction could somehow extract her misery. But the mourning ran its full course, and at some point in the middle of the night, she'd reluctantly accepted her loss. It still eroded her soul like a cancer, but after making a conscious decision to continue living - even though all she wanted to do was fall asleep and never wake up - Axle touched down here.

It had been over three days since she last slept, and to say that she was suffering from sheer exhaustion was a complete understatement. After rummaging through the pantry of dehydrated goods and showering the muck from her body, Axle made her way to a fluffy bed and burrowed under the covers.

Her body was willing, now if she could only get her mind to shut down…

But abruptly, with no more trigger than the fact that she'd stopped moving, a memory flitted across her mind for the thousandth time in the past twelve hours…


"Hey Nail," she said, and repressed a smile as he spun around suspiciously fast.

"Yes?"

She toyed with the blade of grass in her mouth before continuing, her lips curling up into a smile. "Next time you have a conversation with a female, Mister I-have-no-gender," she jested, trying not to laugh as he frowned in honest bafflement at the title, "It's common etiquette to keep your eyes on her face."

He blinked stupidly. She glanced pointedly down at her chest where the vest stretched over her breasts. His eyes followed, and lingered, narrowing in thought. After a couple seconds, vague comprehension lifted his handsome features, and his cheeks darkened with a purple flush. It was cute. Really, it was.

Yep, she thought amusedly. You've been staring at them this whole time, boy.

His eyes trailed back up to her face, and he gulped. "They aren't chest muscles, are they?"

She laughed heartily at the innocent nature of his glaring ignorance.

"No."

Yep, You've been staring at them this whole time, boy.
She bit her bottom lip, and clenched her eyes shut as her cognizance dropped ruthlessly right into another recollection…perhaps the most excruciating of them all…


"I want to remember this," he breathed, "Your touch. How you feel. How you make me feel."

Her eyes watered, and she clutched at him desperately, losing all sense of reality from the intensity of his declaration. "Come with me, Nail. Please. Guru can find another"

The sound of shuffling feet was heard on the ramp below. "Axle!" Sprocket's voiced yanked her out of the blissful moment.

"You know I can't." Nail lifted his head, and rested his brow against hers, his eyes wet and anguished. "Never forget, Axle…."


Never forget…

Axle turned her face into the pillow and didn't even try to fight it this time. With her mouth open in a silent cry, she wet its material with her tears, and clutched blindly at the mattress as though it were a mother's embrace.

Sleep came eventually, but not soon enough. By the time it claimed her, it was alarmingly abrupt. After three wakeful days her body, quite simply, had spent the last of its conscious energies in grieving.

She wouldn't have woken up for the end of the world.


Winded from his hurried flight, but intoxicated with exhilaration, Nail descended upon the quaint mountain living quarters. A brief curious question popped in his head as to how Axle came about the place, but it was swallowed up in his anxiousness.

The moment his feet touched down they were running, and he barely turned the knob in time to keep from splintering through front door.

"Axle!"

Not waiting for an answer, he bolted up the stairs, four at a time with his heart in his throat. "Axle! He did it! I'm"

He paused, mid-stride, when he entered the room, his voice halted by his tongue. Swaddled in the blankets like a marsupial in its mother's pouch was Axle. His Axle. Sleeping. And no doubt soundly, considering the fact that his enthusiastic entrance hadn't aroused her.

Nail barely noticed the relieved smile that turned his lips upward, or the sting in his eyes as he padded over and knelt by the bed. Her long dark lashes were clumped with residual wetness from shed tears, and her shimmering cheeks were streaked with water lines. The soft sheets were balled up in her fists as her silent form rose and fell with the deep breaths of slumber.

A sudden hiccupping sob convulsed through her body, and he startled, expecting her to wake up. But she was no less conscious than before, and it hurt his heart to think that even in the depths of a comatose sleep, she still cried.

He rested his lips gently on the corner of her mouth, feeling her breath as it exhaled against his chin. "I'm here, Axle," he whispered against her skin. "I'm not leaving this time."

Whether his words reached her buried awareness or not, he wasn't sure, but he was answered with a small, nearly inaudible whimper that resounded in the back of her throat.

He wanted to wake her - so badly, it was all he could do to keep quiet. But her lack of utter consciousness made him wonder how long she'd gone without sleep, and the better namekian in him decided to let her rest. He pulled back and looked at her face. He thought he might be content just staring at it for however many hours it took her body to rejuvenate itself, but then his eyes trailed to the curve of her form under the covers.

Acting on impulse, he stood and walked to the other side of the bed, slipping under the sheets. He scooted over and intimately curled himself around her warm figure, draping an arm across her stomach.

She slept on, oblivious, and as he inhaled the perfumed scent of her washed hair, his chest ached with the pain of an impossible reunion, the rediscovery of a lost love, the promise of a future with her by his side… He clung possessively to the Rameumptumite female that had rocked his world all those years ago, reveling in the fact that this time, at last, he wouldn't have to let go.

Ever again…