Chapter 11: Picking Up the Pieces
The wreckage of helicopters and small planes was strewn all about the base of Korin's tower; many lying broken in craters of dirt and crushed greenery, others still partially hanging from nearby trees-- a few so badly mangled that they may as well have been refrigerators for all one could tell. To the west, a few small chemical fires burned on in the wreckage. The sheer amount of debris was incredible. It looked as if a freak explosion had taken out a military hangar.
Gohan alighted, dismayed. How were they ever supposed to find anything in this mess? He could feel the ki signatures of the others descending on his position-- the most likely position he'd found for where Piccolo would have landed. He'd freefallen most of the way in order to determine it, so he now trailed a toe in the dirt to mark it. Unfortunately, there was nothing else. Gohan closed his eyes and thought. Wind shear-- wind would push people in different directions on different days. What direction had the wind been from last night?
After standing and dredging his memory with all his might for a good several minutes, Gohan gave up. The location was too different; and he couldn't even remember what the weather had been like at Capsule Corp. He opened his eyes, unsurprised to see the others standing around him, regarding him curiously.
"Any luck?" asked Dende, anxious for his kinsman.
Gohan sadly shook his head. "I thought if I just fell... but I don't know which way the wind was coming from last night, so I don't know which direction he went in. Assuming he even fell in the first place..."
"It was... no, it's too different way up on the lookout," Dende reflected. He frowned, looking thoroughly dejected. "I-- I'm sorry, Gohan, I--"
"--Why not just ask Upa and Bora?" Kuririn put in, then scratched his arm nervously as the others stared at him with blank expressions. "Um... they live right over there. Maybe they even saw something."
Kuririn nodded his head to the left, and Gohan followed it with his eyes to see a settlement of tents in an area remarkably free of wreckage. Smoke was rising from the center.
"Gohan, haven't you ever met them? Upa was a friend of Goku's, a long time ago."
Gohan shook his head. Now that Kuririn mentioned it, he did think he remembered some story... a boy's dead father, the dragonballs-- it was so lost in the sands of his memory, so alike to the other stories that bounced around his head, that the details were lost in the similarities.
"At the very least, we should make sure everyone is all right," Chaotzu piped up, levitating in the direction of the camp.
The smoke trailing from the center turned out to be nothing more than a cookfire. Around it, the entire tribe seemed to be making themselves busy cleaning up their damaged tents. Already the craters near the settlement were empty and the scraps of metal collected for later discard or use, as everyone bustled about putting their home to rights. The only sedentary figure in the whole tableau was sitting right in front of the fire, roasting several fish. His katana lay beside him.
"Yajirobe!" Kuririn said, shocked.
The corpulent figure turned at his name, then shrugged.
"I don't suppose you're going to let me eat my breakfast in peace," sulked the samurai. "If you don't think I earned it, ask Bora."
"We were going to ask him anyway," said Kuririn. "Hey, you didn't happen to see Piccolo anywhere around, did you?"
"That one?" Yajirobe frowned, and poked his fish with a stick. "No, not around here. I'm sorry, but I don't have enough fish to feed all of you..." he eyed Goku's son skeptically.
Gohan blushed. "Will you help us look for him?" he blurted out, suddenly. "Which way was the wind blowing last night?"
"One question at a time!" Yajirobe said, irritably. "I didn't happen to notice the details of the weather last night; being rather busy at the time! But Bora should be coming here soon; the bunch of you aren't exactly inconspicuous, you know..."
"...Kuririn!" came a young man's shout behind them. Kuririn turned, then smiled in delight.
"Upa! Is everyone all right? Do you need help? Good to see you!"
The young man who approached them was tall and fine-looking, with a straight nose and a soft leather shirt. His long hair was bound back with a feather. "We're fine," said Upa, grinning. "Yajirobe came down and helped keep the wreckage away from the village."
Yajirobe poked his fish again, looking vaguely embarrassed.
Upa turned to Gohan, who was gaping at the handsome stranger. "Are you Goku's son?" he asked. "He should have brought you to see me-- I remember the fun we used to have, riding around on Kinto-un, chasing around after the dragonballs-- his death hits us all hard."
Gohan nodded. "Thank you, sir," he said.
"I guess this isn't just a simple visit, though," Upa said, turning serious, "Given the circumstances. Do you need to talk to my father? He's out helping with the cleanup, although he's getting on in years now..."
"We don't have to bother him," Kuririn smiled. "We were just wondering. Someone fell from the tower last night, and we're trying to figure out what became of him. Did you see anything, or notice which way the wind was blowing?"
Upa squinted. "Mm... was this before or after all the helicopters fell?"
"I don't know," Gohan admitted.
Upa shook his head. "With all that happened, one falling body is too small to notice," he sighed. "But the wind was from that direction-- blowing West-Northwest, strong enough to turn twigs but not branches."
"Thank you!" Gohan smiled. "It's very helpful just to know that much!"
"I wish I could help you, but my people--"
"--we understand," Kuririn said. "Your responsibility is here." Upa nodded gratefully.
Gohan looked at Yajirobe, who frowned.
"Forget it, kid," he said. "Breakfast takes priority. A samurai needs his strength! And I have to report back to Korin soon enough..."
"Come back and see us soon," Upa called. "We'll help you if we can!"
Gohan nodded. "Come on," he said to Kuririn at his side. "West Northwest and moderate... he would land over that way."
As the five men sprang into the air, Yajirobe waved.
"Don't you think you should go help them?" Upa asked him, frowning.
"Young man, people like that," Yajirobe said, "if they actually needed help, it would be far too late for people like us to be of any use.
"No, no," he concluded, pulling a savory fish from the fire, "We're better off sticking to things that aren't beyond us. Eating breakfast seems about right for our skills."
He turned his head to the sky; the others were already small and far away, throwing metal wreckage around as if it were paper.
Gohan pulled up a helicopter and spun it off into the distance. This was the right area, in a direct line from the straight freefall route he'd taken, and calculated for Piccolo's weight and surface area and the estimated force of wind that would act on tree branches in the way Upa had described. Still, although he knew it would take time to check the possible area in which Piccolo could have fallen, he felt that Piccolo should have been found by now-- and it made him even more nervous that he hadn't felt any ki in the area besides his friends', none at all. Could Piccolo be... dead? To be killed by a fall like that was no embarrassment even for a warrior like his sensei.
"Here!" called Tenshinhan. "Gohan-- I think he's here!"
Gohan was there before Tenshinhan finished speaking.
"I don't feel him, but I smell blood and burning," Dende said. "Gohan... this isn't good."
Ignoring his friend, Gohan lifted the steel frame that remained of a plane's fusilage, hurling it away like a javelin. Beside him, Tenshinhan and Kuririn worked as swiftly, clearing a large crater. Suddenly, Kuririn cried out and pointed-- Piccolo's turban, crushed under a rotor. With a last burst of furious effort, soon they were gently lifting the body of Piccolo himself out of the crater.
Piccolo looked awful. His turban seemed to have partially protected his head, at least, but the parts of him that weren't burned off had been crushed by his fall. A metal splinter several inches in diameter pierced his back and emerged through his neck; one arm was singed entirely black and shriveled, and another was simply missing. He didn't seem to be breathing.
Gingerly, they laid the body before Dende. Without speaking, the small man gave Gohan a plaintive look-- as if to say that he could make no guarantees, as if he couldn't stand the hope in Gohan's eyes which refused to die out even now. Piccolo had to be alive. He simply couldn't die again.
Dende placed his hands on what remained of the older Namek's chest, and called forth the healing light. The others watched silently as the light poured into Piccolo's body, but it seemed not to be having any effect. Dende closed his eyes, concentrating.
Suddenly Piccolo gave a gasp, then began breathing irregularly. Tenshinhan slowly pulled the spike from his chest, and the wound closed behind it. The withered arm fleshed and turned green again, and a crushed leg began slowly to straighten.
Dende collapsed. Crying out in alarm, Kuririn grabbed him before he could hit the ground.
"It's too much," gasped the healer. "He was too close to gone-- it is as if his lungs were burned away to ashes. I was able to restore them, but his body will have to do the rest on its own."
"He'll live?" Kuririn asked, intently. Dende nodded, then fainted away.
Gohan placed a hand on Piccolo's chest. It trembled. This was what Bulma felt last night-- only so much more. After all, Piccolo was friend and mentor to him; but Vegeta was the father of her child. And Vegeta was not certain to live. Still, he felt suffused with joy. At least no-one had died yet. There was still the chance they would live through it-- and Piccolo remained to him; although it was childish to think Piccolo could protect him always, at least he was not gone.
Gohan caught his hand back as Piccolo's eyes flickered open.
"Gohan," he acknowledged, voice rasping in his throat. "Goten?"
Gohan nodded; yes, Goten was fine. Piccolo closed his eyes, at peace.
***
In a hospital a hundred miles away, a different tableau was playing itself out.
As the nurse turned from Vegeta's bedside, Bulma's hand blindly sought Yamucha's; that old familiar comfort, although that too was only sadness today. Yamucha was no longer her comfort; her comfort lay dying in a hospital bed. Behind her, though, unseen, Yamucha's eyes closed, feeling her small, calloused mechanic's hand in his. Puar rested on the chest of the man in the bed, warming him.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Briefs," said the nurse, frowning. "We were able to isolate the neurotransmitter chemical your husband was given, but it has bonded to one of the cellular recepters in his neurons, and we don't have a way to dislodge it. If we wait, it will eventually in the ordinary course of things flush itself from his system-- but he isn't reacting to it normally. Something about his physiology won't let him just flush the chemical normally-- it's as if his body is trying to fight it instead. We're getting an immune reaction like I've never seen-- the energy that's flying around his brain--" the nurse took a deep breath. "In essence, the patient is attacking his own mind," she went on. "Only his weakened state is preventing him from going into a seizure. It's a miracle he's alive-- he must have a strong constitution."
"Yes," Bulma breathed. "He's very strong. He loves to fight." She smiled. She'd always known Vegeta's warlike spirit would be his undoing, but somehow she'd never imagined it quite like this. So small and petty and internalized; that was the only part that was nothing like Vegeta at all.
"There's nothing we can do," the nurse said, reaching out to touch Bulma's arm. "We can only wait, and hope--"
"Get your hand off me," Bulma said, twitching back; then, "Please excuse me. I know you're doing your best." The dragon radar was in her pocket; if the others were deserting her to fight their own battles, abandoning Vegeta to find an enemy they could fight with their fists, she would have to take care of things on her own.
"Take Puar with you," said Yamucha, as if reading her mind. Bulma turned, surprised; were they still so close that he could anticipate her decisions?
"Yamucha, no!" Puar said. "I--"
"Please, Puar." Yamucha turned back to Bulma. "Puar can give you at least some help. She's good at getting into places. I'll stay here and make sure nobody tries to get at Vegeta-- you need a fighter in case that happens. Even though I'm not much these days!" He smiled rakishly.
"Yamucha, I--" Bulma stuttered. When had he become so selfless? What a contrast from the man she'd chosen!
"Only for you," Yamucha said, maintaining the rakish smile; but she thought he blushed a little, even after all these years. "Anyone else asked me, and I'd be long gone. Good luck! Gambatte!"
"Thank you," Bulma said, then embraced him. He was warm and solid in her arms-- her first love, and her second oldest friend.
"You trying to make me blush?" Yamucha said, embarrassed, and she saw that he had indeed gone entirely red. "Go on, get out of here before I change my mind!"
"Thank you," she said again, then smiled. She would get the dragonballs; she would heal her mate herself, and that Son family and all of the rest of them be damned! She, Bulma Briefs, the greatest mechanical genius the world had ever known! Straightening herself, she fixed her hair, proudly reflecting on how well she'd held up over these years and these torments. A lesser woman would be crying in a corner, but not her; she would take action.
"Come on, Puar," she ordered; and then marched from the sickbed, cat in tow.
The wreckage of helicopters and small planes was strewn all about the base of Korin's tower; many lying broken in craters of dirt and crushed greenery, others still partially hanging from nearby trees-- a few so badly mangled that they may as well have been refrigerators for all one could tell. To the west, a few small chemical fires burned on in the wreckage. The sheer amount of debris was incredible. It looked as if a freak explosion had taken out a military hangar.
Gohan alighted, dismayed. How were they ever supposed to find anything in this mess? He could feel the ki signatures of the others descending on his position-- the most likely position he'd found for where Piccolo would have landed. He'd freefallen most of the way in order to determine it, so he now trailed a toe in the dirt to mark it. Unfortunately, there was nothing else. Gohan closed his eyes and thought. Wind shear-- wind would push people in different directions on different days. What direction had the wind been from last night?
After standing and dredging his memory with all his might for a good several minutes, Gohan gave up. The location was too different; and he couldn't even remember what the weather had been like at Capsule Corp. He opened his eyes, unsurprised to see the others standing around him, regarding him curiously.
"Any luck?" asked Dende, anxious for his kinsman.
Gohan sadly shook his head. "I thought if I just fell... but I don't know which way the wind was coming from last night, so I don't know which direction he went in. Assuming he even fell in the first place..."
"It was... no, it's too different way up on the lookout," Dende reflected. He frowned, looking thoroughly dejected. "I-- I'm sorry, Gohan, I--"
"--Why not just ask Upa and Bora?" Kuririn put in, then scratched his arm nervously as the others stared at him with blank expressions. "Um... they live right over there. Maybe they even saw something."
Kuririn nodded his head to the left, and Gohan followed it with his eyes to see a settlement of tents in an area remarkably free of wreckage. Smoke was rising from the center.
"Gohan, haven't you ever met them? Upa was a friend of Goku's, a long time ago."
Gohan shook his head. Now that Kuririn mentioned it, he did think he remembered some story... a boy's dead father, the dragonballs-- it was so lost in the sands of his memory, so alike to the other stories that bounced around his head, that the details were lost in the similarities.
"At the very least, we should make sure everyone is all right," Chaotzu piped up, levitating in the direction of the camp.
The smoke trailing from the center turned out to be nothing more than a cookfire. Around it, the entire tribe seemed to be making themselves busy cleaning up their damaged tents. Already the craters near the settlement were empty and the scraps of metal collected for later discard or use, as everyone bustled about putting their home to rights. The only sedentary figure in the whole tableau was sitting right in front of the fire, roasting several fish. His katana lay beside him.
"Yajirobe!" Kuririn said, shocked.
The corpulent figure turned at his name, then shrugged.
"I don't suppose you're going to let me eat my breakfast in peace," sulked the samurai. "If you don't think I earned it, ask Bora."
"We were going to ask him anyway," said Kuririn. "Hey, you didn't happen to see Piccolo anywhere around, did you?"
"That one?" Yajirobe frowned, and poked his fish with a stick. "No, not around here. I'm sorry, but I don't have enough fish to feed all of you..." he eyed Goku's son skeptically.
Gohan blushed. "Will you help us look for him?" he blurted out, suddenly. "Which way was the wind blowing last night?"
"One question at a time!" Yajirobe said, irritably. "I didn't happen to notice the details of the weather last night; being rather busy at the time! But Bora should be coming here soon; the bunch of you aren't exactly inconspicuous, you know..."
"...Kuririn!" came a young man's shout behind them. Kuririn turned, then smiled in delight.
"Upa! Is everyone all right? Do you need help? Good to see you!"
The young man who approached them was tall and fine-looking, with a straight nose and a soft leather shirt. His long hair was bound back with a feather. "We're fine," said Upa, grinning. "Yajirobe came down and helped keep the wreckage away from the village."
Yajirobe poked his fish again, looking vaguely embarrassed.
Upa turned to Gohan, who was gaping at the handsome stranger. "Are you Goku's son?" he asked. "He should have brought you to see me-- I remember the fun we used to have, riding around on Kinto-un, chasing around after the dragonballs-- his death hits us all hard."
Gohan nodded. "Thank you, sir," he said.
"I guess this isn't just a simple visit, though," Upa said, turning serious, "Given the circumstances. Do you need to talk to my father? He's out helping with the cleanup, although he's getting on in years now..."
"We don't have to bother him," Kuririn smiled. "We were just wondering. Someone fell from the tower last night, and we're trying to figure out what became of him. Did you see anything, or notice which way the wind was blowing?"
Upa squinted. "Mm... was this before or after all the helicopters fell?"
"I don't know," Gohan admitted.
Upa shook his head. "With all that happened, one falling body is too small to notice," he sighed. "But the wind was from that direction-- blowing West-Northwest, strong enough to turn twigs but not branches."
"Thank you!" Gohan smiled. "It's very helpful just to know that much!"
"I wish I could help you, but my people--"
"--we understand," Kuririn said. "Your responsibility is here." Upa nodded gratefully.
Gohan looked at Yajirobe, who frowned.
"Forget it, kid," he said. "Breakfast takes priority. A samurai needs his strength! And I have to report back to Korin soon enough..."
"Come back and see us soon," Upa called. "We'll help you if we can!"
Gohan nodded. "Come on," he said to Kuririn at his side. "West Northwest and moderate... he would land over that way."
As the five men sprang into the air, Yajirobe waved.
"Don't you think you should go help them?" Upa asked him, frowning.
"Young man, people like that," Yajirobe said, "if they actually needed help, it would be far too late for people like us to be of any use.
"No, no," he concluded, pulling a savory fish from the fire, "We're better off sticking to things that aren't beyond us. Eating breakfast seems about right for our skills."
He turned his head to the sky; the others were already small and far away, throwing metal wreckage around as if it were paper.
Gohan pulled up a helicopter and spun it off into the distance. This was the right area, in a direct line from the straight freefall route he'd taken, and calculated for Piccolo's weight and surface area and the estimated force of wind that would act on tree branches in the way Upa had described. Still, although he knew it would take time to check the possible area in which Piccolo could have fallen, he felt that Piccolo should have been found by now-- and it made him even more nervous that he hadn't felt any ki in the area besides his friends', none at all. Could Piccolo be... dead? To be killed by a fall like that was no embarrassment even for a warrior like his sensei.
"Here!" called Tenshinhan. "Gohan-- I think he's here!"
Gohan was there before Tenshinhan finished speaking.
"I don't feel him, but I smell blood and burning," Dende said. "Gohan... this isn't good."
Ignoring his friend, Gohan lifted the steel frame that remained of a plane's fusilage, hurling it away like a javelin. Beside him, Tenshinhan and Kuririn worked as swiftly, clearing a large crater. Suddenly, Kuririn cried out and pointed-- Piccolo's turban, crushed under a rotor. With a last burst of furious effort, soon they were gently lifting the body of Piccolo himself out of the crater.
Piccolo looked awful. His turban seemed to have partially protected his head, at least, but the parts of him that weren't burned off had been crushed by his fall. A metal splinter several inches in diameter pierced his back and emerged through his neck; one arm was singed entirely black and shriveled, and another was simply missing. He didn't seem to be breathing.
Gingerly, they laid the body before Dende. Without speaking, the small man gave Gohan a plaintive look-- as if to say that he could make no guarantees, as if he couldn't stand the hope in Gohan's eyes which refused to die out even now. Piccolo had to be alive. He simply couldn't die again.
Dende placed his hands on what remained of the older Namek's chest, and called forth the healing light. The others watched silently as the light poured into Piccolo's body, but it seemed not to be having any effect. Dende closed his eyes, concentrating.
Suddenly Piccolo gave a gasp, then began breathing irregularly. Tenshinhan slowly pulled the spike from his chest, and the wound closed behind it. The withered arm fleshed and turned green again, and a crushed leg began slowly to straighten.
Dende collapsed. Crying out in alarm, Kuririn grabbed him before he could hit the ground.
"It's too much," gasped the healer. "He was too close to gone-- it is as if his lungs were burned away to ashes. I was able to restore them, but his body will have to do the rest on its own."
"He'll live?" Kuririn asked, intently. Dende nodded, then fainted away.
Gohan placed a hand on Piccolo's chest. It trembled. This was what Bulma felt last night-- only so much more. After all, Piccolo was friend and mentor to him; but Vegeta was the father of her child. And Vegeta was not certain to live. Still, he felt suffused with joy. At least no-one had died yet. There was still the chance they would live through it-- and Piccolo remained to him; although it was childish to think Piccolo could protect him always, at least he was not gone.
Gohan caught his hand back as Piccolo's eyes flickered open.
"Gohan," he acknowledged, voice rasping in his throat. "Goten?"
Gohan nodded; yes, Goten was fine. Piccolo closed his eyes, at peace.
***
In a hospital a hundred miles away, a different tableau was playing itself out.
As the nurse turned from Vegeta's bedside, Bulma's hand blindly sought Yamucha's; that old familiar comfort, although that too was only sadness today. Yamucha was no longer her comfort; her comfort lay dying in a hospital bed. Behind her, though, unseen, Yamucha's eyes closed, feeling her small, calloused mechanic's hand in his. Puar rested on the chest of the man in the bed, warming him.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Briefs," said the nurse, frowning. "We were able to isolate the neurotransmitter chemical your husband was given, but it has bonded to one of the cellular recepters in his neurons, and we don't have a way to dislodge it. If we wait, it will eventually in the ordinary course of things flush itself from his system-- but he isn't reacting to it normally. Something about his physiology won't let him just flush the chemical normally-- it's as if his body is trying to fight it instead. We're getting an immune reaction like I've never seen-- the energy that's flying around his brain--" the nurse took a deep breath. "In essence, the patient is attacking his own mind," she went on. "Only his weakened state is preventing him from going into a seizure. It's a miracle he's alive-- he must have a strong constitution."
"Yes," Bulma breathed. "He's very strong. He loves to fight." She smiled. She'd always known Vegeta's warlike spirit would be his undoing, but somehow she'd never imagined it quite like this. So small and petty and internalized; that was the only part that was nothing like Vegeta at all.
"There's nothing we can do," the nurse said, reaching out to touch Bulma's arm. "We can only wait, and hope--"
"Get your hand off me," Bulma said, twitching back; then, "Please excuse me. I know you're doing your best." The dragon radar was in her pocket; if the others were deserting her to fight their own battles, abandoning Vegeta to find an enemy they could fight with their fists, she would have to take care of things on her own.
"Take Puar with you," said Yamucha, as if reading her mind. Bulma turned, surprised; were they still so close that he could anticipate her decisions?
"Yamucha, no!" Puar said. "I--"
"Please, Puar." Yamucha turned back to Bulma. "Puar can give you at least some help. She's good at getting into places. I'll stay here and make sure nobody tries to get at Vegeta-- you need a fighter in case that happens. Even though I'm not much these days!" He smiled rakishly.
"Yamucha, I--" Bulma stuttered. When had he become so selfless? What a contrast from the man she'd chosen!
"Only for you," Yamucha said, maintaining the rakish smile; but she thought he blushed a little, even after all these years. "Anyone else asked me, and I'd be long gone. Good luck! Gambatte!"
"Thank you," Bulma said, then embraced him. He was warm and solid in her arms-- her first love, and her second oldest friend.
"You trying to make me blush?" Yamucha said, embarrassed, and she saw that he had indeed gone entirely red. "Go on, get out of here before I change my mind!"
"Thank you," she said again, then smiled. She would get the dragonballs; she would heal her mate herself, and that Son family and all of the rest of them be damned! She, Bulma Briefs, the greatest mechanical genius the world had ever known! Straightening herself, she fixed her hair, proudly reflecting on how well she'd held up over these years and these torments. A lesser woman would be crying in a corner, but not her; she would take action.
"Come on, Puar," she ordered; and then marched from the sickbed, cat in tow.