Chapter 14: Turning Point
Piccolo, as always, felt it first, even from a deep slumber, and sat bolt upright, skewing pillows across the couch. The disturbance in the energy pattern of the world-- one of the bright stars of ki flaring and then falling away, dimmed.
Gohan, startled by the sudden movement, stretched out the edges of his own awareness, until he could sense what his sensei did. As always, it was easier when Piccolo was actually present-- his own mind followed the Namek's, travelling on a path well-prepared. As he came upon the aura, he gasped out:
"Yamucha. The hospital!"
Piccolo sat frozen in position, and did not respond. Gohn could see the irises of his eyes moving smoothly under the lids, as if the Namek were still dreaming-- but he knew from Piccolo's energy that that was not the case. Piccolo's nostrils flared. Somewhere, he was casting his body out, as he did sometimes; he was using all his senses to feel out the situation.
"I have managed to speak with Dende," Piccolo finally said, opening his eyes. "He has returned to the Lookout."
"But why?" Gohan stood, anxiously wiping his hands against his clothing.
Piccolo gave him a sidelong glance. "The Lookout has its own defense. While it remains, and he remains on it, it will not allow the god of Earth to be harmed." The voice he spoke with was old, and seemed to come from deep inside him. Kami's voice.
Piccolo tilted his head slightly to look Gohan full in the eye. "How long did I sleep?"
"I'm not sure," Gohan admitted. "The sun is beginning to set. Several hours. Yamucha--"
"The others are there," Piccolo said, and turned away, relaxing his spine. "Their energies are normal. The danger must have passed. Even now, they are coming towards us."
Gohan extended his senses again, and felt them-- Tenshinhan, his ki smooth and secretive, almost always mostly hidden, and the small, surprisingly intense star of concentration that was the energy of his companion. Yamucha, ki ragged and muted. And one more.
He glanced up at his sensei, looking for instruction; but Piccolo's face was impassive as usual. At least he was awake; he had pulled himself upright, and was looking a much healthier shade of green. The Namekian immune system was truly prodigious. Clearly, though, Piccolo planned on simply waiting; and so Gohan resigned himself to doing the same. After all, soon enough what they needed to know would simply walk in through the door.
When the others arrived, descending before a blood-red sunset, Mrs. Briefs was already puttering around the kitchen as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Dinner, evidently, must go on.
Unable to contain himself any longer, Gohan rushed outside. Tenshinhan landed gracefully, belying his heavy physique, and behind him, a very woozy Yamucha attempted to land, but slipped the final ten feet at the last minute to slide down onto the grass, wobbling on one knee. Behind them, Chaotzu continued to hover, carrying a woman much taller than he was.
"Yamucha!" cried Gohan. "What happened?"
"Is Bulma here?" Yamucha said, his speech slurred and miserable. "Tell her... tell her I've failed her." Then, astonishingly, Yamucha burst into tears.
Gohan looked up at Tenshinhan, who gave Yamucha a three-eyed glare that could only be interpreted as benevolent disgust.
"Pay him no mind," Tenshinhan said. "One of the doctors managed to give him a shot of tranquilizer. He'll come to his senses when it wears off completely."
Gohan turned to the man wailing piteously on the ground. "Bulma's not here," he said, wondering if Yamucha was aware enough to even hear him.
Behind him, suddenly, he felt a stir of wind; and then Piccolo's cape was whirling past him. Seemingly back in perfect health, the tall warrior strode proudly to Yamucha, lifting him into the air with one hand on his collar. Yamucha hung from his shirt like a sack of bones, sniffling; then, gradually, as Piccolo continued to simply hold him there without reacting to his outburst, he quieted down.
"Better," said Piccolo.
"W... I promised Bulma I'd keep Vegeta safe," Yamucha said, his voice still slightly strangled. "But when it came down to it, I rescued Dende instead. My choice let them take Vegeta away. My choice. I tried to follow them, but they drugged me."
Piccolo sniffed, then set Yamucha back onto his feet. "You rescued your planet's god," he said. "Stop sniveling."
Then he turned and walked back to the house, his business finished. The others stood silent in his wake, and Yamucha stared open-mouthed, his mind whirling over Piccolo's words.
Chaotzu was first to speak up again. "Yamucha said the hospital called the men who came to get Vegeta," he said. "I borrowed the nurse who called them. We can use her for information."
Gohan gave the woman in Chaotzu's arms a second look; she was indeed wearing the uniform of a duty nurse. She was also singularly slack-jawed and blank, like a zombie.
Chaotzu let an evil grin play across his lips. "Weak-willed," he said.
"Sometimes he frightens even me," Tenshinhan commented to the air. Then he extended his thick hand. "Shall we go inside?"
They left Yamucha to sleep off his tranquilizer-induced melancholy; Piccolo seemed all too willing to relinquish the couch he'd spent the afternoon on. In fact, he stood as far across the room as he could get from it, and glared at it with some suspicion, as if afraid that it would reach out and grab him into another moment of weakness.
As for the others, it seemed wrong somehow to question the nurse over dinner; so the meal passed quickly and silently until they found themselves rejoining Piccolo and Yamucha in the living room afterwords. If the atmosphere over the meal had been a trifle strained, here, the air was like tension soup. No-one wanted to begin the conversation. No-one was the type to start one. Tenshinhan, Piccolo, Chaotzu-- all were known for their reticence, if not in fact for their uncanny abilities to communicate without words at all. Yamucha was still asleep, and Gohan felt uncomfortable taking any sort of lead. He wished Kuririn hadn't left to check on Kame House. Even Bulma would have been good to have.
"It is a bad sign that Dende has returned to the Lookout," Piccolo said abruptly, as if following some cue that no-one could see but him. "It means that he feels he can best serve the earth by withdrawing, rather than helping us directly. In short, he will keep himself safe so that the Dragonballs will remain to us as a last resort."
"Are you saying Dende thinks we will fail?" Gohan's heart sank. Dende was someone he'd known as a child, and although he knew that Namekian children aged more quickly than humans, it was odd to think of Dende making such a calculated decision. It made him embarrassed that he was relying on the others so much.
"It is standard procedure," Piccolo said, turning to address his point. "It was very rare for him to leave the Lookout at all-- but he is young."
"We'd best get started, then," Tenshinhan nodded.
Neither of them were finishing their statements, but Gohan could draw out the logic himself: it was standard procedure-- for when the situation was about to turn very wrong.
* * *
Chichi sat in the sideways cage, musing on a plan of attack. The mysterious assassin who had visited her earlier-- she thought she had managed to decipher his identity. Something artificial in the way he walked, some quirk of his movement that reminded her of her bygone youth studying to participate in the budokais-- he could hide his face in the shadows all he wanted, but the stance was unmistakeable, even for a woman long out of practice. The stance of the Crane Master's school. A man defeated by her husband so very many years ago-- Tao Pai Pai.
She knew he was not one to be underestimated; a reliance on techniques of stealth and a legendary lack of scruples could make up for a great deal in lack of talent. And Tao Pai Pai had never lacked for talent, either-- only that strange and phenomenal strength that a Saiyan possessed. Even young Goku had barely defeated him.
Chichi shifted her weight. The cage was thoroughly uncomfortable on its side, and the bars dug into her. The visit had unnerved her, too, even though she had taunted him and sent him on his way bravely. She felt itchy around the base of her neck, claustrophobic from the bars. She wished she had some way, any way to move around-- do katas, anything to help prepare herself. If only she knew meditation techniques, like her son had learned from the demon. If only something would happen.
The doors burst open with a clang, and all at once a great bustle of soldiers rushed in, swarming around the room.
"What's going on? What is it?" Chichi said, grasping the bars of her cage with both hands. She was thoroughly ignored. From the dark depths of one end of the room, another cage was brought forward.
"At least put mine back upright!" she complained, futilely, as they bustled around with the new cage, locking it down onto the floor. The bars were much thicker than her own.
A stretcher was brought hastily into the room, borne by many people-- evidently it was a heavy burden, if a little short-- and its contents deposited in the cage. In vain Chichi tried to crane her neck to see around the press of people; her space was just too limited to get a good vantage, and she could only raise her eye level to that of their thighs. They brought in more equipment, then more, heart monitors and an IV stand, many wires and electrodes, until she had almost convinced herself that it was a malfunctioning cyborg that had been brought in-- until the room cleared.
Vegeta. It was Vegeta.
Suddenly, all the noise in the room faded to a hush. There he was-- the problem she had wrought for herself. She felt she was sinking further into the floor. He was so pale-- she had almost divorced herself from it, thought that now was the time to plan escape, not dwell on past mistakes; even forgiven herself when she heard that she had been only a pawn in Tao Pai Pai's plan. But all that seemed like only so many excuses, now-- like Gohan telling her he hadn't done his homework because he'd found a nest of dinosaur eggs. He was so pale. He looked like he was dead.
But she knew he wasn't. She reached her hand out through the bars, nearly pulling her shoulder out of its joint, but couldn't quite touch him. Tao Pai Pai had a way to this room, and he would be coming to claim this body for his own. All that he had lacked, he would find here: the strength, the training, the near-invulnerable instrument that Vegeta had made of his body. Her world would be turned to dust by a tool of her own design.
The military personnel were clearing out, leaving only a few army doctors behind, watching the monitors carefully.
"Will he be all right?" she said, and to her surprise one of them glanced down, as if baffled to hear a voice emanating from the floor.
"Mrs. Son," said the orderly. "What are you doing down there?"
"I knocked over the cage," she admitted.
"Well," the orderly tsked, then turned back to her monitors. "Should have thought a bit first before doing that, shouldn't we?"
"Please!" Chichi thought her throat would crack; she hadn't intended the word to be so forceful, but suddenly there it was, and the orderly was raising an eyebrow. "Tell me what's going on. Will he recover? Where are my sons?"
"I-- I'm sorry," the orderly said, and put a hand to her impeccable hair. "That information is classified."
"I--"
"That will be all, Mrs. Son," snapped the orderly. "We have better things to do than listen to the ravings of madwomen."
"They told you I was mad?" Why would they have done that?
"We know all about how you think the brass is out there hunting aliens."
Chichi frowned. That was an escape route she hadn't even thought of-- trying to convince the staff that the general had gone of the deep end hunting aliens. Of course, that was the truth, after all-- sort of. That was one route closed before she'd even found the door.
The orderly didn't seem to have much more use for conversation-- but at least she didn't seem to be leaving, either. Tao Pai Pai would have his work cut out for him to break into this control room and take up his new Saiyan flesh. Which bought her more time-- and more time for what? She smiled ruefully. More time to wait to be rescued.
* * *
Thirty miles outside the compound and a hundred feet above the ground, a well-manicured woman's hand reached towards a sleeping cat. The hand paused; instead of stroking the cat, it gave it a sharp (if somewhat affectionate) slap upside the head.
"Any other cat, and you'd lose a finger," said Puar, baring sharp teeth.
"Serves you right for sleeping," said Bulma; then remembered to hastily brush away a trace of eyeshadow, left over from a bout of feeling sorry for herself that she'd sooner forget.
Puar rolled her eyes.
"You miss all the good parts when you're asleep," Bulma said smugly. "A big helicopter just went by-- high and fast, faster than any of the helicopters we build at CC."
"Follow it!" Puar said, sitting up.
"I am, stupid," Bulma said, "It's long gone, though. I was able to plot their trajectory with a couple of algorithms, accounting for standard military stealth procedures and the efficiency of their engine based on propellor size and speed... got it down to a five-mile radius, ahead. We'll be there soon. Why'd you think we're flying so damn low?"
"Wait... are you sure this isn't dangerous?"
"Fine words from a bandit!" Bulma double-checked her computerized projection of the helicopter's flight path. They would want to land outside of the target area, so as not to arouse suspicion, then hike in...
"Of course it's dangerous," Bulma relented. "That's why Yamucha sent you with me. To be my guardian while I get into my customary scrapes." She flashed a dazzling grin that sent a shudder all the way down Puar's tail.
"Either way, it's inevitable now," she muttered. "Those stupid Z-warriors couldn't figure out how to operate a radio if it could speak the instructions itself! And my dad would probably forget to tell them..." She pulled in the throttle, watching the elevation level plummet on the display. "Nobody answered the message I sent back to Capsule Corps. God only knows where they've galavanted off to. And if time is important here-- and it usually is-- we may be the only thing standing between Vegeta's life and death!"
"I think you're just curious," Puar said, closing her eyes again. "And like fancy words."
"I think you can shut up," Bulma retorted.
Either way, the helicopter descended towards the wooded valley.
Piccolo, as always, felt it first, even from a deep slumber, and sat bolt upright, skewing pillows across the couch. The disturbance in the energy pattern of the world-- one of the bright stars of ki flaring and then falling away, dimmed.
Gohan, startled by the sudden movement, stretched out the edges of his own awareness, until he could sense what his sensei did. As always, it was easier when Piccolo was actually present-- his own mind followed the Namek's, travelling on a path well-prepared. As he came upon the aura, he gasped out:
"Yamucha. The hospital!"
Piccolo sat frozen in position, and did not respond. Gohn could see the irises of his eyes moving smoothly under the lids, as if the Namek were still dreaming-- but he knew from Piccolo's energy that that was not the case. Piccolo's nostrils flared. Somewhere, he was casting his body out, as he did sometimes; he was using all his senses to feel out the situation.
"I have managed to speak with Dende," Piccolo finally said, opening his eyes. "He has returned to the Lookout."
"But why?" Gohan stood, anxiously wiping his hands against his clothing.
Piccolo gave him a sidelong glance. "The Lookout has its own defense. While it remains, and he remains on it, it will not allow the god of Earth to be harmed." The voice he spoke with was old, and seemed to come from deep inside him. Kami's voice.
Piccolo tilted his head slightly to look Gohan full in the eye. "How long did I sleep?"
"I'm not sure," Gohan admitted. "The sun is beginning to set. Several hours. Yamucha--"
"The others are there," Piccolo said, and turned away, relaxing his spine. "Their energies are normal. The danger must have passed. Even now, they are coming towards us."
Gohan extended his senses again, and felt them-- Tenshinhan, his ki smooth and secretive, almost always mostly hidden, and the small, surprisingly intense star of concentration that was the energy of his companion. Yamucha, ki ragged and muted. And one more.
He glanced up at his sensei, looking for instruction; but Piccolo's face was impassive as usual. At least he was awake; he had pulled himself upright, and was looking a much healthier shade of green. The Namekian immune system was truly prodigious. Clearly, though, Piccolo planned on simply waiting; and so Gohan resigned himself to doing the same. After all, soon enough what they needed to know would simply walk in through the door.
When the others arrived, descending before a blood-red sunset, Mrs. Briefs was already puttering around the kitchen as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Dinner, evidently, must go on.
Unable to contain himself any longer, Gohan rushed outside. Tenshinhan landed gracefully, belying his heavy physique, and behind him, a very woozy Yamucha attempted to land, but slipped the final ten feet at the last minute to slide down onto the grass, wobbling on one knee. Behind them, Chaotzu continued to hover, carrying a woman much taller than he was.
"Yamucha!" cried Gohan. "What happened?"
"Is Bulma here?" Yamucha said, his speech slurred and miserable. "Tell her... tell her I've failed her." Then, astonishingly, Yamucha burst into tears.
Gohan looked up at Tenshinhan, who gave Yamucha a three-eyed glare that could only be interpreted as benevolent disgust.
"Pay him no mind," Tenshinhan said. "One of the doctors managed to give him a shot of tranquilizer. He'll come to his senses when it wears off completely."
Gohan turned to the man wailing piteously on the ground. "Bulma's not here," he said, wondering if Yamucha was aware enough to even hear him.
Behind him, suddenly, he felt a stir of wind; and then Piccolo's cape was whirling past him. Seemingly back in perfect health, the tall warrior strode proudly to Yamucha, lifting him into the air with one hand on his collar. Yamucha hung from his shirt like a sack of bones, sniffling; then, gradually, as Piccolo continued to simply hold him there without reacting to his outburst, he quieted down.
"Better," said Piccolo.
"W... I promised Bulma I'd keep Vegeta safe," Yamucha said, his voice still slightly strangled. "But when it came down to it, I rescued Dende instead. My choice let them take Vegeta away. My choice. I tried to follow them, but they drugged me."
Piccolo sniffed, then set Yamucha back onto his feet. "You rescued your planet's god," he said. "Stop sniveling."
Then he turned and walked back to the house, his business finished. The others stood silent in his wake, and Yamucha stared open-mouthed, his mind whirling over Piccolo's words.
Chaotzu was first to speak up again. "Yamucha said the hospital called the men who came to get Vegeta," he said. "I borrowed the nurse who called them. We can use her for information."
Gohan gave the woman in Chaotzu's arms a second look; she was indeed wearing the uniform of a duty nurse. She was also singularly slack-jawed and blank, like a zombie.
Chaotzu let an evil grin play across his lips. "Weak-willed," he said.
"Sometimes he frightens even me," Tenshinhan commented to the air. Then he extended his thick hand. "Shall we go inside?"
They left Yamucha to sleep off his tranquilizer-induced melancholy; Piccolo seemed all too willing to relinquish the couch he'd spent the afternoon on. In fact, he stood as far across the room as he could get from it, and glared at it with some suspicion, as if afraid that it would reach out and grab him into another moment of weakness.
As for the others, it seemed wrong somehow to question the nurse over dinner; so the meal passed quickly and silently until they found themselves rejoining Piccolo and Yamucha in the living room afterwords. If the atmosphere over the meal had been a trifle strained, here, the air was like tension soup. No-one wanted to begin the conversation. No-one was the type to start one. Tenshinhan, Piccolo, Chaotzu-- all were known for their reticence, if not in fact for their uncanny abilities to communicate without words at all. Yamucha was still asleep, and Gohan felt uncomfortable taking any sort of lead. He wished Kuririn hadn't left to check on Kame House. Even Bulma would have been good to have.
"It is a bad sign that Dende has returned to the Lookout," Piccolo said abruptly, as if following some cue that no-one could see but him. "It means that he feels he can best serve the earth by withdrawing, rather than helping us directly. In short, he will keep himself safe so that the Dragonballs will remain to us as a last resort."
"Are you saying Dende thinks we will fail?" Gohan's heart sank. Dende was someone he'd known as a child, and although he knew that Namekian children aged more quickly than humans, it was odd to think of Dende making such a calculated decision. It made him embarrassed that he was relying on the others so much.
"It is standard procedure," Piccolo said, turning to address his point. "It was very rare for him to leave the Lookout at all-- but he is young."
"We'd best get started, then," Tenshinhan nodded.
Neither of them were finishing their statements, but Gohan could draw out the logic himself: it was standard procedure-- for when the situation was about to turn very wrong.
* * *
Chichi sat in the sideways cage, musing on a plan of attack. The mysterious assassin who had visited her earlier-- she thought she had managed to decipher his identity. Something artificial in the way he walked, some quirk of his movement that reminded her of her bygone youth studying to participate in the budokais-- he could hide his face in the shadows all he wanted, but the stance was unmistakeable, even for a woman long out of practice. The stance of the Crane Master's school. A man defeated by her husband so very many years ago-- Tao Pai Pai.
She knew he was not one to be underestimated; a reliance on techniques of stealth and a legendary lack of scruples could make up for a great deal in lack of talent. And Tao Pai Pai had never lacked for talent, either-- only that strange and phenomenal strength that a Saiyan possessed. Even young Goku had barely defeated him.
Chichi shifted her weight. The cage was thoroughly uncomfortable on its side, and the bars dug into her. The visit had unnerved her, too, even though she had taunted him and sent him on his way bravely. She felt itchy around the base of her neck, claustrophobic from the bars. She wished she had some way, any way to move around-- do katas, anything to help prepare herself. If only she knew meditation techniques, like her son had learned from the demon. If only something would happen.
The doors burst open with a clang, and all at once a great bustle of soldiers rushed in, swarming around the room.
"What's going on? What is it?" Chichi said, grasping the bars of her cage with both hands. She was thoroughly ignored. From the dark depths of one end of the room, another cage was brought forward.
"At least put mine back upright!" she complained, futilely, as they bustled around with the new cage, locking it down onto the floor. The bars were much thicker than her own.
A stretcher was brought hastily into the room, borne by many people-- evidently it was a heavy burden, if a little short-- and its contents deposited in the cage. In vain Chichi tried to crane her neck to see around the press of people; her space was just too limited to get a good vantage, and she could only raise her eye level to that of their thighs. They brought in more equipment, then more, heart monitors and an IV stand, many wires and electrodes, until she had almost convinced herself that it was a malfunctioning cyborg that had been brought in-- until the room cleared.
Vegeta. It was Vegeta.
Suddenly, all the noise in the room faded to a hush. There he was-- the problem she had wrought for herself. She felt she was sinking further into the floor. He was so pale-- she had almost divorced herself from it, thought that now was the time to plan escape, not dwell on past mistakes; even forgiven herself when she heard that she had been only a pawn in Tao Pai Pai's plan. But all that seemed like only so many excuses, now-- like Gohan telling her he hadn't done his homework because he'd found a nest of dinosaur eggs. He was so pale. He looked like he was dead.
But she knew he wasn't. She reached her hand out through the bars, nearly pulling her shoulder out of its joint, but couldn't quite touch him. Tao Pai Pai had a way to this room, and he would be coming to claim this body for his own. All that he had lacked, he would find here: the strength, the training, the near-invulnerable instrument that Vegeta had made of his body. Her world would be turned to dust by a tool of her own design.
The military personnel were clearing out, leaving only a few army doctors behind, watching the monitors carefully.
"Will he be all right?" she said, and to her surprise one of them glanced down, as if baffled to hear a voice emanating from the floor.
"Mrs. Son," said the orderly. "What are you doing down there?"
"I knocked over the cage," she admitted.
"Well," the orderly tsked, then turned back to her monitors. "Should have thought a bit first before doing that, shouldn't we?"
"Please!" Chichi thought her throat would crack; she hadn't intended the word to be so forceful, but suddenly there it was, and the orderly was raising an eyebrow. "Tell me what's going on. Will he recover? Where are my sons?"
"I-- I'm sorry," the orderly said, and put a hand to her impeccable hair. "That information is classified."
"I--"
"That will be all, Mrs. Son," snapped the orderly. "We have better things to do than listen to the ravings of madwomen."
"They told you I was mad?" Why would they have done that?
"We know all about how you think the brass is out there hunting aliens."
Chichi frowned. That was an escape route she hadn't even thought of-- trying to convince the staff that the general had gone of the deep end hunting aliens. Of course, that was the truth, after all-- sort of. That was one route closed before she'd even found the door.
The orderly didn't seem to have much more use for conversation-- but at least she didn't seem to be leaving, either. Tao Pai Pai would have his work cut out for him to break into this control room and take up his new Saiyan flesh. Which bought her more time-- and more time for what? She smiled ruefully. More time to wait to be rescued.
* * *
Thirty miles outside the compound and a hundred feet above the ground, a well-manicured woman's hand reached towards a sleeping cat. The hand paused; instead of stroking the cat, it gave it a sharp (if somewhat affectionate) slap upside the head.
"Any other cat, and you'd lose a finger," said Puar, baring sharp teeth.
"Serves you right for sleeping," said Bulma; then remembered to hastily brush away a trace of eyeshadow, left over from a bout of feeling sorry for herself that she'd sooner forget.
Puar rolled her eyes.
"You miss all the good parts when you're asleep," Bulma said smugly. "A big helicopter just went by-- high and fast, faster than any of the helicopters we build at CC."
"Follow it!" Puar said, sitting up.
"I am, stupid," Bulma said, "It's long gone, though. I was able to plot their trajectory with a couple of algorithms, accounting for standard military stealth procedures and the efficiency of their engine based on propellor size and speed... got it down to a five-mile radius, ahead. We'll be there soon. Why'd you think we're flying so damn low?"
"Wait... are you sure this isn't dangerous?"
"Fine words from a bandit!" Bulma double-checked her computerized projection of the helicopter's flight path. They would want to land outside of the target area, so as not to arouse suspicion, then hike in...
"Of course it's dangerous," Bulma relented. "That's why Yamucha sent you with me. To be my guardian while I get into my customary scrapes." She flashed a dazzling grin that sent a shudder all the way down Puar's tail.
"Either way, it's inevitable now," she muttered. "Those stupid Z-warriors couldn't figure out how to operate a radio if it could speak the instructions itself! And my dad would probably forget to tell them..." She pulled in the throttle, watching the elevation level plummet on the display. "Nobody answered the message I sent back to Capsule Corps. God only knows where they've galavanted off to. And if time is important here-- and it usually is-- we may be the only thing standing between Vegeta's life and death!"
"I think you're just curious," Puar said, closing her eyes again. "And like fancy words."
"I think you can shut up," Bulma retorted.
Either way, the helicopter descended towards the wooded valley.