NEARLY FIVE YEARS LATER…
"Daddy, who's this?"
Goku froze. This was not an unusual occurrence – the "deer in the headlights" look was a frequent visitor to his face. True, he rarely if ever froze in battle…but when he heard his wife opening the door after he had recently cleaned out the fridge, he would freeze. Whenever Roshi or Kami had caught him doing something he knew he shouldn't have been doing…such as eating while training…he would freeze.
So when he saw his four year old son holding up an old scrapbook, turned to a newspaper article and a nearly full-page shot of someone he had almost completely put from his mind, he froze. He had not expected to find Piccolo's eyes glaring at him again so soon…or ever again.
"Daddy?" Gohan asked again, tilting his head, birdlike.
At last, the man found his voice. "That's…that's a guy named Piccolo."
The boy grinned. "Was he your friend? You're in the picture…how come you're looking mean at each other?"
"He…uh…." How could he answer a question like that? It was too bizarre. What had they been? Not friends, that was for sure…but he saved the word 'enemy' for people like Cymbal. "Not exactly," he said finally.
"Who was he, then?"
"He…he was somebody I knew once. Really angry, but not such a bad guy all the time." Which was true enough, he supposed….when he was asleep, the demon wasn't quite so cranky.
Gohan brightened. "Can I meet him?"
"NO," Goku practically yelped.
The boy's brow creased. "But if he's not bad, then…"
"Er….hey, how would you like to go out and play for a while?" Goku asked, one hand going behind his head…..following it up with a nervous laugh.
Gohan beamed up at him, his eyes the way Chichis were when she didn't scowl at him. "Okay!"
And as his son literally scampered out the door, Son Goku breathed a heavy sigh of relief. He turned to glare at the scrapbook, sitting open on the kitchen table. "S'all your fault," he muttered, reaching over to close it.
His eyes came to rest again on the dark green face, set in a familiar scowl…cold, uncaring, unreachable. "What ever happened to you, Piccolo?" he wondered aloud. "Did ya go home…are you still mad at me?"
He half expected the newspaper to answer, feeling a little betrayed when it didn't. Closing it, he blew the dust off the cover…setting it high on a shelf, well out of reach, out of sight, out of mind. And then he sat down in one of the wicker chairs, wondering idly what new adventures would mark future pages in that book.
* * *
Piccolo knew he was being reckless, stubborn, foolish….all of the things that Tambourine had always yelled at Cymbal for. But it had been five years. He had been training for five whole years for his next bout with Son Goku and his offspring…whom the demon had never seen.
Well, now he would see him.
Piccolo wore no cape now…it and the turban had long since been discarded. White was a sensible color to wear in the punishing glare of the desert, but when you were trying to disappear in the velvety layers of shadow in dense forests, it left something to be desired.
He had grown in the last five years. Had changed. So much time alone had made his voice more gravelly from disuse, and had made him generally less inclined to talk. His thoughts, though, were much the same…pragmatic and clean, stripped of anything fanciful or unnecessary.
He would see the child, asses his abilities, and make a decision.
And curiosity, Piccolo told himself, had nothing to do with his decision whatsoever.
That was when he heard it. A faint crying in the distance…a human sound, as familiar to him as an old lullaby. In barely a breath, he was after it…a leaf borne on the wind, soundless and swift. Yes…it was getting louder, closer…
It was above him? Was the child flying already? Piccolo looked up…and up….and up the sheer wall of a cliff. On a branch, stubby legs kicking, was a child….but the sun was too bright and at exactly the wrong angle, so he couldn't make out…
*SNAP*
Having only enough time to widen his eyes as both branch and child came down, Piccolo could think of nothing to do but step back….catching the child reflexively to keep it from landing on him. The boy…for boy it was, apparently…was still squalling, eyes clenched tightly shut, apparently not realizing that he had not hit the ground.
"Stop that," the demon all but barked – he'd had his fill of the pounding sound resounding in his sensitive ears.
The child stiffened, uncurling a tail…Piccolo's eyes bugged out at this….a TAIL from his waist…and opening his eyes to stare up at his unwitting rescuer through a screen of sable locks. Soft eyes the color of coffee blinked up at him, widening as well. "Mr. Piccolo?"
There was an instant problem….a superimposition….and image from his father's memories. A child, wild hair, looking up at him through a cascade of black, tail lashing….closer, closer, pain erupting through his chest, his back, no air….warm, sticky running down his abdomen and his spine, choking ….
His eyes doubling in size, he dropped the child, taking a quick step back before he even realized that he'd moved.
The boy immediately crabwalked backwards until he managed to scramble to his feet, at which point he simply stared at the much-larger being with a look of utter, amazed shock on his face. "You're…a lot bigger than you looked in the picture, sir."
Not knowing which to react to first – the honorific, the fact that this child knew who he was, that he wasn't screaming, or that he looked so insanely like his sire – the demon merely stood there, schooling his face into the stony mask that had always served him so well against his enemies.
The little boy held out his hand. "Uh….pleased to meet ya, sir. My name's Gohan, and I didn't mean to fall on you and thank you for saving me, 'cause…."
"I did NOT save you," The demon snapped, crossing his arms…deeply offended at even the suggestion. "I just didn't want you landing on me."
"Oh. Well, thanks just the same."
…
Piccolo found that, for one of the few times in his life, he had nothing to say in reply. He could not recall ever having been thanked before. Certainly, he'd been mocked with an occasional "thanks for nothing…" but never had anyone actually meant it. He didn't have any idea how you were *supposed* to respond to something like that…but he knew that it was definitely making him uncomfortable.
He HATED being uncomfortable.
The demon glared directly into those two eyes, bright buttons against a face that could have walked right out of his subconscious. "Don't ever do that again," he half-growled.
The boy blinked. "Do what, sir?"
"Thank me. I've done *nothing* for you." He allowed his upper lip to rise up over one fang….sharpening his glare consciously, as much a threat as a sword pointed at the boy's throat. "And while we're at it, I'm no mister. Got it?"
"Yes sir."
The demon barely heard him. He was too busy contemplating the futility of giving rules to a being he was planning to kill anyway. Son was nowhere in sight, and that boy might be dangerous in time…and besides, what better way to punish his enemy for daring to pity him? What better way to prove to him that it had made no difference whatsoever…that he had failed in his little conversion attempt?
What better way to prove to himself that he felt no differently about his enemy or his task than he had before that…that….idiot decided to play good Samaritan?
So he leveled a hand at the boy, preparing an energy blast. He could not help blinking when the child didn't react at all – at least not in a way he would have expected. And Then Piccolo realized that the child had no idea what he was doing. He couldn't see that he was about to die.
"Um….my name's Gohan, in case you wanted to know." Admittedly, he sounded a bit nervous…but usually someone who was about to have his head literally blown off his shoulders would be more than nervous. He would be trembling. Running, stumbling, and falling in a blind panic.
Gohan was doing none of that. This bothered Piccolo deeply, like sand in his shoe….chafing at something subtly, enough to be irritating…but he didn't know why it was there. Or what it was.
"What are you doing?" the boy finally asked.
"Don't you know?" Piccolo snapped back coldly. It was unthinkable that Son Goku would not have taught his son something of fighting by now. Surely he had. Surely he wanted his offspring to fight as he did…or at least be able to protect himself. After all, his own father….
Wrinkling his brow in utter confusion, the boy shook his head. "Nope."
…well, Son had never made any sense anyway, Piccolo reflected sourly. And he was wasting time. Here he had a clear shot…a chance to make up for the stupidity of letting his greatest enemy fly away untouched after…after that cave incident. To show that whatever strange disease had turned the man's brain to mud hadn't affected him in the least. And he was going to take it.
He built the energy up around his hand.
The boy grinned suddenly. "Hey, that's cool. How are you doing that?"
The demon merely snorted and took aim, right between the too-soft eyes that shimmered in the soft light of afternoon beneath a shadowy curtain of raven-hued bangs….and it was familiar somehow. He had seen something similar once….somewhere…
The little girl looked up, the dark, gaping holes beneath her bangs reflecting sudden, desperate hope coupled with fear…
Stop it, he told himself firmly. Just stop. It's different.
He really would have fired at that point, but his hand was shaking. With a snarl, he clenched it, letting the energy disappate…
"Hey, sir…I'd better be getting home. Mom'll be worried."
Again, Piccolo did not answer. He was busy, squeezing his fist so tightly that talons dug into his palm…as if to punish it for betraying him a second time.
"Do you want to come?"
With a low growl, he turned on one heel military-style, storming back toward the forest. So he hadn't killed the kid. It was probably a dumb idea anyway…his father would be furious, and if there was one thing he didn't need, it was an angry Son Goku on his hands.
Speaking of whom….he had training to do. And he'd wasted more than enough time here.
* * *
Piccolo had long since lost all concept of time – his body's protests had been utterly drowned in the numbing demands of his katas. His cape and turban cascaded from a nearby rock, orange-hued in the light of the setting sun. His breathing, though steady as ever, was deep; he drank in air with the hunger of a man starved for months. The sweat that poured down his face had ceased to be distinct droplets, but were steady streams, glinting in the scant light as the dripped from his antennae.
There was something beyond brute strength to his motions, something beyond technique. His movements were fluid, and his form was dark against the crimson sky – a fire shadow dancing on the wall of a cave.
All this the onlooker noticed in the second that he arrived, and not without a faint glimmer of appreciation. Never respect, not for a being such as this, but…appreciation. It wasn't every mission that the people he was sent to exterminate provided him with such a show. He reached up to brush a strand of his uncooperative, raven-hued mane away from his scouter lens. 1100. Not bad. Not great, certainly, but not bad.
The emerald fighter beneath him froze abruptly, as if he somehow knew that he wasn't alone. He stood taut, turning his head immediately…and Radditz found himself staring into a pair of furiously surprised eyes.
They Saiya-jinn warrior chuckled. How cute – the little Nameksei-jinn was mad at him. He grinned wolfishly and, on impulse, began to clap slowly, deliberately, each one ringing through the still, desert air like a bell. "Well done, lizard-man. It was almost as good as watching the infants on my planet learning their drills for the first time."
The Nameksei-jinn – the cautious and oft-ignored part of Raditzu's brain whispered that it was very odd for one of them to be on earth, but the Saiya-jinn promptly pushed it to the very back of his mind – did not rise to the bait, but stepped backward into a defensive crouch. "Who are you?" he asked calmly.
Hmph. Strange accent, Raditzu thought automatically. Nameksei-jinn or ningen? "None of your business, green man. You'll have to excuse me for dropping in on you like this – I'm looking for a man named Kakkarotto. I thought that you were him."
The Nameksei-jinn narrowed his eyes and shifted his feet slightly in the sand. To Raditzu's trained eyes, he could only have been testing his footing. "Well, since I'm obviously not, I suppose you'll be going."
Raditzu felt a laugh bubbling up inside him. Gods, who said that Nameksei-jinn were all a bunch of tree-hugging cowards? This idiot wasn't backing down…and to a Saiya-jinn no less! He widened his grin a bit and said, "No, I don't think I will."
* * *
Piccolo, inwardly seething over his failure to notice the other warrior's arrival, let his eyes travel the length of this newcomer, and he did not like what he saw. The being, obviously a warrior, was a full head taller than he was. He was clad in armor that left his legs and arms bare, and in the fading light his muscles rippled like the ocean on a calm day. A long scar ran from the inside of his thigh to the outside of his knee; another curved from his shoulder to his elbow, white against the burnished bronze of his skin.
The demon liked what his chi senses were telling him even less; this being was powerful beyond anything that he'd ever encountered before. "Listen," he growled, "I'm not interested in a fight with you."
The newcomer didn't respond to his words at all, but continued to stare at him with an altogether disconcerting look on his face and in his posture, an odd mixture of excitement and…hunger. "Oh, but I am," He responded softly. The brown, furry belt that Piccolo had mistaken for part of his armor twitched.
Piccolo blinked twice, trying to make certain that his vision was clear. It was. The belt had moved. Which meant that it wasn't a belt. It was a tail, like…like Son's. The demon kept his face perfectly blank, though inside he staggered from the shock. "Why?"
The other warrior laughed out loud. "Why not?"
And then, without warning, he dropped from the sky like a winter rain. Piccolo barely had time to leap away as the newcomer's foot impacted the ground. The other warrior grinned, obviously pleased that his quarry was skilled enough to dodge, and came at him again.
Piccolo sidestepped a second time, flinging a chi blast at his strange assailant as he sped by. The warrior pivoted, caught the small ball of energy easily in one hand, and crushed it out of existence. "You'll have to do better than that, green man."
The demon decided not to waste breath on a reply; instead, he lunged into the offensive. The other warrior moved into a defensive position that Piccolo did not recognize, his face alight with apparent pleasure as he blocked kick after kick. "Pretty footwork. Too bad you're so weak – you might be fun, otherwise."
He latched onto Piccolo's foot with one massive hand and flung him away; the demon flipped, landing lightly on his feet just in time to see the other warrior coming toward him. He lifted a four-fingered hand and threw a small chi blast at the other's eyes, which he batted away effortlessly.
Piccolo had no time to grapple with his surprise; he barely managed to get his forearm up to block the next blow. The force of impact sent shocks through his whole body, and he was driven back a full foot. A second strike, this one a kick, he deflected with his knee, and immediately regretted doing so as pain shot through his leg.
He's too strong, I can't fight him in close like this. Piccolo launched himself straight up, hoping that his strange attacker would be slow in reacting. Indeed, the other made no move to follow…but he seemed to have stopped paying attention to him altogether. As he watched, wondering whether or not to stand and fight, the stranger rolled his eyes and pressed a button on the lensed device he was wearing over one eye.
"Loosen up, ouji-sama. I'm just…well, yeah, but…messing around?" The warrior's expression turned sour. "Aw, come on…you'll never believe what I found here! It's a Nameksei-jinn." He rolled his eyes. "No, I am not being sarcastic…it's a Namek! Well, we're kinda fighting currently, and…uh-huh, that's what I…yeah, really fighting…yes, with hitting back…you are no fun, do you know that?"
Whatever the last reply was, the newcomer obviously didn't like it. Adopting a truly put-upon expression, he pushed a button on the device. "Sorry, green man, it looks like we're gonna have to cut this one short. Line of duty and all that, you know."
Then, he did lift into the air. He winked once through the colored glass of the lens before he flew away – and the wind from his departure was almost enough to knock Piccolo from his place in the sky.
This could be bad, he decided, eyeing the contrail that the warrior had left behind…the only sign that he had been there at all. The demon looked at his forearms, noticing that they were already dark purple – bruised. He certainly didn't envy Kakkarotto, whoever that was.
Piccolo shuddered despite the heat in the desert. That being had said something about his home planet…was he an alien? If so, why did he look so much like Son Goku?
The youngest son of the demon king was becoming increasingly sure that this stranger could not be allowed to go uninvestigated…and there was only one being that he knew of who could offer any sort of advice.
He only hoped that Tambourine would be in a co-operative mood.