Piccolo, though he was possibly the most serious among the Z Warriors about preparing for the coming android threat, was conspicuously distracted during his current sparring session with Goku and Gohan. No, perhaps it was because he was so serious about it that caused him to be so distracted… and because he was the only one among them aside from Goku himself that knew the full details of the prophecy. Granted, most would consider the details of the time traveler's parentage merely a curiosity at best, and generally just an unimportant detail compared to the threat of the two monstrous machines they were meant to fight in less than a year's time.
Yet, even though Piccolo especially couldn't care less who had children with who, he just couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong because of it, and that feeling only grew exponentially the closer time progressed towards the boy's birth. If he remembered correctly, he was supposed to be born just this past—
"Arghh!" Piccolo roared out in reflexive pain as he suddenly caught a wayward first to the face.
"A-ah! I'm sorry, Piccolo-san!" Gohan apologized frantically, immediately dropping his fighting stance and rushing over towards Piccolo to see if he was alright. The boy's reward for his concern for his mentor was a powerful kick being dropped on his head from above, sending him shooting down into the water of the pond they'd been sparring above.
"Who said you could drop your guard?! Stay vigilant when engaging in battle!" The Namekian barked out once the boy's head broke the surface of the water.
"Like you're one to talk," Goku commented with a slight smirk from where he floated nearby. "You wouldn't have gotten hit like that if you were paying attention yourself. What's gotten you so distracted lately?"
Piccolo couldn't seem to formulate a satisfactory response, merely resorting to letting out a dismissive scoff, averting his eyes from the path of the Saiyan's taunting gaze.
"It's nothing. Now are we going to get back to training or what?"
"Nah, I think that's good enough for one day," Goku replied just as Gohan rejoined them in the air. "It's getting late, and I bet Chi Chi's about done making dinner. What's say we pack it in for now and chow down!"
"I won't say no to that! I'm starving!" Gohan replied before turning his eager grin up towards Piccolo. "You're gonna come have dinner with us again tonight, right Piccolo-san?"
Piccolo seemed hesitant to answer, his mind — and gaze — drifting obviously elsewhere. It took Gohan physically tugging at his pant leg to get him to finally look his way again. That worried look on his student's face was enough to melt past at least some of his stubbornness.
"No, sorry kid. I think I'll pass for tonight. There's… something I need to check up on."
That answer only served to further deepen the concern on the boy's face.
"Check up on what? Is something wrong?"
Piccolo allowed himself a rare break in his stoic façade, shooting his young protégé a very slight but reassuring smile.
"Nothing you need to worry over, I promise. I'll meet you both back here tomorrow at the usual time."
That assurance, along with the gentle rustling of the boy's hair, was enough to dismiss whatever sense of concern had risen in Gohan. He smiled back up at his mentor, giving him a parting smile before flying over towards where his father was waiting for him.
"I call dibs on Piccolo's food!" Goku called out with a grin, earning himself an amused chuckle from his son.
"Piccolo barely eats half as much as Mom does. It's not like you'll get that much more."
"All the more reason to call dibs! Now c'mon! I wanna eat while it's still warm!"
Piccolo watched with an amused smirk as the two flew off towards their home, but his amusement faded almost as quickly as did their silhouettes in the distance. The subject that had hung over his mind like a miasma was one of far more dire consequence than simply missing an unnecessary meal, at least in potential. After all, though he personally cared little about who Trunks' father was, he knew of one person who would care too much for his own good. With that squarely in mind, he flew off in the opposite direction than his two sparring mates had, heading instead for the distant West.
"Vegeta?! Are you fucking kidding me right now?!" Yamcha shouted out as he slammed open the door to Bulma's residential home on Capsule Corp. grounds, leaving the entrance open for the subject of his ire to follow in, newborn son held close against her chest as if to protect him from her on-again off-again boyfriend's rage. He'd managed to contain his anger in the delivery room and in the half a day since, but it seemed it was all too much to bear once she was discharged from the hospital and they made it home.
"What do you want me to say, huh?!" Bulma snapped back without hesitation, not even bothering to deny Yamcha's accusation. She knew there was no way she could, not when her son had been born with an unmistakably Saiyan tail. "Something tells me 'sorry' isn't gonna cut it! Not that it ever really cut it when you said it after all those times you slept around on me!"
"Hey, don't you try to turn this on me! I haven't done that in years! Hell, I haven't so much as looked at another woman ever since you told me you were pregnant, and look where it's gotten me! How long were you planning on stringing me along, huh?! You had to have known! Or were you hoping I'd turn out to be such a loser that I'd miss out on what I thought was my own kid's birth long enough for you to snip his tail before I'd noticed it?!"
Bulma didn't quite back down at that, her face still a twisted mask of stubborn anger, but she couldn't seem to come up with an adequate response. An out presented itself soon enough, however, as all that shouting caused Trunks to start whining unhappily in a clear precursor to outright wailing.
"Look, why don't you just leave? You're upsetting my son…"
Yamcha let his attention drop momentarily to the squirming infant in Bulma's arms, but even looking at him was enough to fill him to capacity with rage and bitterness. He quickly looked past the both of them before he could do or say something he'd regret.
"Y'know what? That's the best idea I've heard all fucking day," he growled out as he marched past the two, slamming the door closed behind him as soon as he stepped outside. He just barely heard the muffled crying of a baby inside before he took off at full speed into the sky.
It was nearly dusk by the time Yamcha landed, though exactly where he was even he couldn't say. He didn't even recall the direction he'd flown, he just needed to get out of there. He found himself on the edge of a lake out in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, the last orange rays from the setting sun just barely reaching above the tops of the dense fur trees that encircled it.
He approached the pebble-strewn shore of the lake, looking down to catch a reflection of himself in the glassy surface of the water. Then again, could he even truly call what stared back up at him "himself" anymore? That stupid bowl cut that was so infuriatingly popular in recent years, the plain street clothes that caused him to blend into a sea of anonymity wherever he went… They were all for Bulma. She made him cut his hair, dress how everyone else dressed, act like everyone else acted. For a time, he'd thought it would all eventually feel normal to him, the natural progression of going from living as a desert bandit to an average joe in the city. Now it was all too clear to him that he'd never have bothered if Bulma hadn't pushed him into it, and now that stranger's face that stared up at him from the water served only to infuriate him all the more.
He turned away from the water, digging into his front pants pocket to retrieve a small capsule case. He pulled out one capsule in particular, pressing the button and tossing it forward to activate in the nearby grass. There was a small poof of smoke, which soon cleared to reveal a small storage chest. He popped open the lid, his heart clenching in a tight feeling of betrayal as he spotted the small black ring box sitting on top of his other personal items. He grabbed it, but continued digging through his things, eventually finding an old bottle of very nice scotch that he'd been saving for a special occasion with a special someone. With everything that had happened, he could do little but laugh bitterly at the notion that such a special occasion would ever bother to present itself to him,or that he'd ever really find that special someone again.
He returned to the lake shore, sitting down roughly near the edge of the water and cracking open his bottle of liquor. He chugged a good portion of the bottle, the liquid seeming to fill him with a warmth that he hoped would serve to distract him from his woes. He then stared down at that little box in his hand, turning it over and popping the lid open to reveal the ring inside, the large diamond set in the center seeming to catch even the faint light from the stars that were slowly beginning to appear above. To think, he'd been planning a proposal for months when she was off getting her kicks with some murderous alien prince…
"Y'know what? Fuckin' fine! You two deserve each other!" Yamcha shouted, staggering back up to his feet and swaying a bit more than he'd anticipated. The scotch had hit him pretty quick, but not so much that he couldn't wind up and pitch that ring as far into the lake as he could. "Bullet squarely dodged, as far as I'm concerned!"
As the ring box broke the surface of the lake with a barely audible 'plunk', a sense of finality seemed to sink in. So it really was over, huh? The last sixteen years — literally half his damn life — and it had all amounted to nothing. This wasn't how his life was supposed to go at all. At this rate, he was starting to wonder if dying at the hands of the androids was such a bad thing after all…
He plopped back down on the ground and reached for his bottle of scotch, but his hand hit nothing but open air. Figuring he might have just missed, he glanced over, but the bottle was gone. For a hot second he worried that he might have thrown the wrong thing into the lake, but a moment later he heard the unmistakable sound of liquid being poured out onto the ground behind him. He looked back to find himself staring up at the back of a two meter long white cape, and just past it was a green hand holding his scotch bottle upside down to drain into the nearby grass.
"H-hey! Do you have any idea how expensive that bottle was?!" Yamcha shouted, scrambling to try to stop Piccolo from dumping the entire thing, but he'd barely managed in the state he was in to get up to his hands and knees before the last drops of the liquor seeped into the ground.
"Do I look like I care?" Was Piccolo's blunt response, a flash of bright ki vaporizing the empty glass bottle that remained in his hand. "You've already drank a third of it. I'd say you'll thank me for this later, but I know better than to expect gratitude from humans…"
Yamcha furrowed his brows in confusion at that, a confusion that only deepened when the stoic Namekian settled himself down to sit cross-legged at the edge of the lake next to him, arms crossed over his chest. The next question was an obvious one,but it had to be asked.
"What the hell are you doing here?" It was a question asked in genuine curiosity rather than anger, despite the hefty cost of the booze the alien warrior had so callously dumped out a moment prior. Piccolo himself seemed hesitant to answer, merely staring out onto the dark lake before him.
"Keeping you from doing something stupid," was his eventual blunt reply. Yamcha felt a cold wash of embarrassment overcome him in that moment. Great. Not only had he just had the worst day of his life, but apparently even someone as socially inept as Piccolo already knew about it. Of course, he couldn't imagine Bulma going off and blabbing to everyone about it, especially since it was more her dirty laundry than his, so that only left…
"Guess you heard all of that, huh? Must be annoying, being able to hear anything on the planet…"
"You learn to tune out what doesn't pertain to you."
Yamcha couldn't help but let out a sardonic chuckle at that.
"Yeah right… like my personal life would interest you at all."
"I don't normally care, but I have a vested interest in anything that can derail our efforts to prepare for the androids' attack next year."
Yamcha finally settled back down where he was sitting earlier, right next to where Piccolo now sat, but he seemed deflated — his shoulders slumped and his head hanging almost in shame.
"Bold of you to assume I'd be of any use against those androids, considering they even kill you and Vegeta in the future version of events. Hell, even with all my training, I couldn't even hold a candle to you as you were before that kid from the future came to warn us about them, so why even bother counting on me to help? I'd probably just get in everyone's way, slow you guys down…"
"Keep that shit attitude and you'll be right," Piccolo shot back with a sneer. "You have every opportunity to be just as strong as any of us, but instead you choose to waste your valuable time on some lost cause domestic fantasy. I get that you're upset — though I won't lie and say I understand it by any stretch of the imagination — but none of that is important right now. We have a limited window to prepare for what is essentially humanity's doomsday, and every second wasted even thinking about frivolous personal matters is just—"
Piccolo only paused in his scolding when he finally looked over towards Yamcha once more, spotting the empty, almost dead look in his eyes as he stared out over the moonlit lake. It was clear he'd mentally checked out on him, and it was easy to see why. Even Piccolo could tell that a lecture wasn't what the former bandit needed at the moment, not with everything going on. What he needed right now was comfort, a sympathetic presence to ease the monumental woes weighing heavily on his mind. Only problem was Piccolo had no idea how to do that.
Yamcha had only fully registered that Piccolo had stopped talking at all when he heard him let out a heavy sigh. In the next moment, he felt a strong arm wrap itself around his shoulders and pull him close into an awkward embrace against the Namekian's side. Despite himself, Yamcha could feel his cheeks heat up, but whether it was from the sudden intimate proximity to the normally distant warrior or the fact that the scotch had finally fully hit him, even he couldn't tell. Either way, his instinct was to dismiss the awkwardness with a joke of some kind.
"M-man, usually I gotta take someone out to dinner before we get to the cuddling stage," he teased with a dumb grin, to which he could feel Piccolo immediately flinch in embarrassment.
"L-look, don't make it weird…" he grumbled out in response, looking away awkwardly but not letting him go just yet. After all, an attempt at humor was a good sign, right? It at least meant he wasn't dwelling so much on what was making him so depressed. Of course, perhaps it had worked a little too well, at least if what happened next was anything to go by.
"But what if I want to make it weird?"
That was all the warning Piccolo got before Yamcha leaned all the harder against him, pushing him back until his back was against the grass. In the next moment, the smaller man was straddling over him on his hands and knees, that doofy, drunken grin still plastered across his face. Piccolo's hand moved almost on pure instinct alone to clamp around Yamcha's throat, fully prepared to crush it in his grasp should the foolish human dare to advance even an inch further. However, despite knowing full well that Piccolo could — and certainly would — kill him in an instant, Yamcha didn't back off, just continued to grin down at the veritable atom bomb he'd decided to toy with.
But, that wasn't quite right. The instant his fingers wrapped tightly around the other's throat, Piccolo detected an ever so slight change in Yamcha's expression. His grin had shifted to be somewhat bittersweet, his eyes as dead as before with zero intent, almost a silent invitation to simply crush his windpipe and let it be done for the both of them.
A burning defiance rose up in Piccolo almost as quickly as his realization had; Yamcha, drunk though he may be, was cognizant enough to attempt to use him as a sort of assisted suicide by pissing him off enough to kill him. He was stunned, and admittedly a little impressed, but mostly offended at the attempt to use him in such a way. A prideful growl rumbled from him, sharp fangs bared up towards the inebriated human straddled above him. No one manipulated Piccolo to bend to their whim. No one. So, in a moment of pure contrarianism, he shifted gears to do the exact opposite of what was expected of him; he pulled Yamcha down by the neck until the two of them were locked in a deep kiss.