A full month had passed since that strange night on the lakeshore, and — unfortunately for Piccolo — time had not allowed for that smooth transition back to normalcy that he had hoped for. In fact, if anything, the weeks that followed only served to get weirder and weirder for him. The most obvious culprits seemed to be his endlessly wandering thoughts.
Several times a day he would be plagued by some flash of memory from that night; the smell of Yamcha's hair, the taste of whiskey on his lips, the feeling of his cock impaling him over and over. These inescapable phantoms of thought inevitably made him feel strangely hot and tingly all over, and always at the most inconvenient times. The worst was when it happened around Goku — a phenomenon he blamed entirely on the two men having very similar builds and overall features — and he would then have to come up with some excuse to abruptly cut off their sparring and put some distance between him and his training partner.
He, of course, tried everything he could to get it to stop. The classic 'meditating under a freezing cold waterfall' helped briefly to cool him down, but the effects didn't last too long. A few times he got so frustrated that, after having returned to his temporary shelter in a cave near the Son residence, he attempted to copy what Yamcha had done to him with his fingers. It felt good in its own right, but each time ended with him merely able to edge himself with no real satisfaction, his efforts paling in comparison to having the real deal inside him. Rather than relieve himself of these strange feelings of his, such attempts only ever served to frustrate him all the more.
As the weeks progressed, Piccolo could only reasonably blame this building frustration for a string of unusual behaviors on his part. He found himself much quicker to anger than he'd ever been before, Goku often being the one to take the brunt of his high-strung flashes of rage. Of course, just because Piccolo was oddly pent up didn't mean Goku was entirely blameless for instigating his fiery reactions. Today, unfortunately, was no different.
"C'mon, are you seriously going to spend another day just meditating? I'm bored!"
An irritated growl rumbled from Piccolo as he kept his eyes stubbornly closed, but he tried his best to reign in his temper.
"Training the mind is just as important as training the body," Piccolo replied as evenly as he could, though that didn't stop him from grumbling out a derisive, "Maybe you should give it a try once in a while and you wouldn't be so damn clueless…"
Whether Goku heard that last bit or not seemed irrelevant, but Piccolo could practically feel the immature pout that the Saiyan put on in response.
"Yeah, that's great and all, but you haven't done anything else for the past two weeks! I wanna start sparring again!"
"Then go spar with Gohan," he responded through teeth gritted tightly against his mounting anger at Goku's pestering.
"I have been, but the whole point of you training with us is for you to, y'know… actually train with us! Why are you suddenly so dead set against sparring?"
Piccolo flinched slightly at that last probing question, as though it touched on a sore spot for him. Honestly, he didn't even have an answer for himself, much less for Goku. The first few weeks after that night were a little awkward, sure, but he still managed to get some real training in. Now, however, just thinking of sparring seemed to nauseate him for some unknown reason. At first he thought it might be the source of the awkwardness before — the fact that Goku's body looked a little too close to Yamcha's for him to deal with while being so frustratingly pent up — but that soon proved to not be the case. Attempting to spar with Gohan, someone he could only ever think of as a sort of foster son, brought the same feeling like his stomach would turn itself inside out at any moment, and inevitably he'd be forced to back out before a single punch was thrown.
"N-none of your goddamn business!" Piccolo snipped back perhaps a bit more defensively than he'd originally intended. He didn't even know why he was so defensive over it — he was just as curious about the answer himself! Of course, he couldn't just unspeak what he'd said or the way he said it, so he had to face the consequences.
"And that's another thing!" Goku retorted, finally getting up from where he was fidgeting restlessly on a nearby log to confront Piccolo face to face. "You've been, like, extra mean lately! What gives?"
"Maybe you've been exceptionally infuriating lately, ever think of that?!" He growled back, finally abandoning his futile attempts at returning to his meditation, instead looking up to glare at the Saiyan standing over him.
"Nah, that can't be it. I've been just as annoying as always," Goku replied without an ounce of irony in his voice. "Actually, now that I think of it, the way you've been acting lately reminds me of someone else…"
"Really? And who's that?" Piccolo grumbled out, his voice dripping with venomous condescension. Goku, oblivious as ever to the implication of that tone of voice, leaned in with a hand shielding one side of his mouth as though to whisper a secret he didn't want Gohan to hear.
"You're acting just like Chi Chi when her Aunt Flo comes to visit."
Piccolo's face immediately flushed a deep purple in a mix of humiliation and anger, an emotional cocktail that left him with his mouth hanging open without any logical retort available to him. Goku didn't seem phased by this lack of reply, merely going off on his own little tangent.
"And just between you and me; I don't think she even has an Aunt Flo!" He continued in hushed tones, narrowing his eyes as though sussing out some great conspiracy. "The only person that ever visits is her dad, and he's never mentioned this lady! Wait, or maybe she does exist, and Chi Chi gets all pissy because she bails every time she's supposed to come over! I know I'd be upset if someone keeps ditching me every single month when they're supposed to visit."
As Goku continued on, Piccolo felt his anger quickly bubbling up inside him with every idiotic word that came out of the Saiyan's mouth. Finally, it was all too much to contain, and he snapped.
"Goku, I'd threaten to beat the stupid out of you, but I don't have a spare year to dedicate to the task!"
Contrary to expectations, this only served to make Goku's eyes light up like a kid on Christmas morning.
"Does that mean you wanna spar?!"
"Oh, go fuck youself!" Piccolo roared out in return, grabbing Goku's face and pushing him out of the personal space he'd been invading. He then took the following opening to rocket away into the air, too livid to remain in the other man's presence.
"See?! This is exactly what I was talking about!" Goku shouted after the Namekian as he flew away. When that didn't prompt an immediate return, he merely let out a small sigh of defeat before turning towards his son.
"Jeez, what's been eating him lately?"
Gohan, who had remained quiet throughout the whole exchange, didn't really have an answer for his father. Goku may have had a particularly annoying and unproductive way of bringing it up, but he wasn't wrong. Piccolo had been acting strangely for an entire month now, and if it was getting bad enough that someone as oblivious as his father could pick up on it, then it must be getting very bad indeed.
Gohan stopped short of going after Piccolo himself, though. He could see that his mentor was in a particularly foul mood, probably so much so that even he couldn't get through to him. He resigned to just let the alien warrior simmer down on his own. Perhaps he'd go talk to him after he had that chance to cool his head and think rationally again.
The area Piccolo eventually landed in was just a few miles away from where Goku lived, just far enough away to not be obvious to anyone who he didn't want finding him. Obviously, this meant only Gohan knew exactly where he'd be in that moment, which suited him just fine. The boy was smart enough to leave him alone when he clearly didn't want to be bothered.
Piccolo glanced up towards the top of the sheer cliff face above, up near where the roaring waterfall spilled over from the more elevated portion of a river into the smaller stream below. It was a habit whenever he returned; instinct telling him to gauge how high the water level might go in the night to avoid getting flooded out. Of course, he didn't have to worry so much now that the rainy season was over, the surrounding trees just starting to change color as summer transitioned into fall.
He hovered over towards a hard to spot path in the rocks leading just behind the waterfall, where the mouth of a cave was neatly hidden. The floor of the cave was flat, the interior depths mostly free of bats and other wildlife due to the crushing deluge that mostly sealed off the entrance. He made his way a little further in before turning off into a natural alcove where very little of the afternoon sunlight could breach. A small spark of ki solved the problem of the pitch darkness, a torch in a sconce carved out of the rough rocky wall blazing to life and bathing the little room-sized alcove in warm orange light.
Of course, there wasn't all that much to light. His belongings consisted of a thick bedroll stretched out across the cold stone floor and a few clay jars full of river water, a small fire pit carved into the floor in the center of the room for when the colder months came. Piccolo plopped himself down on the bedroll still in a bit of a huff, sitting with his arms and legs crossed in an immediate stubborn attempt to return to his meditation that Goku had so rudely interrupted before. Usually the echoing roar of the waterfall outside would help him to clear his mind, but not this time.
In truth, he knew he'd spoken a bit out of line earlier. Goku had been annoying, true enough, but it wasn't really something that warranted a complete blowup like that. He might have even felt a little bad for what he'd said, but mostly he was just bothered by the fact that he seemed to have a tenuous grip on his emotions at best lately. He was starting to suspect there was more influencing him than simply the aftermath of that one night with Yamcha, but what the hell could that something be?
Then, he was pulled out of his thoughts by a strange noise. It wasn't that he'd never heard such a thing before that made it so strange, but that he heard it at all when he was completely alone. It was that weird little sound Goku's and Gohan's stomachs would make right around the time they'd complain about being hungry, and now it was coming from him. He cursed under his breath. Great, now on top of everything else, his habit of eating with Goku's family had gotten him so used to regularly having food that his body actually thought he needed it. Perhaps spending so much time with them really was making him as soft as he feared it would.
"You really should take better care of yourself."
That single sentence was enough to stoke Piccolo's rage anew out of nowhere. It wasn't necessarily the substance of what was said, but who had said it. He knew that aged holier-than-thou voice anywhere, that tone that was somewhere between genuine concern and stern scolding. Sure enough, when he opened his eyes to look up, he found Kami standing there in front of him.
"Right, like you give a damn about my health!" He growled out, not bothering to mask his deep disdain for the elder Namekian. Strangely, his resistance didn't seem to phase the guardian.
"Given the circumstances, I'd have thought you'd care more than anyone else," Kami replied as patiently as ever. In fact, to Piccolo's ear he almost sounded too patient for who he was talking to.
Before he could question him on it, the elder tossed him a small bundle wrapped in a plain white cloth, which Piccolo caught on reflex alone. He stared down at it with a deep suspicion, until he eventually registered the smell coming from it, an aroma that had the strange effect of making his mouth water.
"Mr. Popo made it. You haven't eaten anything in a few days, and I imagine you're too stubborn to ask Goku's wife to make you something."
Piccolo let another annoyed growl rumble in his throat at that, but he stopped short of pointing out that neither of them needed more than water to survive, food being completely unnecessary. Of course, though he'd never admit to accepting help from the one person in the universe that he hated the most, he wasn't so proud as to reject the humbly-packed meal. After all, it did smell really good, and he was hungry…
"So, you've taken to watching my every move like a hawk?" he challenged, setting the food aside to eat only once Kami finally left. "What's wrong, run out of humans to spy on to get your kicks?"
"I observe that which requires my attention," Kami corrected, his tone remaining as calm as ever in the face of Piccolo's confrontational demeanor. "And, for the moment at least, you seem to require my attention."
"I require nothing from the likes of you!" Piccolo barked back with clear offensive in his voice. This finally pulled a reaction from the old god, though it was little more than a roll of his eyes and a sardonic scoff.
"Yes, well, we'll see how your mind changes in half a year…" he mumbled mostly to himself, though he knew Piccolo could hear every word. Before he could be challenged on it, he pressed on. "And what of Yamcha? You've not been to see him since that night."
Piccolo could feel his face heat up at the casual mention of what he and Yamcha had done a month prior.
"I knew it! You fucking voyeur!" he shouted, his anger propelling him up to his feet to glare Kami in the eye. "You were watching that the whole time, weren't you?! I knew you were a soft-hearted fool, but I hadn't figured you for a sick creep!"
"I'm more than aware of what you two did together, but if it makes you feel any better, I made a point to look away as soon as the clothes started coming off," the guardian replied as calm as ever — though that unshakably serene façade was only serving to piss Piccolo off all the more.
"So now you're here to… what?! Play fucking matchmaker and get the two of us together?! Well, don't waste your effort, 'cause it's not going to happen! He wouldn't have even thought of doing something like that with me if he wasn't so drunk he couldn't see straight, and I doubt he even remembers any of it!"
"That may be so, but don't you think he should know what you're going through because of it?"
"That's none of his concern and you're way out of line for even knowing about that!" Piccolo continued to shout, his face flushing a bit more at such an implication. "I can handle it on my own! I'm not going to sit here and pine for him like some lovestruck teenager! It was one night! Give it another month or two and I'll have forgotten all about it!"
He was honestly unsure if that last bit was directed at Kami or himself, but at least it managed to have one desired effect — Kami was actually starting to get mad himself.
"Oh, would you stop playing dumb!" the guardian shouted, even growing so frustrated at this conversation that he stamped the end of his wooden staff against the stone below. "You and I share a soul! You can't hide a new link to that soul by simply pretending it's not there, not from me!"
"Oh, you can't be serious!" Piccolo snapped back, throwing his hands in the air at the audacity of the old Namekian's persistence. "Are you seriously going to stand there with a straight face and tell me that, after a drunken one night stand with some human, he and I are now somehow soulmates or some such nonsense?! Do you even hear yourself when you speak, or have you gone deaf in your old age?!"
Piccolo expected the encounter to devolve into a full on shouting match after that, but much to his surprise, it didn't. Instead of firing back an equally heated retort, Kami's face fell into an expression of mixed surprise, concern, and perhaps a bit of pity.
"You really don't know, do you?" he asked softly, his voice still holding a tone of hesitant disbelief. Piccolo wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that. He was all geared up for an argument with his aged alter ego, but that one little question was enough to completely derail him. Wait, what didn't he know?
"Wh-what are you talking about..?" he asked in such a way that was far less demanding than he'd intended. Something about Kami's shift in demeanor had spooked him, and he had no idea why. At least, not until the guardian spoke next.
"You're pregnant."
Piccolo felt a cold chill wash over him at those words, and it seemed to freeze him in place for a long moment. What the fuck did he just say? He opened his mouth as though to reflexively deny such a thing, but the words just wouldn't come out. There was no way… it was just too ridiculous! Then again, that would have explained away much of what he'd been experiencing over the past several weeks, from his unbearable moodiness to his nausea at just the thought of sparring, like his body was trying to subtly tell him he shouldn't do such things in his current state. Even that truly alien feeling of hunger could be reasoned away, especially if he was going to have a half-human child that needed the extra nutrients.
Of course, even if it made a certain amount of sense, that didn't mean he'd just take Kami's word for it. He needed some proof, and he wouldn't trust anyone but himself to provide it. He forced himself to calm down and turn his senses inward, trying to feel anything out of the ordinary within his body. Sure enough, within a moment of looking, he sensed it; a tiny ki that wasn't his own resting in his lower abdomen. It was so small that his own ki drowned it out, to the point that one had to be physically touching him and deliberately looking for it to notice — or else, he supposed, be someone who he shared a soul with. Yet, even as tiny as it was, it was strong enough for him to know it wasn't some phantom of suggestion — his mind playing tricks on him after the idea was put in his head. No, it was real. He was pregnant… and it could only be Yamcha's.