After King Yamma's pronouncement, the reception room of the afterlife fell eerily silent. Goku normally wouldn't have minded asking questions in even such a formal situation, but he was so confused that he couldn't even decide what to ask. Besides that, the situation felt dangerous…not in the someone's-going-to-beat-you-up sense, but in a different way, one that Goku had never felt before except, maybe, right before he'd decided not to kill Piccolo all those years ago. It was a feeling like the whole world was balanced on the edge of a quarter and that what happened in the next few seconds could change everything, forever.
Of the two of them, Kami recovered from the shock first. "What do you mean, he's four years too early?" the old diety asked in a strained voice.
"I mean," King Yamma said, "that your friend here…" the gatekeeper of the afterlife leveled a redwood-sized finger at Goku.. "died two days ago. But he wasn't supposed to. Do you understand?"
"Great Yamma, how does that happen?" Kami asked. "I thought that matters of life and death were decided by fate…and unchangeable."
"They are," King Yamma growled.
"Then how did…"
"I don't KNOW," the gate keeping diety roared suddenly, slamming a massive fist down on his desk with earth-quaking force. "This has never happened before! Not ever in the history of the universe!"
Kami recoiled at the other's outburst…and even Goku felt a little shaken at the sheer volume of sound…but he wanted answers badly enough by then to actually just ask. "Excuse me," he said. "King Yamma?"
The massive red deity turned his eyes to Goku. "What?" he barked.
"If I wasn't supposed to die when I did – then when was I supposed to die, and how?"
King Yamma pounded his fist down on his desk. "NO man may know his manner of death before his time! That is one of the oldest and most hallowed rules in the cosmos."
"Well," Goku said, putting his hand behind his head, "I understand you can't know when you're gonna die, but…does it really matter now? I mean, I can't change anything now that I'm already dead."
Both King Yamma and Kami stared at him for a moment. Then, King Yamma leaned back in his seat, seeming to go over this idea in his head.
Goku could see Kami crossing his fingers.
After a few seconds, King Yamma sighed. "Well, why the Hell not," he muttered under his breath, opening his great book and thumbing through a few pages. "According to this, you are to die in your sleep exactly four years from today."
Goku blinked. "That's it?"
"Yes, that's it. What were you expecting, a fanfare?" Yamma asked.
"Wait a minute…I'm not even all that old. Are you really sure I just died?" Goku asked. To tell the truth, he felt sort of let down. He'd always figured that if he died, it'd be in a fight.
"Oh no," King Yamma replied calmly. "Though there was a bit more to it than that.
"Well…what was it, then?"
King Yamma closed the book. "Let me be a little more clear, Son Goku. According to this, it was supposed to have been at the hand of your old enemy, Piccolo, who shot you while you were sleeping. You can't really ask for better than that, can you? It's classic."
Goku's jaw dropped. He would almost have been less surprised to hear that Chichi had been meant to end his life while he wasn't looking – or Krillen, or Yamcha. "Piccolo?" he asked. "Are you sure?"
"It's written right here," Yamma said, "plain as day."
"Well, then that explains everything," Goku said. "Things had to change because the book was wrong."
"Young man," King Yamma said, "this book has been dictating fate for millennia. What reason would YOU have to doubt it?"
"Because Piccolo wouldn't kill me," Goku responded, surprised at how sure he was of that very fact. "Even if he doesn't know that yet," he added almost as an afterthought. "He would have once, I'm pretty sure…but that was a while back. He's changed now – so maybe history had to change, too."
King Yamma pinched the bridge of his nose. "Naive sort, is he?" he asked Kami.
"To my everlasting consternation," Kami replied levelly. "But great Yamma, we've taken up so much of your time now…"
"I'll say," Yamma growled.
Kami cleared his throat awkwardly and forged on. "I want to talk to you about Snake Way."
"No," Yamma said.
"But sir, the situation is dire. A great threat looms over earth, and…"
"Threat?" Goku asked. "What new threat?" But he was, of course, ignored.
"I've GIVEN you my answer, Kami," Yamma interrupted. "You're simply too old for such a journey."
Goku blinked. "Are you going somewhere?" he asked of his former mentor.
"He most assuredly is NOT!" Yamma snapped.
Kami buried his face in his hands and drew a deep breath. Goku knew this gesture well – he'd seen it many times before, when his training had pushed Kami nearly to the point of taking up needlepoint or backgammon…or some other hobby less frustrating than the molding of young warriors. "Forgive me for being unclear, sir. I don't want to go onto snake way. Son Goku does."
"He does?" Yamma asked incredulously.
"…I do?" Goku asked, after which Kami elbowed him solidly in the ribs.
"He does," Kami said with certainty.
"Oh," the gatekeeper said. "Well, why didn't you say so? Of course he can go."
"Go where?" Goku asked.
"I'll explain on the way," Kami growled under his breath, taking him by the arm and hauling him bodily toward the exit.
On the way out, Goku turned a little and waved at King Yamma. "Thanks for everything!" He called back almost as an afterthought.
It seemed to him that, as he left, he heard the gatekeeper of the afterlife mutter one word to himself with the air of one who was counting the centuries until retirement: "Earthlings."
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Gohan was so relieved when they made camp that night that he didn't even have the energy to ask where they were. He just flopped down where he stood, arms splayed, staring up at the unfamiliar, graying sky. The sky at home had never looked like that. Above his old house, the sky had been hazy sometimes like a picture smudged with cotton; it had always looked soft, with ice-cream clouds and deep blues. Here, the air was clear all the way up, especially in the evenings; even the clouds looked like something you could cut yourself on. Struck with a sudden wave of homesickness, Gohan swiped a hand quickly across his eyes, hoping that Mr. Piccolo hadn't seen them water.
"Don't you dare," Piccolo growled.
Gohan swallowed nervously and rubbed his eyes again to make sure that all the water was gone. "Sorry, sir," he said, sitting up. His legs had never hurt so bad in his life, but he knew better than to bring THAT up.
Piccolo didn't tell him it was okay like mom and dad did when he did something wrong. In fact, he didn't say anything at all. He just made a low "hmph" sound in the back of his throat and sat down. Gohan wondered if that meant that Piccolo was still mad at him. He bet he was.
Actually, as far as Gohan could tell, Piccolo never stopped being mad. His face was always set in a scowl, his hands were always fisted, and even if it wasn't for that, he would've seemed mad. It was like he projected "mad" waves, punctuated by occasional spikes of "leave me alone."
Gohan wasn't used to that. Sure, his mom was mad sometimes – a lot of the time, if he was being honest, but it was always for a reason, and it never lasted long. Krillen, from what Gohan had seen, was a little nervous and jumpy, but he seemed happy enough. And his dad, well – Dad was always happy. He had a big grin that made Gohan and everyone else want to grin back at him, and Goku's laugh could even bring his mom out of a bad mood sometimes. Now that he thought about it…he mostly knew people who were happy.
There was no way to construe Piccolo as "happy." Gohan shifted a little so that he could look at his strange new companion. Piccolo was sitting a few feet in the air with his legs crossed lotus-style – wow, I wonder how he does that? – with his head pitched forward a little. Both of Piccolo's eyes were closed, both his arms were crossed. He was perfectly still in the air, aside from the slight flutter of his cape. Gohan wondered if he was actually asleep, feeling a little guilty for staring so hard. But, when the other didn't move at all, he decided he really was sleeping. He even scowled in his sleep.
Feeling a little relieved, Gohan took the opportunity to study the other's face. It was green, of course, but it was also made up of hard lines. The jaw was sharp and angular, the nose was like carved granite, even cheekbones were pronounced and hard. Here and there, if he looked closely enough, the boy could make out fine, white-toned scars…none of them deep, but more like blurred chalk lines on a rock. Gohan squinted and tried to imagine that face smiling. He decided that it was impossible.
Piccolo's eyes opened so suddenly that Gohan jumped. "And just what the Hell are you staring at," he growled.
"N-nothing, sir!" Gohan exclaimed, backing up a little bit.
"Didn't think so," Piccolo said. He closed his eyes again, hunched over a little more, etched that scowl deeper on his face than it had been before, so that there were long shadows on his face.
Gohan wondered if he'd hurt his feelings. His mom was always telling him that it wasn't nice to stare, especially not at people who were a little bit different – in wheelchairs or something like that, because it might make them embarrassed. "I'm sorry, sir," he said.
Piccolo's only response was a faint growl.
Gohan decided that maybe he'd talked to Mr. Piccolo enough for one night. He just seemed to be making him madder. Drawing his knees up to his chest, Gohan tried to make himself comfortable. The sand was rough, and his study clothes, even without the tunic over top, weren't exactly practical…or warm. He hadn't thought that he was going to have to worry about being cold in the desert. It was, though, and every little granule was like an ice cube against his bare arms any way he sat…
That was by far the least of his worries, though…as a moment later, his stomach growled almost as loudly as Mr. Piccolo had moments before. Gohan looked up nervously to see if the other had noticed – he didn't seem to, because he didn't move.
"Um…sir?" he said.
"What," the other said.
"I'm sort of hungry. D'you know where I could get something to eat?"
Mr. Piccolo shot him a look that would best classify as ironic. "Look around," he said.
Gohan did, first over his left shoulder, then over his right. All he saw over the left was flat, bristly badland covered in spiny plants that looked like pincushions. All that he saw over the right were rising bluffs that had always looked cool in his schoolbooks, but up close just looked like piles of rock. "But sir, there's nothing out here," he said.
Mr. Piccolo smirked. "Then you better go find something," he said.
"Find something?" Gohan asked. "Like what?"
"Tch, how should I know?"
"But sir…"
"No 'but sir's'" Piccolo snapped. "If you want to eat, you're going to have to find it on your own."
Gohan's eyes widened. "On my own?"
Piccolo growled. "You can't possibly be THAT helpless." He then closed his eyes again.
Gohan swallowed any further protests…Piccolo was actually kind of like his mom in that it was easy to tell when it just wasn't safe to argue with him. "Yes, sir," he said miserably, and started walking.
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Cymbal had never been lucky, Tambourine reflected as he poured himself another glass of wine. Or maybe lucky wasn't the right word, because Tambourine didn't, in the strictest sense, believe in luck. He did, however, believe in fate. Fate was different from luck in that it was traceable, logical…it followed a path. And Cymbal was one of the most ill-fated individuals he'd ever seen.
"It all comes," Tambourine told the prostrate form of his brother, which was still stretched out on the table, "of being an evil henchman."
Cymbal, who had not moved in something like three days, opened one eye slightly, but he did not seem to be awake. The cornea was milky, glazed like a frosty window.
Tambourine took a sip of his drink. "Life is really just one long, complicated novel, you see. It has its character types like any other book. And how many books have you ever read about evil henchmen?"
Predictably, Cymbal didn't answer beyond a slight movement of the lips, as if he were speaking to himself in his sleep.
"None," Tambourine said. "In most stories, you know, they simply disappear after the overlord is defeated. No one really knows what happens to them."
Again, no answer.
"You, though…you had the misfortune to live," Tambourine said. "It's not so bad for most of us. We still have a role to play…a part that may yet change. But as for you, brother…"
Tambourine turned his head slightly…enough to look at his brother straight on and assess his situation. Cymbal looked better than he had two days ago in that, at the very least, it was clear that he was alive and not dead. He was still not well. The great gashes on his body had closed, but not healed…reddish-purple lines crisscrossed over his frame, and the burns were still like shiny cellophane patches on otherwise matte skin.
"You," Tambourine repeated, "are a side character….and the best you might hope for is a side story."
Cymbal seemed to stir a little at that, but Tambourine didn't pay much mind to it. Instead, he turned his eyes to the doorway, the ghost of a smirk flickering over his features. "Ah," he said. "Here comes one now."
Tambourine's eyes arched slightly, but not in a happy way. He couldn't hear them yet – even his hearing was not so keen as that…but he knew they were there. Piano and Drum…in the stairwell…their backs to the wall as if they expected someone to come out and look for them.
"Idiots," Tambourine reflected, turning his eyes to the ceiling. "Honestly, you'd think I collected them."
Still, idiots could be dangerous when they really wanted to be, so Tambourine made a rare concession and set his wine glass down. Closing his eyes, he did something that he generally avoided because stupidity, to him, was actually painful in the same way that grammatical errors are painful to grammar-school teachers. Focusing his mind like an arrow, he shot it Piano-wards.
The stairwell was dark…and glittered where dripping water had, here and there, frozen into veins of ice against the stone. Piano didn't like it, edging a little closer to Drum on the way up. "What if he wakes up?" he asked for the third time.
Drum snorted. "You saw how bad he was messed up. What's he going to do even if he does. It'll be over before he knows it."
"What about the bookworm?"
"We've been through this. He won't interfere…and he's too weak to be worth killing."
"Then…I guess now or never?"
Drum nodded, a smirk like a cut working its way across his face. He began climbing the stairs again.
Tambourine shook his head, a little amused at being so grossly underestimated… but there would be time to smirk over that later. He turned his eyes to Cymbal. "You're going to want to wake up," he said levelly. The body on the desk stirred slightly as if in response to his words.
There was a heavy knock on the door that could have come from a hand or a battering ram. Tambourine walked over to it sedately, turning the knob, pulling back that sheet of newly-repaired, thick wood. "Yes?" he said to Drum's sneering face.
"Out of our way," the larger Namekian growled.
Tambourine raised an eyeridge at him. "You really don't want me to do that," he said.
Drum snorted. "I think I know what I want, thankyou."
Tambourine shrugged. "You know what you want, but…not what you're going to get." And then he stepped away from the door. "Not that it's really any of my business"
Drum stepped in, massive shoulders barely fitting through even that doorway…smirking wickedly at the form sprawled out on the table. "Just like I told you," he said to Piano. "He'll die easy."
"Who will," Cymbal growled suddenly from the table, twisting with deceptive grace from the position that he'd originally landed in to a crouch that looked less like a fighting stance and more like the position a wild animal might take before ripping some unfortunate herbivore to shreds.
The air in the room went still. Tambourine could feel the wheels essentially jam up as Drum and Piano looked at one another, wondering whether to back out or rush, balancing on the edge of indecision for that one moment…not even a moment, a piece of one. Then Cymbal was across the room, hands fisted in the front of Drum's gi, lifting him easily off the floor and slamming his back against the wall. Leaning forward, he bared bloodstained teeth in something that wasn't quite a snarl. "Give me one reason I shouldn't rip your damned face off."
Drum's mouth opened slightly, as if he was trying to find words, but not succeeding. Cymbal didn't wait, dropping one shoulder and heaving the larger demon at Piano, who didn't catch him so much as fall backward with him against an entirely different wall.
"Get out of my sight," Cymbal growled in that low, low tone that meant business.
Piano and Drum looked at him for a moment, visibly weighing their chances.
Cymbal's eyes slitted. "Don't make me say it again," he said.
With a last, nervous look his way, Piano and Drum left the room, eyes downcast.
As soon as the sounds of their footsteps had fully receded, however, Cymbal's aggressive posture dissolved. He sank to a knee, doubling over ribs that were, no doubt, still kitting, hissing out a breath between clenched teeth. Little flecks of blood fell onto the floor.
Tambourine crossed the room in three long, slow steps. He put a hand on Cymbal's shoulder – not a heavy, reassuring palm, but a ghost of a touch, fingertips only. "Bluffing, Cymbal? It isn't like you."
The larger demon didn't answer at first, and when he did, it was in a soft, strained voice that didn't, at first, even sound like his. "What happened?" he asked.
"To what?" Tambourine responded as calmly as before…but with a note of sympathy in his voice.
"I tried…to hold it together," Cymbal said. "Until He came back."
By He, of course, Cymbal meant the original Daimaou no Piccolo, their father, the demon king. Tambourine nodded once. "But he didn't come back," Tambourine said.
Cymbal shook his head. "No," he said. "He said he would, but he hasn't. And then I tried to do what he would have wanted, after that, but…I'm not him."
"I know," Tambourine said.
"It wasn't supposed to be this way," Cymbal said softly– and Tambourine knew he was referring to so much more than what had just happened. He was talking about their former lord's death at the hands of Son Goku, at their blind fumbling and constant failures since – he was talking about their missing brother and more, maybe, than that. He was talking about their youngest brother's loss and subsequent betrayal. He was talking about the way that everything seemed to be falling apart. Tambourine wondered how Cymbal would have felt if he'd known how much he had had to do with that – how carefully he'd pulled the strings, one by one, to unravel the knot.
"No," Tambourine said at last, almost gently. "I don't think it was.
Cymbal looked up at him – the red in his eyes was hot with grief and maybe…maybe…the rough beginnings of regret. "Where did it go wrong?" he asked hoarsely.
Tambourine shook his head. "It didn't go wrong, Cymbal," he said. "It started out that way. But," and here, he forced a small, thin-lipped smile onto his face, "we're going to fix that, you and I. We're going to fix it all."
Cymbal leaned against his leg, shoulders a little rounded, head bowed.. "I don't know what to do anymore," he said.
"I do," Tambourine said in that same soft voice. "Leave it to me."
Cymbal's only response was to nod once. But that was all Tambourine really needed to see. "Sleep now," he said. "I'll take care of it."
Though not, Tambourine thought as his older brother drifted off, in the way that you're thinking of.
