Piccolo liked to consider himself a pretty experienced guy. He wasn't very old, per say, but he'd been through a lot. He'd seen more battles in the few years of his life than most humans could manage to see in generations. But there were other facts that he just didn't know. And he was in the process of learning one of them. That truth was this: living with a kid is not easy.

Kids do stupid things.

Like invite you to birthday parties, and sleep with their heads on your leg, and tug on your cape and try to hand you a flower. "My mom likes them," kids will explain, staring up at you with wide, soap-bubble eyes. "They always cheer her up when she's upset. And Mr. Piccolo, you look really, really upset. Sir."

"I am NOT upset," you can growl at them, if you feel like it. "At least, I wasn't before you stopped your pushups to go looking for colorful weeds. Now get back to work."

"Yes sir," a kid will say. And visibly try not to cry. And then forget about it five minutes later and ask if you want to come pick berries with him.

Or maybe not kids in general. Maybe just Son Gohan.

The kid was weird. Piccolo expected that. But he was weird in a completely different way from Son Goku, and Piccolo had not expected that.

The boy was not a complete wash-out when it came to fighting, like Piccolo had initially feared. He was a smart kid, and he was learning, albeit slowly. And every once in a while, Piccolo caught a glimpse of genuine potential. A jump, ridiculously high – several stories worth of straight-up. Or a dodge, faster than anyone should be able to move, an energy blast out of nowhere. And Piccolo suspected that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Sometimes, when he pushed the kid extra hard, he'd catch a glimpse of something deeper – like when he sometimes watches great, predatory cats as kittens, barely balls of fluff with big green eyes. They're harmless-looking and soft, easily crushed with heels or hands…but when they're playing, sometimes, one will flex a paw or arch its back, and you can see the danger underneath, the promise of deadly, latent instinct. Sometimes, when Piccolo caught glimpses of it, he caught himself pulling back, wondering what would happen if he ever DID bring it out. Whether the kid would inadvertently blow like a spiky-haired volcano, and whether he'd live to tell about it.

Gohan seemed to sense it, too. When they were training, and the boy would get so close to reaching it, he would freeze up and cover his eyes with his hands. He'd balk like a mule approaching the side of a cliff, having caught sight of the great drop ahead and refusing to go further. He could feel it inside himself, and Piccolo knew without asking that he was afraid of it.

Piccolo didn't know what to tell him about overcoming fear. All of his speeches on that topic ran less than true, sounded canned to him. He knew that, in order to reach that power, Gohan would have to be more afraid of an outcome than he was of what was inside of him. He would have to want to reach it, or need to. And for all of Piccolo's pragmatics, he just could not bring himself to do what he knew he might have to.

He could not put the boy in such a life or death situation that he would HAVE to use that power.

He couldn't do it first of all because it might not work. Once or twice, he had simulated a life-or-death situation. He'd flown up several miles one day, held the kid out, and dropped him. But that hadn't worked, and Piccolo had been forced to catch him.

More worrisome was the reason WHY it wouldn't work.

Piccolo could remember that scene vividly – the one where he'd caught Gohan, not more than a meter or two from the ground. "What the Hell's the matter with you," he growled at the boy, who had clenched both hands into his gi and huddled there.

"I…I'm sorry, Mr. Piccolo."

"What was your plan, idiot? See if you can land on your ass instead of your head?"

A sniffle. "I wasn't going to die," he mumbled, half in apology, half in explanation. "I knew you'd catch me. I knew it."

Piccolo had started to growl out that he would do NOTHING of the damn sort. Only he had caught him, after all. Children, he'd decided then, were the most vexing creatures on earth. "I won't catch you next time," he said sourly.

But they had both known that he was probably lying.

So Gohan's faith in him, whether it was misplaced or not, was a problem. It didn't matter whether Piccolo intended to bail him out of whatever situation he created or not, Gohan adamantly believed that he'd be saved at the last second. Which prevented the absolute, crushing panic that would probably be required to get him to find that buried power of his.

The second problem was that Piccolo just didn't trust his intuition as much as he used to. He might misjudge the situation, might not read it right, and then the boy would be dead.

And why in the Hell didn't he want the boy to be dead?

Sometimes, he did. Sometimes, when Gohan would wake him up in the middle of the night with his nightmares, or when he would blunder a combination when he knew better, or when he would just keep chattering about nonsense, Piccolo legitimately thought about blowing his black-tousled little head right off his shoulders.

But there were other times, too.

Like the night before. It had been raining hard enough that Piccolo abandoned his usual open-air sleep for a small cave in the side of a mesa. Quarters had been close, especially with the small fire near the mouth, so he'd found himself sitting lotus-style, Gohan unaccountably close to his side.

The boy had done his best to stay quiet, but as usual, he was not very good at it. He shifted and fidgeted and bit his lip.

"Spit it out," Piccolo had said, keeping his eyes closed. With children as with attack dogs, it was best not to make eye contact.

He'd felt small fingers on his hand, poking at it curiously. His palm twitched, reflexively, and he reminded himself that chi blasts in enclosed spaces usually ended badly.

"It's just…your hand, sir," Gohan had said.

Against his better judgment, Piccolo uncoiled his hand, let the boy pull it into his own lap to study it more closely. It might, he figured, do the kid some good – let him see what he was up against, eventually.

Gohan turned the hand over curiously in his own small ones. He brushed his fingers over the calloused palm, poked the soft pad of his finger over a talon, his eyes widening a little at the sharpness of it. He felt the strong curve of a thumb meant for gouging things, more used to being used as a hook than as an opposable. Piccolo smirked to himself. That's right, kid, he thought. My kind is built for fighting. And if you plan to live, you'd better be ready for that.

But Gohan didn't comment on the deadliness of it. Instead, he said, "You've only got four fingers."

Piccolo blinked. "And?" he said.

"I've got five," Gohan said. "See?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

Gohan grinned. "I dunno, sir – I was just noticing, that's all."

"Hmph."

"It is kinda cool, though," he said.

Piccolo raised an eyeridge. "Cool," he said flatly.

"You know," Gohan said, letting him have his hand back. "Neat."

Piccolo looked down at his hand. "It's an appendage," he said. "It does what it needs to do. I don't see what's so interesting about that."

Gohan laughed. "Sir," he said, "Don't take this the wrong way. But you're funny, sometimes"

Piccolo felt almost offended. "I am not," he said.

Gohan didn't argue. Instead, he leaned against his side, which Piccolo usually discouraged, but Hell, there wasn't a lot of room in there. "Well, not really funny," Gohan admitted. "But you're not as scary as everybody says, either."

Piccolo huffed. "That's because you haven't made me mad enough yet," he said, attempting to hint very strongly with his voice that Gohan was pushing the envelope at that very moment.

Gohan yawned. "If I do, will you let me know?"

"If you do, kid – you'll know."

"I think it might be kinda neat to see," he said. "As long as you weren't mad at me, that is."

Piccolo smirked in spite of himself. "I have no one else to be mad at."

"Do you think you can be mad at my dad when he comes back?" And Gohan looked up at him, his eyes visible in the firelight, wide and hopeful and a little scared. And Piccolo could see what he was really asking. It was more like my dad will come back, won't he?

Piccolo thought about that. Closed his eyes again, and really thought about it…Son Goku holding this child in his arms like a dishrag, Son Goku blazing all around with blue-white light in the tournament ring. The blurry image of Son kneeling over him during that time he'd been so close to death, the weird, heart-clenching sense of helplessness that slowly melted into confusion. The way it had shaken up the nice, neat boundaries of his life and plunged him headlong into disaster.

And for the first time, he'd let himself live through the end of it. The way that the other smiled up at him from where they were collapsed together, torn halfway to pieces and covered in mud. How he'd finally understood that too-damn-soft expression, and some of what was in it – acceptance, for the first time in his life, and a whole host of other things he'd never asked for or wanted. And how, that quickly, the life had gone out of Son Goku, and Piccolo was going to have to walk the path he'd chosen by himself alone. Again. And worse this time, because he remembered different.

He'd opened his eyes. "Gohan," he'd said. "I promise you. If your father comes back, I will be plenty mad at him."

Gohan smiled. "Glad I'm not him," he said.

I'm glad, too, Piccolo had thought, but not said.

He'd spent most of the night trying not to think about why.

And now it was morning. He hadn't slept. And he didn't feel like sleeping.

Gohan, of course, was still out cold. Worse yet, the little brat had managed to entangle himself in Piccolo's cape. The former demon briefly considered either yanking his cape out from under the boy, or launching the boy out of the cave like a shotput. He decided on neither option. Instead, he shrugged out of his shoulderpads and set his turban aside, even pausing to lay the equipment down so that Gohan would not hear it and wake up. Then, with a care he didn't normally possess, he climbed to his feet and left that cave.

The morning smelled like rain, and he had a lot of thinking to do.


Gohan woke up to the feeling of sunlight on his eyelids. Which was a pretty welcome change to waking up with Piccolo's boot prodding his side or, on bad mornings, to waking up face-first in a pond. He wondered what had prompted his teacher's sudden change of heart, and decided he'd ask him a lot later, when he was done sleeping and he'd had breakfast.

Gohan sat up slowly and looked around. There was no sign of Piccolo, except for his cape, which Gohan had apparently wrapped himself up in. The boy grinned to himself. He knew that Piccolo must have left it at least in part so that he could sleep in a little.

Well, no sense in looking a gift horse in the mouth. Gohan settled back under the hem of his teacher's cloak, and inhaled the faint scent of pine and something else that always seemed to cling to him. He was glad he'd been wrong about the large fighter.

When Gohan had first come to the wilderness, he'd thought that Piccolo was just a big jerk who yelled a lot, and it was no wonder he didn't have any friends. But gradually, he was coming to realize that just wasn't true. At least, it wasn't true that he was just a big jerk. He really DID yell a lot. But mostly, Gohan thought, that was just because he wasn't real used to dealing with people. He didn't mean most of the things he yelled, or most of the mean things he said. He just said them.

You'd never guess it at first - because Piccolo was so, well, scary – but deep down, under all the scowling and the pointy teeth, Piccolo really wasn't a bad man. He was sad, instead; sad, and lonely, and maybe even scared, but mostly sad, and mostly tired. He was good at listening (if you didn't bring up birthday parties). And Piccolo took care of him. He felt safe when the big warrior was around – safer than he'd felt in a very long time. Because Piccolo was a great fighter, and strong, and smart, and he would not let anything happen to him.

Gohan wondered where Mr. Piccolo had taken off to. He decided he'd go see. He sat up, stretched, and thought better of it. No, he was going to go outside, and he was going to start doing his forms. That way, when Mr. Piccolo came back, he'd be happier. And maybe he wouldn't get that weird look on his face he got sometimes, like he didn't know where he was.

Decision made, Gohan walked out of the cave.

It was a beautiful day. Gohan stopped for a minute, just to admire it. The night's rain had left the air fresh, with thousands of little water-beads dangling off various blades of grass. It was like the world had just been made.

Mr. Piccolo would roll his eyes if Gohan told him that. Gohan giggled a little bit as he imagined the sour look that would come onto his face – and then he would look up, as if wondering why the heavens were tormenting him with such a waste of time.

Oh well. Maybe he'd tell him anyway, if he remembered to later. In the meantime, Gohan looked for a flat piece of ground. He took a deep breath, slid his feet out to shoulder width, and waited a few seconds to make sure his balance was right. Then, slowly, he sank in the knees, rocked his weight over his right leg, turned to face the left. He narrowed his eyes in concentration, and tried to remember whether or not it was exactly right…brought one hand up in a claw, the left one, the other fist back toward his chin.

"Not quite," he muttered to himself. He shifted his weight another degree or two and grinned. "Perfect," he said.

"Or close to it," a low voice growled nearby.

Gohan's eyes widened, then slowly slid to the right.

Cymbal was standing by the cave door. His arms were loosely folded, his bright red eyes were narrowed to a pair of cuts in his face. And he looked like he was pissed.

"Who taught you that stance, boy," he asked. Demanded.

Gohan swallowed. Blinked his eyes to see if he was dreaming.

He wasn't. Cymbal was still there – his skin more yellow-green than Piccolo's, looking alien and fresh like the rain-watered grass, sharp around the edges. Gohan swallowed again. "N…none of your business," he said. He wished he could have made it sound braver, like his dad or Piccolo would have said it.

"That so," Cymbal said. He walked forward slowly…too slowly…full of a strange, predatory edge that Gohan had never seen in Piccolo. The large demon knelt down to his level, and slid his tongue over too-white fangs. "It's fighting, kid," he said. "And it's my style. So that makes it my business. Who taught you?"

Gohan rotated his stance so that he was facing Cymbal – and out of the corners of his eyes, he could see a dark shadow on either side of him. The other two fighters, he forgot their names…Drum? Piano?...but they were off to the side, making a triangle of sorts with Cymbal.

Gohan realized then that he was in REAL trouble.

"Nevermind," Cymbal said. "I think I know anyway."

"You do?" Gohan asked.

"Mmhmm." Cymbal rocked back on his heels, still kneeling in front of him. "You know now I'm going to have to kill you," he said conversationally.

Gohan's eyes narrowed. "No way," he said. "You better leave me alone."

Cymbal reached over all of three feet, almost too fast to see, and gave Gohan's shoulder a hard push in just the right direction to knock him over. Gohan hit the dirt hard, rolled to his feet, or tried – Cymbal grabbed him by the ankle, and stood up.

And there Gohan was. Dangling upside down by the ankle.

He did the only thing that made sense to him. He hauled a foot back and kicked Cymbal's elbow as hard as he could, three times in a row.

The demon didn't even seem phased. He just…looked at Gohan with a funny expression on his face. Gohan growled in his throat, let his hand fill up with energy, threw it at his side, and watched that tiny ball of power glance off like a softball.

Cymbal didn't even twitch. Just smirked. "That it?" he asked.

Gohan bit his lip and tried to discreetly look around for Piccolo. Because Piccolo would be coming soon, he knew it. And, like any child, he started to voice that reality before it actually happened. "You better put me down," he said. He crossed his arms, too, and tried to look intimidating.

"Really? Why?"

"Because Mr. Piccolo'll be back any second, and you'll be really, really sorry," he said.

Cymbal chuckled. "You think he's coming back to save you?" he asked. "He's made a run for it if he knows a damn thing about life by now."

Gohan felt anger fill him up, and he kicked Cymbal again – the wrist, this time. "That's not true! He'll be here, and he'll kick your butt."

Cymbal outright laughed. "Damn," he said. "You're a mouthy one, aren't you? That's almost a shame."

"What is?" Gohan asked, still trying to look at once scowly and dramatic – or as much as he could while hanging upside down.

Cymbal tilted his head at him – an outright weird expression crossing his face. Like the one Gohan's mom got sometimes when she was looking for something, and then suddenly remembered where it was. "I think," he said, seemed to pause, then spoke again. "I think I've always liked kids," he said at last.

Gohan blinked.

"Just relax," Cymbal said, and that hard smirk was back again. "This'll be quick." He flexed his talons into hooks. Gohan closed his eyes.

And then, Gohan fell face-first into the dirt, there was a horrible foot-hitting-skin-sound, and he found himself staring up at the backs of Piccolo's legs. He scrambled to his feet. "Mr. Piccolo!" he exclaimed.

Piccolo did not say even a word. He was tense, and pulled tight like the string on a bow, chi so strained even Gohan could feel it. Piccolo put a rough hand on Gohan's head, shoved him further behind him. "What the Hell are you doing here," he growled at last, at Cymbal.

"Huh," Cymbal said. "Some welcome. I was in the neighborhood" And then both hands were claws, not just the one he'd been about to rip Gohan open with. "Thought I'd stop by."

Piccolo growled deeper. And Gohan noticed he was getting tenser. Piccolo was worried, which made Gohan worried.

Then, Gohan heard Piccolo's voice inside his head – sharp like a whip. Alright, kid, listen up. This is gonna get bad. When they attack me, I'm going into the air. They'll follow. When that happens, I want you to run away as fast as you can.

Gohan's eyes widened, and he thought back automatically, falling into this new kind of communication as only a child can fall into things: But…but sir! I can't run and leave you all by yourself here, and besides…I don't know where to run! And what if they catch me? And how will you find me once you get done fighting the…

The boy experienced the mental version of a smack upside the head. Don't be stupid. Piccolo's thoughts in his mind were all red and purple tangled together. When I tell you to run, boy, you RUN. No argument.

Y…yes sir.

Cymbal chuckled, breaking the silence. "So quiet, Piccolo," he said. "Don't you want to argue a little?"

Piccolo smirked. "No," he said.

"Then I'll argue for you. You don't have to do this."

Piccolo's eyes narrowed.

Impossibly, something in Cymbal's expression seemed less hard to Gohan for a second or two. "You think this is so much better," he said. "You really think you're gonna be able to live out here like this forever?" Cymbal casually jerked his thumb toward what Gohan guessed was probably civilization. "They'll never accept you as one of them, and they'll never let you share air with them if they can help it. So what's that leave you? Hiding in caves the rest of your life?"

Piccolo's nose creased so deep it made shadows. "You'd never understand," he said.

"No. You don't." Cymbal shook his head, his words softening a little. "Maybe you don't want to be one of us anymore – but that's what you are. This is a war, Piccolo, and nobody should know that better than you. So you might as well win it. How's it better to try to be something you're not?"

Piccolo laughed – a short, sharp sound. "All these years," he said. "You've never once really looked at me."

"There are some things," Cymbal said, "that you're just born to do. No one can fight that. Not even you."

Piccolo smirked. "Then I guess you were born to die here?"

"Alright, brat," Cymbal said, a weird grin in his voice. "Have it your way."

"Thanks," Piccolo said. "I think I will."

Gohan was literally knocked off his feet by what happened next, even though he couldn't see it. There was wind, a roaring sound, and then there were shapes above him, flying through the air like wasps. He stared up at it, eyes wide, for the first time seeing what fighting is. Not the nice tapping of most tournaments, not the staged stuff he saw on tv, and not the kind of fighting you see in cartoons. This was real. Horrible, snappy sounds of impact, growls, grunts, the hissing noise of tearing flesh.

Closing his eyes, Gohan rolled to his feet and ran, just like Piccolo told him to. He had to open them when he stumbled, scrambled a few feet, ran again with gravel in his hands. Blood was rushing in his ears, his head pounding in a horrible rhythm, his thoughts full of just run, run, run.

He thought he heard a scream. He didn't know whose it was. He kept running.

The sky lit up like a strobe light was going off, and Gohan paused. Turned to look back. He couldn't really see what was going on. Just distant flashes, lights…pulses like when jets fly by, and the air shakes from it…muffled noise, like distant thunder.

And then, all at once, he understood why it didn't matter how Piccolo was going to find him. Because he wasn't going to. He wasn't. He was going to fight those three big, scary people, and they were going to rip him to pieces, like he'd watched, one night in the desert, a pack of hyenas rip an antelope apart. And he'd cried hard until Piccolo told him that was just the way it worked sometimes.

…but it wasn't right. Gohan turned slowly back toward the fight, bit his lip. Took a step forward – maybe he could help? But Piccolo had told him to run. He took a step back. But what if…

Mr. Piccolo? he tried. And like that, he was part of it.

Shoot through the air like an arrow, half-twist and duck, bring leg around at the 90 degrees and use the rotation. Dig into side, snap just a little, and damn, that rib almost broke, almost, he was close. Sharp, surprising pain of claws down the back, reverse the elbow to the face, pitch forward – damnit, got to get him off me – kick straight back, drop to avoid the punch…wait, haven't seen Piano…where did he…

A voice echoed around Gohan. "Hey, kid," it said. "Have a nice run?"

Gohan prayed for a second that it was part of what he was hearing from Piccolo. But it wasn't. He turned around slowly.

He came face-to-knees with Piano.

"Don't have time to draw this out," the big warrior said. He inclined his head back to the fight on the horizon. "They're gonna need a hand. So…got any last words?"

Gohan did, actually. And they were 100 percent reflex. "MASENKO-HA!" he screamed so hard it hurt his throat, closed his eyes, and pushed both hands out at Piano with every ounce of strength he had.


Piccolo felt the blast happen on the outer corner of his mind, like seeing something out of the side of his vision, and he knew immediately what had gone wrong. Because of course, Cymbal would have planned for this, and of course, the kid was the real target.

He kicked his older brother right in the teeth, reversed himself in the air, and shot his body toward Gohan like a bullet. None of this was planned. He was operating at that utterly instinctual, adrenaline-flooded level that he always came to in a fight for his life – and one of his base instincts was screaming at him to get to the kid as fast as he could. In the back of his mind, which was NOT occupied with staying alive, he made a mental note to be really, really pissed about that later.

The air roared around him. And he heard an answering roar. It had taken Cymbal and Drum a fraction of a second to adjust to this latest tactic, which he was sure looked a Hell of a lot like "run away."

That was alright. Piccolo was faster than Drum. And at a sprint, he was pretty sure he was faster than Cymbal, who wouldn't be in a hurry to try to catch him. No, Cymbal would pace himself, just exactly like a wolf, would reserve that burst of speed for when Piccolo's lungs were already starting to burn. When he didn't have enough juice left to go any faster.

Except Piccolo wasn't running away, and he just needed to stay out in front for about five seconds. After that, it might not matter.

Piccolo landed so hard he stumbled, caught himself on a hand, looked up.

Gohan had managed, somehow, not to be reduced to a smear of grease on a rock. Was dodging blows from a bemused-looking Piano. Was still very much alive, even though the air smelled like Ozone. Damn. So the kid had some survival instincts after…

"Mr. Piccolo!" The boy cried suddenly.

…or maybe not.

Piano spun around, but Piccolo managed to put a blast in his face anyway, smirking with deep satisfaction as his brother stumbled backward. And then Gohan, much to his surprise, hit Piano with a blast from behind, kicked the back of a leg so he'd fall, managed somehow not to get landed-on. And Piccolo was of course about to tell him, again, to run. That he'd try to hold them.

He didn't have the time.

Instinctively, he'd expected Cymbal to dive down and hit him from the side in the fliers-version of a tackle…because Cymbal liked to hit things more than he liked to blast them. But this time, he felt an energy ball land between his shoulders – it sent him face-first for what he was pretty sure was a record distance.

The sand cut. So did the rocks. There was dust in his eyes, it was hard to breathe, and it was just like that time, all those years ago after that tournament, when he'd fallen out of the sky and onto the sand. His eyes opened, and the sand glowed in front of him, just like with moonlight, but this time, he could still get up. Pulled his legs under himself, quickly.

It didn't help. A knee hit his shoulder, then a hand hit the back of his head, and he was being wrenched onto his knees by the arms, which two people were suddenly holding – Piano and Drum, he realized, not that this was surprising.

And he could maybe still get loose. But probably not in time.

"Leave him alone!" he heard, and running feet, and damned if the kid wasn't running at them like he actually intended to do something about it.

He didn't make it to them. Cymbal materialized in front of him. And Gohan bounced off his leg and landed on the ground, actually dazed from how hard he had collided. Cymbal hadn't even moved.

Piccolo ground his teeth together, tried to kick out with his left leg, but he knew he wasn't getting loose that way. He could see the end of the story coming. And he could do nothing to change it.

He remembered, again, the broken shape of Son Goku stretched out in the mud.

Piccolo clenched his eyes against the blinding light he was maybe just imagining in Cymbal's hand. No, no, no, you stupid little monkey, when I say run, this is why you run.

Gohan either didn't hear him or didn't care. He clenched both his fists, and jumped back up to his feet. "I said leave him alone," he yelled almost straight up at Cymbal.

Piccolo didn't want to watch it. But he couldn't help himself, after all.

Cymbal chuckled. "Can't promise that," he said. "But I can do this much for you."

And the light was real, red-tinted and growing around Cymbal's hand. "I can make sure you don't have to see it."

Gohan was mad. Piccolo had never seen the kid outright mad before. And if he had more power, that would be a good thing, but of course he didn't, and…then something else caught Piccolo's attention. On the very outside edge of his brain, there was a tingling, a warning signal, a sure sign that something bad was about to happen.

The sense that he was standing right next to some very high explosives.

Cymbal did not notice. But then, Cymbal was mindblind, and he would not have been able to sense it. The elder demon smirked a little further, pointed his hand at Son Gohan. "Say hi to you dad for me," he said. "We go way back, y'know."

An alarm bell went off in Piccolo's head. He would later not be able to say how the Hell he'd done it, but he pitched his whole body forward suddenly, hard enough to wrench his left arm out of the socket, but also hard enough to get his two brothers to drop him for that very critical hundredth of a second. He hit the dirt, tucked both hands over the back of his head, and clenched his eyes shut.

The world exploded in white and thunder.