Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super, or anything else related to the Dragon Ball universe, or any of its characters. They are all owned by Akira Toriyama.
Piccolo had found nothing during his search.
No saiyans, no giant monsters, no kids, nothing.
It was infuriating.
How could something of that size, and with such a huge power level just disappear?
To top it off, he hadn't seen any evidence of the kid in the area either, despite having sensed him earlier. He would have found the kid's corpse if he was dead, so clearly, he was alive somewhere. But where?
He took another, final, glance around the dark clearing. The sun had set long ago by this point.
He had learned nothing today, about what had happened here. It looked like he was going to have to start again, tomorrow.
He grit his teeth in irritation.
'No.'
He wasn't going to search again, tomorrow.
He had skipped his daily training today, chasing shadows. He couldn't afford to do that again. Not with the incoming threat on the horizon.
He had no intention of spending another day actively searching for that brat, and trying to figure out what had happened, because he needed to get as strong as possible, as fast as possible. He couldn't waste any more time than he already had. So, he would probably just stay in the area for a while, and continue with his training.
If the kid couldn't survive on his own, then he wasn't worth the effort he was putting in to keep him alive, anyway.
Though he would admit, if only to himself, that there would be a noticeable loss in their chances, if the kid did die.
The kid's potential was just that impressive. It was the only reason he had made it so far.
He frowned.
He did need to find the kid again at some point, but he could wait. He'd keep his senses open, and when he sensed the kid's energy again, then he'd know where to look.
Who knows?
Maybe the kid even knew what that thing was.
He'd have to confront him about it.
Gohan's stomach let out another growl.
He was really starting to get desperate.
He hadn't eaten in days, and the last time that he had eaten, it had only been a few berries that he had managed to find out of luck.
There was almost no food in the surrounding area. He had checked everywhere. He had passed by plenty of poisonous plants and other berries that looked edible, but he knew better from his books, and from his dad's lessons.
There was clearly a reason why there weren't many animals around. With so little to eat in the area…
The only one he had seen in the area to this day, had been the tiger he had killed a while back.
He must have gotten incredibly lucky to find even that.
He was still wearing the clothes that he had made from its fur, though they were definitely falling apart now. It was probably only a matter of time now before they started rotting. He hadn't cleaned or tanned them properly after all, due to time constraints.
That, and he had expected to easily be able to find another animal the next day, to make a proper set of leather. A replacement set.
Needless to say, he didn't.
He was really starting to get worried.
He felt another sharp stab of pain in his stomach that forced him to hunch over, and slow down to a walk.
He had never been this hungry before.
It was the only thing that he could even think about anymore.
Food.
He needed it now.
He had to keep going though.
Thankfully, after another moment, the sharp pain faded.
At least the pain only came in waves.
He straightened, and picked up his pace again.
He had to be getting close by now.
He jumped over the bush in his path and continued his silent run through the trees.
He had picked up some animal tracks a few hours ago, and was currently following them. Or attempting to anyways.
But he couldn't let himself make any noise. Just in case he was close enough to be heard by whatever he was tracking. He couldn't risk scaring them off. Even if his stealthy movement cost him significant amounts of his already dwindling energy.
Air walking was a massive Ki drainer after all.
He really needed this to pay off. If this was another dead end, he didn't know what he would do.
What could he do?
What if there was nothing over here?
He had only been able to obtain a general direction from the tracks earlier, and he hadn't seen any more, since. Maybe he had gone too far somehow, and passed them, or maybe he misread the tracks.
He was certainly no tracker, so it was possible.
He shook his head to try and clear his thoughts.
They were clouded, and it was getting difficult to concentrate.
He was beginning to get light-headed.
Maybe he was making a mistake by running.
Should he walk instead?
He was getting tired.
So tired…
'No. I have to keep going. I have to catch up, it's the only way.'
He couldn't risk whatever he was chasing, getting away.
There were dense trees and bushes on both sides of him. It looked like he was running through a hallway, from his perspective.
It had been like that for quite a while now. Everything looked the same as it had, thirty minutes ago. He probably wouldn't be able to find his way back to the bed that he had made, as a result. Not that that was a big loss. He didn't have anything of value back there. He'd just make another fire pit, and another bed, when he found a suitable place to stay.
And some food.
He took a quick glance up at the position of the sun. It was past noon now.
His stomach let out another growl.
He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.
His eyes were drooping, by the time he made it out of the forest.
He had been running non-stop for almost the whole day now.
He was pretty sure that he would drop out of exhaustion, the moment he stopped moving.
He had been keeping an eye out on his surroundings, as he had been travelling, for any sign of berries or nuts, but he hadn't found anything.
There was no food in the whole forest. It was such a huge contrast to the forest that he had lived and trained in, before.
Before it was destroyed by something.
That forest had had more food than he knew what to do with. There was just so much. Especially in that one clearing of fruit trees, and berry bushes.
Every time he had ever been hungry back then, he'd just go to his favorite clearing. Or to the river to fish.
His mouth watered just thinking about it.
But there was nothing like that anywhere in this new forest.
He hadn't ever realized how lucky he had been, before.
Running out of food hadn't even crossed his mind back then. Not before the last few days anyway.
The possibility was so real now.
He spared another glance up at the sun. It was at least two o'clock in the afternoon now.
He slowed to a walk, and made his way out of the treeline.
Was he going to starve?
He froze, once he took a few steps into the wide open clearing in front of him.
There was a lake.
And there were deer. Lots of deer.
He counted almost twenty.
Those animal tracks he had found were from a herd of deer passing through, apparently.
Why hadn't he seen any more tracks on his way, then?
What were the deer eating?
Not that any of that mattered now. He was already running towards them.
His exhaustion had completely vanished in an instant, upon spotting them.
He didn't care about why they were there, or about the fact that they were just grazing. It didn't matter to him what they were doing.
They were his dinner.
They were all his dinner.
He hadn't let a single one of them leave the clearing alive. He was faster than they were, especially now that he was desperate.
It had been surprisingly easy. It hadn't taken more than a few minutes. The body truly did incredible things when it needed food.
It was mostly a blur to him, thinking back on it. He hadn't even thought to make a knife for himself until after he had ripped apart the first deer, cooked it, and ate it, all with his bare hands.
Now there he sat, in the middle of a now devoid of life clearing, with seventeen dead deer, and the bloody remains of an eighteenth, surrounding him, trying to figure out what just happened.
He looked down at his hands.
He was absolutely soaked in blood.
Not his, of course.
His clothes were definitely ruined now. Not that they weren't ruined before…
He glanced at the fire he had made, and the makeshift spit he had made out of a tree branch.
He was still pretty hungry.
He glanced around the clearing.
He needed another one.
He stood up, and started walking towards the closest deer.
Once he was full, he was going to make a knife to make things a bit easier.
Nothing else mattered until then.
He let out a belch as he finished his third full deer.
He was full now.
He had no idea how he was able to eat so much. He had eaten essentially, three times his own body weight in deer meat. The volume of his meal, far exceeded the volume of his own stomach.
Yet he didn't feel much heavier.
It didn't make a whole lot of sense.
There must be some insanely effective metabolic process in all saiyans, in order to allow them to eat so much at once with so little negative side effects.
But even that wouldn't fully explain it.
His dad came to mind especially here. He could eat for hours at a time, and then get right back up and train.
After eating like that, any saiyan should be too heavy to move, let alone fight.
Saiyan eating habits seemed to violate everything he knew about conservation of mass. But, since it was pretty much impossible to violate such a fundamental property of the universe, where did it all go?
There had to be some sort of biological mechanism to explain what happened, right?
How could the mass from the food he just ate, just disappear?
Did it all get converted into Ki somehow?
And if it had been converted, then where was all of this Ki, stored?
Did he have some sort of Ki organ that stored his energy somehow? The same way his stomach stored food?
Why had he never asked himself these questions before?
He had never eaten so much at one time himself, but he had seen his dad do all kinds of seemingly impossible things in the past. Why had he never questioned any of it?
Nobody, no matter how great or powerful they were, could violate the laws of physics. They were constant and never changed under any circumstance. Any apparent violation that has ever occurred in the past, has always been able to be explained. Sometimes with a new scientific theory, others, with clever uses of familiar ones.
If a scientific theory is violated in any way that creates a contradiction, then it is wrong, and a new one needs to take its place. Or at the very least, it must be modified to account for the contradiction. A single piece of irrefutable evidence is enough to topple entire theories, and shake the foundations of human understanding, to the core.
Especially if a theory as fundamental to science, as the conservation of mass, was violated.
But the laws of the universe themselves, never changed. Only the theories that try and make sense of those laws, did.
Not even his dad was exempt from them.
He may be capable of incredible things, some of which probably can't be explained yet, with the current body of scientific knowledge on Earth, but that doesn't mean there are no physical laws in place that govern the things that he can do. It only means that humans haven't observed those laws in action yet, or studied them in detail.
He looked down at his stomach.
It seemed as if he had just violated the law of conservation of mass, himself. If he actually had, then he had just inadvertently dealt a crippling blow to science. It would mean that every experiment ever done to confirm that the theory was true, was at best, not showing the whole picture, and at worst, totally wrong.
Pretty much every scientific experiment ever done, depended on this theory being accurate.
He was currently suggesting that all of it could be wrong.
It was a bit disconcerting.
The odds of that happening were just so small though. Small enough to realistically be called, impossible. Science was just too effective of a system to discount its findings all at once like that.
It was far more likely that this 'violation', wasn't a violation at all, and that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation behind it.
So what was going on here?
'I refuse to believe that the fundamental principles of physics, can be cast aside by observing my dad, eating dinner.'
Maybe saiyans just had a metabolism that fast and effective.
But then wouldn't that generate a lot of heat?
That, and he himself didn't always have to eat so much. In fact, most of the time, even after training, he could get by with just an average amount of food. The amount he would expect given a kid his age, training.
Nothing even close to the amount he just ate.
Whatever the explanation was, it was far more likely that the theory of conservation of mass, remained intact, and that the saiyan metabolism just had a clever way of appearing to violate it, than it was for the mass of the food to just magically disappear.
Once again, it all came down to the fact that he simply didn't have the answer yet.
Maybe there were no current theories in all of science to explain it yet. Or maybe he just couldn't think of one that did.
But an explanation must exist.
There was no such thing as an event without an explanation behind it. Even if we didn't have the tools or knowledge to ascertain precisely what that explanation was, currently, an explanation still existed.
It was yet another question that would probably plague his thoughts for the foreseeable future.
Great. Those were really starting to annoy him.
But it looked like he was just going to have to deal with it.
Grudgingly, he added it to his already lengthy, mental list of unexplained events that he had witnessed.
He looked up at the sky, and let out a sigh. It didn't really matter now. He'd think on it later, when he didn't have work to do.
He was definitely satisfied now. He wasn't hungry anymore, and he was full of energy. That's all that mattered now.
He had thought about what he needed to do now, while he was eating, and he more or less had a plan of action.
He still had a few hours of daylight, and he had a lot of leftover meat. Meat that would quickly go to waste if it wasn't used.
Now, there was a reason why he had killed all of the deer, rather than only what he needed. He wasn't sure when he would eat again, so he had to be sure that he would have a stockpile of food, just in case.
He never wanted to run into a situation like this again.
Now he just had to make sure all this leftover food was preserved properly, so that it didn't go bad.
He needed to dry it out, and preserve it.
To do that, he was going to make deer jerky.
At least, that was the plan.
Once again, he sent a silent thank you to his mom for forcing him to study practically every subject imaginable. Including wilderness survival, and luckily enough, the anatomy of various animals. Deer included. He would have probably starved if she hadn't forced him to do so.
He used to think that those subjects were useless and unneeded.
He didn't hold that opinion anymore, needless to say.
Before he could do anything with his deer meat, he needed a knife so that he could butcher it properly. He could probably use his hands again, just like he had on the previous deer he had eaten, now that he thought about it, but a knife would make things cleaner. Easier.
For that, he would need to find a rock of some sort, and sharpen it.
He glanced around the clearing, and eventually towards the lake. There were plenty of rocks around it.
He could probably make due with a sea shell of some kind too. It just needed to be sharp, and durable.
Jerky would solve his food problem for the foreseeable future, since it was easy to make, and lasted a while.
He just had to make a smoking rack near his fire pit, and hang the deer strips. They would dry out slowly over time, and the smoke would keep any bugs away. He just had to make sure the meat was far enough away from the flames so that it wasn't cooking. That wasn't his goal. It would just spoil quicker that way.
Jerky, when prepared properly could last months. Years in some cases.
That longevity was exactly what he needed. And cooking the meat wasn't the way to achieve it.
Jerky wasn't all that these deer were good for though. All of these deer could also solve his clothing problem.
He would tan the hides, properly this time, and stitch them together with sinew.
He'd get the sinew by cutting the tendons out of every deer leg, drying them out, and pounding them into usable threads with a rounded stone. Then he'd just have to tie them together. Simple, but time consuming.
He'd use the legs for tendons, since there was almost no usable meat in them. He could probably get some tendons out of the backs as well if he was careful about it.
He'd then start tanning the hides by scraping all the fat off of them, cleaning them in the lake, and drying them off on a stretching rack of some sort. He'd have to build that first, then he'd leave the hides to dry for a few hours. Ideally, it would be a few days, but he was on a time constraint.
A more flexible time restraint than last time, but a time constraint nonetheless. He still had to use the deer brains to oil the hides before they started decomposing from being left too long, after all. The deer were dead, which meant bacteria were already in the process of breaking them down. There were also, likely, plenty of predators in the region that would be attracted to the fresh scent of blood in the area. He had to finish up, before they got here.
He'd need to make a bowl for the brain mixture, probably out of stone. He was strong enough now to carve something like that with his Ki as long as he was careful…
Then he'd just have to boil each brain in some water, and scrub the hides down.
An animal's brain was usually enough to tan its own hide. A convenient fact that he was more than willing to exploit.
Then he'd leave the hides soaking overnight, before starting the real work on them, tomorrow.
More stretching and beating the hides to soften them, and then finally, smoking them.
If everything went well, he could start making decent quality clothes tomorrow afternoon.
And he would have a lot of jerky ready by tonight.
He finally stood up, and took another glance around the clearing.
He needed to get to work.
He wanted all of the jerky finished, and all of the deer hides fully cleaned, and scrubbed with brains by the time he went to bed.
That meant he had to do a lot of wood collecting, and construction, in the meantime. He had to build countless drying racks, and jerky racks. He also had to figure out a way to store everything safely so that he wouldn't lose all of his meat to some passing animal in the middle of the night.
He let out a sigh.
Just surviving was so much work.
It was times like this that made him wish that he knew how to make things, seemingly out of thin air like Piccolo could. He didn't even want to get into how that process worked…
He took a deep breath, and let it out, to prepare himself for the several hours of work ahead of him. Then he started making his way to the rocks surrounding the lake.
He needed to make a knife, and a few other tools first.
He'd find what he'd need in those rocks…
'That's the last of it,' he thought to himself, after dropping the last arm-full of scrap meat into the hole in front of him.
He was finally done.
It had taken even more work than he had originally expected.
He had been working hours into the night.
He had to build twenty jerky racks to hold all the meat. They were more like jerky walls actually.
They were essentially large branches tied together, with smaller sticks protruding outwards that stabbed into the meat, and let huge amounts of it hang, close to the fire.
One of the fires.
He had to build five fire pits exclusively for smoking the deer strips.
He had so much food now though, so it was worth it.
It had all finished drying out a few hours ago, and he was now storing it all in temporary, makeshift bags made out of large leaves that he found in the area.
There were a lot of bags.
Making the stretching racks had been relatively simple as well. The hardest part had been finding all of the materials. They were made mostly out of branches.
Four large pieces of wood, made up a rectangular frame. He had made extra cordage out of tree roots, and various other plants that he had scavenged, which was used to tie the frame together, and hold the hide in place, under tension. He then had to poke small holes in the hides for the cordage to be threaded through.
Then he planted the rack into the ground on a stick.
He had eighteen of them in the area, each of which had been holding a fully fleshed, and cleaned deer hide. A lot of them he had screwed up on, so they had some holes, but he could still use them.
He had taken them down only about an hour ago so that he could de-hair, and brain them, to prepare for his work tomorrow.
The rest of his time had been spent making cordage, tools, and making a natural glue stick using a recipe his dad had shown him involving tree sap, animal hair, and a few other improvised ingredients that he had found in the area.
It looked like a clump of yellow, hardened glass on the end of a large stick.
He was going to be needing a lot of it tomorrow. It worked as a sealant, so he was going to be using it liberally, as waterproofing for all of his new clothes, and for the sinew he had made earlier that would be used as stitching for said clothes.
He had made another bed, and a lean-to shelter out of sticks and leaves. Right next to a sixth fire pit.
The only problem that he had now, was the fact that he had no way of stopping any animals from getting into his food.
The only thing he could really think of to help, was to dig a hole for all of his deer scraps at the edge of the clearing, and fill it. Something he had just finished doing.
That way, if any animal came, they would be attracted to the hole in the ground first, before his deer hides, and meat. Hopefully.
And, depending on what animals showed up, he'd get more food potentially. He was strong enough to take out a bear, or even a pack of coyotes, or tigers, if he had to, with minimal effort.
Then he could make even more animal jerky.
He just had to hope that if any animal did show up, they didn't go for his hides.
That would be annoying.
Tonight, he was at his most vulnerable after all. He couldn't do much in terms of storage, or protection, until the hides finished soaking.
Once he had all of his clothes and tools made, he wouldn't have to worry about leaving things out in the open anymore. It was why he had elected to work on everything at once. Everything would eventually be stored in deerskin bags that he would carry around with him everywhere he went.
It was much easier to protect his things that way.
But until then, he had to defend the clearing from any would be predators.
At least until tomorrow anyways.
He turned around, and started walking back into the clearing, towards his shelter.
He had extinguished his fire pits near the center of the clearing that had been used for jerky, and moved his jerky racks towards the edge of the clearing next to his shelter. They were reusable after all.
So were his stretching racks.
At the edge of the clearing, in the treeline, was his shelter, bed, and fire pit. The fire was lit, and surrounding it, were all of his racks and tools, stored and ready to use tomorrow, the rocks with all of his hides soaking on them, and bag after bag of deer jerky.
He kept all of it as close as possible to his shelter so that it was easier to defend.
He sat down on his bed, and looked into the fire a few feet away.
Above his head was a slanted roof made out of sticks and leaves. It wasn't waterproof, but it would keep some extra heat in.
His animal scraps were on the other side of the clearing.
He finished all of the work that he could do for the day. He was ready for bed.
He let out a yawn.
He had kept his air walking technique up throughout the whole day. He could feel the strain still, even after deactivating it, but he was getting close to mastering it. The strain wasn't anywhere near as bad as it had been when he had first started out with it. And he had definitely decreased the amount of energy that he wasted with it significantly. He had reduced the wind that used to be generated every time he used the technique, to near unnoticeable levels, too.
He wasn't sure when it happened exactly, but sometime after he had woken up in the destroyed clearing several days ago, his technique had become significantly easier to perform. It was like something had just clicked in his brain.
It was exactly what he had been hoping for, and was a huge step forward.
So much so, in fact, that he was going to need to come up with a new training plan again, soon. He had almost completed his current one.
He had a decent level of strength, and was approaching total silence. He needed to work on his flexibility still, and he needed to start learning how to make larger Ki blasts. He needed to keep working on control, too. Basic efficient movement was already pretty much ingrained into his muscle memory, but he still made occasional mistakes. Air walking had to be totally ingrained yet, too.
He wanted it all to be second nature. He didn't want to have to think about his moves, at all.
A lot of that would hopefully come after more time training though.
Hopefully, after tomorrow, if everything worked out the way he hoped it would anyways, he might be able to get back on track with it all, again.
He just needed to think up a new training plan before then.
A/N: Please excuse any grammar and spelling errors, as I have no beta reader at this time.
- LeviTamm