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.

He was doing it.

He was so close to the top.

Despite there being no usable handholds on the wall anymore, he had still managed to find a way to continue his ascent.

By crawling. Well… sort of.

He had finally succeeded in climbing over that ridiculously difficult overhang that had caused him to fall, and almost die previously, through the use of his brand-new, sort-of-technique.

Now, he was dealing with the sheer, vertical cliff face that had loomed above it. The place that he hadn't been able to reach on his previous attempt.

It was the final stretch of his climb. The section that he hadn't been able to even get to, due to the fact that he had limited himself to the idea that he had to climb, solely through the use of his arm and leg muscles.

Which was impossible as far as he could tell, since everything was totally flat now. There wasn't anything to grab onto anymore, and there hadn't been for a while.

The distribution of handholds decreased from a few here and there, to zero, beyond the overhang. It had already been low before, but now… it was honestly getting ridiculous.

It was like trying to scale a sheet of glass.

If he hadn't come up with his new Ki solidification technique, that he had yet to name properly, exactly when he did, there was no way he would have made it this far.

He was really beginning to regret his decision on coming to this particular mountain to make his escape.

Thankfully however, there were only a few more meters of rock left, before he reached the top of the mountain.

His new idea was definitely one of his better ones. He could already tell. But he would have rather come up with it under different circumstances.

Extending his legs, he scooted himself upwards, another few feet.

Glancing down once again, he confirmed that the dinosaurs were still there, way down at the base of the mountain.

They were still waiting, hoping, for him to fall again.

It was a level of determination that was unsettling.

Why wouldn't they just leave already? It should be obvious to them by now that he wasn't going to be their dinner.

He dropped his control over his Ki on his left leg.

He allowed it to dangle free from the wall for a moment, before he once again repeated the maneuver that he had been using to slowly ascend the wall.

Dragging it back, towards his chest and bending his knee, he planted it in a new, higher location, and stuck it to the wall once again.

Repeating the process with his right leg, he found himself crab-walking, backwards, up the wall.

His hands, feet, and legs were all firmly stuck to the wall to hold up his weight. When he wanted to ascend, he would unstick the limb he wanted to move, move it to its new location, and then stick it back to the wall again.

When he wasn't moving, he was seated on the wall facing the ground, where his goal, the summit, was behind him.

It was a strange orientation to get used to, but it had been the easiest way he had managed to find that had allowed him to climb this type of wall. He would probably find a better way to climb vertical surfaces in the future, but he was still having a pretty difficult time just keeping himself on the wall.

He was using his Ki in a different manner than he was used to, so he had to concentrate a good amount. Anything that made things a little easier was welcome at this point. And backwards crab walking, happened to do just that.

It was a good thing he had emphasized Ki control over raw strength during his training.

That decision had saved his life, without a doubt.

Stopping his ascent momentarily, he took in the sights while letting his muscles recover.

His current position, offered a pretty nice view of the area, T-Rex aside. Comparable even, to that of Mount Paozu, his home.

The mountain he was currently climbing, hardly qualified, in his opinion, as an actual mountain. It was only a few hundred meters tall if that, and there were a multitude of others just like it in the area. Evenly spaced apart from each other, and separated by plains.

The mountains were shaped more like giant pillars. Massively thick cylinders of rock with flat tops.

There was nothing notable about them really, at least at first glance. The only reason he had decided to climb one was for a safe spot to rest, and the flat tops of the pillars had looked enticing.

He was tired, sore, bleeding, his head hurt, and he was being chased by dinosaurs.

Some rest was really starting to sound like a good idea.

He also needed to re-think his training, yet again.

Even though his previous Ki manipulation and air-walking training had proven to be invaluable, and had saved his life just minutes ago, he had realized that there was a problem with the way he was doing it.

He was getting too good at using his feet as outputs for his energy.

He was unbalanced. He could pump out energy with almost instinctual ease, out of his feet, but he had a hard time doing even basic Ki manipulation with his hands.

This mismatch was being highlighted in his current situation. He could stick his legs to the wall with ease, but his hands felt… unstable almost. Like they might slip off the wall at any moment.

It was the main reason why he was crab walking instead of climbing up the wall like an insect would. Or a gecko, even. Sitting down on the wall maximized the surface area of contact between his legs and the wall, and allowed him to relieve a lot of the weight from his hands.

He had to work on that imbalance in the future.

That, and his previous model of explaining how Ki worked, was wrong. He needed some time to think over any possible implications.

He had so much to do.

But first…

He took another step, then scooted backwards. He took another, then another…

Then he reached the top.

Turning around while still sticking to the wall, he grabbed the top ledge of the mountain, and pulled himself up.

Levering himself over the side, he flopped onto his back, struggling to catch his breath.

It had been a while since he had been this tired. Not since he had first started practicing his air walking, at least.

And this was definitely the first time that he had ever been in this much pain.

It was a totally new experience.

His previously brown, deerskin clothes were now stained red, and he was soaked in both blood and sweat.

At least, it certainly felt like he was soaked.

Clearing his mind, he took a few moments to just listen to his breathing as it slowly quieted down.

He really just wanted to go to sleep. It didn't matter that the sun was still high up in the sky. He wanted to go to sleep.

So he closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the fact that some light still managed to get through his eyelids.

That was when he heard it.

A weird, high-pitched… chirping?

It was close too.

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes again and took a glance to his side, the direction where the noise was coming from.

A giant pile of… tree branches?

It had taken a moment to figure out what he had been looking at, but there was definitely a pile of branches up here.

And that wasn't all, either.

Was the sound coming from inside the pile somehow? That didn't make any sense.

Also, there was a black blob on the ground. A shadow?

But there was nothing up here.

That was when he looked up.

Straight into a pair of giant, yellow eyes.

Oh.

It had clicked right then.

How had he managed to miss that?

He had crawled into a nest.

One built by a very large bird that he couldn't identify the species of.

There was an ear splitting shriek, loud enough to cause a gust of wind that blew his hair backwards, and forced him to close his eyes.

Opening his eyes, he watched with an almost… detached curiosity as the giant bird's wing flashed towards him.

His muscles were sore. He had already started relaxing too… after a hard workout. His muscles had already started loosening up.

He really wanted to make an effort to move them, but he was just too tired, and he had been caught totally off-guard

He knew that the moment he tried to move his muscles, they would hurt again. It was just what happened when he tried to stretch out cooling off, sore muscles.

He was in a battle of will power. His brain told him to move, but his body didn't want to respond.

His body won, opting to take another brief moment of relaxation before impact.

His brain had given up after realizing that even if he had tried to move, there was no way he would have been fast enough to get out of the way.

He called on as much of his power as possible for protection, and flooded his whole body with it.

It was all he could do.

He felt the abrupt shift in air pressure on his face as the strike inched closer to his face.

This was going to hurt.

A moment later, he lost all feeling in his entire body, and felt himself leave the ground entirely.

His eyes were forced shut once again.

Contrary to what he had originally thought, the strike hadn't hurt that much initially. He had lost control of his Ki, and accelerated from rest, to super-speed in an instant.

He had felt the acceleration certainly, but not the pain.

It was like being hit by a bus.

He could feel all of the organs and muscles in his body shift at the sudden change in speed. It was uncomfortable, but not painful. At least, not yet.

The bird, whatever it was, was a non-sentient type, and couldn't speak, or understand speech. Meaning, it acted on instinct instead of reason.

Just his luck.

Even though most currently known species had individuals in it that could rival the intelligence of humans, for some reason that science hadn't been able to explain yet, other individuals had no such intelligence, despite being genetically similar.

If he had run into a bird of that species that was smart enough to converse with, he could have reasoned with it instead of just being batted away in an instant, with no warning.

He would have left the mountaintop too, if he had been asked.

But he clearly had no luck at all today.

It must have thought that he had been trying to harm its obviously new-born chicks, and lashed out defensively.

The newborns had been the source of the original chirping sound.

Opening his eyes, he quickly noticed that he had been blown clean off, and away from the mountain.

He was in free-fall… again.

Quickly, he started shifting his arms and legs to try and orient himself. He definitely wanted to land feet first.

Concentrating on his feet he started drawing on his Ki. He was going to need a lot of it to survive a landing from that height.

He was pretty sure he had enough to survive at least. It was his physical muscles that were severely weakened, not his energy reserves.

He started flooding his feet with his power, then glanced down…

Snap!

He felt it, more than he heard it. Something breaking in his right leg after abruptly hitting something, hard.

Had he misjudged the ground's position? It had been way closer than he had thought.

Why?

Or rather, how?

He caught a flash of green from the ground. An unusual color of green. It wasn't grass.

What did he hit?

Instinctively, his arms flew up, in an attempt to protect his face.

He definitely would have face planted if he hadn't.

His body continued forward, after his feet made contact.

He felt his arms slam into what he now knew, wasn't the ground. It couldn't have been. And it took everything he had to protect his head from hitting it.

Immediately, he began rolling uncontrollably down a slope, before …falling once again?

A moment later he slammed into something else. It was a lot harder than the previous impact, and it knocked all the air out of him.

He had landed on his back, spread-eagled, facing the sky.

He could hear the sounds of various pebbles and pieces of rubble hitting the ground around him as everything seemed to come to a halt.

Then the sounds of nature filled the area once again.

…

Was he still alive?

He started gasping for air.

In, and out.

He was still breathing.

And there was no pain. At all.

That was an even worse impact than he had had when he fell off the mountain the first time, plus he was already in a lot of pain before he had been hit by that bird. Something was wrong. Had the adrenaline not worn off yet?

Where was the pain?

He shifted a little.

…

Ah, there it was.

It had started out as a weak ache in the background, before suddenly ramping up in intensity.

It was bad.

So bad that he could feel tears.

It felt like he had just been thrown through a meat grinder, then beaten up with a hammer.

The only reason he wasn't screaming outright, was because it would hurt too much to do so.

All of the muscles in his body felt like they had an electric current running through them. They were contracted, and it was difficult to move.

Heat.

That was probably the worst of all.

It felt like he was on fire.

Was this what his dad had felt like back then?

His mind conjured up the image of his uncle standing over his dad, laughing maniacally.

A part of his mind had always been morbidly curious as to what something like what his dad had gone through, felt like, even though he certainly wouldn't want to test it out himself. He knew that it had to have been bad for his dad of all people to be essentially powerless because of the pain, but now he knew.

And to be honest, when compared to the pain he was feeling now, his dad had probably had it worse.

He couldn't even begin to imagine trying to stand up right now.

It hurt to breathe.

At the moment, he almost wished that that impact had killed him. Just to spare him from… this.

This pain was beyond brutal.

He had no words…

It was beyond his understanding.

He was almost positive that he was going to die in a few moments. With this much pain, there's no way that he wouldn't.

The image of his uncle appeared in his mind once again.

It was a welcome distraction… but it caused him to pause.

Huh.

He had killed him.

He himself had actually killed someone.

That hadn't really crossed his mind until now.

The memories of those moments were pretty fragmented so he couldn't remember himself actually doing it… but, he had.

That made him a murderer technically…. right?

Why hadn't that crossed his mind until now?

Was it because he was dying?

Now that he thought about it… that had really been the only thing he had done with his life until now.

The only significant thing he had done in his life, had been killing his uncle.

Why hadn't he noticed that until now?

When he thought about it, it was logically the best decision at the time. Even if he hadn't been thinking very logically at the time…

People like that, like the saiyans… they had to be removed, right? It was the only way to make sure they wouldn't threaten anyone again.

At least, it made sense to him.

But, his dad had always told him otherwise. That it was wrong to kill. That he would regret it, and remember it, for the rest of his life, if he did.

It was supposed to be hard.

It was supposed to weigh on his conscience.

So why didn't it?

Was it because he didn't remember it clearly?

No… well maybe.

But maybe the reason why he hadn't thought about it until now…

It was because, for some reason… he didn't care.

He wasn't sorry about it, and he would do it again in the same situation.

He had expected it to hurt more though. Like what his dad had said.

'I guess I finally have an answer for whether or not I would have had it in me to kill the other saiyans when they got here.'

He would have.

Absolutely.

Was there something wrong with him for thinking like that?

He started feeling the ground around him shake.

It quickly got more intense.

Tilting his head ninety degrees, he managed to take a glance behind him, in the direction of the sound.

Eight charging dinosaurs greeted his gaze.

With oddly, green colored skin, different from the shade of grass…

He had hit a dinosaur on his way down.

That was what caused him to screw up his landing.

He had forgotten about them.

The one in the lead had its mouth open, and was already scooping up the ground mere feet behind him.

The shadow left behind by its open jaws was already engulfing him, offering him a clear view of the razor-sharp teeth that were moments away from tearing him apart, and the black abyss just beyond them.

It left him a final moment of contemplation.

He really wished that the fall had killed him.

At least that would have been quick.

The pain left behind from surviving the impact had been bad. Worse than anything he had ever felt before, in fact.

But being torn apart?

That could only be described as the pinnacle of brutality.

He couldn't think of a worse way to die, than that.

And that thought terrified him.

As the jaws enclosed around him, he realized that being helpless really wasn't his worst fear, as he had thought previously.

He knew that he was afraid of causing the deaths of others more than dying himself, but when it came down to it, there was something that he feared even more.

As things currently stood, he was more afraid of pain.

He was still a coward.

He hadn't changed.

He had always wanted everyone else to save him in the past, because he didn't want to fight himself.

His dad… Piccolo…

He was scared.

He wanted the saiyans dead so that he would never have to face them again… because he was scared.

He wanted to die quickly so that he wouldn't feel the pain of a death that was drawn out.

Because he was scared.

Now he understood.

At the core of his character, there was nothing but fear. Fear of failing others, fear of pain, fear of death, even fear of fear itself.

Despite all of his attempts to assure himself that it wasn't true, in the past, he was only deceiving himself.

He wasn't his father. He wasn't brave, or strong.

He was Gohan the coward.

And he absolutely hated that.

A/N: Please excuse any grammar and spelling errors, as I have no beta reader at this time.

- LeviTamm