.::Author's Note: I would like to take this opportunity to give a brief warning to my readers. The following chapter, as well as several that follow, will contain subjects that may be disturbing to some readers. These include descriptions of violence and gore, war, murder, PTSD, and reference to sensitive historical events. Please be aware of such things going forward and prepare accordingly. I would also like to mention that I am not endorsing any particular view on the historical events described, and that the thoughts and opinions of the characters in this story, whether protagonist or antagonist, are not necessarily ones that I myself share. Please keep this in mind as the story progresses. Thank you.::.


The world in which Yamcha now found himself was far different from the one he'd left when he'd gone to bed with Piccolo the night before. The crack of gunshots and the resounding boom of artillery fire rang in his ears, only barely masking the shouts and screams of men all around him. The terrain all around was dirty and shattered, whole chunks of land exploding all around and staining the sky a dull brown with the dirt in the air. He viewed it all through a pair of round lenses, his breath reflecting back at him hot and humid off the rubbery mask covering his face. A gasmask, perhaps?

"Sch-Scherbakov!"

Hearing the familiar name, Yamcha immediately turned to find where it had come from. Even through the utter chaos of a warzone, he managed to find him immediately. A soldier clad in a khaki brown uniform lay amongst the rubble, a smattering of deep crimson staining his midsection. It was at this moment that Yamcha realized that he had no control of the body he was in. He sprinted from where he was taking cover over to where the fallen soldier lay, ducking as best he could as bullets screamed past his head.

Despite the obvious danger, he seemed to place himself between his fallen comrade and the enemy, his back facing the hail of incoming bullets and shrapnel. He only managed to get a cursory glance over the soldier's wounds before what felt like several white-hot pokers buried themselves into his back. A deep grunt of pain emanated from his throat, but he managed to stay knelt upright, gritting his teeth and bearing the pain as best he could.

"You're hit…" the soldier groaned out, and though it wasn't in a language Yamcha could speak, he could understand it perfectly. He soon recognized it as the same sort of language Piccolo had used at the firework show. It must have been Russian, then.

"Doesn't matter," came a deeper voice from Yamcha's own mouth, speaking the same language. He instantly recognized the voice, which confirmed his suspicions. This was Piccolo. Kami. Ivan. He pulled a strap from across his chest, setting down a canvas bag with a red cross symbol painted on it. He opened it up and pulled out what looked like a huge mass of gauze, pressing it firmly against the soldier's wound and earning him a loud shout of pain.

"Whatever… Just patch me up before you check out…" he replied a little too bitterly for someone speaking to the man trying to save their life. Yamcha got the feeling that these two weren't exactly friends. Still, Ivan didn't bother to reply, instead working to secure his comrade's wounds as best he could out there on the battlefield. Just as he finished tying the gauze pad firmly into place, the soldier's eyes widened, staring off past his shoulder.

"Behind you!" he shouted, but it was too late. Before Ivan could react, a hand grabbed hold of his gasmask, pulling his head back. It all happened so quickly that he hadn't had the time to try to pry the hand loose before he felt a blade slash across his throat. He was then tossed to the ground, left for dead as his assailant presumably moved on to the soldier he'd been treating.

Ivan managed to hold himself up on his hands and knees for a moment, his entire body trembling as he watched a pool of deep purple rapidly pool underneath him as it flowed freely from his neck. His panicked breaths became more strained as what little blood that didn't leak from his slashed throat began to fill his lungs. His vision began to blur and soon he collapsed into darkness.

His hearing was the first to come back to him as he slowly regained consciousness, though the conversation that was happening nearby was heavily muffled at first. Even so, he could tell that it was spoken in a different language to the one Ivan and his comrade were speaking, one Yamcha had never heard before. Soon enough, as his hearing grew sharper, he found that he could miraculously understand this language as well.

"Ah, yes. I have never met a man who would not resort to begging for his life when facing the inevitable. Please, amuse me. What can you offer me that would entice me to let you live?" taunted a man's voice very close to where he lay. He sounded so smug and superior that, despite the clear and present danger, Yamcha really hoped Ivan would get up and punch this guy square in the jaw. Since that didn't happen, he had to settle for listening to the exchange.

"Our medic… Not human… Take him… I live…" This time Yamcha recognized the responding voice as the injured soldier from before. He spoke in the same language as the smug asshole, but it was clearly not one he spoke often. He apparently only knew just enough words to get by, resulting in very broken speech. The other man let out an intrigued hum, and there was a shuffling of feet around him. A moment later, he felt himself being lifted up to his knees. His vision was still cloudy, but he could just make out a man wearing a green uniform and an officer's cap. He then felt his mask being ripped off, resulting in a collective gasp from those holding him.

"Gott im Himmel… What is he?"

"Impossible… I slashed his throat, but it's healed!"

"He was right… The Soviets employ demons now…"

"Enough!" the officer barked out, silencing his men's frantic speculation. He too seemed mesmerized by the creature they had captured, staring at him as though he'd never seen the like of him before – which, to be fair, he surely hadn't.

"Well, well, well… I must say, this certainly is the most unique offering I've ever been presented with. It's certainly worth far more than your life, to be sure," the officer commented, clearly talking to the injured Russian soldier behind him. He pulled a pistol from the holster at his hip and turned back to the soldier just long enough to shoot him in the head. He then holstered the pistol, returning his attention to their captive.

"Now then… Kraus, have a message sent to Herr Mengele. Tell him that I have a one-of-a-kind specimen for him… and that my handling fee has just doubled."

"Yes, sir!"

"Shit, I think it's waking up…"

"Ensure it doesn't. It's a long ride, and I don't want to take any chances with this one."

And with that, the last thing Yamcha remembered was the butt of a rifle slamming into his face.


Yamcha sat bolt upright in bed as he was jolted from his sleep, drawing in a sharp breath. He looked around as though to confirm where he was. Gone was the blood and dirt of the battlefield, as he instead found himself in the dark yet familiar setting of Piccolo's bedroom. He let out a sigh of relief. Just a bad dream, then. Even so, he couldn't help but reach up and touch his neck, relaxing fully when he found no wound.

What the hell was all that? There was no way a dream like that came from his mind. Sure, he'd been determined to help Piccolo recover his memories, but he didn't think he was so obsessed as to literally dream one up. He glanced down next to him, where his Namekian partner lay. He was drenched in a cold sweat, his jaw locked and his brow tensed even in his sleep. It looked like he was having a nightmare.

That must have been it, then. Yamcha knew Namekians were naturally telepathic, so it wasn't too much of a leap to suppose that particularly strong dream could be shared by accident in his sleep. If that was true, then Yamcha couldn't help but wonder how much of that dream had been a memory, and how much was a fabrication of a terrified mind. Either way, he supposed now he knew why Piccolo had been so afraid of the fireworks the night before.


Yamcha never worked up the courage to tell Piccolo about his dream in the weeks that followed. He thought the stoic alien would be angry with him if he knew. It was a senseless fear, of course. The whole thing had been the fault of neither of them; Yamcha hadn't intended on prying, and surely Piccolo hadn't intended to show him such a thing.

Since then, Yamcha noticed that Piccolo had grown more quiet than usual, which for him meant that he was rendered practically mute aside from a few occasional words. Still, to his credit, he didn't try to distance himself and seek isolation, something Yamcha knew was his instinctual reaction to, well… everything. He hardly said anything, but he didn't shy away from physical contact any more than usual. In fact, in the absence of his will to discuss what was plaguing his mind, he seemed to find some comfort in the small gestures of affection Yamcha offered.

Yamcha, for his part, was torn between his desire to know what the hell was going on and every sensible part of his brain screaming at him to be patient. Even he knew you couldn't rush such things, so he tried his damndest to follow his sensible side.

As luck would have it, he would soon have something to sate his curiosity for the time being without having to bother Piccolo about it. It was towards the end of February when he received a text from Dr. Briefs informing him that the research project he'd left him with was finally complete. He'd never gotten dressed so quickly in his life, hardly getting more than two words of explanation out to Puar as he flew out the door. He was at Capsule Corp. in seconds flat, not giving the receptionist time to greet him before he dashed back towards Dr. Briefs' lab. Upon his hurried entrance, the old inventor couldn't help but raise a brow at Yamcha.

"Goodness, if I had known it was this important, I'd have asked them to rush the job," he commented, causing the younger man to blush in mild embarrassment.

"O-oh, no, there's nothing urgent about it. I'm just excited to see what they found, is all," Yamcha explained, giving the scientist a goofy grin that he hoped was disarming. It seemed to do the trick, as Dr. Briefs didn't question the matter further. Instead, he gestured to a file left on the table.

"I must say, I'm surprised at how much they found on this Scherbakov fellow. The Russian government seemed particularly interested in him for some reason."

Yamcha didn't like the sound of that. It meant that the Soviet officials of old either suspected or knew what Piccolo really was. He opened the file – which was a good half an inch thick – and started flipping through the papers. There were two copies of each document; one in its original Russian print, and one that had been handily translated. It all seemed to have been arranged chronologically, and one of the first things he came across was a reprint of an old newspaper article. It seemed to be about a wedding of all things, which greatly confused Yamcha until he began reading. A young woman, the beloved granddaughter of a high-ranking government official, was marrying a man of the poor working class of the time. It went on to celebrate how such a thing was only possible thanks to the advent of Communism; how class no longer mattered and how everyone was equal. It was your typical propaganda piece, even he could tell. The only thing he was unsure of was what this had to do with Piccolo.

Then, he read the bride's maiden name, and it all started to make sense. Her name had been Tatyana Scherbakova. This had to be the sister Piccolo spoke of! He turned to the next page and found that the continuation of the article included a photo of what appeared to be the most prominent members in attendance. The bride and groom were central amongst the group of course, flanked on either side by several other people. Much to his surprise, Yamcha found that he recognized two of the men in the photo. One was a face straight out of history books, his prominent mustache making it hard to mistake him for anyone else. A quick peek at the caption confirmed that he was indeed looking at the face of Joseph Stalin.

Setting that startling realization aside for a moment, he moved on to the other familiar face in the picture. Farthest to the left on the bride's side stood a man who was quite a bit taller than everyone else present, his long blonde hair cascading down over his broad shoulders. He looked terribly uncomfortable, as though he'd never had to pose for a photograph in his life, let alone one to be published in the papers. Yamcha recognized him instantly as the man who'd given him the challenge of his life during his final baseball game. It was Piccolo in his human disguise. It was Ivan Scherbakov.

He skimmed further down in the article to see if Ivan was mentioned at all. Much to his surprise, he was. Stalin – apparently there to facilitate the propaganda story and to reinforce his public image as one of the common people – made mention of the family's only son looking forward to turning eighteen within the next year so he could join the army and serve his patriotic duty to his country by helping to eradicate the "Nazi scum."

Yamcha felt a chill run up his spine upon reading that, recalling the dream he'd had more than a month ago. That man, the officer… He was a Nazi, wasn't he? It hadn't occurred to him before, but now that he thought of it, he felt stupid for having not seen it before. Piccolo would have come of age in 1943, right at the height of World War II. Now, looking back at the wedding photo once more, Yamcha felt he knew why Ivan looked so miserable. He'd essentially just been drafted into one of the bloodiest wars the world had ever seen.

Yamcha set the newspaper article aside, moving on to some of the other papers. The next several documents looked to be military reports, which certainly didn't bode well. Reading through them felt like deja vu. Ivan had served as a field medic for a year before his unit was utterly destroyed near the border of Poland. He'd been the only one spared, but had been captured and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Yamcha's blood seemed to run cold at that. Once again, he thought back to the dream. The Nazi officer had mentioned taking Ivan to someone named Mengele, selling him off as a "specimen." Now that he had the proper context, he knew exactly who that was. They'd taken Ivan to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor made infamous by his horrific medical experiments conducted on the prisoners of Auschwitz.

The reports didn't detail what happened to Ivan during the year he spent at the camp, instead picking up the story at the camp's liberation by the Soviet Army. They'd pulled him from one of the crematorium ovens, burned beyond recognition but miraculously still alive. He was taken to a field hospital, but that's all Yamcha was able to read. The rest of the pages were almost entirely redacted, consisting of nothing but thick black bars of ink over the text. The meaning was obvious: they'd found out what he really was, and he instantly became a state secret.

"Quite the story that fella had. How'd you come to learn of him?"

Yamcha jumped in surprise as Dr. Briefs addressed him suddenly. He'd been so engrossed in what he was reading that he'd completely forgotten he was still in the scientist's lab.

"Uhh… He was an ancestor of a friend of mine. I thought I'd find more about him as a surprise, but after reading it for myself…"

"Ah, yes… I couldn't help but read it myself. Poor lad… I don't think anyone deserved all that."

Yamcha couldn't help but agree, especially since what was readable was likely the tamest of it all. Regardless, he thanked Dr. Briefs for his help and left with the file tucked under his arm.

As he made his way out of the lab, he found himself torn. Should he share what he found with Piccolo" Should he bother trying to keep it from him? Surely it was only a matter of time before he started to remember the war. Hell, there was no reason to believe he hadn't already. It would explain why he'd been especially quiet lately.

Before Yamcha could come to a conclusion, he spotted something that stopped him dead in his tracks. As he passed through the main Capsule Corp. doors, he came face to face with Mr. Popo, his unblinking eyes staring right into him.

"I know what you're doing," the genie announced without prompting. Yamcha wasn't sure what to say to that. Was he in trouble for trying to dig all this up about Piccolo's past? It had been the guardian before Kami that had suppressed the memories in the first place.

"Come with me," Mr. Popo continued before he could come up with some sort of excuse. The guardian's assistant then pulled a small cloth ball from his pocket, tossing it to the ground between the two of them. The ball unfurled before it touched the ground, taking the shape of a flying carpet. Yamcha hesitated, but another glance at Popo's empty eyes told him that he wouldn't be taking "no" for an answer. He reluctantly stepped aboard, and Popo stepped on just after, at which point the skyline of West City disappeared, giving way to empty blue sky.

Yamcha jumped slightly at the sudden change of scene, finding himself in the middle of Kami's Lookout. He looked around, soon catching Dende's gaze. The child guardian looked just as confused as he was, lending support to Yamcha's theory that Mr. Popo was acting on behalf of a former master rather than his current one.

Mr. Popo hopped off the carpet and wordlessly made his way towards the guardian's palace, clearly expecting him to follow. Yamcha stepped off the flying carpet, but hesitated to follow just yet.

"Look, if this is about Piccolo's memories, he started remembering them all on his own! I might have helped some of them come back quicker, but he would have remembered them eventually!"

"I know," Mr. Popo replied in his usual monotonous way, "I knew this would start to happen after Piccolo and Lord Kami reunited, I just didn't know how or when you would come to be involved."

"Wait…" Yamcha began, now jogging to catch up with Popo. "That would mean you knew I would get involved in this. How could you have possibly known something like that?"

"Because you've been involved in this for far longer than you realize."

Yamcha came to a stop upon hearing that, his brows knit in confusion. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He'd only been involved with Piccolo for about four months, and before that they'd hardly ever spoken to one another. How in the hell would he have been a factor in any of this before then?

Mr. Popo's lack of response seemed to suggest that he planned to show him rather than tell him – or at least he hoped that's what would happen. Honestly, any explanation would be greatly appreciated at this point, regardless of the form it came in. Soon enough, the two of them headed into a part of the palace that Yamcha was starting to recognize.

Suddenly, Mr. Popo stopped in front of a certain door. Rather than opening the door to let them pass through, he instead bent down to open a very old looking chest. Peeking inside, Yamcha could just make out some neatly-folded clothes of charcoal grey.

"Put these on and leave everything you have on you in this chest," was the only instruction he was given. Yamcha was as confused as ever, but he knew better than to question Mr. Popo. He knew he wouldn't get any answers anyway.

He retrieved the set of clothes from the chest, finding it to be the same sort of old-style tree piece suit that Piccolo tended to favor. He changed into them, combing his hair neatly back upon being instructed to do so, and put on the pair of glasses he was then handed. Upon looking in a mirror, Yamcha found that he was just a tommy gun away from looking like an actor in an old mob film. Not a bad look for him, actually. He quite liked it.

"If you're ready, come with me," Mr. Popo said as he finally opened the door they'd been standing in front of. The room beyond the threshold was pitch black, a dim spotlight in the center the only source of light. As he walked in, Yamcha took notice of the large pendulum swinging back and forth above his head. He remembered this room well. It was the Pendulum Room, a chamber where one could experience the events of the past. He'd become intimately familiar with the room when he Krillin, Tien, and Chiaotzu were training in preparation for Vegeta and Nappa's attack on Earth. The four of them had been sent back to the Saiyan home planet to fight and train, a truly brutal experience that he didn't have fond memories of.

Mr. Popo didn't seem interested in Yamcha's clear hesitation at the situation, approaching him to hand him a small manila envelope.

"Take this and do not lose it. These documents will get you through the checkpoints."

"Wait, what? What checkpoints?" Yamcha asked in utter confusion, but it was too late to get anything else out of him. Popo was already at the Pendulum Room controls, activating whatever ancient mechanism would send him back through time and space. Before he had time to protest, Yamcha watched as the darkness of the pendulum room melted away, revealing a place entirely different.