Yamcha let out a big yawn as he stretched out in bed, scratching at his messy mop of hair. He turned over to lay on his other side, reaching out blindly to try to wrap his arm around his husband's torso, but his hand touched nothing but bare cold sheets. He finally opened his eyes to see where Piccolo might have gone to only to be half blinded by the sunlight streaming in through the window. Well, that would explain why Piccolo wasn't there. The Namekian warrior almost never slept in past sunrise, and from the look of things it seemed to be getting on towards noon. He supposed it was too late to go back to sleep, then.
Yamcha crawled out of bed and slipped on a pair of pants, merely running his fingers through his wild hair to get the larger tangles out, but doing little more than that. Today felt like a lazy sort of day, and he was sort of hoping he could get away with not getting fully dressed. He wandered out into the hall, turning towards Yuri's room to check if the four-year-old was awake yet. Before he had a chance to even grab the doorknob, he overheard talking from inside.
"Okay, Mr. Vlad, it's your turn to pick a card, and I'll try guessing it this time!"
Yamcha couldn't help but furrow his brow at that. Who the hell was Yuri talking to? He couldn't sense anyone but his son in the room… Still, he was concerned enough to go barging into the boy's room. Yuri jumped in surprise at the sudden intrusion, but merely turned his head to stare up at his father. He shot him a grin, not attempting in the slightest to hide what he was doing, so he was clearly not doing anything he thought was wrong. He merely sat neatly on the floor, a deck of playing cards in his hand. Just as the former bandit sensed earlier, no one else was there.
"Oh, hi Daddy! You slept a lot today. Papa's already outside training," he stated casually, the smile never leaving his face.
"Oh, uhhh… Right…" Yamcha replied, still extremely confused. "Hey, I heard you talking in here a second ago. Who were you talking to?"
"Oh, I was just talking to Mr. Vlad! He's my friend! Mr, Vlad, say hi to my Da—" Yuri suddenly cut off as he turned back to where he was looking before, his brows furrowed in confusion at the sudden emptiness in front of him. Yamcha looked in the direction he was staring, but all he saw was a big crow sitting on the railing just outside the window.
"Uhh… Is Mr. Vlad a bird?" Yamcha asked hopefully, but Yuri shook his head.
"Awww, he disappeared again…" he whined, his shoulders wilting in disappointment. "He always does that whenever someone else is around… He's really shy."
Suddenly, it started to dawn on Yamcha what was going on here, and he couldn't stop a small smile from spreading across his lips. Aww, how cute. Yuri had an imaginary friend. At least, that seemed to be the only reasonable explanation. After all, what else couldn't be sensed and magically disappeared around anyone but the child it played with?
"Oh, that's okay. Maybe he'll come back if I left again. Tell him I'm sorry for scaring him off, okay?" Yamcha said with a smile, ruffling Yuri's hair playfully. The boy let out a small giggle, but nodded his head.
"'Kay!"
And with that, Yamcha left Yuri to play with his 'friend.' After all, he didn't see any harm in letting the child have his fun. He was still pretty young, and small children made up imaginary friends all the time. Now that he'd gotten himself riled up, though, it was clear he wouldn't be able to settle for his lazy day as he'd originally planned. Instead, he returned to his room to put on his gi, planning instead to join his husband outside to share in his training.
"Good morning. So glad that you decided to join us here in the waking world," Piccolo greeted as Yamcha made his way across the lawn towards him, the Namekian never having to turn around or even lift his head from where he was quietly meditating. Yamcha had long since grown accustomed to him always knowing when he was approaching, no matter how silently he did so. He merely let out a chuckle, scratching at the back of his head.
"Yeah, sorry about that. Looks like I really conked out, huh?" he replied with a lopsided grin. "By the way, I don't suppose you've 'met' Yuri's imaginary friend? Or am I late to this party or something?"
"Imaginary friend?" Piccolo repeated, finally standing up from where he sat floating above the grass. "No, I haven't heard anything about it, though I suppose it would make sense. He only ever gets to see his friends on the weekends, so it's only natural that he'd imagine having someone to play with during the times he has no one his own age around. He'll grow out of it eventually, I'm sure."
Whatever small reservations Yamcha had left about the whole thing seemed to dissolve upon hearing that. That seemed like an extremely logical explanation, and if Piccolo wasn't bothered by it, then he supposed he was okay with it as well.
"Alright, well if you happen to hear him talking to a 'Mr. Vlad,' that'll be it."
"Mr. Vlad, you said? Strange… I wonder where he came up with a name like that…"
"It's an old Russian name, right? I figured he might have picked it from something you could have said…" Yamcha replied, already starting to grow slightly uneasy about it again. Piccolo shook his head, which only deepened his unease.
"I never knew anyone by the name of Vladimir, which is what Vlad is short for. It was a common enough name back then, but I wouldn't have any reason to mention it now."
"Well…" Yamcha began, now searching his mind desperately for some reasonable explanation for all this. "Could he have read it in one of the books in the library?"
"I did teach him to read Russian, but I can't think of any book in there with that name in it that he wouldn't find painfully boring or just plain beyond his comprehension level. Though… I suppose he could have simply picked a book at random and liked the name of the author."
"Yeah, I guess…" Yamcha conceded. That had to be it, then. Either way, it did seem like a stupid thing to get all worked up over.
They left the subject of Yuri's imaginary friend to the wayside for the next several weeks, and things fell back into their usual routine. The weekend came again, meaning it was once again time for Yuri to go sleep over at one of his friends' house. This week it was Chi Chi's turn to host, and Yamcha had just returned from dropping their son off at the Sons' East District home. When he got home, he sensed Piccolo upstairs and hurried his way up to join him, eager to start enjoying one of the few moments alone they got anymore without the risk of a child walking in on them or overhearing them.
Once Yamcha got upstairs, however, he was confused to find that Piccolo was in Yuri's room. Arching a brow in curiosity, he made his way into their son's room to join him. He found his husband sitting on the edge of the child's bed, his brow furrowed as he flipped slowly through a sketchbook that Yuri was often seen coloring in.
"H-hey, something wrong?" Yamcha asked hesitantly. Piccolo never looked up from the sketchbook as he replied.
"I'm not sure… There's some drawings in here that are a little odd…"
"L-like what?" Yamcha asked nervously, at which point Piccolo turned the sketchbook around for him to see.
The picture he was shown seemed innocent enough at first glance. It was the typical crayon drawing that any four-year-old might be expected to draw. It had the usual child-like depiction of a simple house, a circle of yellow above with lines sticking out of it to indicate the sun. A figure that Yamcha had come to recognize as an almost stick-figure version of Yuri himself was drawn near the house, a happy smile on his face. But it was what was drawn next to Yuri that made Yamcha's blood turn to ice. It looked as though Yuri had taken a black crayon and run it up and down the page to create a formless bar of black, a yellow circle drawn over the top of it. It was a tall black stain, a bright gold ring floating over its head. The last nail in the coffin was the childish writing next to each of the figures; one spelled out Yuri's name, while the writing next to the black figure clearly spelled out 'Mr. Vlad.'
"Y-you've gotta be kidding me…" he breathed out weakly, taking hold of the sketchbook and holding it with shaking hands. No, this couldn't be right… It just couldn't be! Piccolo instantly picked up on how terrified Yamcha seemed to be upon seeing the doodle, now staring up at him with concern.
"What's the matter? I know it's kinda creepy, but I didn't think it was that creepy."
"I-it's not that…" Yamcha stammered out hesitantly. There was no choice anymore, was there? He had to be honest to his husband about what he'd seen back when Yuri was still a baby. "I've seen this thing before…"
"What do you mean you've seen it before? Seen it in a movie or something like that?"
Yamcha shook his head in response.
"No… I saw it. I saw it in here, four years ago… Standing over Yuri's crib…"
"What?!" Piccolo snapped back as he jumped up to his feet, causing Yamcha to visibly flinch. "You saw something like this in our child's room when he was hardly just hatched and you didn't think to tell me about that until now?!"
Yamcha was paralyzed to respond for a long moment. He'd never seen Piccolo so angry with him, and it kind of scared him a bit. Still, he couldn't really blame the guy. This was their kid they were talking about, after all. Were their positions reversed, he knew he'd be pretty mad himself.
"L-look, it was dark, okay? A-and I was half asleep, and it was only there for a split second, and… And I thought I was just seeing things and making myself paranoid! I didn't want to worry you over nothing!"
Piccolo stared down at him for a moment as if sizing him up to gauge the truth of his explanation. Eventually, he seemed to accept his husband's story, letting out a low growl as he averted his glare down towards the child's drawing once more. He was still clearly angry, but that anger was now directed towards the situation at hand rather than at Yamcha.
"So… What do we do?" Yamcha asked, completely out of ideas. Piccolo let out a heavy sigh, seeming to struggle a bit with coming up with something himself. Finally, he seemed to settle on something.
"We consult an expert."
The two of them immediately took off towards the western desert, hoping to go request help from this 'expert' while Yuri was still away with his friends. There was only one person either of them could think of that had experience with spirits and otherworldly beings, and thankfully she was more than willing to come check things out for them after they explained the situation to her. Within hours, the old witch Baba sat floating on her crystal ball in the middle of the young boy's room, eyes closed as she felt her surroundings for traces of whatever this 'Mr. Vlad' was.
"Hmmm… Yes, something's definitely been in here. Something not meant to reside in this plane of existence," she announced finally, which only served to dash all of Yamcha's hopes that this might have been something silly and harmless after all.
"S-so… This place really is haunted?" he asked hesitantly, to which Baba merely gave a hum of non-committal agreement.
"I suppose you could say that, in a certain sense. This spirit hasn't attached itself to this place, however, but to your son. It seems to have resided in this room with him for something like five years, not nearly long enough for the stench of Hell to leave it."
"What?!" Piccolo barked out, clearly distressed by this sudden turn. "Are you saying this… this thing escaped from Hell?! And now it's attached itself to Yuri?!"
Baba gave a somber nod.
"That is unmistakably the case. If the child is as old as you say, then I can only imagine it imprinted itself on him while he was still inside his egg, which is why he instinctually trusts this creature."
"What does it want from him? And why him?" Yamcha asked, but this time the tiny witch shook her head.
"I do not know. Such creatures do not normally toy with their victims for so long. Normally, the child would be terrorized, or possessed, or some attempt to devour him would be made, but… I sense none of that in this creature. Whatever it is, it seems to just want to play with him."
"I don't give a fuck what it wants," Piccolo interjected, his patience wearing thin finally, "Whatever it is, I want it gone! Can you do that?"
Baba grumbled a bit at his demanding tone but seemed to chalk it up to his understandable concern for his child. She hopped down off her crystal ball, pulling up her sleeves as though preparing to get to work. She held her hands up towards her floating crystal ball, mumbling some incomprehensible words under her breath. The crystal began to glow with a pure white light, the energy emanating from it pulsing throughout the room. After a moment, however, the light in the crystal ball shifted to a deep black, a counteracting energy sparking around it.
"Wh-what the—" was all Baba managed to get out before she was sent flying backwards, her back slamming against the far wall. The crystal ball continued to float for a while before the dark energy faded away, and it lowered itself down safely to the ground once more.
"H-hey! Are you okay?!" Yamcha asked as he rushed over to Baba's side. The old witch seemed to be uninjured, but she was pale as a ghost, staring with wide eyes back at her own crystal ball.
"I-it… It spoke to me!" she stammered out almost fearfully.
"I-it did? What did it say?"
"'Be not afraid. No harm will come to this child so long as I am here to watch over him.'"
"Be not afraid, huh? Tch…" Piccolo repeated the offending line with a scoff. "So now this bastard is trying to pass itself off as some kind of guardian angel?"
"Th-the line between angel and demon is thinner than you might expect…" Baba replied, just starting to regain her composure. "Either way… I'm afraid there's nothing I can do. This spirit is simply too strong for me to banish on my own."
"What do you have to do, then? Are there others you can ask for help? Can King Yemma do anything about this?" Yamcha asked, frantically trying to drag an answer out of the old witch. Unfortunately, she shook her head once more.
"I'm the most powerful witch on this planet. Even if I recruited all the covens this world still has, it wouldn't be enough. Yemma may have authority over the dead, but his powers here in the living world are severely limited. The only course of action I could possibly think of would be to teach my ways to someone far stronger than myself."
"Then teach me!" Piccolo replied without hesitation. "I have all of Kami's memories and training, and he could already do a lot of what you do! Teach me whatever's left to know so I can destroy this thing!"
Once again, Baba shook her head.
"I'm afraid, under the current circumstances, you're the only one I can't teach to fight this spirit."
"Wh-what?!" Yamcha retorted. "Why not?! Piccolo's one of the strongest people on the planet! You couldn't ask for a better candidate to fight this thing!"
"Oh yes, he does seem to be the ideal candidate, but that may be why he can't," Baba replied evenly, finally making her way back over to her crystal ball and checking its surface for cracks. Upon seeing their confused faces in the reflective surface of the magical instrument, she decided to explain further. "This spirit knows who poses the greatest threat to it, and it has attuned its energy to what is essentially his spiritual blind spot; a frequency of energy he is incapable of sensing no matter how hard he trained. He cannot see it, he cannot sense it, and he cannot interact with it."
"But… If this thing could do that, what hope does anyone else have to learn to detect it? It'll just block them out, too!" Yamcha replied hopelessly. Surprisingly, Baba gave yet another shake of her head.
"No. While it can do that, it won't. Spirits, especially very old ones like this one, are very flexible, able to adjust their energy at will, but they can only attune themselves to one frequency at a time. This one seems stubbornly determined to stay out of Piccolo's notice, and it will not change no matter what. The instant it does, it knows that Piccolo is more than capable, and even more willing, to fight back against it. Because of this, we may have just one last option remaining."
With that, Baba turned her gaze to stare squarely up at Yamcha. At first, he was very confused, but soon enough the implication hit him.
"W-wait, you mean me?!" he shouted out incredulously. Surely she must be joking! Of course, Baba was not known for her sense of humor, and the deadly serious look in her eyes supported this.
"You said you've seen it before, correct? That means your spiritual blind spot is not so close to Piccolo's own for its invisibility to work perfectly on you. If you were properly trained in the spiritual arts, there's every possibility you'd be able to see through its tricks and maybe even physically interact with it. Besides, you've already died once before. Since you've spent some time in the afterlife and know the feel of that world, it'll cut out what is potentially decades of training."
Yamcha was truly taken aback by this suggestion. All of a sudden, she was talking about teaching him to be a medium? It was all happening so fast, he wasn't sure how to respond. He looked over towards Piccolo as though trying to gauge his opinion on the matter. The expression on his husband's face was one of the most helpless he'd ever seen. That alone seemed to light a fire in Yamcha, and he turned back to Baba with newfound determination.
"Alright, I'll do it. I'll go through whatever training you can think of, as long as it'll help Yuri."
"Very well, then. I'll teach you. I only have one rule if you decide to become my pupil…" she replied with a smirk, pointing up towards the orange gi he still wore. More specifically, she pointed towards the symbol of the Turtle School of Martial Arts. "You will not wear my baby brother's obnoxious uniform in my palace!"
