Author's Note: Thanks Everyone! For your continued reviews! This, is very different from the first go-around, but I think I'd always felt Gohan had been too human in his response to his situation for someone who was supposed to be going through puberty. Ah well. What do you think? RavenDi

Happy Birthday Vegeta

Chapter Nine: Homeward Bound

They came out of the darkened jungle, Gohan blinked as the silhouette of a second capsule jet became visible on the beach in front of him. He growled at his stupidity and stalked past it. He crouched beside the rhythmically lapping water and rinsed the worst of thickening blood from his fingers, watching in fascination as it ran from his hands in sanguine rivulets staining the ocean with tiny clouds of red that were instantly dissolved, absolved. He snorted at his delusion, and boarded the jet.

Gohan paced the narrow corridor, a bloody lion after the nights' feeding, a caged animal, fed and malcontent, with a scowl furrowing his brow, and his arms crossed tightly across his chest. With a frustrated sigh, he chose a seat at the rear of the plane, well away from the others, quiet, dim. He sank into a leather captain's chair, let his head fall heavily onto the headrest, stiffly stretched his legs out in front of him and tried not to think. He couldn't even stand to think about it, until he knew Bulma was going to be all right. He nearly groaned aloud as he felt Piccolo take the seat next to him.

Piccolo secured Bulma in one of the fold-out bunks and as far as he could see, she was sleeping, deeply. She was dirty, and her hair had been forcibly shortened, but she was alive and well. There was only one person who could explain what had happened, but Piccolo didn't like the odds of getting anything useful from his pupil just yet. He had to try though, Gohan tended to assume responsibilities that were not his alone.

He moved quietly to the back of the plane and took the seat next to Son Gohan who was trying to relax and failing miserably. Barely leashed tension slashed around him in clear-cut barbed-wire barriers of "leave-me-the-fuck-alone." The Namek only smirked, impervious to the boy's moods after years of training, even if this was more extreme than most.

"Hostile natives, huh?" Came the quietly teasing voice of his Sensei.

There was a heartbeat of silence in which Piccolo thought he wouldn't reply at all.

"There are different types of hostility." Gohan said, moving his body as little as he possibly could. The clash of fatigue and adrenaline was driving him mad, his body twitchy, moody. He was trapped on the razor's edge between decorum and destruction, and Piccolo didn't deserve to be attacked, but Gohan didn't give a good goddamn. If he chose to ignore the warning he was blaring, too damn bad.

"Like the one you're exhibiting now?"

"Maybe," he gritted his teeth and growled lowly in an effort to keep from ripping Piccolo apart, "I'd like to be left, alone."

"I'd just like to know what happened." The Namek replied blithely.

Gohan's animalistic grumble grew louder, insistent, as he tapped into his power and drew a tiny, intense sphere of ki to the tip of his finger. His relief at being able to do so was a tangible thing that sent a shiver through his overwhelmed physique. He pointed the visibly throbbing ball at Piccolo without even lifting his head to look at him.

"Let it go." He rasped bluntly.

Piccolo marveled at both the threat and the restraint. "You know I can't do that. I need to know what the hell happened to piss you off, and I need to know what happened to Bulma-san. Someone is going to have to explain it to the medics, and Vegeta."

A tremor shook Gohan at Piccolo's careless mention of the Prince. "Fuck." He spat, and let the ki disperse. Aggression seethed through him, flexing his fingers with lethal intention around the armrests of his seat, bending them to his will with an audible metal-wrenching sound. He shoved down the overwhelming urge to wrap those fingers around his mentors' green neck and end the interrogation forcefully. He evaded both his blood rage and the recent events that Piccolo was trying to rend from him with a desperate challenge. "What happened when you went to retrieve the fifth ball?" Silence swung, heavily charged between them, then with a sigh, Piccolo decided barter would have to suffice in this situation.

"The person holding the fifth ball, was an 'old friend' of Kami's. She wants to renew their acquaintance, and so does Kami."

"But, I thought Kami died when the two of you fused." Gohan's reply was shocked, and for the moment, he was genuinely distracted from his own difficulties. The Namek gave himself a mental nod of satisfaction.

"Not exactly. His… consciousness is still very much there, she had no trouble at all reaching him…through me." Piccolo's voice was subdued as he recalled a not unpleasant kiss.

"I thought Namek's were asexual?" retorted Gohan with a hint of his usual humor.

Piccolo snorted. "We choose to reproduce asexually, for a number of reasons, most of them safety related. Namekian sex, for non-procreative purposes is fairly similar to human sex, just less, constrained."

Gohan trembled in silent angst as his first sexual encounter erupted in his mind, in full, painfully graphic color, guilt-laden and horrific in a thousand different ways. 'Fuck.Fuck.Fuck.' A whimper nearly escaped his closing throat. There wasn't a fucking thing about the whole damned experience that had been anywhere near 'normal.' It was obviously going to be his only experience since there was no way he would ever take that kind of risk again, certainly not with someone he actually cared about. For a millisecond there was an image of another girl, and defensively he repelled it so far away, so fast, he could, almost, pretend he hadn't seen it.

The sudden ache emanating from his adopted son made Piccolo all the more determined to get to the bottom of this matter, by whatever means necessary. "Now, tell me what happened on that island."

Son Gohan wanted nothing more than to yank out Piccolo's impervious tongue and choke him with it. He had no right, to push in this matter. NONE! But since he apparently was unwilling to kill the stupid Namek, he would have to deal. Scowling fiercely, he shielded the information he didn't want his extremely skilled Sensei to discern before attempting to speak.

"I've never been completely without my ki before." His voice was a grudging husk. "I think, whatever it was that suppressed my ki, suppressed the signatures of everything else as well." Gohan kept his description succinct. "The natives, were fast, and silent, and have one hell of a poison dart. The effect, is instant." Vividly he recalled Bulma crumpling bonelessly into the waiting arms of her attacker.

The Namek waited patiently as Gohan gathered his thoughts. "I believe that's why Bulma is still out -- Kami I hope so -- I, she got more than one dose, and she's only human." He grimaced bitterly, knowing his voice was giving him away to his long-time friend. Telling tales of vulnerability and an awakening dragon of anger. He continued, hesitantly. "It's effect on me, would probably have been nominal, if it had just been one dose. I heard the guard say more than once, that he'd used all six of his darts." A wry smile curved his face. "He wasn't sure it would be enough."

"He was right to be concerned." Piccolo murmured.

Gohan flicked a flat stare in his teacher's direction. He didn't bother to acknowledge the attempt to reassure him. "They should have killed us on sight." He snorted in disrespect. "Instead, they decided to give us to the Queen." He was proud, that the quiver he felt when he spoke of her, was not conveyed in his speech. He sounded neither appalled nor aroused. Just factual. He sighed. "I thought I might could negotiate with her... Bulma couldn't even stand, she was semi-conscious, and…the Queen, fell in love with her hair." His voice cracked, betraying his strain, "The color, you know? It's pretty amazing." He took a deep breath, lined up his next thoughts and censored them ruthlessly.

"She ordered the guards…" he swallowed, "…to cut off Bulma's head, and bring her the hair." Furious, slightly mad laughter bubbled within his throat. "The only reason Bulma's alive is because the guard disobeyed a direct order." His tone shook with disgust. In truth, he was deeply disturbed by both his failure to protect the Prince's mate, and the guard that defied his orders…. When he spoke again, the words sprang straight from the lips of the man who'd killed with his bare hands a few hours ago. Hollow, dead, ice.

"Don't, get the idea he was a good guy…he just wanted to keep her. I overheard them discuss keeping her for themselves." The laughter bubbled and burst and gave way to dangerous fury, at the thought of what they would have done to Bulma-san given the chance. He had no idea where the recent feelings of responsibility for Bulma had come from, but the magnitude of his inadequacy was a slow diseased dying of his insides.

"Well, I'd say you put a rather, emphatic, stop to that." Piccolo mentioned delicately.

The Demi-Saiyan glanced at his hands in the dark and while he knew they were clean, he felt the weight of the dried crimson on his hands, it's acrid scent strong and reassuring in his nose. He snorted flatly. "I only wish I'd gotten the other one."

Piccolo nodded his unspoken acceptance of Gohan's choice. "Go on. Were you able to negotiate with the Queen?"

His innocuous question had Son Gohan's entire body strumming with that incredibly violent tension again, but there was a wall of static-like interference preventing him from determining the true cause.

"In a manner of speaking." His voice was as carefully guarded as his thoughts. Piccolo inclined his head toward Gohan, an unseen gesture of encouragement. Gohan drew a short, harsh breath and launched himself from the chair that could no longer contain him. He strode back and forth in renewed agitation, black eyes volatile. "I slept with her."

"What?" It was the Namek's turn to be shocked. Ironic that watching him rip the heart from the chest of his enemy didn't faze him, but the thought of the painfully shy Son using intimacy as a weapon, seemed, extremely unlikely and somehow, excruciating.

"You, slept…with her." The motion of Gohan nodding, was nearly imperceptible in the dim cabin light.

"Those were her terms?" The Namek prompted bemused.

"Oh yes. Those were definitely her terms." Gohan's quick, crude smirk lit the cabin and a hint of pleased masculinity drawled through his response.

"And then, she let the both of you walk away?" Piccolo prodded.

He hissed an angry warning to the Namek. "No. It rendered her - unconscious."

"Ah." With a gasp, Piccolo connected the power surge that had rocked the capsule jet off course, to Gohan's situation. "I suppose it did. That WAS you then?" Gohan continued to prowl and his energy swamped the tiny room causing it to quake as it had before.

"Wait. I thought you didn't have access to your power?" The Namek could tell by the tremendous spike in his pupil's ki, that he was putting his life in danger with this line of questioning, though he couldn't figure out why, of all the crap Gohan had been through, the lack of his ki would bother him so.

"I - did - not!" He shouted, and the words jarred painfully in Piccolo's sensitive ears. His dark eyes shot indignant flames at his Sensei before he looked away, whispering acidly, "Not before, not during, and not controllably, after." The admission terrified him and his breath caught as he awaited his teacher's reaction. He bristled defensively half expecting an attack, an attempt to neutralize him before he got to the more populated areas of the city.

Piccolo pondered the deliberate wording and the scope of the power fluctuation that had occurred. He concluded, that the crux of the matter, was Son Gohan's loss of control. It happened to everyone, but Gohan was inordinately proud of his. Control that is. In his relief, he let a quiet laugh slip from his lips. "Try and get some rest Gohan, we can talk more of this later."

Son Gohan spluttered furiously. "I tell you I fucked this woman literally senseless, had NO control over the resulting energy, AND YOU TELL ME TO 'GET SOME REST'?" He swayed, disbelieving on his feet.

The Namek looked implacably at his pupil, stance aggressive, hands on his hips, mind racing fearfully, hatefully, behind those waiting eyes. Piccolo knew he was ready to defend himself, but against what? Him? He shook his head and frowned, dismayed that they were already so close to Capsule Corp. It would take a great deal longer than they had at this moment to sort out whatever the hell Gohan was thinking. He sighed and spoke gently. "Yes, rest. You, were injured as well, Gohan. I'm not saying this doesn't bear further discussion, but there are other issues to deal with, Bulma's heath, your own, the dragonballs. Now is not the time."

"Fuck me." He backed slowly into his mangled seat, leaning his head back, letting his eyes droop closed. "What you think won't matter anyway, not when Vegeta-sama finds out." Son Gohan whisped to his mentor.

"Perhaps." The Namek acknowledged that Vegeta was a wild card in the best of situations, and that this, was not, the best of situations.