Disclaimer: I don't even know anymore. Please go to chapter two. If it's not there, please go to chapter one. If it's not there either, please smack your forehead repeatedly with a board.

I thought about getting an art class here in college, but the more I hear of the art majors, the more I think otherwise. People, photography isn't an amazing art. Out of most of the visual media, photography is one that takes the least amount of talent and skill to make something decent. Now, I do know skilled and talented photographers, but please, when you only use good equipment, colors, and natural light... And "foreshortening" is a stupid word and shouldn't even be used in photography in most cases. And photo manipulation? That's even less skill sometimes. You can have a crappy picture, put it through a filter on Adobe or PSP, and viola!
I'm mostly just bitter because the wankers rejected my drawing of a Chinese emperor for being "cartoony" over a series of stupid photographs of monkeys and children.
Piccolo was surprised how fast the situation suddenly changed. Just that morning he was still in frustration over his "cure", still suffering and unable to do anything about it. Now, the cure was already in full-throttle to cure him, providing that he only help it out a little.

He and Atsarute exited from the ship into the night air of the swampy planet. The area was cracking and humming with insects and animals, making it seem louder since neither was saying a word to each other. The others were bid to remain in the ship, as to not disturb the process, but they crowded around windows to watch.

Atsarute lead him towards a marsh with many overhanging trees and glowing bugs phasing in and out of view as they floated about the dark air. She sat down, in a normal cross-legged pose, and motioned him to do the same. For a while, they sat in silence, trying to make sure that they were ready, before Piccolo finally spoke:

"Am I going to be able to navigate through your mind like that?"

She looked up from the ground to him. "You should be able to. It's been a while, but you did spend a year with me. You should know how some of my mind works. After all… it's not like your mind works too differently, eh?"

He grinned and nodded. "I guess you have to start off, since you have to free my spirit first?"

"We have to lock in first," she said. Before he could ask what she meant by that, her eyes met straight with his with a serious, penetrating gaze, and he instantly knew what to do. After a while, his vision got darker and darker as he sat, unblinking, and found himself in a hallway that he had never seen before.

.-.

Atsarute had been trying to calculate and move through Piccolo's mind as quickly as she could, but she found herself getting delayed. Many doors would suddenly open and close as she went down the hall, and curiosity gripped her several times to look within the ones that flung open just as she passed. Every once in a while, she'll see something that she recognized from her visit to Earth, including a representation of the Red Stave Pub. Each time, she reluctantly had to pull herself away from such rooms. She had more important things to do.

The direction and path to the Visudda wasn't a straight line, but she didn't take any wrong turns along the way. Ignoring several obstacles, she tried to make up lost time by hurrying, but it hardly seemed to help. After what felt like hours, she finally came to a door where the energy seemed to radiate best. The door was barred and barricaded with hinges that long ago wore out from the constant pressure of the spirit trying to escape on its own. She tore at the chains and the boards, ripping out tusk-like bars. When it was down to the last defense, the spirit burst out on its own, passing through her at such a speed that she flew backwards several hundred "meters". Just as she landed, and cursed the speed of the passing entity, another door flew open beside her. She shot her eyes towards it, and stood. It didn't look very familiar; in fact, it looked odd for something Piccolo could have in his mind. It was a large room covered with white linens and pastel colors, the scent of flowers and perfume wafting from it.

This time she couldn't hold back her curiosity. "It'll be a while before he finishes his part of the job, anyway."

.-.

Piccolo had loitered the past several hours in one of Atsarute's own rooms. It wasn't one that he had recognized, nor was it an amazing sight. It wasn't even a "room", per say, but a vast expansion of land, cold, dark, and devoid of life. There were several stones with writing on the ground, writing that he could not read. From the looks of them, the area seemed to be a graveyard. Figures that she would have a place like this…

A sudden surge went through him, like his energy had just converted itself to something else. Some sort of transition… She must have freed my 'real' spirit… He rose from the stone that he had been sitting on and left through the rectangle of light that represented the door back to the main hallway.

Piccolo blinked when he realized something: he knew exactly how to get to her Visudda in under five minutes, how to maneuver within the Visudda, and how to detach the talisman from it. He was fairly certain that he knew none of this before, but instead of pondering any longer, hurried to the right door and bolted in.

The room was strange; really nothing more than churning clouds of energy that almost resembled furniture and other objects. Pots with light poring out of their mouths lined the incessantly moving walls, and the floor itself morphed upon its own accord under his feet. When he continued to move forward, he was surprised that he didn't just fall through the ground.

He came up to a gigantic solid object sticking out of the wall. It was a black jewel that was at least twice his size, mounted to some sort of green, metal setting. It radiated an energy that attached itself to the energy of the room. He approached slowly and reached out to the energy permeating from it, trying to sever it from the walls.

.-.

As soon as Atsarute entered the room, her black wraps were replaced with something else. She looked down at her new apparel for a while until she recognized it as an Earth dress for wedding ceremonies. "Strange…" she muttered.

She walked past a mirror, and raised a brow. Her eyes slowly went towards it again, then approached, bewildered. She could not see her own reflection. Tapping on the glass, looking behind it, and moving around revealed nothing to her until she inspected what image the mirror represented. The floor, although clean upon her side, was littered with various objects sprawled across the carpet. The bed's covers were disturbed, and showed blood-colored satin under the frilly cloths that were, in her world, undisturbed. The covered dresser was revealed, showing skulls and weapons, with a drawer that was flung open, and the wall's linens had fallen, showing a fresco of a massacre.

Taking a step backwards, she turned to see if these things were real again, this time walking up to these disturbed places and moving the covers to see what would lay under them. Just as in the mirror, there were weapons on the wall, paintings of carnage, skulls and bones, and bold colors under the dusty, bright ones. She looked back at a mirror then saw what looked like a person that was otherwise hidden by the angles from which she observed the reflection previously. It was a woman, and as she looked closer, she could tell that she wore the same dress as her, but it was torn in several places, and she bled through cuts and bruised bite marks. She was stuck straight on a large ax, and the blood running down it revealed that she must have died from it. "That's me… but why—"

A large hand came down upon her shoulder. She gasped and whirled around to see… Piccolo? No, he doesn't look the same…

"You'd better get out of here," said Neil, "I have no idea how Piccolo would react if he saw you in here, but I doubt it would be pretty." He lead her back out of the room, her apparel returning to normal as soon as she stepped foot into the hallway.

"Is he finished? Already?" She said.

"Almost. He'll be here soon. You should get ready to help us separate. Come on, I'll lead you to the others."

.-.

Nobody stayed up long enough to see the whole thing take place. As far as they could tell, the two were just staring at each other with stern eyes. The Son family (and Videl) ended up falling asleep in the main room nearby the window, whereas the scientists went back to their own rooms, and Vegita and Bulma to theirs. Suraku, as much as he wanted to stay and watch over his general, decided it best to leave back to speak with Jakkaru at the branch office.

Dawn broke, and the light hazed in to pierce at the sleeping party's closed lids, making several of them stir before Goku got up ahead the others and peered out to the marsh in the distance, trying to find Piccolo and Atsarute. The general seemed to have been hunched over the edge of the marsh's bank, but Piccolo was nowhere in sight.

It wasn't long before the whole room was alerted of his disappearance, and they all rushed out, wearily as it was, towards the woman. She slowly looked over to them with groggy eyes and made a tired grin. "It's finished," she rasped out, "Don't bother them. They're resting." When the group seemed confused by "they", she motioned towards three different trees, each one with an unconscious Namekku-sei-jin under the dark canopy.

Without warning, she covered her mouth and began to cough violently, each heave racking through her body and making blood splatter upon her hand and trickle down her arm. When it was over, she sighed, and pulled her hand from her with a grin, revealing an object within the small pool of blood she held that was no doubt the Talisman of Eiaa.

"I need… sleep as well… The water should be pleasing…" With this, she let herself fall forward into the swamp lake, fainted before she even hit the surface. The water had an undercurrent of its own, as it slowly dragged her away from the bank while the morning light streamed through the roof of leaves to settle in bright splotches across her body.

She's not dead, squire; she's just restin'. She might be pining for the fjords, too, but I seriously doubt it.