Chapter 005 - The Tail of the Full Moon
The sun was high in the sky above the wilderness. A stampede of dinosaur roamed the flatlands below, weaving through the seemingly endless towering rocks that dotted the ground. Up on one of these rocks, the two children were still no closer to getting down the cliff and were both very hungry!
"This isn't fair..." Gohan frowned. "There isn't even a rope or a ladder for us to use..." He once again backed away from the edge of the cliff and walked back over towards Corset; she was looking pretty upset.
"There isn't even any food up here for us to eat." He added.
Corset looked up and wiped the loose tears from her eyes. "... I wanna go home... I wanna go home and see my mama and my nana and my grandpa..." She brought her knees up to her chin and buried her face within them. "I'm so hungry!"
Nearby Piccolo still hovered in the same place, still meditating. It appeared neither of the two children had spotted him.
He opened one eye and took a quick peek at them, closing his eye with a feeling of frustration. Why were they still there? 'Little brats!' He cursed to himself.
"I don't even know if my mama's ok." Corset sighed disheartened.
"She should be ok," Gohan mumbled. "The green guy didn't say she'd gone or anything. Maybe she's fine."
"Maybe..." Corset frowned. "...You've only got your mama left now, right?"
Gohan sighed and looked at the ground, "... My mother and my grandpa too. I hope they're both alright."
"What's your mama like?" Corset asked, trying to ignore her stomach. "Is she pretty?"
"I guess she is," Gohan nodded, "she's strict but really nice. Her food tastes yummy! She makes me do a lot of studying so I can become a great scholar when I grow up."
"A great scholar?" Corset repeated. "Sounds tough."
"Yeah, but it'll be fun," Gohan smiled. "Do you live at home with your mother and father?"
"I live with my mama, grandpa and nana. I don't know who my daddy is but we live in a huge house in a big city," Corset explained. "It's a really huge house! Bigger than any house you've ever seen!"
"Wow, I'd love to see how big your house is one day." Gohan giggled.
"You could see it but I don't know where we are or how we'd get there," Corset frowned. "If my mama was here she'd get her plane out and fly us there. Fwooo! We'd fly over lots of people's heads! She makes planes and stuff at home!"
"Wow, your mother makes planes?" Gohan blinked impressed. "Oh! I remember now! My dad told me about your mother! Her name's Bulma, isn't it?"
"Yeah! You know my mama's name!" Corset eagerly nodded. "She builds planes and bikes and cars and other things! She owns a company with my grandpa!"
"Capsule Corp, that's it isn't it?" Gohan beamed. "Wow... no wonder your house is so big. I'd love to go see it even more now!"
The night sky had once again fallen on the barren wasteland. The two children had talked for most of the afternoon and had worn themselves out, alongside starving themselves. Neither had come any closer to working out how to get down or where they'd get food. Both slept as best as they could despite it being rather chilly and cold. The cloudless sky seemed particularly bright due to the full moon looming over the land below, illuminating it slightly more than usual. Piccolo still watched over the two.
He was completely unaware of what was to come as Gohan woke.
The situation quickly fell out of hand as Gohan's eyes became fixated on the moon. His tiny body reacted and the same transformation his father had made as a child began. Gohan was transforming!
As Piccolo watched in confusion, Gohan's body began to grow dramatically, clothes shreading as he transformed into the giant oozaru form.
The weight was too much for the sturdy rock to bare; it crumbled and crashed down to the ground, Gohan landing heavily on both feet. Corset - who was still asleep and exhausted through starvation - did not wake. She rolled and bounced across the large piles of rubble, vanishing into a small cluttering of rock.
Gohan began to rampage; Piccolo still flabbergasted and clueless as to what had just happened. A blast from the monkey's mouth struck the distance and erupted, the area reduced to nothing, winds howling ferociously past Piccolo as he did his best to stay in the air. Confusion had almost engulfed him but he'd still managed to keep himself concentrating on what was at hand. He had so many questions about what was currently happening; why had the boy suddenly transformed, what had made him transform, how was he going to stop him?
Gohan roared out once more and began to randomly fire out blasts, bringing more destruction to the area around him. Several explosions rocked the area, chunks of rock collapsed around them as the sky lit up after every attack struck a target.
Piccolo was pushed back up into the sky slightly. He glanced down as he tried to come up with an explanation. "What on Earth could have caused the boy to transform?! What happened just be-"
Piccolo gasped and turned around.
"The moon!"
He recalled Raditz had mentioned to Goku and his friends about a Saiyan reaching their full potential in the presence of a full moon. This had to have been the reason why the boy had transformed!
Not wasting another second, Piccolo quickly charged up an attack and fired it off towards the large satellite. "DISAPPEAR!"
A couple of seconds went by before the moon was suddenly bathed in a bright light. A moment later it exploded in a dazzling bright display of light. The sheer force of the explosion quickly reached Earth, battering the area with a terrifying and howling wind.
The giant monkey suddenly stopped as something inside snapped once more. To Piccolo's relief it began to revert in size, finally turning back into Gohan. The boy fell forward onto his face.
It wasn't until after a while that Piccolo finally lowered his guard; there was no sign of the naked child suddenly doing anything so dramatic again; his ki signified he was unconscious. The demon lowered himself down to the ground, landing beside Gohan and examining the damage surrounding them. To think he would be capable of such destructive force... He could have destroyed the whole planet with that kind of power!
Piccolo glanced over to the rock pile that had once been the pillar the two children had been trapped on top of. The girl was somewhere around there, possibly trapped underneath the rubble. As strange as it would be to Piccolo to admit, he was relieved to sense her ki still; the relief meant that his guess of her holding power within her wasn't totally wrong and that what he was doing wasn't a waste of time. He would leave her to free herself if she was trapped.
His attention turned back to the naked boy beside him. "It would seem I have discovered the secret behind your Saiyan powers... It looks as if I was right to remove the moon too; I'd hate to think of what would have happened had the Saiyans been under its influence." Piccolo muttered.
His eyes fixated onto Gohan's tail.
"... I'd better make sure..."
He reached down and grabbed his tail at the base, snapping it off and tossing it to the side. "It seems the tail is a Saiyan's weak-point... Think of it as a gift from me!"
He pointed a finger towards Gohan, firing off a strange beam of light. Within a flash, Gohan was fully clothed in gear matching his father's; a sword beside him. The insignia on his back read 'demon' instead of the 'turtle' insignia Goku's clothes had.
Piccolo turned away and began to walk, recalling the girl was to his left. She too had a tail... Piccolo sighed and wandered over towards the large pile of rocks. With a single blast he cleared some of the rubble away, uncovering the sleeping girl and pulling her out rather violently from the rocks. He grabbed her tail and ripped it out. The demon then dropped her back onto the ground, staring at her for a moment or so. ... Might as well give her some.
Again he pointed a single finger out, changing Corset's clothes to a dark blue fighting suit with pink wristbands, leg warmers and belt. A sword lay at her side.
The demon turned away and walked a few steps before stopping again. "I have my own training to do... As I said, you have six months to learn to fend for yourselves... If when I return you're both still alive then I shall provide you with training from Hell..." A wicked smile appeared on Piccolo's face, "you'll wish you were dead..." With that, he took off into the sky, leaving the two children to sleep.
The sun's rays began to rise over the horizon. A cool breeze woke her from her sleep, brushing her fringe across her face. She felt uncomfortable as she woke; since when had she been on her front?
"Corset, wake up! You've gotta see this!"
Corset slowly opened her eyes, squinting in pain when she realised she was facing east and directly at the sun! Just who was making that racket?
"Look! We're on the ground!"
Corset sat herself up and wiped the sleep from her eyes, "... What? I don't wanna get up yet..." She mumbled, now able to see better.
It dawned on her what she was seeing. Flat ground around them, steep rock formations that extended to the sky above them... Her stomach suddenly rumbled, making her flinch in pain.
Gohan frowned; they hadn't eaten in two days now. Still, now they had the opportunity to find some food.
Corset noticed the clothes Gohan wore were different. "Where did you get those from?" She asked, pointing at him.
Gohan blinked and looked down, gasping in shock. "W-Where'd my other clothes go? These aren't mine!" He looked back up at her for an answer, noticing hers were different too. "Hey... you've done it as well!"
Corset gasped and examined her new clothes. "Where are my t-shirt and shorts? My mama is gonna yell at me if I've lost them!" She then noticed the hilt of the sword that lay beside her and instinctively squirmed away from the dangerous object. "W-Why is there a sword here? I don't get it!"
"Someone must have given these to us," Gohan smiled, "I got a sword too! Look, we're even back on the ground! Someone must have saved us and then given us these things to help us."
Corset picked up on what Gohan had said and looked around. "But... but how did we get down from that big rock?"
"My tail's gone," Gohan frowned.
"It has?" Corset looked down to where his tail would usually be; sure enough it wasn't there! "Where'd it go?"
Subconsciously she reached down for the base of her own tail, gasping in horror when she found it wasn't where it should be! Corset glanced down and screamed. "WHERE'D MY TAIL GO?"
Up above them, Piccolo sat calm as he continued to meditate. He'd been the one to remove their tails. He'd been the one to change their clothes and had provided them with their swords. He'd been the one to have to fend off what Gohan had become last night. Despite the noise, the feeling through the ground and the bright lights, Corset'd slept through Gohan's Saiyan transformation. Those couple of minutes had given Piccolo a great deal of insight to the Saiyans and their powers – Goku included. He'd been lucky enough to realise the full moon was the key to the transformation and had destroyed it. As a precaution he'd removed the children's tails – that had been one of the Saiyan's weaknesses after all. He'd done more than enough to help these weaklings – now it was up to them to live.
"What are we gonna do now?" Corset asked. "We can't stay here – the dinosaurs will come back again."
"Yeah, you're right," Gohan nodded, flinching when his stomach grumbled. "... Maybe we should try to find food."
"Why isn't there a restaurant here or a fridge?" Corset frowned. "I wish I had my mama's capsules; she has one that turns into a small house."
"Some trees have fruit on them, let's go see if there are any fruit trees around, or a lake," Gohan suggested.
"I wish there were trees which grew cake..." Corset mumbled to herself. "... or cookies or chocolate! Hey, do you think there would be strawberries?"
"Let's go see," Gohan began to walk.
"Ok, I hope we are going the right way."
"Me too; I'm hungry!"
"If we find a lake, what would there be in there? Fish?"
"Yeah, lots of fish hopefully!"
"Eh... I hope it's yummy fish, I don't like a lot of fishes..."