Val let go of the man next to her, leaning back and away from him, feeling her temper suddenly spike. "What...?" Tien said near her. She did not look over at him.

"Piccolo, you're alright!" Gohan said, pushing past her to get to him.

Val watched him hug him with childlike abandon. The way she used to hug her own father when she was younger. It made it difficult to reach his throat though. She punched him in shoulder farthest from Gohan, stood, up and stumbled away from him. She left the staff on the ground, storming off. She could hear the others call after her, but she ignored them.

She went to her room, slamming the door behind her. She huffed, looking down at her hands, still a bit burned from when she used the staff... used the staff. She thought over Goku's words, asking her if she still had hold of Piccolo... When the realization hit her, she gasped and her hands began to shake. She dug into her pockets, yanking the bracelets out of them and shoving them back on her smarting wrists. She had cursed Piccolo without even realizing it. She had channeled her energy into the staff when she was not wearing the bracelets. She felt her stomach clench, fearful something bad was going to happen to him now... something unexpected... something-

She heard someone rapping their knuckles on the door. "Val," she heard Piccolo call out to her from the other side of the door.

Before she could think of a response, he opened the door, slipping into the room with her. He closed the door softly behind himself. She saw he had the staff in his hand. She stared daggers at it instead of him. Even the idea of looking at him after the kiss she gave him with mixed feelings. He offered her the staff, but she refused to lift a finger to take it. He leaned it against the wall near them.

She looked up at him. Grateful he was alive, terrified that she cursed him to ensure it, mad at him for leaving her stuck up here, finding out what could have happened, and things she could not even put a name to. She stepped up to him, aiming to go toe to toe with him, but then backing up at a formal distance. Her stomach rolled with emotional turbulence.

He broke the silence. "Why aren't you in the guardian's quarters?" he asked.

She blinked up at him. "I'm only doing this until we find someone suitable for it. Leave them those rooms. I took this on for you and for the Earth. Kami might have refused you if I hadn't taken it on," she reminded him evenly. She gasped, realization dawning on her. "You took the broken piece of my bracelet, knowing I would follow you. Knowing it would give Kami one last chance to ask me to become guardian."

"And what have you been doing as guardian? The duty Kami entrusted to you, the planet he entrusted to you? Mr. Popo mentioned you weren't doing much beyond walking around, avoiding the library, and remote viewing," he pointed out.

She pursed her lips, feeling a bit tattled on. "Let the next guardian do that-" she started.

"You need to be doing more," he interrupted. She frowned up at him. "Does King Kai even know you took over? Have you been contact with him yet? Or did you even try to track Cell or warn people he was coming?"

She felt her jaw slack, guilt welling up a bit. "I wasn't sure how to do any of that..." she confessed.

He sighed, "Kami was right, you should have been trained. I need to train you, if we have time while dealing with Cell. Figuring it out without training is difficult."

"But I couldn't be convinced," she muttered under her breath.

"What?" he asked.

She looked up at his ears, not his eyes, in annoyance. "But I couldn't be convinced," she repeated, louder and clearer.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She clicked her teeth, debating about revealing that she knew what she future should have been from Future Trunks or not. The way he looked at her made her give in. "I was supposed to have been trained as guardian," she revealed.

She felt a short burst of panic, not coming from her. "How do you know that?"

She reared her head up. "Future Trunks told me," she confessed. "I was supposed to be trained up as the next guardian after Goku died, but as you can see, my future has veered off course."

"Why did he tell you?" he asked her shrewdly. He looked over at the staff leaning abandoned on the wall. "You can't use guardianship for selfish purposes-"

"The real question is why didn't you tell me?" she interrupted him in turn, raising her voice. "You knew the future, you, and Goku, and Kami. All three of you watched it and me unravel down a new path. Instead of warning me, telling me I was-"

"You would have railed against it!" he raised his voice louder, over hers. "You would have found a way out of it if you felt like you weren't getting what you wanted."

She stared up at him, feeling her face and hands flush. Anger at him winning her over. "So you just let it happen, watched it all happen. Didn't interfere. Didn't stop it."

"You don't think Kami or I didn't try? Goku didn't care, he just said to let what happen happen so long as you didn't interfere with Vegeta and Bulma and Trunks. I tried to nudge you to go train with Kami on more than one occasion. He outright asked you to start training as guardian. You railed against me and denied him at every turn." He paused. "I throw you off course," he added with a bit less bite. "Right after Future Trunks left. I told you to both train and research in tandem. Somehow that set you down the new path..."

She blinked up at him, pulling back a bit at the sense of his remorse, which seemed stronger than it should be. She thought back to that moment, how he had hinted so hard for her to pick the right place to train... "You should have warned me."

"Would you have gone through with it if we just told you 'you're the future guardian of Earth?'" he threw back at her.

She almost railed at him, but then bit herself back, thinking it over. "I would refused, for the same reason I refused in this time line. Over and over. To focus on-"

"-the antivirals," he finished for her. She nodded, agreeing with him much to her chagrin. "Once I put valuing that above all else in your head, nothing could shake you from that goal."

"And Goku didn't die," she pointed out. "With him alive, I had no motivation to take on guardianship. It was the fear of your death, and thus Kami's death with a successor guardian if I didn't." She shook her hand out to dissipate the heat from them and put her hands on her face, thinking hard about what the future would have been, the Future Trunks told her had been changed. She thought about how his death would have been her fault in that time line because she went after the androids on her own. His death, Vegeta's, all of theirs. All because she was going to go early to find the androids in this time line just a few days ago. "The night before the attack," she gasped in realization. She brought her hands down from her face. "You came to me. Stayed with me all night. To stop me from going after the androids earlier than everyone else. It was just a ploy to keep me from doing that." She felt her temper flare at that, making the memories of that night that were sweet bitter. She thought more of that night and that morning. "And had Bulma in on it, too," she accused. "That's why she made plans to do my hair before I left."

He cocked his head to the side, but nodded. "Partially," he explained. "I didn't have to come to your room if that were the original goal of not allowing you to go after the androids early and alone like you did in the other timeline. I could sense you wanted me there though. I had nothing to do with Bulma's interference. She did that all herself. She must have figured out your plan and was going to slow you down, no matter if I was there or not."

She thought, puzzling over everything. "So you both stopped me from going after the androids alone... Like I did in the other timeline..." She felt a flare of embarrassment at that and then a spark of annoyance. "You knew they killed me first, but didn't say anything when I once asked you who they killed first?" She thought back to the memory, bringing her hand to her lips at the memory. He sighed but made no response. "You knew also I was supposed to die, before I became guardian, and that my death lead to everyone but Gohan's..." She kept thinking, mind reeling, wondering what she would have done all those years ago had she known what her future had been supposed to be instead of what it was now. "You knew I was supposed to still be with Tien..." she gasped in realization, the thought spinning in her mind. She looked up at him. He had known it, but nothing ever happened until after they had broken up, with her being the one to initiate every time but the last time. "I was never supposed to become guardian because I died while training for it and we were never supposed to have been together..."

She stepped to him, closing to a informal distance. She breath quickened. She place a hand over the scar from him on her side and then shifted it to over her heart. "This... emotional connection... it was how I cursed you when Cell should have killed you..." She looked over at the staff. "The staff... it magnified my curse... I didn't realize what I was doing until it was too late..." she explained. She looked up at him, seeing him still alive and still breathing. "How might it twist for the worse? It always seems to, in unexpected ways..." The thoughts made her nervous.

She looked up at him, hearing him simply grunt. She stepped up closer to him. She took his hand and placed it on top of her hand on her chest. She felt nervous, trying to get a read on him. "Strong ones spill over between us. That's how you knew I was dying from the heart virus." She felt her hand start to shake, holding his to hers. She look up at him, fearfully, hopefully.

"It was not supposed to to be like this," he explained vaguely, but did not pull his hand away. She gripped it a bit harder, stubbornly.

"What?" she asked.

"Your feelings for me spilled into me, sparking and amplifying feelings towards you," he explained. "Which should never have happened because you should have stayed with Tien and not been in close contact with me." She shook her head slightly, not trying to follow his logic. "You came to us, Goku and I after breaking up with Tien and to avoid Vegeta. Emotionally very turbulent and vulnerable. During that time I even thought I missed being around Vegeta at one point. Then we were in close proximity to one another for weeks on end, building and rebuilding, passed back and forth until the connection could no longer be resisted and you threw yourself at me."

She blinked down, ears drawn back and unwilling to do look at his face. "Doesn't mean it isn't real. Doesn't mean it shouldn't have happened," she argued.

"Doesn't mean it's healthy, nor that it should have ever been allowed to happen." He explained. "Kami advised against it again and again." He grunted, flexing his fingers against her hand. "The future's off track now, and needs to be set right. It's had disastrous consequences being allowed to go off course. Just look at Cell and all the evil he's done in the world. He needs stopped and the future needs reset to what it was supposed to be as if the androids had never made an appearance. The only change that should have happened was Goku surviving the heart virus."

She looked up at him, mincing over his words in her mind. "But it's changed. And for me so much." She looked over at the staff. "I did become guardian, but I won't be it for long. And the two of us..." she stated nervously.

"Should never have been," he finished. The second he pulled his hand away, she tried to hold fast to it, but he was too quick.

She felt her lips curl, launching herself up at him, slamming her fists against his chest angrily. "It did happen. In this timeline. In this life time," she half shouted. "Each time, each feeling..." she pointed out. She gripped his shirt, digging her nails into it.

"Amplified by the emotional connection," he recalled. "It would have never gotten that strong had we keep the distance between us that should have been."

"You never resisted," she recalled. "Were never passive about anything I initiated."

He sighed. "Because I knew what will happen eventually and inevitably," he started. "You know it, too." She looked up at him, numbly. She felt her emotions flare and then somehow grow cold. "You know you have to help set the future back on track. You have to have figured it out by now that you have to make the choices to set your future back on track in order to safe guard the future." She shook her head, tempted to cover her ears, but that would require letting him going. "You want to know your future, what to know what you're supposed to do? Fine. You're supposed to be Earth's guardian. You're supposed to end up with Tien. That's your future, if the androids had never appeared, whether you rail against it now or not."

She let him go, shoving him but leading herself to go back a few steps. "But I don't want to do that, any of that," she rushed out. She looked up at him, asking, "you can't want that, either? Not after everything we've been through." She tried to sense something, anything off of him. He was just cold and numb, blocking her out. "Why don't you fight? Why don't you want to fight against it instead of giving in?"

"You still want a child, an Anthromorphic child, one day?" he asked her. She blinked up at him in confusion over his question and nodded. A quick flash of the child from her fever dream flashed in her mind. "Then look at Cell," he said.

She did and grimaced at the very thought, feeling queasy. "What about him?"

He answered, "he's got Demon Clan in him. He's evil, pure evil, just like I was, just like my father was." He took a steadying breath. "If you had a child with me, even if it were an Anthromorphic child, it's likely that they would be just like Cell, or worse."

She opened her eyes wide at his realization. "No, that's true! That's not the only possibility," she argued. "He's also got Frieza and Saiyan in him, Cell does, did you forget that? He was raised by a computer, not someone with morals and a good heart," she countered. "With Dr. Gero's research that Bulma has for me back at Capsule Corps, I can use it to ensure we have an Anthromorph child, one that will be raised not to a monster. And one that won't be able to curse anyone like I can either." She gasped. "The curse, that's why your doing this. The curse rebounded unexpectedly in a way that your ending things with me now because I kept you alive."

He shook his head. "After fusing with Kami, I had some time to think away from you and your emotions. A child like Cell is not something you would risk with Tien. The time line needs restored as much as possible. You must make the choices that guide it back to that. You going back to being with him and you as guardian of the Earth will push the future back to the way it should be had the androids never appeared. Kami knew, he insisted on it, even though I was not as quick to listening to it as he would have liked."

"I don't want that!" she shouted, shocked at how calm he was in his delivery. "The future has changed yes, but the future was never set in stone."

"It's not something to be risked, think logically instead of emotionally," he advised.

She tried to sense something, anything off of him. "Quit blocking me out," she said.

He looked up at her, understanding her meaning. "Quit being overly emotional. This is exactly what I meant when I said you rail against anything that doesn't go your way." She snarled up at him, not wanting to admit he might be right. "Your emotions tend to spill into mine. Heightening mine. That could be the cause of everything that happened between us."

She frowned, not wanting to believe that. "Then why did you save my life when I should have died after fighting in the Shinsenkai?" she insistently asked.

"Because your foolish interference saved Kami's life, and mine in turn," he answered.

"Only that?" she pressed, not believing him. "What about when the Namekians left? Our brothers..." she thought over it. She remembered bonding with both him and Kami after that. She remembered that time, a connection was there.

"That was not a romantic connection," he answered.

She scowled, thinking hard. "What about on Namek, when you shoved me out the way when Frieza tried to kill me?"

He answered, "that was residual feelings and actions spilled over from Nail-"

"I knew it," she blurted out, catching him. "I knew you shoved me out of the way on purpose in that moment."

He curled his lip. "That's not what we're arguing about right now," he countered. "We're arguing about setting the future back on course and what you need to do to make it right. We've argued long enough about it, haven't we?"

"Right? That's not right! I don't want to make it right if that's what's right?" she said in disgust, feeling chilled by the very idea.

"It's difficult, but you have to do it without railing against it. You can set it right, but you need to go back to Tien," he said, with her detecting just a hint of morose in his voice.

She jumped on it. "That's not what I want, that's not what he wants, that can't be what you want!" She tried to block any emotions from spilling over to him after he accused her of that leading to whatever it was they had had. "He's with Aiko. She's in love with him." She panted, seething up at him. "I'm not just going to throw myself in between them and tear them apart just because it could have been the future that will no longer happen."

"You're meant to be with him," he decided, wrongly in her mind.

"I'm not in love with him!" she shouted up at him. His eyes went wider at that, in time with hers. She clasped both hands over her mouth, backing away from both him and her realization. He averted his eyes from hers, not saying anything. She felt her temper flare once more at the blow to her pride mixed with her emotions. Her hands burned, heat wanting a release. Searing her flesh now. "Leave," she growled out, feeling an overwhelming desire to be left alone. She closed her eyes, and turned away from him.

She screwed her eyes shut tight, hearing the sound of the door opening and closing quietly. She gasped painfully as her hands burned so badly blisters were forming. She threw the heat down, risking doing inside a building. When flames licked up by her feet, she stomped them out, still stopping until her knee ached, long after the flames had been put out. She looked at her hands, thinking how awful the cursing was, how cursing him to survive by accident, but making him rethink the future and what all had happen between them.

She winced, pulling the third and last senzu bean she had out of her pocket, biting so hard on it that she bit her own tongue. The blisters on her hands seemed to be a waste of senzu bean, but it was not like Dende was her to heal her, nor did she have access to any medical supplies from Capsule Corps.

When her hands felt better, her heart nor mind did not. She went over to her bed, collapsing down on it tiredly, but still looking over at the door determinedly, mind recalling the second to last kissed she shared with him, a sign that things were not over yet.