Suggested Listening: Def Leppard "Deliver Me"
Scars Are Proof We Will Survive
Over the next few weeks, the half-breed hermit and her guardian fell into a strange, if comfortable, routine. Piccolo would keep watch, train, meditate, and occasionally fend off visitors intent on welcoming him back to the world of the living. Aubergine would walk the boundaries of her territory, spend a few hours training, pointedly ignore Piccolo's presence, and butcher perfectly good meat and produce and leave the larger portions on the back stoop. They avoided one another for the most part—every time they were together, they wound up arguing, so why punish themselves?—and in doing so, they actually managed to get along pretty well.
Piccolo could barely recognize the woman she'd become and often found himself shaking his head in disbelief. She spent most of her time patrolling her property for trespassers but put very little effort into her training. Though she kept plenty of livestock—chickens, geese, goats, even an ox—she still rarely ate anything but fish. Her garden was well-stocked but anything not grown for the livestock was routinely ignored. Chores were neglected, training was neglected, repairs and maintenance were neglected…everything that didn't involve trespassers was more or less neglected.
As if that all weren't odd enough, her personality seemed to have changed, too. She was prone to long silences from the time he met her and more likely to hold her tongue than to speak her mind, but she rarely went a whole day without speaking; now she was going on a whole week of unbroken silence. Her expression rarely changed from the blank mask she'd assumed after she locked him out. Every day, Piccolo found more and more changes in the woman he grew up with…every day, he wondered if those changes were his fault.
The biggest change, however, wasn't apparent until the afternoon of the third Saturday day. As every day before, she spent the first couple hours of the day training then took off to walk the boundaries again, starting at the foot of Mt. Paozu and hitting all the old familiar landmarks along the way. Then he felt her energy spike without warning. It took him a matter of moments to reach her—out by the caves so similar to the ones he used to call home—but the danger was already over. A heavily scarred reptilian humanoid hung from Aubergine's grip, its laser rifle abandoned nearby. Right before Piccolo's eyes, she sapped away every last bit of the frantically pleading creature's energy, her black eyes merciless. A last wheezing breath later, she flung the withered corpse to the ground.
The eyes that met Piccolo's were entirely emotionless—one a familiar pitch black, the other more greyed than black—and a deep gash-like burn from the laser weapon split her right cheek. Without a word she brought her right hand up to her cheek; by the time he reached her side the white glow and the wound had faded entirely and her eyes had begun to change again.
"I don't need protecting anymore," she reiterated darkly as her dark purple irises broke through. "I can take care of myself." Without another word, she took aim at the corpse and incinerated it with a single controlled chi blast, and while the remains smoldered into ash, she continued on her way as if nothing had happened.
As her outline faded into the distance, Piccolo stared down at the abandoned laser rifle. He'd only been gone ten years…how could she have changed so much in so little time? Clearly, her attitude change was only the tip of the iceberg. Before, she could barely bring herself to fight even when lives were on the line; now she was able and willing to kill without much provocation.
Piccolo had no doubt the creature was a headhunter—some being from another planet intent on cashing in on her hair and eyes for a quick, if illegal, paycheck. Could it be, he wondered, that she'd been faced with such a situation before? Could she have been fighting off head-hunters the entire time he was gone, nay, even before he died? The wound on her cheek—similar in angle and position to the scar across her other eye, though smaller and lower—troubled him more than he cared to admit.
He needed answers. With a last look in the direction Aubergine went, he took to the skies; it was time to pay his respects to New Earth's young guardian.
"Got any sevens?" a chipper female voice asked as Piccolo lit on the lookout's tiles.
"Nope, go fish," Dende replied. With an 'aw, man' of disappointment, Pan added another card to her already sizable hand. Twenty years old and attending college and she was still just a big kid…clearly, she took after her grandpa more than anyone expected. Across from her, Dende glanced shyly at her over the cards fanned out in his hands; about time the little guy grew up, Piccolo thought to himself. "Hey, Piccolo! I wondered when you'd show up!" The name startled Pan and she turned wide, excited black eyes his way; the warrior counted down the moments it took for her to decide no, she wasn't dreaming, and react. She sucked in a deep breath.
"Mister Piccolo!" she squealed launching herself at him, her cards flung haphazardly every which way. Muddy red streaked his cheeks as the demi-Saiyan tackled him, flung her arms around his neck, and fairly choked him. Clearly, he realized with a scowl that didn't at all match the warm and fuzzy feeling in his gut, she still worried he'd suddenly vanish from existence again. Those bloody Son kids really knew how to worm their way into your heart.
"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled at the young woman hanging off his neck like a monkey. "Get off already." Her grin didn't fade at all as she did just that, dragging him over to Dende by the collar of his mantle. "This isn't a social call—I need answers." Dende scrutinized him a moment, ink black eyes solemn. It seemed, Piccolo mused silently, the young guardian hadn't only grown up on the outside.
"Better head home, Pan," Dende told the demi-Saiyan with a wry smile. "I'll see you next week, right?" Pan pouted and complained a moment about being sent home—something about 'mid-terms coming up'—but she complied no less. After subjecting her grumpy godfather to another tackle hug and giving the blushing sputtering guardian a big squeeze as well, she took off toward Mt. Paozu. Dende watched her vanish into the distance, his cheeks slightly pink.
"You're kidding, right?" Piccolo drawled startling the younger Namek.
"It—It's not—!" he protested gesturing wildly, the pink in his cheeks darkening to muddy scarlet. "I—I—We're just—!"
"Save it." Seemingly realizing he wasn't going to accomplish anything by pleading his case, Dende fell silent and avoided his elder's eyes. "I'm sure you already know why I was sent back…and why I'm here."
"Y-Yeah." Dende rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "King Yemma told King Kai and King Kai told me—You were sent to protect the demi-Hīrā-jin living by Mt. Paozu—Aubrey, right? I never realized she was the only one of her kind in this galaxy…I guess I was too focused on her being half-Saiyan."
"Something tells me she knows less about it than you do—she didn't recognize the word at all." Piccolo led the way along the outer edge of the Lookout, keeping a close watch on Aubergine's energy.
"As for why you're here," Dende continued hesitantly, falling into step beside his elder. "I assume it's got to do with the hunters after her...and…that…scar." His eyes darted away nervously. Piccolo waited. "It wasn't long after the old earth was destroyed and the new one created, maybe a few months…I'm not sure how, but someone got the word out that one of her kind lived on this planet, probably during the Grand Tour. In a matter of months, she had more hunters come after her than in the entirety of her life on Old Earth. One got lucky—caught her sleeping…well, drunk actually."
"Drunk?!" Piccolo snapped. "What was she thinking?! You don't get drunk with assassins at your door!"
"She wasn't thinking, Piccolo," Dende pointed out sternly, "She was grieving. You weren't there—you died and you didn't come back! The others respected your wishes and didn't collect the Dragon Balls, but she didn't know - she thought we abandoned you! She broke into Capsule Corp, stole the Dragon Radar, collected all seven on her own, and demanded Shenron bring you back!" The younger Namek winced at the memory. "Being ordered around like that left him grouchy for a month. When you wouldn't cooperate with being sent back—insisted that your living would be the earth's undoing…" Dende trailed off, unconsciously slowing to a halt.
"She fell apart." Big black eyes met Piccolo's and their owner nodded gravely.
"Disintegrated. Aubrey saw you die too many times, Piccolo—Buu killed you, Dabura, Cell, and Frieza nearly killed you, that Nappa creep killed you…You were the only one she considered a friend, and she felt—" Suddenly he cut himself off, shook his head as though to clear the cobwebs, and started walking again. "She's had to learn to live without you, Piccolo; she's not the woman you left behind. I get that King Yemma wanted you to protect her—or at least wanted you out of his hair—but you can't just expect everything to be the way it was before…it's not."
Piccolo thought over the younger Namek's words for a moment, concerned at what Dende wasn't saying. It was obvious that there was much unsaid, much held back, but what on Earth—Old or New—could be so horrible that the guardian couldn't speak of it? Instead of acknowledging these suspicions aloud, Piccolo addressed a completely different one. "She can't see out of that eye, can she?"
"No," Dende answered with a troubled sigh. "It's completely blind…at the time, it was all I could do to heal her other injuries. I've offered many times since, but she refuses every time." He shook his head, partly in concern and partly in disgust. "She wants to keep it—says it's proof she survived the attack and will survive others like it."
"I could heal that, you know." Piccolo refused to accept or decline the offer, instead, turning to glare at the horizon with a derisive snort. Blood trailed down his thick brows and into his eyes, but he refused to acknowledge it. It was only a flesh wound—nothing to worry about, considering his father had an entire child punched through his chest—but the damn brat across from him wouldn't quit annoying him about it. Thinking he wouldn't notice if she was sneaky enough, Aubergine tentatively reached out for the small gash on her companion's forehead; before she could make contact, though, a clawed hand closed around her wrist in a painful grip.
"Don't. Touch. Me." Piccolo's warning was barely above a growl, but as always, Aubergine was unimpressed by his tough-guy act. Perhaps it was a matter of his age or his admittedly squeaky prepubescent voice? She pulled away, and when he released her, she grabbed a burning branch from the dying fire, shook out the flame, and offered it to him.
"Burn me." Her order stunned him, confused him, to the point where he was unable to do anything more than blink in disbelief. "I'll show you—just burn my arm." For a moment, Piccolo felt torn, confused, and unaware that his inner dilemma showed plainly on his young face. The little black-haired brat was just like any other brat on the face of that godforsaken planet—she was just another obstacle he had to overcome to follow in his father's footsteps—so why did he hesitate? Why did the thought of harming her, even with just a small blister, disgust him? He had no answers.
Fed up with his silence and refusal, Aubergine rolled her eyes and chucked the branch back into the fire. "Fine," she grumbled, "then just watch." Right before his eyes, she held her left arm out over the fire. Flames licked along her tawny skin, each one making her flinch and whimper. Piccolo's hand shot out seemingly of its own accord and he swatted her arm away from the fire.
"You idiot!" he swore, his black eyes halfway between frantic and angry. "What were you—!" He really should have expected the roasted fish she jammed in his mouth to shut him up. Ugh…her cooking really was terrible.
"Just watch," she reminded shortly, her right hand hovering over the burns on her left arm, fingertips just barely touching them. Right before Piccolo's eyes, Aubergine's eyes changed—black spread from her pupils outward until it swallowed up every single speck of iris and white—and a soft white glow spread outward from her hand. The glow surrounded her arm and her burns began gleaming silvery white, then like some strange magic, they receded into her flesh as though they'd never been there. Once her skin was again unbroken, the glow vanished and the black began to slowly fade from her eyes—eyes fixed seriously on his own.
The young Namekian found himself incredibly creeped out by those solid black eyes and instead focused on her newly healed arm. He saw the mess of nasty burns—saw with his own eyes how her skin was blistering and red—but the skin before him now was completely unmarred. In disbelief, he found himself tempted to poke the inexplicably healthy skin, but her knowing smirk dissuaded him. "You can heal people," he acknowledged instead.
"Much worse injuries than that, too," she proclaimed seriously. "My father said it was a gift of my mother's people." Her eyes grew uncomfortable at the admission and she turned to stare into the flames. "I wouldn't mind." Piccolo considered her words silently, his right eye twitching from the feeling of blood drying down the right side of his nose.
"Don't heal it all the way." She looked up, one black brow arched in confusion.
"What?" The young Namekian snorted and gave her an 'are you stupid or something?' look.
"Just stop the bleeding—don't heal it all the way," he clarified slowly as though talking to a person of low intellect. The irritation in her expression was worth it. "If it scars, it'll prove I'm strong—that I'll survive anything!" Aubergine rolled her eyes again but held her hand out to his forehead, the very tips of her fingers gingerly touching his skin; he felt every single one of them, heat spreading outward from all five points of contact. As her eyes turned solid black again, and the same soft white glow surrounded her hand—nearly blinding him—a strange feeling replaced the heat of her skin, something almost like slipping into a cold brook on a hot day. A barely visible shiver ran through him, but he didn't let it show in his face.
"I hardly think a little line on your face proves you're King Shit," she drawled as the glow faded away. He couldn't fight the feeling that she was staring right into his own with those creepy black eyes, but with no visible pupils, he was left guessing. When she pulled away, he reached up to feel around, and sure enough, the wound was still there, only scabbed over. "Still. Whatever you've got to tell yourself, I guess." Growing tired of her company, Piccolo lunged to his feet and prepared to stalk away into the forest again. Before he could get far, though, her voice stopped him in his tracks and brought an angry blush to his cheeks. "If that scar means you're strong, does the one on your ass mean you're a chicken?"
A sudden noise tore Aubergine from her sleep. She lurched upward gasping, her eyes already solid black and her hands outstretched to drain whoever was stupid enough to attack her in her own bed. Upon finding only her incredibly fat and lazy tabby cat curling up on the windowsill next to her head, she felt rather silly.
As the black drained from her eyes, she scrubbed her scruffy bangs back out of her face, considering the dream that woke her. She was used to Piccolo featuring in her worst nightmares—after all, it was his last glorious death that brought those recurring nightmares to life—but the latest dream was nothing she'd ever dealt with before. Piccolo was glad to see her, so glad he took up residence on her property and watched over her by day. When night fell, an army of headhunters appeared out of nowhere, all intent on reaping her saleable organs for their own gain…and Piccolo, unwilling to simply stand aside and let her die, was killed.
"No," she insisted aloud as the fat orange cat hopped down to her bed—the impact sending a protesting groan through the old box spring—and lumbered up to stick his ass in her face. (Granted, he simply wanted to groom her hair, but even for a cat, Tangerine was all ass.) "That's not going to happen…he's not stupid enough to stick around." Tanny let out a protesting wowr and glanced pointedly up at the window.
The tired woman swept her bangs out of her dead eye again and stared out over the landscape. Between the mortared chunks of salvaged glass, a glimpse of movement under the nearest tree caught her eye—something long and pale rustling in the breeze—dancing like linens drying on the line. Piccolo's cape, she realized with a halfhearted frown at the Namekian warrior levitating above the dew-dampened grass. Moonlight painted his skin with silver and a faint golden aura surrounded his still form. Torn between solemn and sullen, she lifted her fingertips to the mortared glass, watching the stoic being meditating near her home.
Piccolo wasn't stupid enough to stick around where he wasn't needed…so why was he still there?
UP NEXT: Aubergine gets a lesson in living - "Is This Living, or Just Existence?"