Contact the Record Keeper


ONE


Left behind. Reduced to a glorified trainer. What a waste.

Absently lifting his turban to scratch an antenna, Piccolo grunted and tried to adjust his thoughts. Meditation wasn't easy these days. Thoughts crept in...and not the relatively good ones he was used to.

What do you expect when you spend your days training brats and solving squabbles between people who should know better by now? Shouldn't you be trying to catch up to those saiyan bastards instead of pandering to their spawn? They're leaving you in the dust, you know. Even the kids can clean your clock.

Thoughts...and questions. Questions better left unexplored.

And yet here you sit, day after day. Why did you allow yourself to be...domesticated?

He winced. That was the word that occurred to him more and more frequently these days. Domesticated, in all its terrible glory. He--the former Demon King, the essence of all the evil in a young and brash god-wanna-be's heart--had been...domesticated.

He'd barely lifted a finger against Buu. After training the brats in the fusion dance, he'd basically played baby-sitter. Worse, he'd been absorbed, for all the gods' sakes, forced into impotence in a veritable coma while the world went to hell around him.

Might as well have sat at Capsule Corp. and watched it on television, for all the good you did.

That voice.... He knew it well, though he hadn't heard it so loudly in years. Piccolo.

Not the Piccolo that couldn't meditate for all the arguing within himself, but the Piccolo he used to be--the powerful being who had hated the world and had hated its goody-two-shoes god with a deep and abiding passion for being the other half of himself. The tails to his heads. The light to his dark.

If only he could get rid of that other half now that things had settled down.

He knew he wouldn't go on an evil rampage or any such stupidity without the old guardian's influence. He had made his peace with this life and this place before he'd started taking on other nameks. He had sworn to protect Gohan with his very life before fusing with Nail and had further accepted Son Goku into his regard before fusing with Kami.

No, he wouldn't be the evil cuss he'd always been.

But you wouldn't be a pontificating, sanctimonious prick, either.

"Gah! Enough, already!"

His power flared around him at his outburst, and he gave up on meditation for the day. Standing in midair, he stretched, his legs cramped from being forcibly crossed for so long without the relaxation of meditation. This...disruption of his normally flowing thoughts happened ever more frequently as the years passed with no new threat. Of course, Kami loved the peace, but Nail was bored. And Piccolo....

Well, Piccolo would give anything to be himself again.

Maybe it was time to have a little talk with Shenron....

* * *

"Oi, Piccolo! Up for a spar?"

Grunting, he cracked an eyelid and glared at one of the two people for whom he would willingly give his life. Wary of a joke--or worse, a pity-spar--he closed that eye again and determined to ignore his old nemesis. Soon enough, Son Goku would reach the end of his notoriously short attention span and leave.

Waterfall. Waterfall. Waterfall. Tapping foot.

What?

Cracking both eyelids this time, he looked around, then down, finding his former rival standing on a slab of rock in the middle of the watering hole, shirtless and tapping a foot impatiently. Scowling, he opened his eyes fully and glared down at the idiot, who merely grinned in response.

"So? Can we spar?"

Irritated at the interruption now that he could finally meditate in relative peace again, he grunted. "Vegeta pissed at you again?"

A laugh. "Isn't he always?"

Snorting, he closed his eyes again, already tuning himself into his waterfall's soothing rush. "So go 'my prince' him a few times and patch it up. I'm busy."

After a few moments' silence, he realized he wasn't alone yet and opened his eyes, nearly falling out of the sky at the sight of Goku floating barely a foot away.

"Dammit, Son! Don't do that!"

Innocent as the driven snow, the big idiot tilted his head to one side and grinned. "Why not? It's the only time I really get to see you off your guard."

"Look, isn't there someone else you can nag into a spar? I'd hardly be a challenge at this point."

A frown darkened the usually open, smiling face, and a terrible epiphany struck him like a lightning bolt out of an unclouded sky. That dark expression sat just as well on those angled, saiyan features as the usual grin. Perhaps even better.

He tended to forget that Son Goku, for all his smiles and pranks, could be a merciless killer when driven past the breaking point.

"You're always a challenge, Piccolo. You've bled me nearly as much as Vegeta has."

"You've bled me...."

The odd phrase caught in his mind, and he mulled it over, scowling a bit. Why had his old rival worded it like that? He had expected a half-hearted protest about his fighting abilities or the usual pandering to his cunning mind. The idea that this affable dope of a saiyan might measure his warrior worth by how much blood he'd spilled struck him as...disturbing.

Forcing a snort at the odd turn of his thoughts, he crossed his arms and turned half away. "Years ago, maybe. Now, you could probably run circles around me without even ascending past Super Saiyan."

Admitting just how far beyond his reach his rival's power level stretched galled him...and another epiphany struck. Just when had he given up on that all-or-nothing rematch with his nemesis?

"Your energy has been off the last few days, Piccolo. Are...are you all right?"

His astonishment kept him tongue-tied, and he simply stared at the one person who had run the gamut of his emotions. Hadn't he hated this man? Where had the boy he'd beaten nearly to death gone? Where had the youth who had rallied and nearly destroyed him disappeared to?

When had Son Goku grown up and left him behind?

"Piccolo?"

The fighter before him was no child, no untried youth, no rookie warrior. The softly rounded face had hardened and sharpened with time, the wiry sinew of adolescence firmed and shaped with relentless training, the innocent eyes darkened with responsibility and hardship.

And concern.

"What?" Shaking off his shock, he took another look and wondered exactly how long he'd been staring like an idiot. "I'm...I'm fine, Son."

A man. Son Goku had grown into a man while his back was turned. How had he missed it? Had the centuries he remembered from his father's and Kami's lives lulled him to the passage of time? Had his dulled need to defeat his young rival allowed him to miss that youth's maturation? Or had his silent jealousy of the saiyan's great leaps in power blinded him to the fact that he no longer faced a boy at a cheesy Earth tournament?

"I dunno, Piccolo. You look a little pale, and that's quite a trick for you."

Or had that idiot grin and eternally youthful cheer done it?

"Geez, you're really starting to worry me. I've never known you to turn down a fight, Piccolo."

Something clicked, and he blinked, realizing that Goku actually did look worried. And suddenly, he wanted a spar. Not the rematch he'd always wanted, of course. He supposed that was never meant to be. But he could spar, and he could....

I can bleed him some more.

The usual, crooked smirk felt good.

"No going Super Saiyan."

And there was the sunny, honestly happy grin that made the man look like a boy.

"Deal!"

"Your funeral."

* * *

"Gah!"

The spiraling beam missed bare, reddened skin by less than an inch, and Piccolo roared a laugh at the shock of actual fear in those wide, saiyan eyes.

"Not funny, Piccolo! You could've killed me!"

"You're getting slow in your old age, Son. I think I singed your chest hair."

Tilting his head and completely dropping his guard, Goku patted at his bare chest and frowned. "But...I don't have any chest hair. And neither do you."

Far from annoyed at the oh-so-Goku comment, he couldn't hold back another chuckle as he dropped his offensive stance and lifted a hand to staunch the rather copious flow of blood down his arm. The supposed idiot scratching his head not ten feet away had nearly cut his arm off with an energy disk, and he hated nothing worse than regrowing his limbs. Two per lifetime was plenty.

The three hours past had been the best he could remember since he'd fused with Kami. No voices contradicting themselves in his head. No foreign emotions to be worked into his own. No confusion or weight of duty to the world.

Just a simple spar with a simple man who could crush him like an egg if his control slipped.

Exhilarating.

Apparently realizing the spar was over, Goku sat down and crossed his legs meditation-style, rubbing at his blood-streaked muscles and grinning ear to ear. "Great spar, Piccolo! I haven't worked that hard in ages."

Taking up his own favorite pose in midair, he focused a little energy on regenerating the worst of his injuries, surprised at the extent of the damage. While Gohan might be stronger and that prick Vegeta might be more ruthless, Son Goku always gave him the best workout--an odd combination of "fight or die" and "tag, you're it", as if even the most deadly match was nothing but a mildly important game.

When the last of the open wounds sealed, he gave up on the rest and relaxed. "Did I bleed you enough to stay in your good graces?"

If possible, that stupid grin brightened. "Absolutely! I was just debating whether or not I need a senzu."

His earlier discomfiture returned at the enthusiastic response. He'd been joking, of course, but the big idiot had answered both immediately and honestly in the affirmative. Why did Goku seem so happy about bleeding?

"Son, can I ask you a question?"

A shrug. "Sure."

A frown of concentration settled into his forehead, and he fought to keep it from spreading to his mouth. "You said something earlier about me bleeding you almost as much as Vegeta has, and just now you didn't even blink when I said it again. What...what does it mean? I mean, it just doesn't sound like you."

Tilting his head a bit, the saiyan seemed to actually consider his response before answering. "Well...Vegeta says it's a better measure of a warrior's skill. Anyone can kill with a blast or a weapon. I mean, I could have vaporized you or you me without even breaking a sweat, you know? It takes far more ability and focus to wound an opponent, to beat him with your own skill and cunning, to spill enough blood to really count, and to make him live through it."

He blinked. That definitely sounded like something the arrogant little bastard would come up with.

"You know, I can even remember exactly how he put it, though it's been years." His dark eyes shadowed with memory, Goku lowered and roughened his voice, sounding eerily like the prince he mimicked. "Blood is the coin of the realm, Kakarot. I want to see how rich you are."

A snort snuck past his discomfiture. "I hate to tell you this, Son, but he was probably trying to kill you."

The odd clarity that occasionally filled those usually sparkling eyes surprised him again, slapping him anew with the knowledge that Son Goku had indeed grown up and was just as cunning as the other saiyan when he wanted to be.

"But he didn't, Piccolo. Not that or any other time. And he could have." Those wide, serious eyes settled on his own, holding his gaze with no shame or stupidity. "And you could have, too."

His throat didn't seem to want to work, and his words came out more softly than he intended. "You know I wouldn't."

And just like that, the smile was back, taking decades off his age and dozens of points off his IQ. "And neither would Vegeta, much to his frustration."

Ruefully amused at the goofy saiyan's mercurial mood swings, he merely shook his head. "I think you trust him too much, and I know you've always misplaced your faith in me."

Laughing, Goku shoved to his feet and stretched. "Are you planning to betray me one of these days, Piccolo? If so, gimme a heads-up so I won't be so angry. I'd hate to find out at the last minute that there's another level past Super Saiyan 3. I dunno if I could forgive myself for mopping the floor with your turban."

A grunt. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

"Heh. That one hit the mark."

Growling and trying to hide his smirk, he stood in midair and crossed his arms. "Go heal up, Son. Next time, I won't hold back on you."

"Yeah, and maybe next time I'll cut off your arm instead of just nicking it."

"Get out of here!"

Still laughing, Goku lifted into the sky and waved, flaring his energy to speed his flight. Piccolo watched his old rival go, a soft smirk quirking his lips. Old rival. Old friend. They were one and the same, weren't they? After all, while the cheerful, often goofy saiyan had never ceased to be the first, he had always tried to be the last.

Now that he'd finally quieted the other nameks' voices in his head, he understood. And, for the first time in months, the former Demon King felt...peaceful.

Ironic, that.


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