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Piccolo rubbed his boot over the crater in the floor of his land, rolling the rocks under his sole as he looked up the mountain, the very one he had crashed through not a few days before. The sky was threatening yet another storm and the Namek wondered if Gohan had simply shifted it with his power, in the end, denying the clouds their downpour had done little good. For all the things they had achieved, here the storm still was. He stepped over to the greying lake and looked back up at his meditation ground, picturing the android coming upon him, full of glee and a sharp tongue. Too much mirth, not serious enough. Half warrior, half comedian, and Piccolo had lived because of it.
He had become more powerful because of it. So why didn’t he feel good?
Piccolo sighed and rubbed his damp brow. The humidity was climbing, the birds were nestled but he remained outside; itching for that rain to come. To wash away all the strange things he felt that had no place at all. The Gammas were androids, fully artificial, no more alive than the dirt beneath his feet. Surely their death would come no more surprising than an appliance failing, than an air car predictably breaking down when you needed it the most. He dug around in what he knew of human experience to make sense of it, he even pondered over visiting Krillin. He wanted to ask the man a question but he knew himself well enough that the words would never spill from his still bruised lips. His time as Kami did little to fill in the gaps, even Nail was conspicuously silent. The only thing that tickled his ears was the distant sound of thunder and the question he dare not ask.
The Namek walked to the edge of the lake and started his journey around it. A cathartic route that usually helped clear his head but he had been hit so many times, maybe his brain was as fucked as his face was. Cell Max had delivered a beating unlike any he had felt before. Maybe being giant made it worse, made it bigger, last longer. He closed his eyes briefly as he walked, remembering the relief he had felt when Gohan delivered his final attack. The pride he’d felt. It had been so short lived. The world was saved but the charming Gamma had not been, despite his change of heart, despite that one last heroic effort that had changed the course of their collective fates.
Piccolo somehow knew, as his body had drifted off in piecemeal dust, that he had not gone to the afterlife. The android was not running, bewildered on Snakeway, he wasn’t sitting frustrated on King Kai’s planet, exchanging quips until he was revived. He had been recycled just like any other inorganic thing. His mind rallied in defence of the boy, wishing he knew more about science; could he be brought back? What happened when an android was shattered into a thousand pieces? Could his essence not be traced and rebuilt? Maybe he should speak to Bulma, not Krillin.
Piccolo stopped as he reached the precipice, where the waterfall toppled over the edge. He crossed his arms and the rain finally fell, soaking his clothes quickly in a thunderous effort and he tipped his face upwards into it. Maybe there was a piece of Gamma 2 on the wind, just one, single fragment settling on his nose. Maybe he was everywhere. He snarled and looked back over the cliff at his own wistfulness. Why did he care so much? Because Gamma 2 had been fed a pack of lies? Because his kind heart had been tricked and played with and it had taken no effort at all to turn him around? Not like Piccolo, or even Vegeta, who had resisted and played demon for so long that he was still surprised the senshi had been quite so patient. He couldn’t help but feel that it was undeserved.
His gi stuck to him sodden, the weather running rivers down his face and dripping from his antennae. It sent a chill through him, but a pleasant one. Piccolo hadn’t felt clean since it all happened, like his insides needed rinsing as well. The hot rage he’d experienced still rang within him, the fear still furiously grasping his chest, stealing his breath. For Pan, for Gohan, fuck, even for Bulma, but also for those two android boys who hadn’t really done anything wrong. Like children, brought into the world for all of a moment, just to have one of them suddenly and brutally depart. His Namekian instincts roared, a genetic predisposition to protect the innocent that he had sought all his life to avoid. Yet, here he was, living a life dedicated to protecting them all. He thought again of Eighteen and Krillin, of her nature and why he had fallen so hard for her. A machine, a cold being that may have no soul at all. It was all beyond him, a puzzle he didn’t have the education to solve, nor the purity of soul. He didn’t know love all that well either, it was both enormous and alien, but he saw it easily enough, even in himself. Particularly now that his whole being was absorbed in the death of someone he barely knew and yet somehow, he’d become a man obsessed. He’d wanted to save him so badly, had wanted his premature death to count or better yet, not to have happened at all. Amber eyes haunted his thoughts but he didn’t, couldn’t, resent it. Whatever strange thing had passed between them, however encumbered, he remembered it not with bitterness, but with fondness. Piccolo smirked into the rain, letting some of the drops graze his long fangs.
Just what exactly is inside an android’s heart?
CC.