Crossed Fates

   It is a common fact that the higher you go in the atmosphere, the thinner and colder the air gets. Piccolo knew this better than anyone. After all, training today was taking place there. He sat on nothing but his own ki, ice covering his body completely. Of course, the conditions hurt him, but he'd long since trained himself as a samurai, never yielding to pain.

   Up here, he could have total concentration. No sound could reach the near vacuum of the Stratosphere. That made detecting Gohan's absence all the more easier. From day one, he'd been keeping track of Gohan constantly, tracking him through his ki. He'd built a psychic link of sorts with the boy, and when it broke off, he knew something was wrong.
 His eye's snapped open, shattering a small piece of his ice coffin. He sent forth a ki blast across his body, splintering the rest of the ice. He tried to remember where he'd last felt Gohan. There...very faintly, he could sense the ki trail of Gohan. Piccolo didn't need any more incentive than that. With a powerful burst of ki, Piccolo hurled himself back towards the Earth.

   As he descended, he almost instantly went from freezing cold to cold to warm to hot to boiling hot to burns two ton rocks hot. Of course, Piccolo shielded himself from them just enough to keep conscious. He spent the rest of his energy on calming his mind as he tried to locate Gohan's trail. It went from his camp to a course through the woods, then, it was engulfed in a mass of ki. For only an instant, Piccolo thought it was the saijyens, then he remembered that was were Crystal Tokyo was. The tightly packed ki made the city seem to have a power level of roughly ten million.
 /Great, I'll have to search visually/ Piccolo thought, /What am I supposed to look for, his dead body lying in an alley with a knife through his back. No, he can't be dead. He's too strong, he just can't be.../
 Piccolo spiraled in a tightening circle around the city, trying to find Gohan. On his thirtieth lap, a thought occurred to him. A memory from his father popped into his head, a flashback from the past. It was his father, raving mad in a cage. He was to young to break the bars, and there, on two twin thrones sat a bearded king and his large wife. Then, it fast forwarded a few hours, to nighttime. A guard coming to feed the monster, foolishly getting within reach of namekien arms.

   The flashback came and went quickly, leaving Piccolo enraged. He flew as fast as possible towards the castle, trying to identify the King's abnormally high ki as he searched. He found it quickly, then rocketed in through the castle walls then back out and into the garden. There, to his suprise, was the queen.
 He cut off the flow of ki and landed with the grace of a practiced acrobat. He looked around the garden, searching not with his eyes, but his nose. He was rewarded with the faint, but poignant, smell of Gohan.
 "Where is Gohan?" Piccolo said, hiding his anger inside.
 After all, if a battle could be avoided, it was all the better.

   However, when the queen brought up a strange, ornamented, wand that shot out a huge energy blast straight at his chest, he forgot his idea's of peace.
 /Wow. No wonder her power level is higher than the kings,/ Piccolo thought as he absently rubbed his chest, /That blast was truly a work of art, like something an artist drew, not the raw ki I use. I think she was holding back too. Better be careful./
 The queen started to speak: "So, even here in Crystal Tokyo I can't be rid of evil monster's. Well, in the name of the Moon, I shall punish you!"
 Piccolo laughed, a sound that most people found disturbing. "The moon? You represent the moon? When was the last time you saw it? I blew it up."

   That phased her. "Y-you blew up the Moon. S-so that means...You couldn't of. That's impossible."
 "Not really. It's just a dead piece of rock."
 The queen got over the loss, quicker than Piccolo would have thought, and started her wand attack again, this time meaning business. Her talisman flared to life, sending out raw energy this time in the form of one pure, white beam. Piccolo was ready this time though, and he countered with a mouth blast that seared his throat, but thanks to his training he was able to block out the pain.
 The two blasts collided, each one not giving in to the other. At the collision point, the ground was starting to turn black and the foliage was burning. The pain in the back of Piccolo's mind was starting to get more intense.
 /Can't keep this up/

   Contorting his hands in apparent signs of the occult, Piccolo charged up the energy around him, let it fly as a ball of electric death towards the queen. He cut off his blast, then jumped twenty feet in the air to see if it worked.
 Before he could see, he had to reel in pain from a bright, red rose that stuck into his back. He looked behind him for the assailant, and saw the king. His was dressed in a sharp tuxedo and wielded a black ebony staff.
 /Hmm, he's stronger than before./
 "So, you dare invade this place of safety. This castle was made for a place of peace, and yet you break the peace by attacking the queen. For this, I will defeat you!"
 Piccolo ripped the rose off his back and subconsciously started to heal the wound.
 "Look you! I don't want to fight!" Piccolo lied, "Just give me Gohan and I'll leave."
 Before the king could answer, Piccolo phased behind his back and put him into a painful armlock. He did it just in time to avoid the queen's charged up tiara.

   "Give me Gohan." Piccolo said, calmly, as if the assassination of royalty was no new thing to him. That ripping his arm off wouldn't give him any mental anguish at all. He could finally smell the king's fear and hear his heart pounding into his chest. Perfect.
 "I don't know where or who Gohan is. Please, release me and I'll start a search for him."
 Piccolo listened for the jump in the king's heart beat that meant he was lying, when he didn't, he let go of the man's arm.
 "Fine."
 Almost as soon as he let go, the king's clothes changed into the formal apparel appropriate for a king. His queen ran up to him, now dressed in an equally formal and elegant dress, though she herself wasn't.
 "Darian!" She yelled as she hugged him hard across the neck, "I thought he was going to kill you!" She then noticed that Piccolo was still there, glaring at her.
 "Uh, honey, why is he still here." She whispered into his ear.
 "He's uh, well he's looking for someone named Gohan."
 "Oh yeah, he did say that, now that you mention it."
 "And you tried to blast him!"
 "Well, he's scary."
 "Serena, you are such an idiot."
 "Yeah," She said, hugging him again. "But you still love me."
 Piccolo emitted a growl that was scarier than a rabid tiger that threw the two back into reality and away from their little dream world.

   "Listen, I followed Gohan's trail up to this point," Piccolo said, this time only a half-lie.
 "His scent is very faint, but I know at least that he was here, and then he wasn't."
 The king nodded thoughtfully, then turned to his wife for confirmation.
 She also nodded.
 "Follow us." Was all he said.

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