Earth
Piccolo had Ginyu pinned and was venting weeks of fury through his fists.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Straddling him, Piccolo hammered straight into his face, pounding a crater into the ground.
"Hah… ha ha ha…" No matter how hard Piccolo hit, Ginyu only laughed.
"You're begging to die!" The more Ginyu laughed, the hotter Piccolo burned.
Watching Gohan blink back into the battlefield, Goku blinked. "Gohan… why are you carrying a dung beetle? That's nasty."
"Just watch, Dad. It's got a special use." Gohan's smile went a shade wicked.
Raditz, Nappa, and even Goku felt a chill run down their spines at that smile.
Gohan had found a dung beetle as big as a man's palm because, well, Earth in this world had its share of weird fauna. He wasn't touching it; a thin sheath of ki held the bug suspended at arm's length.
"Piccolo he's goading you. Don't take the bait!" Goku shouted.
"I know… but I really want to smash him. That bastard is unforgivable!" Piccolo grit his teeth, then flashed away to open the distance.
"Hah… go on, keep hitting khak!" Ginyu got up, spat blood and a couple teeth onto the dust.
"I would keep hitting you… but killing you sounds even better." Piccolo slid into a stance, ki welling between his hands.
Now. Ginyu set his posture to make it look like he was about to trade beams.
"Here we go." Gohan's eyes locked on him.
Ki swelled around Piccolo's arms with a hot, rippling shimmer.
"Masenko!" Piccolo roared, just about to fire
Ginyu's eyes went hard. A golden glare wrapped him head to toe. "Body Change!"
There it was his innate ability to swap souls. The beam seized Piccolo's body in place for a heartbeat just long enough to make him a target.
"Damn!" Piccolo felt it too late. He should have expected this. After all, to a scavenger like Ginyu, a body stronger than Frieza's was the ultimate prize.
Two phantom silhouettes peeled up from their skulls.
"Ginyu… I came prepared for you." Gohan rocked back like a pitcher and snapped his arm forward.
The dung beetle arced into the path of the swapping beam.
Piccolo's soul braced and held, stubbornly standing its ground above his own head, refusing the pull. That alone shocked Ginyu he'd stolen bodies before, but he'd never run into a soul that could resist the exchange.
The reason was simple. As Mr. Popo often said, Namekians train the mind first. Mind is spirit soul. Fused with Kami, Piccolo's spirit was whole and honed; in sheer quality it outclassed flesh.
"No no, don't you !" Ginyu's disembodied voice seemed to scream.
What he saw filled his ghostly eyes with dread: a dung beetle, suddenly right there.
Too close. No way to dodge. No time to think.
The beetle, caught in the beam, lunged for the nearest vacant shell Frieza's body.
And Ginyu's soul, riding his own beam, plunged straight into… the insect.
The swap failed just not the way he intended. Ginyu became a dung beetle.
The dung beetle's soul woke up inside Frieza's body and skittered away on all fours.
"Huff… huff…" Piccolo's chest heaved; cold sweat poured down his back.
"That was too close. Thank you, Gohan." He bowed his head a first for him, and utterly sincere.
"It wasn't your fault. Heat of the moment. Anger trips reason," Gohan said, shaking his head.
"What do we do with him?" Piccolo lifted "Cap Dung yu" with a pinch of ki, trying not to look directly at the chitin.
"Heh. Dung beetle… what do we do?" Gohan's grin turned mischievous.
"You're disgusting," Piccolo muttered, swallowing down a purely mental wave of nausea. (Namekians didn't really eat; this was all in his head.)
"And that one?" Piccolo jerked his chin toward the distant figure Frieza's body, now home to a very confused insect scrambling on hands and knees.
"Send him on. For all his sins, Frieza wasn't this cheap." Gohan raised a palm and spun a neat little ki sphere.
He flicked it lazily. It traced a tidy arc and struck the crawling figure.
Boom.
With that soft report, the emperor's body went the same way as the emperor himself into nothingness.
"All right, show's over. I've got school. I'll take care of this one." Gohan snagged the beetle-Ginyu in a ki grip and blinked out.
"Piccolo, Earth's going to need disaster relief. Could you brief Elder Moori and the others?" Goku asked.
"Yeah. Leave it to me." A flex of will, and Piccolo's familiar cape and turban snapped into place. He launched toward Moori's compound.
"Okay, we're done here too. Raditz won't be long now before you and Nappa hit Super Saiyan." Goku's eyes gleamed at the memory of their near-breakthrough.
"I felt it too," Raditz said.
"Krillin, heading back to Kame House?" Goku called.
"Yeah. Where else would I even go? See you!" Krillin shot skyward.
This time there wasn't even an "offering to the plot gods" Krillin didn't get to be more than a background extra. Hard to trigger Goku's next leap when he'd lost rock–paper–scissors and never even stepped onto the stage.
Boys' restroom, Central South Academy
In a stall, Gohan set to work. He sheared off the beetle's legs with needle-fine blades of ki, then shattered the tiny regenerative cores so they wouldn't grow back dung beetles were stubborn about living.
He jogged down to the ground-floor staff outhouse.
"Heh. See? I'm nice I even brought you to your favorite place. No need to thank me too much," he said, and dropped Captain Dungyu into the pit.
"Ugh. That smell." Even Gohan gagged.
"Gohan! What are you " Ginyu squealed, voice muffled and unheard. Gohan had already pinned him in the bottom with a thumbprint of ki. That sliver of energy would hold for thirty to fifty days easily.
After all, it was only a little beetle.
Job done, Gohan washed up, squared his uniform, and strolled back toward class.
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