Early the next morning
It was Saturday no school for Gohan.
"Gohan, you coming with us?" Goku asked.
"No. I've got something else to do. You guys go on ahead." Gohan shook his head and blinked out of sight.
Goku, Vegeta, Raditz and the others shot off toward the coordinates Gohan had given them.
Arctic ice sheet
"Hm? All of them moved at once… looks like something's up." Floating cross-legged in meditation, Piccolo felt their ki surge and stood. He fixed the direction and sped off.
Lookout
"Gohan! Long time no see!" Dende brightened the moment he spotted him.
"Mm. You bored up here?" Gohan ruffled Dende's hair.
Different growth rates meant Gohan now towered a head taller than him.
"Not at all! Listen I've been observing how humans reproduce, and compared to Namekians it's completely "
"Okay, yeah, no need to tell me that. And maybe stop peeping bad for the eyes." Gohan cut him off fast.
"Peeping? No way. I'm very diligent! They, um, measure each other's… depth and length? They seem happy makes me envious, really. Why don't Namekians have sexes…" Dende was getting way too into it, spiraling from excitement into existential frustration.
Gohan's face went crimson. "…Mr. Popo, what exactly are you teaching him?"
"This is basic mammalian biology. Earth's Guardian should understand the planet he guards." Mr. Popo's expression didn't flicker.
"Dende, I'm here on business." Gohan raised his voice.
The chatterbox froze mid-sentence. "What is it, Gohan?"
"Have you noticed anything abnormal lately? Cases where people are left as dried husks clothes on the ground, bodies sucked dry, that kind of thing?"
Dende stepped to the edge of the Lookout, shut his eyes, and reached out across the world.
"Mr. Popo," Gohan muttered through a twitching smile, "maybe have him do this more often. Watching that other stuff won't… help him. He literally can't."
"I am only a servant," Popo said blandly.
Gohan's cheek twitched. A servant, my foot…
The thought sparked another: back with the Time King, he'd never asked about Popo's origin. His eyes narrowed.
"Mr. Popo ever heard of the Time King?"
Popo's gaze snapped to him, drilling straight through. A terrible pressure rolled out of him.
Under that weight, the primordial qi within Gohan roared to life. He slipped into Mystic on instinct.
A deathly, suffocating stillness bled across the sky.
Crushed between the two auras, Dende collapsed, eyes wide with terror.
"How… do… you… know of the Time King?" Popo asked, each word a hammer.
Mystic calm iced over Gohan's eyes, now a lifeless gray. "I know because I know."
Popo stared at him without a word.
A minute later the pressure vanished. Dende wheezed and got his knees under him. Gohan eased back to base; the pall of despair lifted like a fog.
"So you do know him." Gohan couldn't help the flash of excitement. He hadn't realized how close he'd just skated to disaster; the death-rule woven into Mystic dulled his danger sense.
"I do not," Popo said, face unreadable.
"You're lying."
"I am only a servant." Popo turned away and walked off, whether Gohan believed him or not.
Damn spook. One day I'm ripping that mask off. Gohan swallowed the thought.
"G-Gohan… what was that?" Dende managed at last.
"It's fine. What'd you find?" Gohan asked.
"There five thousand kilometers out two… lifeless humans are draining people's energy. And over there something worse. A monster. It's swallowing people's essence… body and spirit." Dende pointed, voice shaking.
"So Cell really did come. What a mess this timeline is." No ripple touched Gohan's eyes only a small knot of curiosity.
"You know that thing?" Dende asked, nervous.
"Leave it to me. Keep an eye on anomalies, all right? And stop watching things you can't… participate in. I'm serious." He rapped out a few scolding words and vanished.
"Got it! I will!" Dende called after him.
Following Dende's directions, Gohan skimmed low over a dense forest, circling until
There: a time machine, half-buried in moss, as if it had sat there for years, a gaping hole torn through its dome.
"Found you." He touched down.
He popped it back into its capsule with a button press, then combed the area. Soon he found a sloughed carapace the dry husk of a molt.
Hide well, bug. I want you at your best. He flicked away. Let's see if they let 17 and 18 live long enough for you to evolve.
He reappeared above the island where the androids were rampaging. "Oh? They made it too." Piccolo and Krillin's ki brushed his senses; together with Goku's group, that made six, sweeping low in a grid.
In a shadowed alley, Android 19 and Android 20 huddled.
"Number 20… how did they find us?" 19 whispered.
Dr. Gero now Android 20, his brain the only human part left glanced toward the street. "The reports about this island, most likely. It doesn't matter. According to the data, we can eliminate them. Come let's isolate one and strike."
Since their return to Earth, Goku and the others hadn't gone all-out. Last night, when Gohan sized everyone up, he'd shredded the surveillance micro-bots; and Piccolo's fusion had been done up on the Lookout, far beyond their range.
Gero's tiny drones had limits they'd failed to reach those heights. The best they'd scraped together was a trace from Piccolo's fight with Ginyu.
Piccolo himself kept his ki sealed to perfection spiking only in combat and dropping to nothing the moment he stopped. To those bots, he was a ghost.
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