Author's note - Well, here it is – the last chapter of book one. This one gave me fits for obvious reasons. It may not be perfect, but it was time for this book to be done. I'd like to take this time to thank everyone who stuck with this story all the way through and who put up with the many, many delays. Of course, the story isn't quite done being told – you can expect to see book two sometime this fall. Thanks again, everyone.

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Daimaou no Tanbarin opened the door to his study. As always, he hung his cloak on the hat rack in the corner. As always, he started a fire with an absent gesture, hearing the flames rise up. Immediately, the room was cast in soft hues of red and orange – like a sunset, but with less actual light, warmer for its familiarity.

It was good to be home.

He eased into his chair…the one that sat before the massive, carved desk that had served him well for so many years. With a sigh – it HAD been such a mess, really, in the end – he opened the still-unfinished book. He had a bit of time to kill.

The demon made it through exactly two paragraphs before he shot the ceiling an annoyed look. With a gesture, he swept everything from that desk – all the papers, the notes, the books, the documents – and pushed back from it, the book setting on his lap.

Precisely two seconds later, a large object crashed through the ceiling. It fell like a shot duck, pieces of stone and straw drifting through the air like feathers, all to land in a rather inglorious heap on his desk. The crunch, like the sound of dead locusts under the heel of a boot, would have made most men cringe.

Tambourine was not most men. He merely pinched the bridge of his nose. "Aiming for the courtyard, were we?"

Cymbal seemed not to hear him. The massive demon had fallen at an odd angle, slightly askew on that desk, somewhere between facedown and on his side. His shoulder and chest were partway off the desk – his head a little bowed – his eyes partway open, vacant, fixed. He breathed only in high, strained gasps, blood flecking his lips, pouring in small rivlets down his face. Already, the limbs were stiffening, beginning the telltale shakes of a body entering into shock. Blood made a sheet on Tambourine's desk from the gaping wound in the other's side…sliding over the edge like a pot overflowing on the stove.

"You missed," Tambourine said as he stood, the darkness falling from him like water from the back of a dolphin.

Cymbal lifted his head with obvious effort and flashed his brother a glare worthy of the Old Testament prophets. "So…damn…sorry" he spat, a strangled quality to his voice. Spatters of blood flecked onto the desk.

Tambourine shook his head. "And I wonder at times…" he began walking over toward the fireplace, pulling a poker from its stand as he did so, "why I can never seem to get any reading done." He began heating the tip of it in the flames, waiting calmly for it to glow a bright, bright red. Once he judged it to be suitably hot, he turned on his heel, walking back to that desk.

Cymbal, he noted, was not doing so well. The older demon's head was beginning to lower, his eyes clenched with the obvious effort to retain consciousness. His skin was barely even still a shade that would constitute green.

Well, Tambourine thought, No help for it. And against that ragged wound in the other's side, he pressed the poker, hearing immediately the sound of sizzling flesh – the pop and hiss not unlike the sound that humans associate with frying bacon.

Cymbal, surprised, actually screamed – a raw sound coupled with a curling of the body, a convulsion, a shudder.

Tambourine stood impassively as he watched the other's pain – and felt it, buffeting his shields, threatening to pour into his mind. He let it. Savored it, in a way, as he had long ago learned to do. After all, when one doesn't know how to rid himself of pain, he has two logical choices. He can forgo his sanity, or he can learn to appreciate it. Tambourine had chosen the latter. He was glad now.

Tambourine hesitated a moment before breaking the loaded silence after the scream – and when he did, it was not with his usual near-whisper. It was instead in his actual voice…a voice that was nonetheless soft, but deeper, substantial. "Rest now," he said, allowing some calculated warmth to enter his tone.

Cymbal blinked, and even as he was, turned his head to look at his brother incredulously. Tambourine could easily read a brief flare of suspicion in his eyes, wariness – the look, he noted wryly, of a wild thing right before it eats from your hand.

Tambourine shook his head slightly, held up his hand in a calming gesture, palm toward the other. "It's alright," he said. "Let…me help you."

He had, he realized, never seen his brother look at him like that before – but the older demon sighed and gave up his fight to keep his head lifted. The snarl relaxed slightly, almost disappearing – remaining more as a deflection of pain than anything else. His body shivered once…so odd, that, as Tambourine had never seen the man shake before, not even in the cold of the mountains…and gave up consciousness entirely, letting it fall out of him in the form of a sigh.

Tambourine felt his lips curve up into a smooth, controlled smirk. His long, supple fingers slid up his brother's neck to rest against his temples. In this way, he entered his mind. And he knew that everything was about to change.

Which was almost regrettable. He'd sort of miss arguing with him.

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Krillen didn't really understand how it had happened. One minute, everything had been fine – well, weird, really weird – but fine. The giant monkey was gone and Cymbal was gone.

Granted, it had surprised him when Piccolo had walked right up to Goku and started yelling at him. Of course, the fact that Piccolo was giving Goku the tongue-lashing of his life was, by itself, not so unbelievable. Piccolo hardly ever talked to Goku without raising his voice or having a few veins start to pop out on his forehead. What was weird was that the demon wasn't showing any signs at all of wanting to hit his longtime enemy. Stranger still, Goku hadn't been the least surprised to have the other walk up to him and read him the full chapter and verse of the riot act without so much as a sucker punch to punctuate it. Even the demon's less-than-friendly attitude hadn't seemed to bother Goku at all; instead of tensing up or moving into a stance, the orange-clad warrior had looked more like he was trying not to laugh. It was as if Goku had known somehow that Piccolo wouldn't hurt him.

Krillen's initial alarm had started to dissipate. He'd even started to think that maybe things had changed between them somehow, a little. Maybe Goku wasn't so crazy. Maybe Piccolo wasn't so terrible. Maybe everything would be alright.

Nothing could have prepared Krillen for what happened next, or its aftermath. Nothing could have readied him for seeing his best friend and longtime hero lying in the mud like an abandoned sock, half-collapsed on Piccolo. Who looked like…well…

Who looked like his lifetime enemy had just dropped dead on his legs, the midget realized glumly. Great. Now what do I do? He couldn't very well leave Goku out there in the mud. By the same token, any image he could conjure in his head of him going up and speaking to the demon was more disastrous than the last. The small monk was sure that the demon would rip his head off….or claw him to pieces…or pick him up by the front of his gi and shake him until his teeth rattled out…

Stop it, he thought, pushing all of those increasingly-graphic visuals – damn his imagination anyway – to the very, very back of his mind where they belonged. He steeled himself as best he could, drawing up on legs that wanted to shake and hands that wanted to pluck at his uniform, narrowing eyes that wanted nothing more than to cry. He forced a breath out. And he walked over to Piccolo. (Well, limped was more like, but walking sounded more heroic).

Krillen hadn't really taken the time to devise what he'd do after he got to Piccolo. He figured there wasn't any use in planning – as soon as he got there, the demon would jump to his feet and start spitting out one-liners…or rip his head off or something. So there was no point making big plans until he saw how Piccolo was going to react.

With this in mind, the small monk forced himself to walk right up next to Piccolo. He tried very hard not to look at Goku at all yet. That would only make him act like an idiot.

Krillen waited for Piccolo's reaction for a few seconds. He was more than a little disappointed when nothing happened at all – he'd built himself up to be ready for some kind of spectacle. He got the feeling that Piccolo hadn't even noticed him.

He cleared his throat nervously. When nothing happened the second time, the monk cleared his throat more loudly, realizing belatedly that he sounded as if he were choking on something.

Piccolo turned his head to look at him, and Krillen realized that he'd been wrong. The demon had known he was there. He just hadn't cared. Krillen felt his stomach tie up at the way that Piccolo looked at him – his eyes were wide, as if he still couldn't believe what had just happened. It's like he's in shock or something, Krillen realized after a moment or two.

Hastily, the monk swallowed every word he'd been about to say about "he at least deserves a decent burial," and "he's dead already, can't you leave him alone," and "get the Hell away from him, you psycho." When he finally found his voice again, what came out was a little stuttery, and not nearly as strong as he'd planned.

"P…piccolo," he said. "We…um…it's still raining."

No answer.

"We…um…shouldn't stay here. It's…" he found a spot on the ground to stare at "raining and all."

Silence.

"Your b…um. Someone could come. And that'd be bad, you know?"

Nothing.

"Piccolo," he said at last, surprised at how soft his own voice was. "We have to take him back now."

At that, the demon nodded, beginning to unfold himself. He moved, Krillen thought, very slowly - like a man just come out of sleep. "There is no 'we'" the demon said in a hoarse, sharp voice as he lifted off the ground and flew – haltingly – toward Son Goku's home. It sounded a lot like reflex.

Biting his lip, Krillen followed.

They didn't fly very fast. This was none of the crazy, unbridled ripping through the sky that would happen after a victory. Instead, the flight back to Mt. Poazo resembled more what it was – a funeral procession. Only they had Piccolo in place of a hearse. Krillen didn't know why, exactly, but that seemed appropriate.

And Piccolo was still acting weird. It wasn't just that he didn't zip or zoom around. It wasn't just that he was so quiet. The problem was more that he seemed distant, detached – he carried the body of Son Goku as if it were a bag of something fragile, but not as if it had been close to him. It reminded Krillen of a video he had seen once of a war. A bomb hit a beach. A man fell, his arm severed. The same man stood a moment later, a dazed expression on his face. He cradled the limb to himself as if it were a child, and he kept right on staggering.

All in all, it made Krillen pretty uncomfortable. After all, what could he do with a demon who'd decided to lose his mind all of a sudden?

With such dismal thoughts in his head…those and the voice in his heart that kept gasping, over and over, he's gone...it was no wonder that the journey to Son Goku's house seemed to take forever. He was relieved when the two of them finally landed, even though it meant he'd have to face Chichi…

Piccolo dropped Son's body onto the yard, unceremoniously. He then crossed his arms and bowed his head – as if composing himself.

For one of the few times in his life, Krillen didn't know what to say. "We'll wish him back," he blurted at last, when he worked up the courage.

Piccolo snorted. "What makes you think I'd allow that," he said. "I just got rid of him."

Krillen was about to fire off an angry retort when he noticed that the other really didn't sound mad – just kind of like he wasn't all there. Like he was….hiding something. Krillen thought again of the way he had looked in the instant that Goku died, the way his face had changed for just a second. "Actually," he said, "I thought you might wanna help."

At that, the demon rounded on him, eyes reduced to pinpricks, fangs gleaming. "Are you out of your shiny little mind? What in the Hell is WRONG with you people! All I ever wanted was to destroy this place, and every time I turn around, someone's offering me milk and cookies! You're insane, all of you! Insane! GAH." Piccolo threw both hands into the air and turned his back on the small human.

"Um," Krillen said, cringing a little and somewhat taken aback by the whole explosion. "S…sorry. My mistake!" he said, holding both hands up in front of him placatingly. "Forget I even mentioned it. I'll just take him inside for you, okay? Right. Bye, Piccolo!"

At that, Krillen picked up his friend's body and darted into the house…though he couldn't help but notice that the demon didn't seem to be going anywhere at all.

"Man, Goku," he said. "What have you been doing while I've been gone? Didn't I tell you not to go making friends with demons?" When Goku didn't answer, he felt a lump swelling in his throat – and he could not stop it. "I wish you were here," he said to the corpse, which lay with its hair falling quietly over its eyes. "You'd know what to do."

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Gohan was not having a good night. In fact, it might just have been the worst night ever. First, he'd had a terrible dream about finding out he had an evil uncle named Raditzu, who had kidnapped him. The dream had also had a very cold place and demons, and a strange man with silver eyes. He had been glad when he'd woken up in his own bed, but he'd been very scared.

As he usually did when he was scared, Gohan went looking for his parents. His father was nowhere to be found…and when he went downstairs, he saw something that made him even more upset. His mother was sitting curled-up on the couch and crying. Dad's friend Krillen was standing beside her, looking sad and miserable. And there was something strange on the table, covered with a sheet – but for some reason, the presence of the something made him shiver, so he didn't go look at it. Instead, he ran out of the house. If his mom was crying, then he should find dad. He'd know how to make it better.

Except that his dad wasn't in the yard, either. Gohan turned around several times, looking for his father, but there was just no sign of him at all. "Dad?" he tried after a minute, but no one answered.

Still, he had a feeling he wasn't by himself. He started turning slowly, and before long, he spotted a familiar figure – leaning up against the house on the shadow-side. That figure was sitting in the air – yes, really sitting in the air – with his arms crossed and his eyes closed.

Gohan ran over to him immediately. "Mr. Piccolo!" he said. Granted, the large, green fighter made him a little nervous sometimes, but he was someone at least a little familiar, and he always seemed to know what was going on. "Man, am I glad to see you…"

The green man didn't so much as open an eye.

"Have you seen my dad?"

There was still no answer, though it seemed to Gohan that Piccolo scowled just slightly.

"Mom's really upset," Gohan babbled on, "and dad always knows how to make her feel better and stuff, except we don't know where he is, so…"

"Your father isn't coming back," the green fighter snapped finally.

Gohan was brought up short. "What do you mean? He's gotta come back, he's my dad…" the boy's eyes began to water slowly, but with growing speed, "He's just got to."

"He's dead," Piccolo all but spat.

"D…dead," Gohan stammered. "Daddy can't be dead, Mr. Piccolo, he's…"

"He is. Get over it."

The boy stared at the demon with wide eyes. He couldn't believe that Mr. Piccolo could just talk about his father like that. Especially about him being dead. Of course, Gohan didn't believe him, not really – but it was such a terrible thing to say in the first place that he felt tears welling up in his eyes. "Y-you're a liar, sir" he said.

"Good call, kid," the green warrior muttered under his breath. "But m'not lying this time. Didn't you see the body? It's on the table."

And suddenly, everything made sense. Why mom was crying. Why everything was so strange in his house, like the day after a holiday – why nothing was happening the way that it usually did. Why he'd been feeling sick ever since he woke up…Gohan felt his throat start to close up, his eyes ache, a sensation of near-bursting in his chest, like someone had punched him in the stomach and dropped him at the same time…

Mr. Piccolo whipped his head around to glare at him, and Gohan was briefly taken aback by the force of his glare. "Don't you EVEN start that," he said. "Because I'm not going to put up with…"

It was too late. Fear on top of everything else only made the dam burst sooner. Gohan's legs gave out from under him as he sat down hard, fisted his hands over his eyes, and cried.

"Stop it," Mr. Piccolo snarled, but Gohan couldn't. Trying to just made him hiccough.

"So help me, I've…" Mr. Piccolo paused, his eyes narrowing in way that made him really, really scary-looking. Those eyes, he noticed, weren't like any eyes he'd ever seen before. They weren't like his dad's or his mom's – the eyeball part was smaller, almost all black – the only things Gohan could think of to compare them to were the eyes of a snake he'd seen once…a little garden thing that had been crawling along the walkway back when everything was okay.

Mr. Piccolo didn't say anything at all, even though Gohan thought he wanted to. Instead, he looked away, toward the mountains in the distance – almost like he was expecting someone to come, or as if he'd heard something from there – and growled deep in his chest. "You're coming with me," he said abruptly.

Gohan almost stopped crying when he heard that. "Wh..what?" he gasped. "But what about…"

Piccolo gave him no time to argue. He instead picked him up by the back of his shirt, tucked him under an arm – and bent his knees. Gohan, too startled even to yell for his mom, gasped out loud at the powerful sensation of the warrior's jump into the air – it was like bouncing on a trampoline, only there was no stop to the bounce. Then the ground was spinning away beneath them like it did when his dad took him for a ride on the cloud. Only faster, and windier, and he really, really didn't want to be there. "Put me down!" he yelled, or attempted to yell. It came out more like a squeak.

"Shut up," was Piccolo's only, terse response. So Gohan did the only thing that he could, logically, do. He fainted.

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Kami-sama had been guardian of the earth for a long time. He had seen crises, had stood with his knuckles white on his staff as bombs fell on cities and as plagues tore over the land – all this for centuries before a relative peace had settled, before his dark counterpart had been released from the Mafuba jar. He had enough experience, in other words, not to get too alarmed over the planet's lesser problems. There would be droughts and famines – great accidents and greater crimes – but these things would pass. Tomorrow would come. And he would ease the passing of the planet's many horrors as best he could. Thinking in this way was the only thing that kept him relatively sane.

This was different.

Kami watched as his reborn counterpart picked up the son of Goku, tucked him under his arm, and took off with him. Watched as, leagues away, an entirely different demon lay stretched out on a desk in someone's office, gasping in soft, ragged pants that sounded to him like the sound of a sickle cutting through tall grass over and over.

Watched as, in the center of a field, a small contraption…mostly plastic, with a small, green lense, beeped unobtrusively and steadily, and heralding in those tiny sounds – sounds that could have come from any dime-store wristwatch - the doom of his beloved planet.

"Astounding, isn't it?" a familiar, wasp-soft voice asked. "How such a small stone can make such a large ripple"

Kami spun in a flare of white robe, charging a blast in his right hand. "How dare you," he asked, his voice surprisingly low for all the rage it held. "How DARE you set foot in this holy place? You of all people…"

"Well," Daimaou no Tambourine said calmly and logically as he stepped out from behind a column. "You do." The corners of his cape were still darker than the rest of it – heavy with blood, as if drying from a rain.

"I am the guardian of this planet. I am Kami-sama. You…"

"I - am not impressed," the younger demon responded in that same, level tone…walking toward him. He moved as if in slow motion – the cloth seeming almost to float around him. His silver eyes turned, disdainfully, toward the growing energy ball. "Put it away, old man. It wouldn't help."

"Have you come to kill me?" the old guardian asked stiffly. "I won't make it easy for you."

"I'm not here to kill you," Tambourine responded…stepping up beside him to peer over the edge of the lookout, expression vaguely thoughtful.

"Why not," Kami growled.

"You'd only be replaced. And then I'd be put to all the annoyance of analyzing that one's methods and ticks. Does terrible things to my schedule, you know."

"So keeping me around is convenient for you?"

Tambourine pursed his lips just slightly – and it seemed to Kami that they curved up just slightly on one side. "The lesser of two evils. Or two goods, as the case may be."

"This is a game to you," Kami said.

"Yes – and no."

Kami bit the inside of his cheek in an effort to keep his temper in check. "You did something to the boy," he said. "Didn't you."

Tambourine arched an eyebrow at him and shrugged. "Being god implies a certain degree of…omniscience. Shouldn't you know?"

Kami's eyes narrowed. "It wasn't Cymbal who killed Son Goku."

Tambourine smirked just faintly. "No."

"You did it."

"Yes."

"You did it," Kami continued slowly, with a cold feeling growing inside him, "knowing that Piccolo would take the son of Goku."

"Very good."

"What did you do to that boy, Tambourine?"

"Omniscience is apparently overrated," Tambourine said, templing his fingers. "I always suspected some sort of exaggeration, but…"

"I'll tell them," Kami interrupted. "about both the scouter and the boy. About how you killed…"

"No," Tambourine responded in the same tone that he'd used before. "You won't."

"I…"

"Who would you tell?" His lip twitched. "Who would you send to me, Kami-sama?"

He was right, of course. There was no one on earth – not now, anyway – who was prepared for the sorts of things that they'd encounter facing that particular demon. There was no one without the kinds of skeletons in the closet that could make for disaster facing someone with mental talents. There was no one with the right combination of innocence, strength, and experience – perhaps not even Son Goku, before he had died.

"And in the second…" Tambourine turned his eyes to him, clear and light as ice over a river. "In the second, direct interference is not permitted. You were allowed to get away with it before, I think – because there is a certain balance to be considered. Half of you had caused the damage – and it was your task to repair it. This, well…"

Then it hit him. It hit him like one of King Kai's fabled mallets. "You want to be the demon king."

Daimao no Tambourine actually laughed – albeit very softly. "Want to be? Kami-sama. You're going blind in your old age."

"Then you already…"

"Let's just say – that I've submitted my resume."

Kami's mouth went sandy-dry. "Why?"

"Because," Tambourine responded as he stepped back into the shadows, "even though you might not realize it yet…you need me to be. You and everyone else."

"We don't NEED more hardships," Kami called after him. "Earth has enough on her own!"

There was no real answer to Kami's voice save the soft breathings of the palm trees in the wind and the blue dancing of shadows on the marble floors. Still, it seemed to him that the air resonated with a response just the same: wait and see.

There was, after all, nothing else to do.

Feeling heavy and useless, Kami turned his attention back to his planet, taking stock of the situation with skills borne of a lifetime of practice.

Somewhere not-so-far-away, an orange-clad body is lying on a table. A woman was crying over it, her shoulders bent like a bird's wings to its nest.

Almost on the other side of the world, another body is lying on a table, near to death, but not yet dead. His mind, though, is sinking into a well that it might never rise from. After all, the hole was deep – and the fall had been begun years ago.

Far east of them, in the wilderness, an angry, bewildered young man and a little boy are beginning a journey. Neither of them know how it will end – or even where they're going. Kami would pray for them if he knew how

But he only knows how to watch.