"A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling"

-Arthur Brisbane

Piccolo was not soft.

This was a fact that he refused to be disputed, no matter the whispers behind his back nor the cheeky grins sent his way. Soft would imply that he freely walked around in human cities without so much as a withering glare, much less a snarl. Soft would have meant that there was never a twinge of instinct to just let the humans all burn under his hands. He had heard the woman Bulma call it his "demon programming" when he had been meditating and somehow assumed deaf.

Yes, there were those that had earned his respect. But as a rule, he wasn't very fond of most humans.

…And at times –such as now- it would be much less troublesome if he wasn't very 'fond' of half-humans.

"Gohan." Still…if he wasn't here to make sure a certain one of them didn't fall off the lookout or something equally idiotic, who would?

"Hm?" The boy's feet dangled over the edge of the white tile, letting the wind tug at them every so often and threaten to pull him down to the dark world below. In retaliation, Gohan had liberated a blanket from the inner rooms of the lookout at some point and now wore it draped over his shoulders like a superhero's cape. It fell slightly as the child twisted around to glance at Piccolo with unnaturally green eyes. As a mentor, he had never gotten used to them, blank as they were.

"What-" '-are you doing', would have been the proper way to finish the question. It was how he'd planned to initially. It was how he'd been planning to for the last…ten minutes? Much preparation was required for delicate matters such as asking questions.

Which was not, of course, to be confused with the human term, "making conversation". Because no, the silence was not unnerving; and no, it had nothing to do with the form that Gohan was now in.

And now the kid was looking at him.

"Piccolo?" He promptly looked away. He couldn't look at those eyes anymore.

"Nothing." There was a pause, though only for a moment as the gears in Gohan's head began to turn.

"It's not nothing." The child decided on his own - as nine year olds were prone to do. Piccolo only grunted as a grin was sent his way, because that was just what he did. Receive smile, give noncommittal noise of some sort, rinse, repeat. Nothing had changed since the boy had been eating dinosaur tail steaks and fretting over Saiyan attacks.

"You're probably wondering what I'm doing out here." Gohan seemed to have taken the botched question as an invitation to babble to his heart's content, or at least, until Piccolo's ears fell off.

That was…good. Babble was normal. Right. Time to tune it out.

"And I know it's weird, I thought the same thing, because father is going to fight Cell tomorrow and…well…it's Cell. Trunks told me what he was like, and I still can't believe that Father thinks...thinks that we can..." Piccolo cut him off with another grunt. They'd been over this already. Between the two of them, a good day or two had been spent trying to figure out what the hell Goku was thinking, but to no avail. And that wouldn't change in the next few hours either.

"I thought that'd it'd be like the night before the androids, that I would just kind of fall asleep." Piccolo preferred not to be reminded of that night. The aforementioned sleeping had been done on him after all, and Piccolo had spent the day slightly stiff as a result.

Not that he'd ever admit that out loud, of course.

"But I can't sleep tonight, so I came out here since Mr. Popo is really good at telling when you're wandering around and I didn't want him to catch me snooping. He almost killed me with a garden rake once – well, I mean, he tried to. Or at least I think he did."

When Gohan was scared, he shook until he was snapped out of it. When he was hungry, he whined until he was fed. When he was content, he grinned until the bad news was dropped like a bomb. When he was angry, he threw a tantrum until someone slapped him. When he was downright pissed, he kicked your ass until he felt you had damn well paid up.

"Maybe Mr. Popo is going to fight Cell with his killer garden rake? No, he'd be away from the flowers too long. But if Father told him that Cell would destroy the flowers then...!"

When he was completely, utterly and hopelessly lost, he babbled. A lot.

"Gohan…" Piccolo began. Things like this needed to be taken carefully. One wrong move, and he'd have his arms full of emotionally insecure demi-saiyan, because yes, Gohan was a volcano ready to blow. With the exception of Vegeta, they all were just one step off that cliff, one step from losing themselves in the battle and never stopping. As for Vegeta, it was Piccolo's firm opinion that he had gone running off that ledge long ago. Piccolo meditated to keep himself from doing the same.

"You're right. I don't think that'd work. Maybe we're all going to attack Cell at once? No, Vegeta wouldn't agree, I don't think Father would either. But it could work. Between me you and Trunks we could probably-"

Battle itself was not a pretty thing. Heads were ripped from shoulders, intestines were pulled from their cages, lungs were crushed, hearts were shot through, skin was torn open, bones pierced through the muscle that had held them. Allies were murdered and their bodies spat on. The victor always paid for his success in blood; likewise for the loser and his defeat.

But still, it was the aftershock of the fight, seeing, then remembering, then reliving again and again, that truly maimed. A warrior without an arm could still fight. A warrior without a mind was not a warrior anymore.

"I know father has a plan, it's just that I've thought of everything, or at least, I think it's everything, and I just can't see why he's smiling so much, especially since I talked to Krillan, and he said that Father said that-" but, it seemed that the slow and steady approach would not work. Piccolo had to work fast, or else the clingy attack would begin, and the salvation of his 'soft-free' reputation –not that he cared what any of the humans thought- would be utterly and completely out of his reach.

So the Namek stood, and crossed the distance between them in two giant steps. He spared a moment to glance down at Gohan and offer just the tiniest hint of a smile within the smirk plastered on his own face.

"…Piccolo…?"

Piccolo then promptly kicked his student off of the lookout.

The fresh air would do Gohan some good. It wouldn't clear his mind nearly as well as meditation, but making a demi-saiyan sit still for any length of time was not a particularly appealing task. Eventually the kid would remember that he could fly, at which point he would turn around, finally peaking over the lookout again while he mumbled about how awful Piccolo was to him.

And so the Namek waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

And somewhere along the way, he realized that even Gohan would've remembered that he could fly by now. Yet there was no telltale burst of ki. Common sense said that the brat was doing this on purpose. But…

'I didn't knock him out, did I?' He vaguely remembered something about humans, altitudes and fainting, though that couldn't –shouldn't?- have applied to Gohan. Perhaps. No. But maybe? There was no way. Still, possibly…?

And then out-loud, "Damn."

He was over the lookout's edge before he had the time to think otherwise. Saiyan skulls be damned, there were just some falls that people weren't made to undertake. Some part, maybe the diamoh in him, roared rather obnoxiously that if the kid fell off and ended up with a bruise or hundred, it was his own damn fault. And it really didn't matter, Dende was up on the lookout anyway.

But still.

It was the principle of the thing.

…

…he was starting to sound like Gohan now.

He sped up once he was outside Dende's range of detection –no point in worrying him- and was caught up in an instant. The blinding whiteness of the liberated blanket stood out like a beacon against the night sky. Now, that hadn't been too hard.

A three-fingered hand caught a lean ankle in its grip.

Green eyes blinked, "Piccolo…?" and it appeared that there had been nothing wrong.

A sigh threatened to loose itself upon the world, "Do you realize how close to the ground we are?" came the -rather poor- defense. Suggestions of the forest below could be made out, sweeping outwards until the land and sky became one indistinguishable nighttime blur. Unvoiced for the second time that night was the question, 'what are you doing?'

And again it was answered regardless. "I was sky-diving. I read about it for a physics project for juku…and I just kind of remembered…it…" a pause as the upside-down child considered something or other.

"A lot of blood rushed to my head."

There was a grin; the kind Piccolo had become wary of.

"Well?" He asked, since the sooner this was over with, the sooner Gohan would just go to sleep.

"Father will win anyway." And that, it seemed, was that. The great revelation, the sum of all this 'therapy'. A conclusion that the boy had been convinced of since day one. Right. And there was nothing frustrating about this at all. (Nothing exasperating about seeing his only student fail to realize his own capabilities. Nothing trying about seeing the techniques he had taught cast aside for hope in a person who essentially claimed they were all doomed) Nope, not one bit.

The Namek did not share this sudden optimism, nor would he falsely claim to. But if Gohan chose to, then fine. For allowing this, Piccolo was still not soft. Never would be. (But dammit, if this was the last day they lived on earth, then at least one of them would remember it properly.)

Moments passed.

"Uh…Piccolo?"

"Hn."

"You can let go of my leg now. I'm starting to get a headache." Added as an afterthought, "Too much blood."

This time, there was no lookout to be kicked off of.

Instead, there was just a flick of the wrist and the half-saiyan was flying to the ground.

'Somehow' Piccolo mused as the speck known as Son Gohan became smaller and smaller, 'it was a lot more satisfying when there was a hungry dinosaur at the bottom'

(And he could never believe that the boy who ascended super saiyan was still the boy who babbled)

I figured that there's enough Gohan angst in the section, (We've got suicidal Gohan, Gohan with cancer, bloodthirsty Gohan, etcetera…) so, I attempted to make him happy. Dunno if it worked though. And I'm not even going to touch on how Piccolo came out. Originally he was supposed to kind of sort of not be liking the super saiyan, but he went soft towards the end of the story I think. Too soft. Any advice?

Pointless, no? Ah well, at least I can say I tried. Regardless, thank you for reading this far. Have a happy new year!

Do NoT oWn (I have no beta. Sorry in advance for typos, I tried to get them all, but by this point, I've read it through so many times that my brain just fills in the gaps I'm afraid. Please point out any blaring mistakes?)