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Serendipity: Shifting the Paradigm	By : Ghost-of-a-Chance Category: Dragon Ball Z > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 589 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ, any of its characters/devices, or any books/movies/song mentioned; no money's being made here. I DO own Sierra, Rio, Rowan, & all my OCs...and a very fat cat named "Heifer."

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
Trigger warnings out the ass with this chapter, including vomiting, frank discussion of abusive behavior, trauma, and PTSD, and violence resulting in injury. There are also some brief scenes from Vegeta’s backstory–both canon and non-canon—including but not limited to childhood, working for Frieza, the fights with Goku, Frieza, Cell, and Buu, and his actions under the control of Babidi. This includes his stand against Buu, and we all know how that went.
Strap yourselves in, Folks. It’s clusterfuck o’clock, and this one’s gonna be me-e-e-essy.
Suggested Listening: Lifehouse “You and Me,” Survivor “In Good Faith,” Linkin Park “Crawling,” The Alan Parsons Project “The Fall of the House of Usher: Arrival,” Ashes Remain “End of Me,” Serpens “Impending Menace”
Each emotional injury
Leaves behind its mark.
Sometimes they come tumbling out
Like shadows in the dark. *
Between the Lines of Fear and Blame
After an hour of chatting over cooling tea, Rowan still couldn’t wrap her head around how the evening turned out. She started the night feeling sorry for herself and missing her family, invaded the kitchen, and startled the kami into blistering his hand. From there, though, the situation did nothing but improve.
At first, their conversation was stilted and full of pauses and backpedaling, but soon, it flowed as naturally as it had any other time they chatted. The only difference was they were speaking face to face, and now she could see his reactions in real time; he was stinking adorable in real time, blush and tea foam mustache and all.
“How does one become a god, anyway?” she asked, but before he could answer, she added, “did you apply? Get head-hunted? Lose a bet? Wait, don’t tell me—you came to Earth and pulled the take me to your leader shtick and they said, nope, LOL, seat’s yours now.”
Dende choked on his (tepid) tea and began beating it out of his lungs, laughing the whole while. After wiping his mouth, he rasped, “it’s nothing so exciting, I promise. You remember the tyrant I told you about? His name was Frieza. Frieza invaded and waged war on the people of Namek—my people. Goku, Gohan, and their friends saved us and delivered us to safety. When the previous kami…” A small wrinkle grew between his eyebrows as if he was looking for an appropriate word. “…passed on, I came to Earth to repay their kindness.”
Passed on? Kami could die? How could an immortal being die? Or were kami not immortal at all? Rowan curled her fingers around her mug to fight the urge to fidget. “Leaving behind everything you knew…that can’t have been easy.”
Dende’s lips thinned in a brief, tight smile. “And that’s not even the half of it. Whatever I am now, my people don’t have one, at least, not according to our oral history; if we ever had such a thing, it had a different name. We have an elder at the head of each clan and a village elder over them, and above the rest, the great elder; I thought I was to be a temporary great elder.”
“—and instead, you’re a god?”
“I’m actually more like a guardian…and sometimes it feels closer to babysitter or janitor.” Oddly, that made Rowan just the slightest more confident she wouldn’t get struck by lightning. In her defense, this guy was stupid-cute for a guardian-slash-god-slash-babysitting-janitor, alien or not, and she was a teenager with all the hormones that entailed.
The chiming of the clock on the wall startled her from her thoughts. “Crud, is it really that late?”
“Late?” Dende teased, “or early?” The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled was beyond unfair. Rowan had never wanted to complain to the manager in her whole life. Had. Now she wanted to raise holy hell and demand a refund. Who gave this guy permission to be so precious when he was unattainable?
“Good thing there’s no school tomorrow,” she said, as if she had no other thoughts in her head. As if a small, stupid part of her wasn’t mentally a squealing little girl writing their initials and drawing lopsided hearts around them. As if she wasn’t picturing taking him to a school dance and pointing out whichever bullies they should totally spit on together.
“Even so.” Dende tipped back the last of his tea and carried their empty mugs over to the sink. “…you’ll be tired in the morning if you don’t get some sleep.” …Rowan hated how that made sense. Instead of saying so, she traded him a dish towel for the mugs and washed them at the sink. She hated washing dishes, but it gave her an excuse to linger a bit longer; too soon, that excuse, like their tea, vanished. Conflicted, Rowan turned to leave, but at the door, she stopped and looked back.
Kami—Dende—stood by the sink, staring down at the healed skin on his hand with a conflicted expression. A burn of that severity should have taken weeks to heal, but with a gesture, he wound back time in a way that made Rowan pity her younger self. Her scars would never heal so seamlessly, and even now, the one on her shoulder itched when the humidity rose enough.
On the other hand, Rowan had a family to support her, broken as they were. Dende—Kami—was alone on a planet full of people who looked to him for guidance, demanded answers, begged for help, and blamed him when things didn’t go their way. They would never believe the person hearing their prayers confided in a moth under the moonlight because he had no confidant. Kami’s job was to support the people of Earth, but who supported him?
“Dende?” He looked up, wide-eyed, and buried his hand in his opposite sleeve. Rowan summoned her courage and patience. “Can I…I mean…will I see you again? Or…” She regretted opening her big fat mouth to begin with and fell silent. What was she thinking? He was afraid of her. She should never have seen him in the first place. This was an accident, just—
…wait. Were his cheeks looking darker than before?
Dende broke the silence. “It’s pointless hiding from someone who has already seen you. Right?” Rowan nodded dumbly. “The Lookout has an impressive library. It’s great for avoiding…um…”
“Scary human women?” she suggested. He was definitely blushing.
“People,” Dende corrected, “and distractions. If you like, you could do your homework in the library, or you can just visit. Anytime.”
Rowan knew she had a stupid grin on her face without needing to see; she felt it pulling at her cheeks. “I’d like that.” This time, she didn’t stop until she got back to her borrowed room with the door shut behind her.
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Despite his words to Rowan, Dende knew he wouldn’t get any sleep in what remained of the night. The excitement of his first face-to-face encounter with Rowan—and the long talk that followed—chased away whatever restfulness the hot tea might have brought. Instead, he resigned himself to an early morning and made his way out to the garden to greet the dawn.
It was fortunate he never allowed himself to contemplate how it might be to meet Rowan, because doing so outshone the limits of his imagination. Alien biology aside, she was as pretty up close as from afar, and even more endearing. The mannerisms hinted at in their conversations were unmistakable in person, and putting expressions to familiar tones and phrases made his cheeks and neck burn. Somehow, she never noticed him staring every time she got animated about a topic—something that he considered proof of miracles—and after a while, she didn’t stare, either. …at least, not that he noticed.
…did he just not notice?
“Kami, can you hear me?”
Dende halted mid-step. From the volume and clarity, the summons came from the Lookout rather than the world below it. He looked up at the line of windows connected to the guest bedrooms; sure enough, in one backlit window was a familiar grinning face framed with carrot red hair. Rowan. Less than ten minutes after parting ways, she sought him all over again, and knowing her, she didn’t want something from him. There was no need to examine why that made him so happy. He always spoke to her aloud, even when she could not hear him, but this time, he spoke only with his mind, just to tease her. “You know, you can use my name, right?”
“Yep. You can use my name, too.” The little stinker stuck her tongue out at him. “I just wonder. Who made me tea? Was that Dende or Kami?” Knowing Sierra was her aunt, it made sense that she could focus her thoughts enough to communicate without speaking aloud.
“Are the two so separate?” Dende thought it over, looking up at the familiar constellation he used to find New Namek. What would Great Elder Guru have said? What would Great Elder Moori say? The previous Kami was a nameless Namekian Dende knew only from his extensive writings on Earthean history and heroes; what would he have said if a precocious human girl held his burns under cold water? Maybe it would be best to allow a distinction between the two, if only so she understood why he intervened. “Perhaps we are. In that case, Miss Stone, Kami answered your call and offered you comfort; Dende offered you safety, tea, and conversation.”
“And which one of you got the matcha-mustache?” Dende’s cheeks heated, and he scrubbed his sleeve across his mouth, but it came away clean. “Made ya look!” …he took it back. Rowan wasn’t pretty or endearing; she was a holy terror and going to fry his brain. “Thanks for the tea…Dende…and thanks for the talk, too.”
So often before, Dende ended a psychic conversation with Rowan with some variation of the same phrase, and he never saw her reaction. This time, he stared up into her window, looked her right in the eyes, and spoke in a whisper she would see as well as hear. “Anytime, Rowan Stone. Anytime.” The soft, crooked smile on her face and the grass-green warmth in her eyes told him everything.
He was in serious trouble. Mister Popo was going to kill him.
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Trunks, Minotia, and their friend were wound to the gills, and none could blame them. Sierra loved school at their age, but even she resented homework on a Saturday. The extra work was unavoidable, though; Trunks scored low on an English test that Wednesday, and Minotia had catching-up to do. And the new kid? Bulma bragged to Gohan’s mother about Trunks’ grade improvements, and ever since, Goten came by in the afternoon for tutoring in science, mathematics, and history.
Sierra did not get her degree for this. Working with kids was the last thing she wanted, and she included Rowan in that. Don’t get her wrong—she loved her niece, sometimes more than she loved her sisters, but kids were loud, messy, obnoxious germ factories until they became teenagers. These kids? She liked them, but she would still rather be doing almost anything that didn’t involve children. She learned her lesson when Rio didn’t learn hers.
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
“Tell him, Minotia, tell him I scored a 75 on that test!”
Sierra gritted her teeth, counted from one to ten, from ichi to juu, from hitotsu to tou, and then she counted from uno to diez for good measure. With her temper under control, she fixed a stern glare on Trunks and Goten. “You scored a fifty-seven.” If Goten had dyslexia—or whatever they called it when it affected numbers instead of letters—that might explain some things about his grades.* She made a note to look over his work before he left, never acknowledging that doing so went above and beyond the verbal contract with Chi Chi. Then again, Chi Chi sent her the anti-inflammatory tea seeping warmth into her hands, and without that tea, she would be in much more pain today.
That was another problem. Without warning or explanation, Piccolo took on Gohan’s job of shuffling her to and from the Lookout for healing once a week, and after a while, he just…stopped. He stopped coming to pick her up, just like Gohan, and she had no way to contact him. Sierra knew what she did to offend Piccolo—she breathed—but Gohan? He picked up and dropped off Goten with some regularity, but any time he came close enough to read, she only picked up the psychic equivalent of panicked screaming. He was hiding something from her, but what?
Whatever the reason, the result was the same: Sierra was a month overdue for healing and feeling worse than she had since winter. Nothing kept her pain in check anymore, not her medications, the tea, rest, or even soaking until she swore she might grow gills. The worst part was her lower back, where the nerves had been firing nonstop for a week; nothing touched nerve pain, at least nothing the doctors prescribed. After being able to go without it for so long, having to rely on that damned cane again pissed her off to no end. One way or another, she needed to get someone to get her to Dende before she couldn’t walk anymore.
Sierra’s phone rang.
She blinked. The lack of a custom ringtone indicated the number wasn’t a contact, but she wasn’t expecting any calls. The boys, who never noticed, only quieted when she cleared her throat. “Break time. Go run around for a bit.” The table never emptied so fast in all their previous lessons. Without looking at the display, she answered the call. “Hai, Stone desu.” No answer. “Dochira-sama deshō ka?”
Sierra pulled the phone away to check the number, but the area code soured her stomach. 417. The caller was in America, southwest Missouri, to be exact. Since Dakota traded in her citizenship, only three people had ever called from Missouri—her abue Martinez, her auntie Constanza, and her mother—and the dead don’t call long-distance.
Trembling, she spoke again, this time in English. “Hello. Who is this?” Still no answer. Well, the population demographic in her hometown had been largely Hispanic before they moved to Japan. Maybe… “Si, quién habla?” The person on the other end of the line took a breath. Sierra’s fingers tightened around the cast-steel head atop her cane. She pressed the phone to her ear until she could hear muted, measured beeping and the murmur of distant voices.
The sudden disconnect tone was all the more painful for its unexpected appearance. She swore, yanked the phone away from her ear, and rubbed her wrist on it to dull the throbbing. After several long moments of staring at the phone’s home screen, she pulled up her call logs.
Call from: 417-___-____.
Sat., _ __, 20__.
5:04.
It happened. She didn’t imagine it. What on earth could that have been? The very question sent a chill down her spine, and for the longest time, she sat staring at the phone wondering what just happened. In the end, she did what she did best: she sucked it up and walked away.
The air was fresher outside, and the breeze carried a sweet smell from the new-mown grass below the balcony. On the way to her usual lounge chair, Sierra stopped to check the progress of the coneflower. After weeks of looking wilted and feeble, it appeared much improved; the leaning concerned her, however, and when she noticed a small patch of bright green popping up beside it, that concern turned cold.
Sierra plucked a leaf off of the intruder and ran through the list of traits in her mind. Texture: rough, hairless. Shape: simple, ovate, serrated edge. Arrangement: opposite. Stem: square, moderately spiny. She crushed the leaf between her fingertip and thumb, and the pungent stench—rancid citrus and cat urine—made her swear a blessed blue streak. Lantana camara.
Everything she should have done, she did, and still, it wasn’t enough. She uprooted the coneflower from the flowerbed, cleared away the invader strangling it, washed the root system clean, and replanted it in fresh soil far from the indoor garden; still, the Lantana’s taint spread. Her breathing quickened, growing harder and louder, and her eyes grew wide and wild; all the while, she remembered the comparison she made before, if only in her mind. Beautiful, toxic, smothering Rio who destroys everything she touches; plain, common, sturdy Sierra who can barely keep her head above water. Her head hurt, her back hurt, her hands hurt, she hurt, she-hurt-she-hurt-she—
Sierra ripped the Lantana sprout up by the root, crushed it in her fist, threw it onto the deck, and ground it to a pulp under her shoe.
Temper cooling, Sierra stared at the drooping coneflower at her feet. She uprooted herself the way she uprooted that plant. She cleared away the people who were killing her—her sisters—and started over with the clothes on her back, her bank account, and what skills she had for barter. She spent months getting treatment for her pain and health problems, and just as many getting counseling for what she still—still—refused to call abuse. And what did that get her? Nothing.
Rowan must be terrified.
The sudden realization made her ill. In their video call, Sierra saw tearstains shining on Rowan’s cheeks, shadows under her eyes, and months’ worth of stress in between them; if her strong niece was in that condition, Rio, who was as resilient as honeyvine fluff, must be in pieces. And here Sierra was, safe and cared for, wishing she could grind Rio under her heel. She felt sick. She stepped back and stared at the pulverized Lantana seedling with bitterness, hurt, fear, recognition, and shock filling her thoughts.
Wait. Recognition? Shock? Those thoughts were not hers.
Sierra stiffened and turned to peer over her shoulder. Sure enough, she found Vegeta standing in the doorway with two mugs of coffee and a comically uncomfortable expression. Of course, the one time she had a temper tantrum, the king of temper tantrums had to witness it. After a brief look at the green mess smeared into the teak decking, he arched a mocking eyebrow at her. “Weeding?”
“It’s pointless,” Sierra admitted as he handed her the cup with cream and sugar and joined her by the railing. Judging by the temperature of the coffee—Panchy’s blend, based on the bitter smell—Vegeta stood watching her for a long while before she detected him. She was slipping. “Replacing the soil again might eradicate any lingering seeds, but the fibrous root structure may yet hide fragments of lantana root.” If only echinacea purpurea had a taproot like the rest of the genus.* “I could trim it back to the caudex, but the Coneflower may not survive such drastic damage.”
Vegeta stared at her for a moment as if she said something too idiotic for comprehension. “What?” she asked.
“In that case, you have two choices: you stop fighting the weed, or you let them both die.”
Again, Sierra recalled the comparison—Rio, the weed, and she, the Coneflower—and she blanched. “I—”
“No,” Vegeta snapped, “you listen. Everything you’ve done so far has made that thing more pathetic. If you don’t stop, you’ll kill them both. It’s too late to protect it. Find a way to keep the weeds in check, or eradicated them entirely and let the host die with them; those are your only options.”
At that moment, the disconnect between what Vegeta said and what he felt became apparent. After the first nightmare she picked up, Sierra avoided reading Vegeta whenever possible, but she still picked up bits and pieces regardless of her preference; without a doubt, he was saying one thing and meant another. Never had she heard so many words out of his mouth in one sitting, either. Sierra stared at the Coneflower, gritting her teeth and rolled her tense shoulders back down; she took a chance.
“My…sister…” Vegeta waited, for which Sierra was grateful; she hadn’t struggled with speaking so much since junior high. “Rio…she’s beautiful, but she…kills…things…”
Vegeta rolled his eyes and scoffed. “I kill things. It’s nothing special.”
Ass. “She’s toxic,” Sierra clarified. “I’ve done everything to help her, but for years she’s—she’s strangled me—under the surface, where it doesn’t show. I tried…cutting her out…but…” She fell short. Even the spoken words felt like an admission of guilt, of weakness, of being not enough.
Vegeta, bless him, took up where she gave up. “The damage was done.”
Sierra nodded, unable to even speak her answer. In the time since that stormy Family Friday night when she fell apart on the kitchen floor, she had been struggling in a way she hadn’t since Rowan turned five. Masking and smothering her emotions came naturally to her, but at the expense of her mental health; now the lid to Pandora’s box had cracked open and a steady miasma of weakness and rot was leaking out and poisoning her. How long would it be before she couldn’t hide within the privacy of her thoughts?
Vegeta glanced at her through the corner of his eye, looked back out at the lawn, and scowled. The three boys played without a care, unaffected by the emotional shitstorm on the porch. Vegeta set his coffee on the railing and crossed his arms, and met Sierra’s eyes again. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone…”
“I’d never.” She meant it, too.
“Running solves nothing,” Vegeta said softly. “Ignoring problems only makes them worse. Find a way to keep the threat in check without burning everything to the ground. Otherwise, one day, you’ll wake up with blood on your hands and no memory of how it got there.”
Sierra hesitated, conflicted, then asked, “May I?” Vegeta met her eyes askance and jerked his head once. With her hands on the railing and her eyes closed, she took a grounding breath. At the edge of her awareness, a trail of invisible breadcrumbs led the way to the grisly memories Vegeta laid at her feet; without warning, her feet slipped.
She fell straight out of the deep end into a nightmare.
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Scene: a dark planet backlit by a fading sun—a cavernous fortress full of the smells of sweat and cooked meat and the sound of raucous laughter. On a dais at the head of a long blood-colored carpet is a throne, and upon that throne lounges a man with bitter eyes and gravity-defying black hair. Perched on the step just below that throne is a boy not long out of diapers, still chubby with baby fat; the relation is unmistakable despite the disparity between his youth and the other’s age. “Someday,” the king tells his son, “you will grow to be the most powerful of all Saiyans—you will become the Super Saiyan of the old legends, boy. You will lead our people, and Frieza will rue the day he stole our freedom.”
“Yes, father,” the boy says. “I will be strong; I will destroy Frieza.” I will avenge you. The last, he says only in his mind; his father has enough worries.
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Scene: a dark planet with reddened skies, barren but for dying trees, stone walls, and a towering white castle straight out of a science fiction movie. Three ape-tailed warriors bicker as they walk—one burly and bald, one with more hair than any man needs, and a familiar third. “What do you mean?” the long-haired man demands. The third—unmistakable even in his hardened youth—says nothing.
The burly man follows the prince, but looks back. “They say that Frieza did it.”
The long-haired man is struck stupid. “Why?” Such grave allegations of betrayal were difficult to comprehend, and more often than not, his brain operates on only half-power. They all bear scars from their lives since the annihilation of their home and people, and each keeps their own confidence; he isn’t the first warrior to lose parts of himself to injury and poor choices, nor will he be the last.
Vegeta says nothing, and his companions follow.
“Vegeta, you have to listen to me—it was Frieza that ordered it all—to have your father killed, and to blow up our home planet!”
The words that come out of Vegeta’s mouth are not the words in his heart; the blinding, burning hatred there could never be summarized so neatly as “I already knew.” Words didn’t exist which might do justice to the icy poison leeching through his soul.
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Scene: Earth. Some great cataclysm has leveled a landscape of towering bluffs and rent deep gouges into the valley floor. Broken and bleeding, a body lies in the rubble—a body with a familiar face, tired, kind eyes, and a bright orange gi. Rasping threats and insults, Vegeta drags himself through the wreckage toward a battered white vessel with a crimson window.
A threat approaches from behind him—a cowardly little nothing he could once have beaten without breaking a sweat. The bald warrior’s bitter words fade into white noise and the icy bite of steel at Vegeta’s throat.
Vegeta’s life flashes before his eyes in an iron-stinking flood—his history, his struggles, his reason for existence—but the blow never comes. Instead, his life is spared by a third-class moron. A weakling who lost to Raditz defeated him, then refused to finish the job. Still, swallowing his wounded pride, Vegeta slinks away like a wounded animal, drawing spite and malice around himself like familiar armor.
Lightyears away, Vegeta’s eyes drift closed as the cosmos streak past the window, rage burning inside him like a banked fire meeting a breeze. He will survive to fulfill his destiny; he will survive to claim his revenge. Of all those who survived the purge, only he and the soft-headed moron still live.
It never occurs to Vegeta that he may not be the one to avenge their people.
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Scene: a dying planet far from Earth where the colors are upside down and the ground is soaked with blood. Kakarot stands over him, alive and triumphant, and insists on fighting Frieza as if the damned lizard has any honor. The concept is as foreign to Frieza as speech is to toads. Once, Vegeta understood honor, but no more; a conscience is a luxury enslaved world-reapers cannot afford.
When the Dragon Balls revive him, what he senses from the imploding planet cannot be possible: Kakarot defeated Frieza. The irony is so bitter all Vegeta can do is laugh like a lunatic. All around him, fragile creatures gather—many, his victims, blatant proof that his soul is as rotten as it can be—but he cares little. For the first time in his life, he’s free.
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A thousand scenes follow, set in different places with different players, and each one piles upon the last in the way of snow building for a collapse. Whenever threats come to Earth, Vegeta and Kakarot fight—sometimes each other and sometimes as allies. Every time, no matter how far Vegeta has progressed or how hard he fights, Kakarot, the sniveling bleeding heart, outmatches him.
When Cell self-destructs, Kakarot goes with him. No one is angrier or more dismayed than Vegeta.
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Scene: a stadium full of panicking humans. One entire side of the place is gone, the stands and its occupants obliterated with a single blow. A foreign entity itches in Vegeta’s brain like a parasite burrowing through the very essence of him, and in its wake is a darkness he forgot.
Thousands—thousands of people had filled the stands, but now, only charred remnants mark their places.
Before the moron returns to the other world, Vegeta will get his fight, one way or another. This time, Kakarot won’t keep him from the match they deserve. This time, he will win.
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Scene: a battered, barren landscape scattered with writhing pink blobs of flesh. The sound of a familiar voice—the voice of Vegeta’s son—punctures the haze that obscured the world. Suddenly, hyperaware of the world and his place in it, Vegeta remembers the sound of screams and feels Bulma’s dismay and heartbreak through their bond. He realizes what he’s done, and what he must now do.
In his future, there exists only death. That’s the only way to atone. Death alone will bring Babidi’s foul magics to heel. Once, Vegeta sought to conquer this world and fled, alive but defeated; now, he will die to take down a madman, to give this world and its people a chance to fight another day.
Finally, he understands why Kakarot let him live all those years ago. The irony may kill him before Buu has the chance.
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One moment, Sierra was focusing on reading Vegeta; the next, she emptied the contents of her stomach over the railing. Vegeta grimaced but said nothing about the mess. The Vegeta who came to Earth to conquer would have threatened her, mocked her, even thrown her from the porch; to him, Sierra was nothing but a worm. This Vegeta met her eyes askance and asked lowly, “Am I still not a threat?”
It took Sierra a moment to realize he referred to her unimpressed reaction the day they met. She pulled a rumpled tissue from her pocket to wipe her mouth and rinsed her mouth out with coffee that tasted even more putrid than before. “You’ve always been a threat.” Another mouthful of bile-tainted coffee went over the railing, and Sierra felt sorry for the shrubs below; hydrangeas loved acidic soil, but Panchy’s coffee might kill grass even without bile. “You just weren’t a threat to me.”
What should one call the expression on Vegeta’s face, she wondered, surprised, or maybe incredulous?
“You’ve always been an open book to me, Prince Vegeta. I know the truth. So do you.”
Neither was sure what to say to that. Had they met even five years ago, both recognized, it would have been a very different story. Sierra counted herself fortunate that Bulma tamed him, as much as anyone could tame an alien warrior. For a long while, the porch was silent as Vegeta and Sierra both thought over the conversation. Finally, she spoke again. “Do you really think there’s a way? …to survive without giving up my family?”
Vegeta scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Who’s talking about your family, woman? I’m telling you how to quit killing that plant. It’s pathetic.”
Sierra floundered. She wondered if she was dreaming, or if she imagined the entire conversation, or if she finally lost what remained of her damned mind. Then she recognized the amusement in his eyes. The breathy laugh hurt her acid-burned throat, but holding it back would hurt worse. “Well-played, príncipe. Well-played.”
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Piccolo felt Trunks approaching long before he saw the boy. No surprise there—the kid was too young to recognize the wisdom in masking one’s energy off the battlefield and too cocky to care whether someone witnessed him. What made no sense was what sent him to Mount Paozu from the start. Piccolo flagged him down, and with every word Trunks said, Piccolo wanted more and more to hand Gohan’s ass to him on a platter.
Piccolo thought the kid had seen sense. When he refused to ferry that damned woman around anymore, Gohan agreed to take over again. So much for that. According to Trunks, Sierra was several weeks overdue for healing and hardly able to walk again, and it could all have been averted. Why someone else—anyone, Goku, Vegeta, even that Tapion character—wouldn’t take on the task was beyond Piccolo’s comprehension.
This problem had only one solution. Piccolo would take that Stone woman to Dende one last time, and afterward, he’d drop her at Gohan’s feet and wash his hands of her and everything to do with her. This much fuss over keeping the woman away from her relatives was beyond illogical and into ridiculous; if anything, a shouting match might do them some good.
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The library was every bit as calming as Dende claimed. That said, Rio had been prowling around like a caged animal the whole morning; even the back of a hoarder’s closet would seem comfortable.
After watching her mother struggle for so many years, Rowan was an expert at reading the signs. Pacing showed tension. Silent, measured breaths often meant hypervigilance. Sudden, sharp movements showed anxiety, and intrusive memories caused random changes in expression. All the above led to angry outbursts if Rio didn’t get some space; and Rowan knew better than to test her luck. Leaving the floating temple’s grounds wasn’t an option, but she gave Rio all the space she could stomach.
“Tell me, Rowan. This passage says humans once attributed illness to the presence of foul smells, and they used fragrant herbs to prevent sickness during an epidemic. Do many still believe that?”
Rowan grinned behind her tablet as though she could hide behind her assigned reading. Being able to avoid her mother was a relief, but spending that time with Dende? Dende, who was far too cheerful for someone reading about a literal plague? Priceless. “I want to say no, but honestly? One of my classmates had strawberry milk with his lunch last week, and he asked where they got the pink cows.”
Dende blinked, looked up from his book, and tilted his head to the side like a confused puppy. Rowan’s stomach fluttered in a manner she’d attribute to food poisoning in other circumstances. “Pink…cows…?” he asked.
“He thinks chocolate milk comes from—” The startled expression on his face cut Rowan short. “What’s—”
“Oh, no.” Dende lunged to his feet and rushed toward the balcony, the priceless volume of Earth’s history falling to the library floor without consideration. “No, no, he wouldn’t! He knows—he can’t—Oh, Piccolo, what are you thinking?” He finally looked back at Rowan. “Rowan, do you trust me?”
Rowan didn’t even have to consider it. “Of course, but—”
“Get your mother inside—I’ll delay them, but you have to get Ms. Stone out of range!” Without a backward glance, Dende braced his hands on the balustrade and vaulted over in a single movement. By the time Rowan reached the balcony, he was halfway across the tiles at a dead run.
Any other time, it might impress her that he was uninjured—the drop measured at least fifteen meters, after all. That said, she had more important things to worry about: Rio was still in the garden, Rowan would never reach her in time, and one of the people on the tiles looked frighteningly familiar.
“Auntie Dai?!”
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The noise up on the Lookout should have been a warning. Piccolo set Sierra on her feet to the sound of shouting from the sanctuary, a voice in the garden, and rapid hide-softened footsteps on the tiles drawing closer every second.
Everything happened at once. Dende shouted Piccolo’s name. The red-haired teenager sprinted out of the sanctuary. Her mother—Sierra’s sister, presumably—rounded the corner in the garden, saw them, and stumbled to a halt. In a matter of seconds, a multitude of emotions ran through her eyes: fear, then relief, then boiling, burning, blinding rage.
Piccolo didn’t recognize the threat the woman posed. Why would he? In his experience, danger came from monsters and enemy fighters, not small unarmed human women dressed in pink.
“Dai! You fucking bitch! Where were you?!”
One minute, Piccolo believed that the women could just scream it out and their petty problems would be solved. Next, the cursing heathen grabbed the nearest object—a heavy stone planter from the garden—and hurled it with all her might. Although Sierra tried to dodge, she was too slow, too weak, and she hit the tiles with a sickening crack. Even as she lay crumpled at Piccolo’s feet, panting and shaking, her eyes were dry, empty, and dull. Sierra’s assailant froze, whimpered, and crumpled to her knees, clutching her scalp until her fingers turned white.
In a pulse-pounding daze, Piccolo recalled that moment in the Briefs family’s garden many months ago in vivid detail—how Sierra bludgeoned him with the head of her cane, and how he called her a coward. He remembered the rotten citrus smell of the flowers, and her fury and fear, and how she shut down at the mention of family. At the time, she insisted he had no idea what she’d lived through, and he believed she was blustering. And who would blame him? Pampered human women understood nothing about fighting for their lives, while he knew, lived, bled, and breathed it.
An unnatural calm settled over Piccolo, sharpening and narrowing his vision and dulling his hearing; the joints in his hands cracked from clenching his fists. In the back of his mind, he heard shouting, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from the empty-eyed woman at his feet. She may not be bleeding internally this time, but to his ears, the sound of bone breaking was unmistakable.
Now Piccolo understood. He was a fool; he was a stubborn, blind, self-righteous fool. Human or not, Sierra wasn’t weak. She was legitimately traumatized, and the responsibility lay with that woman from the garden. Sierra ran away, not from responsibility but toward safety.
And in his infinite arrogance, he threw her right back into danger.
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Up Next: A long-awaited reunion, a disastrous realization, Piccolo extends an olive branch, and Sierra makes her hardest decision yet in The Sum of Our Scars.

Notes in order of occurrence
* Rush, “Scars”
* Title – From The Fray’s How to Save a Life.
* Counting to ten – Ichi – juu, hitotsu – tou, and uno – diez are all just ways to count to ten, the first two in Japanese and the third in Spanish.
* Dyslexia with numbers – Dyspraxia is a condition that can cause symptoms similar to dyslexia that affects a person’s ability to math. (And yes, I just used math as a verb. Because I can’t math.)
* Hai, Stone desu. Dochira-sama deshō ka? – Yes, this is (Miss) Stone. Who is this?
* Spanish in this chapter: Abue – short for abuelo. “Abue Martinez” would be Sierra’s mother’s father. Si, quién habla? – a polite way to answer the phone in most Spanish-speaking countries, literally, “yes, who is speaking?” Príncipe – literally, “prince.”
* Honeyvine – Cynanchum laeve (commonly called Honeyvine) is a delicate climbing milkweed native to the eastern and central US and parts of Canada; it’s a host plant for the Monarch butterfly and the papery pods are sometimes used for folk art. Its seeds are fitted with downy fluff that enables dispersal by wind. While I’ve written Sierra comparing Rio to Lantana, comparing her to Honeyvine would be more accurate because she’s fragile and toxic, but still has a purpose and redeeming qualities.
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