Piccolo's aura-reading was incredibly fast, razor-sharp, and rigorously trained by years of brutal combat experience that most living beings his age simply could not claim to possess.
The immediate results came back completely wrong.
The deeply unconscious man—the bruised alien currently being casually carried by one extended hand like an afterthought—registered loud and clear. He was strong.
He was significantly stronger than Piccolo himself.
That fact alone was already highly not ideal.
Then, Piccolo's sharp senses swept directly over to the tall young man standing casually in the clearing with his hands still shoved in his pockets, and found—
Absolutely nothing.
There was no active aura. There was no ambient physical pressure. There was no spiritual presence whatsoever. If Piccolo simply closed his eyes and relied purely on his advanced ki-sense, the tall man standing right in front of him simply did not exist. It felt exactly like a strange, localized gap in the air that just happened to be shaped perfectly like a person.
Piccolo had extensive, personal experience with advanced power concealment techniques. He knew exactly what deliberate suppression felt like. He knew the tightly contained quality of a massive aura being forcefully held inward, and he knew how to spot the faint, bleeding edges of something violently restrained.
This was not that. There were no bleeding edges. There were no hidden seams. There was just absolute, perfect absence. It was as clean and total as peering into a deep void.
Every single warrior instinct Piccolo possessed sent his brain the exact same unified, screaming signal: This man is incredibly dangerous.
He firmly set his feet into the dirt. He squared his broad green shoulders. He fought to keep his raspy voice perfectly steady.
"Who are you?" Piccolo demanded.
"Don't be nervous." The young man's tone was perfectly comfortable. It was entirely conversational. "I'm from Earth. You can just call me Jordan."
Piccolo's jaw instantly tightened. Being told not to be nervous by the exact, terrifying source of his nervousness was not a psychological technique that worked on him.
"This guy," Jordan said, casually nudging the floating, unconscious alien figure beside him with his hip, "arrived here today specifically to destroy the planet. Technically speaking, that makes him an enemy of Earth." Jordan paused for a second, allowing a silence that held just slightly too much obvious enjoyment. "Which means you and I are actually on the same side. You're welcome."
I'll thank you with my foot up your—
"How stupid do you actually think I am?!" Piccolo shouted.
The intense pressure building in Piccolo's chest wasn't genuine fear. Piccolo intimately knew exactly what true fear felt like; he had fully cataloged the useless emotion and permanently discarded it years ago. This feeling was something entirely different. It was the highly specific, electric tension of suddenly encountering an unknown, impossible quantity that his sharpened combat instincts simply had not finished calculating the math on yet. His heavy, purple aura rose around his body without being consciously summoned. It was the automatic, biological response of a warrior's body rapidly preparing for a fight to the death.
"I am Piccolo, the Great Demon King!" he declared loudly. The dark title carried genuine, heavy weight when he said it out loud. "And I absolutely do not cooperate with pathetic humans. I never have. I never will."
"Just a friendly reminder," Jordan said softly. He tilted his head with an expression that could only be accurately described as infuriatingly smug. "You shouldn't make promises you can't keep."
The ambient air temperature in the clearing seemed to immediately drop two full degrees.
"You dare mock me—"
Piccolo's aura violently detonated outward in a shockwave of displaced air.
He firmly gripped his own right wrist with his left hand, leveling four green fingers directly at Jordan's chest. It was the highly specific, focused martial stance that always preceded one of his most reliable, lethal finishing attacks. Bright yellow ki rapidly condensed between his extended fingers with a loud, audible hum. It was incredibly dense, tightly focused, and carried the kind of massive destructive output that routinely left deep craters in the earth.
"Die! Hah!"
The devastating energy wave launched forward at absolute full power, tearing up the grass beneath it.
Jordan's right wrist casually flicked.
The simple physical motion had the relaxed, casual economy of an experienced tennis player returning a very slow serve. It was a simple backhand, completely relaxed, and almost insulting in its dismissiveness. The blazing energy wave connected directly with the bare back of Jordan's hand and was instantly redirected. The beam twisted violently sideways in mid-air, the highly focused energy bending at a sharp angle that basic physics simply did not quite account for, right before it detonated spectacularly against the nearest rocky hillside in a blinding burst of yellow light and displaced, raining earth.
In the heavy, ringing silence that immediately followed the explosion, Piccolo stood completely frozen with his attack arm still extended. His mouth was hanging fractionally open in shock.
In that tiny, impossible fraction of a second when Jordan had physically moved his arm, Piccolo's highly strained senses had managed to catch something. It was a brief, completely unguarded glimpse of exactly what was hiding underneath the terrifying absence. It felt exactly like staring directly into a sudden flash of noon sunlight in a pitch-dark room. It was completely overwhelming, it was immediate, and it left burning afterimages behind his eyelids. It was a massive, crushing pressure that didn't just push against him so much as it completely saturated the air itself.
He is stronger than me, Piccolo realized, a cold sweat breaking out on his green forehead. Significantly stronger.
He might actually be stronger than Goku.
"Excuse me," Jordan said politely.
He calmly dusted a tiny speck of displaced earth from his dark sleeve and smoothly returned both of his hands to his pockets. "I don't usually enjoy inhaling debris." His dark gaze settled firmly on Piccolo. The look was calm, entirely unhurried, and carried the specific, patient weight of a man simply waiting for the complicated math to finish being done by the other party. "It seems you are not interested in cooperating with me."
Piccolo's extended hand slowly dropped, closing into a tight fist at his side. His massive, ingrained arrogance violently pressed against the cold, hard calculation his survival instincts were currently running.
The calculation definitively won.
"What exactly do you want from me?" Piccolo growled.
"Just for you to come with me right now." Jordan's expression immediately shifted into something that sat uncomfortably somewhere exactly between conspiratorial and highly theatrical. It was a bizarre combination of emotions that Piccolo found to be deeply suspicious. "The Earth is about to face a massive crisis it has never seen before. It is not just any standard enemy. And it is not just your personal problem, or mine. Goku is going to be heavily involved in this too."
Jordan casually gestured a thumb toward the unconscious Raditz floating beside him.
"This specific one currently has two much stronger companions traveling to Earth right now from all the way across the galaxy. The stronger of those two is at least ten times his combat level."
Piccolo stared at the bruised alien.
"That is impossible," Piccolo said flatly.
"You had better believe it. When they finally arrive here, their primary objective will be exactly what his was." Jordan allowed a beat of silence to emphasize the point. "Which, as we have already established, directly and violently interferes with your own long-term plans."
Can we please stop bringing up my world domination plans every thirty seconds? Piccolo thought, grinding his teeth.
Jordan looked at him with exaggerated, theatrical consideration. He slowly, deliberately closed one hand into a solid fist that was roughly the size of a small melon. "So. Here is your choice. You choose to come with me right now—" Jordan's fist tightened audibly, "—or I introduce you to the exact same long nap this guy is currently taking. It is entirely your call."
A long, heavy pause settled over the quiet clearing.
Piccolo's green forehead was noticeably damp with sweat. His fierce demonic pride attempted to stage one final, desperate objection, but it was firmly and permanently overruled by the rational part of his brain that had just watched his strongest energy wave get casually redirected by a bored backhand flick.
"...I'll go."
He bit the bitter words out of his mouth like they had caused him actual physical pain.
"I am absolutely not surrendering to you," Piccolo added immediately. The rapid clarification arrived with the defensive speed of someone who had been frantically preparing the excuse since exactly two sentences ago. "I just want to see exactly what kind of ridiculous enemy requires combining my great power with Goku's. That is all."
"No fight?" Jordan released his massive fist with what appeared to be genuine, profound disappointment.
Then, almost immediately, the visible disappointment was completely replaced with an easy, understanding smile and a dismissive wave of one hand. "Okay. Fair enough. I suppose even a great demon king with grand world domination ambitions still has his personal dignity to maintain."
He is mocking me, Piccolo realized, his eye twitching. That was absolutely intentional mockery. There is absolutely no other valid interpretation of that tone.
"Let's not waste any more time then," Jordan said briskly.
Jordan casually closed his eyes.
He was standing completely out in the open, directly in the presence of a ruthless demon who had literally just tried to murder him. He had absolutely no visible physical guard raised, he held no defensive martial posture, and he was standing there with both of his eyes completely closed.
Piccolo's green fingers twitched involuntarily. The violent impulse to strike was definitely there.
But, Piccolo reasoned with himself, a man who could casually redirect my best attack with a bored backhand flick is absolutely not a man who would ever present a genuine, fatal opening purely by accident.
The violent impulse quickly subsided. Cold reason won out again. Piccolo's tense fingers slowly relaxed at his sides.
Across from him, almost too faint to be completely certain of it, the corner of Jordan's mouth twitched upward.
Piccolo being highly pragmatic, Jordan thought.
The interesting observation settled somewhere deep in Jordan's mind with a note of genuine, pleasant appreciation. Years of solitary martial development had apparently produced something much more calibrated and cautious than the original timeline's highly reckless, arrogant young demon king. Jordan had genuinely half-expected to be forced to have this entire conversation while casually dodging a second, third, and fourth energy attack. The fact that it hadn't required any of that was, in its own unique way, highly impressive.
It's a shame, though, Jordan thought lightly. It really would have been interesting to see a Namekian's full physical output up close.
Piccolo felt a sudden, inexplicable, ice-cold chill run rapidly down his spine. He looked hard at Jordan with narrowed eyes, suddenly experiencing the highly irrational but deeply insistent feeling of having just very narrowly avoided something incredibly unpleasant.
He prudently said nothing.
Jordan said nothing. The tense moment quietly passed.
Then, Jordan's relaxed expression shifted slightly, and he actively did something.
Piccolo physically felt it well before his brain could even begin to understand it. It was a massive, invisible, and completely instantaneous expansion. It radiated outward from the tall figure standing across from him exactly like a massive ocean tide going out at extraordinary, impossible speed. It instantly connected with something impossibly vast. It connected with the planet's own natural electromagnetic field, its deep biomagnetic substrate, and the invisible, underlying energetic structure of every single living thing currently residing on the surface. The massive connection firmly locked into place with the seamless, absolute certainty of a perfect electrical circuit finally completing.
Overwhelming information suddenly flooded in from absolutely every direction all at once.
Piccolo's own highly trained ki-sense was exceptionally good. It was excellent, by literally any standard currently available on this planet. But what Jordan had just casually activated was to his ki-sense what the entire Pacific Ocean was to a small glass of tap water.
This man, Piccolo thought very slowly, his eyes wide. He has been monitoring absolutely everything.
High Above, in the Circular Plaza of the Kami Lookout:
The old, green-skinned Kami and Mr. Popo had been quietly watching the entire time.
They had watched the quiet clearing, the sudden confrontation, the casually redirected energy wave, and the tense negotiation that had immediately followed it. The unique divine senses naturally granted by their high positions allowed them to flawlessly monitor any given corner of the Earth they chose to look at.
The exact moment Jordan fully activated his massive Mind Network, something strange happened to their divine view.
There was a sudden, jarring blur. A visual skip. It felt exactly as though the act of watching itself had been briefly, violently interrupted by something massive actively watching them back.
Then—
Jordan was casually waving right at them.