From ruthless interstellar conqueror to the sole certified sparring coach of Earth's newest martial arts bootcamp. It was a career trajectory absolutely no one—especially Raditz—would have ever predicted.
He endured it.
He endured the humiliating, glowing collar locked around his neck. He endured the suffocating suppression that aggressively choked his battle power down to a pathetic fraction of its natural ceiling, making every single physical exchange feel like fighting waist-deep in mud with both hands tied behind his back. Above all, he endured the look of sheer, grim determination on Krillin's face when the little monk—who had been significantly shorter than Raditz his entire life, and still was—brutally planted a bruised knuckle into his jaw with a right hook that the Saiyan would have normally swatted away in his sleep.
But what made the entire ordeal genuinely, cosmically humiliating was the fact that the collar's hidden sub-network was flawlessly doing its job.
It was keeping the fight perfectly even. Raditz could physically feel it happening. There was a subtle, algorithmic ceiling pressing down on his ki. Every single time his opponent's aura spiked higher in desperation, the collar instantly recalculated the math, granting Raditz just enough slack to violently press back without breaking through and vaporizing them.
Every micro-improvement the Earth warriors made gave Raditz a fraction more freedom. Every agonizing step they took toward the terrifying benchmark required to face Vegeta and Nappa meant the collar loosened just a little bit more. Which meant Raditz was allowed to be just a little less embarrassed.
The mathematics of the situation were deeply, personally offensive.
If I had known this was how the invasion was going to go, Raditz thought bitterly, absorbing a brutal flying kick on crossed forearms and feeling his boots carve deep trenches backward through the sand, I would have found a different brother to visit.
But there was absolutely nothing to be done about it now. One survived however one could.
On the far, peaceful end of the beach, Jordan lounged in a beach chair with Goku and Chi-Chi. They were discussing absolutely nothing of consequence while Goku inhaled a massive plate of food and Chi-Chi maintained that specific state of hyper-vigilant, maternal readiness that seemed to be her default setting whenever Jordan was within a ten-mile radius.
The afternoon was pleasantly warm. The ocean behind them was still violently churning from Krillin and Yamcha's most recent sparring session. Tien Shinhan had finished his grueling rotation an hour ago and was now sitting quietly on the sand with Chiaotzu, engaged in focused, rhythmic breathing work—the kind of intense meditation that looked like resting, but absolutely wasn't.
It was, Jordan noted with satisfaction, genuinely working.
He could feel the subtle biometric shifts through the Mind Network. The changes weren't dramatic, and they certainly weren't happening overnight, but they were building like a slow, inexorable tide. Krillin was reading Raditz's high-speed movements faster. Yamcha's Kamehameha timing had audibly sharpened. Tien was actively learning to calculate and counter an alien ki signature he had never encountered before—something far denser and more brutally compact than the traditional martial arts energy styles he had trained against his entire life.
One year wasn't a lot of time. But one year of this specific crucible was going to yield vastly different results than one year of their usual shadowboxing.
Jordan was idly watching the horizon when his senses caught the familiar, heavy vibration of something large approaching at high speed.
It wasn't an active threat—he had identified the ki signature long before the sonic boom reached the island. But it was entirely unexpected.
Piccolo dropped out of the sky, landing heavily on the white sand in one clean, fluid motion. His heavy white cape settled aggressively around his broad shoulders. He was completely alone.
The glaring absence of a four-year-old Gohan was immediately obvious.
Jordan registered the missing child at the exact same millisecond Chi-Chi did, which was deeply unfortunate for the eardrums of everyone in the immediate vicinity.
"Where is my son."
It was not a question. Chi-Chi's voice had bypassed anger entirely, settling into that specific, terrifying register that clearly indicated she was exactly one unsatisfactory syllable away from taking the problem into her own hands with a kitchen knife.
"I left a clone with him," Piccolo stated flatly. He stared down at Chi-Chi with the bored, guarded expression of a demon king who had fully anticipated this exact screaming match and was entirely prepared to wait it out. "The boy is fine."
The words were factually accurate. In Chi-Chi's estimation, however, they were entirely insufficient.
She had exactly one second to mentally process the horrific image of her five-year-old baby trapped alone in a hostile wilderness full of carnivorous dinosaurs, supervised solely by a magical, green copy of the literal monster who had murdered her father-in-law.
Her nervous system made a rapid, collective executive decision, and the lights immediately went out.
Goku caught her as she collapsed.
"Chi-Chi?! Chi-Chi!" He stared down at his unconscious wife with the specific, panicked alarm of a man who had already seen this exact scenario play out once today, and still had absolutely no idea what the correct tactical response was.
"Twice in one day," Jordan observed neutrally, already standing up from his lounger. "That's a new record."
Piccolo watched the domestic chaos unfold in absolute silence.
"The clone is highly reliable," he added, speaking to no one in particular.
"I believe you," Jordan said, waving a hand dismissively. He gestured toward the Kame House. "Goku, get her inside. She'll be fine when she wakes up. Probably."
Goku scooped Chi-Chi up and beat a hasty retreat toward the house with the practiced, terrified efficiency of a bomb squad technician carrying something fragile and extremely volatile.
Jordan and Piccolo were left standing alone on the beach.
The muffled sound of distant, concussive ki exchanges continued to roll over the boiling water. Raditz's collar made its silent, algorithmic adjustments. The afternoon sun was beginning to dip lower toward the horizon.
"So," Jordan said, turning to look at the towering Namekian properly. "What actually brings you back here?"
Piccolo's thick arms were tightly folded across his chest. His face wore its default mask—cold, closed off, and deliberately blank. It was the armor of a being who had learned very early in life that showing any emotion was a lethal vulnerability. But there was a heavy, unspoken tension vibrating underneath the stoicism that Jordan could read clearly, even without tapping into the Mind Network.
"Wherever Goku is going to train," Piccolo said. His voice was measured, a low, deliberate rumble, like a man who had obsessively rehearsed the sentence in advance. "I want access to the exact same training."
Jordan was quiet for a moment.
He had mentally prepared a long list of potential reasons for Piccolo's sudden return. This was absolutely not on it. Jordan turned the request over in his head, unpacking the sheer gravity of what it actually meant. Piccolo was asking for access to a resource he couldn't take by force, meaning he had to go through other people to get it—a massive compromise against his fundamental nature. More importantly, Piccolo was willingly accepting that it was his temporary alliance with Goku that was opening this door. It required swallowing a jagged pill of pride he had spent years aggressively refusing to swallow.
"That entirely depends on whether Kami agrees to it," Jordan said evenly.
Piccolo's jaw visibly tightened. A flash of pure, visceral disgust flickered across his alien features before it was violently suppressed back into neutrality.
The history between those two entities was incredibly long, and precisely the wrong kind of complicated. They were technically the exact same person—two violently split halves of a single, ancient Namekian soul, bound together by a fragile thread of shared mortality. They had spent every single year since that biological schism as mortal enemies. Piccolo could not simply walk up to Kami's Lookout and politely ask for a favor without first untangling decades of mutual, homicidal hostility. Furthermore, the Guardian of Earth was under absolutely zero cosmic obligation to assist his darker, demonic half.
Jordan let a beat of silence pass, then sighed. "Look. You're officially part of Earth's defensive camp now. That's exactly what I told Kami when we were up there last. The old man is pragmatic—he understands the brutal reality of the situation. I think if Goku personally vouches for you, and you manage to not start a fistfight in the first thirty seconds of arriving, he'll agree to it."
Piccolo stared down at him.
It wasn't quite gratitude—expecting that would have been pushing the limits of the timeline—but his rigid posture shifted slightly into something that acknowledged the words had landed exactly as intended.
"Don't worry about it," Jordan added, turning toward the house. "Let's just wait for Goku."
Chi-Chi was an incredibly deep sleeper once her nervous system finally decided to shut down properly.
Goku crept out of the bedroom on the balls of his feet, pulling the door closed behind him with the agonizing, sweating delicacy of a man who intimately understood that the difference between a clean escape and a third fainting episode was the sound of a single creaking floorboard.
He found Piccolo and Jordan waiting outside in the cooling evening air.
"Jordan!"
Goku's voice was a hushed, frantic whisper, carrying the pent-up, explosive energy of a golden retriever that had been waiting by the front door since noon. "Let's move! I've got everything packed, let's go right now—"
Jordan blinked.
For a split second, illuminated by the faint, warm light spilling from the Kame House windows, Goku's expression—the barely contained eagerness, the desperate physical need to be moving toward a fight, the slightly guilty backward glance toward the bedroom door—perfectly overlapped with a very specific, deeply familiar image.
Saitama. Racing toward the Z-City supermarket on a bargain-bin Saturday. Shoes already tied before the apartment door was even fully open.
The psychological resemblance was actually uncanny. Same height, give or take an inch. Same exact foundational relationship with the concept of "waiting." Jordan had theoretically compared the two fighters before in an abstract, power-scaling sense. But seeing the manic, battle-junkie overlap in person was objectively hilarious.
The only real difference was the hair. And even then, depending on the transformation, that was temporary on Saitama's end.
Sorry, Jordan projected vaguely across dimensions and a paused multiverse timeline. You have a cosmic counterpart, and he's also 1.75 meters tall and completely incapable of standing still.
"Did you remember to bring Bulma's food capsule?" Jordan asked dryly.
"Yes, yes, I've got it—"
"The Senzu Beans I gave you?"
"I brought all of them, please, let's just go—"
"Alright, alright." Jordan raised both hands in a gesture of surrender, deciding not to draw out the torture any longer. Goku was genuinely going to vibrate right out of his gi if he made him wait another thirty seconds. "Then let's go."
His Herrscher spatial authority violently expanded outward, snapping around all three of them.
Kami's Lookout existed in a completely different, sacred quality of silence than anywhere on the surface below.
The air at this altitude was perfectly still and razor-clear, thin in a way that aggressively reminded visitors they had ascended far above the level where the world's ordinary, mortal concerns could reach. Ancient stone lanterns cast warm, flickering light across the pristine marble platform. The stars felt incredibly close.
Kami stepped out of the sanctuary to meet them, leaning heavily on his staff, accompanied by the ever-silent Mr. Popo.
The ancient god's eyes tracked across the arrivals in sequence. Jordan, whom he had spoken with earlier. Goku, whom he had explicitly invited. And then—
Kami's knuckles turned white around the polished wood of his staff.
"Piccolo."
The word was entirely flat and heavily controlled, but Jordan could clearly hear the tectonic plates shifting underneath it. Shock, rapidly contained. And something far older, far more complicated than mere surprise—the specific, sickening tension of staring directly at something that was, in a very literal, biological sense, yourself.
Piccolo held Kami's gaze without blinking, his thick arms still tightly folded. He said absolutely nothing. His stony expression communicated everything that needed to be said: I am here. I am absolutely not going to pretend to be comfortable with this. And I am also not going to start a fight. That was the silent concession. For the Demon King, it was a massive one.
Jordan let the heavy, suffocating moment sit.
Goku stepped forward. "Kami," he said. There was a bright, unfiltered simplicity in his voice that effortlessly cut through the ancient tension without fully dismantling it. "Piccolo is fighting for Earth now. Whatever nightmare is coming from those alien invaders, we are going to face it together." He paused, looking the god in the eye. "If you can help him the exact same way you're going to help me... I'd be really grateful."
He didn't try to argue the bloody history. He didn't attempt to eloquently explain away decades of homicidal hostility, or the brutal death of the original Piccolo Daimaō, or the terrifying life-and-death biological link that made this entire diplomatic summit structurally awkward. He just stated exactly what was true right now.
Kami stared at his champion for a long time. Then, his dark eyes slid back to Piccolo—who was notably not refuting a single word of Goku's speech. Which was, in its own stubborn way, a total confirmation.
The old Guardian exhaled a long, slow breath. He nodded once.
"Very well."
His voice had settled back into its usual, calm cadence. "The two of you—step forward and touch my hands. I will transport you to the desk of King Yemma."
Jordan smoothly raised a hand.
Kami blinked, looking over at him.
"The universe I come from doesn't actually have a localized underworld," Jordan said, keeping his tone perfectly polite and reasonable. "I'd really hate to miss the rare opportunity to see this one in person. Is there any chance I could tag along?"
The expression that crossed Kami's face strongly suggested he had absolutely not anticipated this particular administrative request. Assembling a spontaneous, mortal sightseeing party for the realm of the dead was definitely not on his itinerary for the evening.
Mr. Popo slowly looked at Jordan. Then he looked at Kami. The attendant's expression communicated absolutely nothing, but he managed to do it in that extremely deliberate way that meant he was trying very hard not to laugh.
"...Normally," Kami said after a pained silence, "living mortals do not visit the underworld without significant, cosmic cause." He paused, adjusting his grip on his staff. "However... you are hardly a normal case." Another long pause. "I suppose taking you along as an observer is not strictly out of the question."
"Thank you," Jordan said instantly, smiling. "Genuinely, I appreciate the tour."
Kami pinched the bridge of his nose with two green fingers, as if physically warding off an incoming migraine, before squaring his shoulders. The flames in the stone lanterns flickered as a supernatural wind that hadn't been there a second ago swept across the plaza.
"When we arrive," Kami instructed carefully, looking at all three of them in sequence, "you must stay close to me. The underworld possesses deep chasms that connect directly to the lower Hells. If any of you happen to fall into them—" The god's eyes locked specifically onto Jordan, wearing the exhausted expression of a manager who had successfully identified the highest-probability source of chaos in the group. "—there is absolutely no return."
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