Summer on Mount Paozu was usually characterized by two things: the suffocating humidity, and the sheer volume of food our family could consume in a single sitting.
I sat at the wooden dining table, my chin resting in my palm, watching my mother completely redefine the culinary arts.
"Mom, are you sure that's safe?" Gohan asked, peeking over the edge of the table with wide, curious eyes.
"Oh, hush, sweetie. It's perfectly safe. It's all about heat distribution," Mom replied without looking back.
She stood in the center of the kitchen, wearing her pink apron over her martial arts gi. Hovering exactly two inches above her outstretched, open palm was a wok filled with diced vegetables, soy sauce, and massive chunks of dinosaur meat Dad had brought home that morning.
Underneath the wok, there was no stove. Instead, Mom was holding a perfectly spherical, intensely condensed ball of blue Ki.
It was a miniature sun, contained entirely by her absolute will. She wasn't just blasting the pan; she was micro-managing the thermal output of her own life energy to perfectly sear the meat without singing a single hair on her head—or burning the house down.
I watched the visual distortion of the heat waves rippling off the Ki sphere. It was honestly a breathtaking display of energy control. It was quite the sight, seeing mom, who was growing stronger by the day, use her own power on something as domestic as cooking.
I could do the same thing yet I simply laughed.
"See?" Mom smiled, giving the wok a sharp flick of her wrist so the vegetables danced in the air before settling back into the sizzling oil. "Your father usually just blasts things until they're burnt black, but if you compress the energy and limit the kinetic radiation, you get a perfectly even cooking surface! I haven't used the gas stove in weeks."
"You're a genius, Mom," I said, with a tone devoid of emotion yet still completely sincere. "You've weaponized domesticity."
"Flattery will get you an extra portion of ribs, Yuzu," she hummed happily, turning off her 'stove' by simply closing her hand. The blue light vanished, and she casually set the steaming wok on the table. "Now eat up. Both of you have a lot of studying to do this afternoon."
As I dug into the perfectly cooked meal, I couldn't help but smile.
After lunch, the dining table was cleared and we immediately went to studying, properly.
Gohan sat beside me, his small brow furrowed in deep concentration as his pencil scratched across his notebook. I leaned back in my chair, twirling a pen between my fingers, and just watched him for a moment.
"Hey, Yuzu?" Gohan whispered, breaking my train of thought. He pointed to a complex division problem. "Does the remainder go here, or do I turn it into a fraction?"
"Fraction," I answered softly, leaning over to tap the margin of his paper. "Divide the remainder by the divisor. You'll get a cleaner number for the next step."
Gohan's eyes lit up. "Oh! That makes so much more sense. Thanks!"
He immediately went back to scribbling, a small, triumphant smile on his face.
I turned to my own paper, looking at the questions I answered. They were too easy for me. I mean, any reincarnator worth their salt, could solve simple equations like this.
Those who failed at the equation (144 x 25) + (360 ÷ 12) - 150 were, in my opinion, simpletons. It was simple math, not hard to solve, 3480 was the answer after all. And honestly, if I had to explain how I came to that answer, then you have already failed at math.
Across from me, Gohan was still chewing his lip over a fraction problem, his brow furrowed so hard it looked like he was trying to solve the mysteries of the universe with sheer determination. It was adorable, really. He used to be the kind of child who shrank at every loud sound and jumped when a cupboard door slammed. Now he was only half-shy, half-focused, and fully capable of throwing himself into a problem until it surrendered.
That had not happened by accident.
I watched him for a few seconds, then glanced toward the kitchen where Mom was finishing up the last of lunch. The scent of cooked meat and warm vegetables drifted through the house, rich and comforting. No panic. No fear. No hiding. Just a family, doing what families did.
I looked back at Gohan and, for the briefest moment, saw the shape of the future reflected in him. Not the frightened little boy who had once hidden behind the porch during the Garlic Jr. attack. Not the child who had been dragged into combat before he understood what fear was. No, this version of Gohan sat straighter.
I found myself feeling proud of all the changes I had inflicted.
"Yuzu?" Gohan asked quietly, holding up his paper. "This one looks wrong."
I leaned in, glanced at the page, and snorted softly.
"You turned a subtraction problem into an act of self-sabotage."
His face scrunched in confusion. "That bad?"
"Not bad. Just… you forgot to borrow."
"Oh." He frowned, then nodded as if that explained the entire cosmos. "Right."
I reached over and tapped the correct line. "Try again. You're thinking about the answer before you finish the method."
He lit up, because of course he did. Gohan still treated every little correction like it was a secret treasure map.
Mom's footsteps crossed the floorboards a moment later. She set down a stack of folded laundry by the wall, then glanced at our notebooks with the sharp, assessing eye of a woman who knew exactly when something was being done properly and when someone was simply pretending to understand.
"You two are doing well," she said, though her tone made it sound suspiciously like an accusation.
Dad, who had been outside chopping firewood with the enthusiasm of a man who viewed everything as an opportunity to train, stuck his head through the open door.
"Alright, I'm going to harvest now."
Mom didn't even look up from inspecting Gohan's arithmetic.
"Be back before sunset," she said. "And bring vegetables this time. If you come home with another dinosaur because you 'got distracted,' you're cleaning the kitchen for a month."
Dad rubbed the back of his head with a sheepish grin.
"Heh... no promises!"
"Goku."
"...I'll bring vegetables."
Dad waved before launching into the sky, disappearing above the treeline in seconds.
Mom watched him go through the doorway, sighed with the long-suffering patience of a woman who had accepted this was simply what marrying Son Goku entailed, then returned to folding laundry.
I exchanged an amused glance with Gohan.
"Five Zeni says he comes back with another dinosaur."
Gohan giggled.
"I'll take that bet."
...
He lost five Zeni.
—July—
July arrived with a vengeance, bringing a heatwave that turned the air of Mount Paozu into a thick, shimmering soup. The cicadas screamed from the trees in an endless, deafening chorus, sounding like tiny buzzsaws grinding against the bark.
Even for martial artists who could shrug off physical extremes, the sheer humidity was oppressive. Mom had declared a strict rule for the month where training was done for 2 hours only. Dad agreed, deciding it would be good to do more.
Instead, we packed a picnic and relocated to the massive, crystal-clear river that wound its way near the house. Though we were a few miles out following the river to a beautiful spot.
The riverbank was our sanctuary for the day. Mom had set up a large, brightly colored parasol in the softest patch of grass, complete with a woven mat and a cooler filled to the brim with iced tea and cold fruit. She was currently reclining in a folding chair, wearing a modest one-piece swimsuit and oversized sunglasses, looking like she belonged on a luxury resort beach rather than a mountain wilderness. She was reading a thick paperback novel, completely at peace.
Down by the water, chaos reigned.
"Look out below!" Dad shouted, launching himself from a high, rocky cliff that jutted out over the deepest part of the river. He executed a flawless, triple-spinning backflip before tucking his knees to his chest and hitting the water like a cannonball.
The resulting splash was less of a splash and more of a localized tidal wave. A massive wall of water surged outward, washing completely over the muddy bank where Gohan and I were attempting to construct a sandcastle.
The water receded, leaving behind a completely flattened mound of wet mud.
Gohan blinked, water dripping from his messy black hair. He looked down at the ruined castle, then up at Dad, who was currently floating on his back in the center of the river, laughing boisterously.
"Aw, man," Gohan pouted, though he couldn't quite hide the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "We spent twenty minutes on the moat, Yuzu."
"Tactical error on our part," I replied smoothly, wiping a dollop of mud from my cheek. "We built too close to the blast zone. Next time, we factor in the dad-radius."
Gohan giggled, tossing a handful of wet mud into the river. "Do you think we can build one higher up? Away from the splashing?"
"We could, or we could just get even," I suggested, an evil little smirk crossing my face.
Gohan's eyes widened. "Get even? How?"
I reached down into the shallow water at our feet, picking up a perfectly smooth, flat skipping stone. I weighed it in my palm. "Watch and learn, little brother."
I flicked my wrist shooting the stone out of my hand like a bullet, skipping across the surface of the river with a rapid-fire thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip.
It skipped exactly fourteen times before perfectly, lightly tapping Dad right on the tip of his nose while he floated.
"Hey!" Dad yelped, startling and sinking below the surface with a loud splash of bubbles.
Gohan burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, clutching his stomach as he fell back onto the muddy bank. A few seconds later, Dad popped back up, wiping his face and grinning from ear to ear.
"Oh, you're asking for it now, Yuzu!" Dad declared, scooping up a massive handful of water and hurling it toward us like a heavy-duty water balloon.
I effortlessly sidestepped the projectile, letting it splash harmlessly onto the grass behind me, but Gohan took the brunt of the aquatic assault, getting completely soaked.
"Retreat!" I ordered, grabbing Gohan's hand. We scrambled up the bank, slipping and sliding in the mud while Dad chased after us, roaring like a mock sea monster.
We bolted toward the parasol, diving behind Mom's chair for cover.
"Safe zone! Safe zone!" Gohan yelled, peeking around the fabric of the chair.
Dad skidded to a halt a few feet away, holding his hands up in surrender as Mom slowly lowered her sunglasses, giving him a look that could have frozen a volcano.
"Goku," she warned softly. "If you drip river water on my book, I will have Yuzu calculate exactly how much force it takes to throw you into orbit, and then I will apply it."
Dad gulped, taking a very slow, very deliberate step backward. "Right. No splashing the reading zone. Got it, Chi-Chi."
He immediately turned on his heel and sprinted back toward the river, doing another ridiculous flip into the water to distract himself.
Mom sighed, pushing her sunglasses back up the bridge of her nose. "Honestly. It's like having three children."
"Hey, I'm perfectly well-behaved," I pointed out, sitting cross-legged on the mat beside her chair.
Mom reached out, affectionately ruffling my wet hair. "You're the worst instigator of them all, Yuzu. Don't think I didn't see you throw that stone."
I offered an innocent, angelic smile. "I was just practicing my physics, Mom. Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection."
She rolled her eyes, but a fond smile broke through her stern facade. She reached into the cooler, pulling out a chilled bottle of green tea, and handed it to me. "Drink up. You need to stay hydrated if you're going to keep running circles around your father."
"Thanks, Mom."
I cracked the seal on the bottle and took a long drink, the cold liquid instantly soothing the summer heat. Gohan crawled over, leaning against my shoulder as Mom handed him a juice box.
For the next hour, we just sat there in the shade. The cicadas kept singing, the river kept flowing, and Dad kept trying to catch fish with his bare hands, occasionally holding up a massive, thrashing trout with a triumphant yell before tossing it back.
I closed my eyes, letting the summer breeze wash over me.
—August—
The late-summer monsoons of Mount Paozu were legendary, and this year, the atmosphere decided to put on a show. Sheets of torrential rain battered the roof of the Son household in a continuous, deafening drumroll that vibrated through the floorboards. The sky outside the windows was a bruised, rolling purple, illuminated every few seconds by jagged forks of white lightning that struck the distant peaks.
Inside, the house was a fortress of warmth and dry wood. The fireplace crackled, fighting back the sudden damp chill and casting a flickering orange light across the living room.
It was the perfect day to sit by the fire, read a book, and enjoy the cozy isolation of the mountain.
Unless, of course, you were Dad.
"You are making the floorboards squeak," I pointed out, not looking up from the thick mechanical engineering textbook I had borrowed from Bulma's lab last month.
"I'm bored, Yuzu," Dad whined, his voice carrying the exact same cadence Gohan used when he wasn't allowed to stay up past his bedtime. He switched from his left index finger to his right thumb without breaking rhythm. "It's raining too hard to spar. The mud gets everywhere, and your mother said if I track one more muddy footprint onto the porch, she's going to use my gi as a mop."
"She meant it, too," Mom called from the kitchen, where she was methodically kneading a massive mound of dough. "I spend entirely too much time keeping this house spotless for you to treat it like a barn, Goku. Read a book. Play a board game. Meditate."
Dad dropped down to his feet, landing with a soft thud, and dramatically flopped onto his back, staring up at the ceiling beams. "I meditated yesterday. And board games are only fun when you guys don't gang up on me."
"We don't gang up on you," I countered, turning a page. "You just refuse to grasp the strategic nuances of Monopoly, and therefore, you go bankrupt. It's basic economics."
"I still say it's unfair you can charge rent on a street you don't even live on," Dad grumbled, crossing his arms.
Gohan, who was lying on his stomach near the fireplace with a box of crayons and a coloring book, giggled. "You landed on Boardwalk three times, Dad. Yuzu put hotels there."
"See? Ganging up on me," Dad declared, pointing an accusatory finger at the ceiling.
I closed my textbook with a soft snap, setting it on the coffee table. Having a bored Goku in an enclosed space was a recipe for disaster. If he didn't find an outlet soon, he was going to start shadowboxing, and the ambient wind pressure from his punches would inevitably knock over one of Mom's prized vases.
"Alright," I said, stretching my arms over my head. "If you need a challenge that won't destroy the living room, I have a game. But it requires absolute, microscopic Ki control."
Dad sat up so fast he was practically a blur. "I'm listening."
I reached into the small bowl of dry roasted peanuts Mom had left on the table for snacking. I picked one up, pinching it between my thumb and forefinger.
"The game is called 'Dead Drop.' The rules are simple. I'm going to flick this peanut at you. I will not hold back on the velocity. It's going to move incredibly fast."
Dad's eyes lit up, his martial artist instincts instantly snapping to attention. He shifted into a cross-legged seated stance, leaning forward. "Okay. And I catch it?"
"You catch it," I confirmed. "But here is the catch. You cannot crush it. You cannot break the skin of the peanut. And most importantly, you cannot create a shockwave when it impacts your hand. You have to match the exact kinetic velocity of the peanut as it hits your palm, decelerating it over a fraction of a second so that the energy dissipates harmlessly."
Dad blinked, processing the physics of the request. "So... if I just snatch it out of the air like a fly..."
"The kinetic transfer will shatter the peanut into dust, and the resulting air pressure will shatter the nearest window," I explained plainly. "Which means Mom will kill you."
"I will," Mom agreed pleasantly from the kitchen, not missing a beat.
"So, you have to read the exact speed of the projectile, catch it, and absorb the momentum flawlessly," I finished, a challenging smirk pulling at my lips. "Think you can handle it?"
Dad grinned, a wild, thrilled look flashing in his dark eyes. He held up a hand, two fingers extended. "Hit me."
I didn't give him a countdown.
I channeled a tiny, hyper-dense spark of Ki into my thumb and flicked the peanut.
Thwip!
The nut broke the sound barrier inside the living room, moving as a blurred streak of tan right toward Dad's forehead.
Dad didn't flinch. His hand snapped up, moving just as fast, but the moment his fingers made contact with the peanut, he didn't clamp down. Instead, his arm swept backward, perfectly riding the trajectory of the projectile. He carried it in a smooth, sweeping arc behind his head, bleeding off the momentum in a localized, frictionless pocket of Ki before bringing his hand back to his lap.
He opened his fingers. The peanut was completely intact. Not a single crack in the shell.
"Ha!" Dad cheered, tossing the peanut into the air and catching it in his mouth. He chewed happily. "That was awesome! My turn!"
He scrambled over to the bowl, grabbing a peanut of his own.
Gohan abandoned his coloring book, crawling over to sit beside me, his eyes wide with fascination. "Can I try to watch the energy, Yuzu?"
"Absolutely," I said, keeping my eyes locked on Dad. "Track the kinetic transfer. Watch how he pulls his Ki back to cushion the catch."
For the next two hours, the storm raging outside was entirely forgotten. The living room became a high-stakes, high-speed shooting gallery. Peanuts zipped across the room at hypersonic speeds, only to be caught with impossible, silent grace. It was a masterclass in spatial awareness and absolute physical restraint.
Of course, it wasn't a perfect streak. About forty minutes in, Dad misjudged the angle of one of my curveball flicks.
He caught it, but his deceleration arc was off by a millimeter.
CRACK.
The peanut exploded into fine powder, and a sharp gust of wind blasted across the room, rustling the curtains and violently shaking a framed picture on the mantle.
The entire room froze.
Dad stood perfectly still, his hand covered in peanut dust, looking absolutely terrified. Gohan had his hands clamped over his mouth to muffle a gasp. I slowly turned my head toward the kitchen.
Mom stood in the doorway, a wooden rolling pin in her hand. The expression on her face was serene. Too serene.
"Goku," she said, her voice like honey poured over razor blades.
Dad swallowed hard. "I... I can fix the frame, Chi-Chi! It didn't break! I swear!"
"If one more peanut explodes in my living room," Mom said softly, "you will be sleeping on the roof. In the rain."
"Understood!" Dad saluted, sweating profusely.
Once she returned to the kitchen, Dad let out a massive breath, wiping his brow. He looked at me, grinning nervously.
"Okay. Slower this time. Just a little."
I chuckled, picking up another peanut. "Your funeral, old man."
—September—
In the desolate, ice-choked crags of the northern continent, the wind didn't just blow; it screamed. It whipped snow into sharp, blinding needles that tore across the jagged glaciers, burying the barren landscape in a relentless white void.
It was a realm of total stagnation. Nothing grew. Nothing survived.
Except for Piccolo.
The Demon King crouched atop a razor-thin spire of ice, his white cape snapping violently in the gale. His legs were bent, his chest heaving, purple blood dripping from his knuckles onto the pristine snow below. His turban was long gone, discarded miles back after a brutal, self-inflicted training session that had left half a mountain face leveled to gravel.
He stared down at his green, clawed hands, his teeth gritting so hard his jaw ached.
"Again," he growled to himself, his deep voice swallowed instantly by the roaring storm. "Again!"
He thrust his hands forward, attempting to force his energy to compress simultaneously into both palms—a dynamic modification of the Makankosappo designed for instant deployment.
The energy flared. Red and yellow lightning crackled violently around his forearms, illuminating his snarl in a harsh, demonic light. But the moment he tried to shift his physical weight to simulate mid-combat movement, the volatile structure shattered.
BOOM!
The premature detonation blew backward into his chest. Piccolo was thrown off the spire, crashing through three separate pillars of solid ice before slamming into the frozen tundra below.
He lay in the snow, coughing up a spatter of purple blood. The cold meant nothing to him, but the burning, agonizing friction within his own meridian pathways was an agonizing reality.
He sat up slowly, his fingers digging into the ice.
It wasn't working.
The realization sat in his gut like lead. For months he had pushed his body past every known limit. He had shattered his bones, starved himself of rest, and subjected his mind to brutal, sleepless meditation in the harshest environments on the planet.
And yet... when he focused his sensory perception south, toward Mount Paozu… The gap hadn't narrowed. It had widened.
When he reached out with his mind, he could feel them. Goku. The human woman. The boy. And the girl—that terrifying anomaly of a child whose energy felt less like a living creature and more like an cold, unyielding law of physics.
They were moving further away from him. Not by miles, but by light-years. Every time he managed to claw his way up another hundred units of power, their baseline shifted as effortlessly as breathing.
A bitter, venomous rage flared in his chest, but beneath it lay something far more insidious: a crawling, suffocating frustration.
"No," Piccolo rasped, pushing himself to his feet. He wiped the purple blood from his chin, his golden eyes narrowing into dangerous slits as he glared across the snowbound horizon. "No. This is temporary."
He wouldn't accept it. He couldn't. He was the reincarnation of King Piccolo! The world was his birthright!
He looked down at his trembling hands, forcing his breathing to slow. He couldn't afford to admit that his methods were failing. He couldn't allow his mind to acknowledge that training alone in the frozen dark, driven by nothing but spite, was fundamentally inferior to whatever sick, unnatural harmony the Son family had cultivated.
"They are capping out," Piccolo lied to himself, his voice a low, desperate hiss against the howling wind. "They've hit their ceiling. They're comfortable. They're playing house."
Yes. That was it. That had to be it.
He crossed his arms, pulling his frayed cape around his shoulders as the blizzard raged on around him. Goku and his freakish family were relying on raw, unrefined efficiency, but they lacked the killer instinct. They lacked the demonic ambition.
"Let them play," Piccolo muttered, his tone hardening into a cold, delusionally stubborn armor. "My growth isn't linear."
He closed his eyes, shutting out the distant, blinding glare of the sun burning in the south.
He convinced himself that he was simply building a foundation. That his solitude was a weapon, not a handicap. That when he finally emerged from this frozen hell, he would bridge the gap in a single, glorious instant and crush the Son family beneath his heel.
It was a lie, birthed from wounded pride and absolute isolation. But in the freezing, silent dark of the arctic, it was the only thing keeping the Demon King from breaking completely.