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Piccolo worked well as a bystander. Waiting and watching.
“You should've swam up the mountainside by now. Yet here you are drowning instead of swimming,” Piccolo said as the water swallowed Gohan once again. “I wonder what your father would say if he could see you giving up so easily.”
That gave a bit more vigor to Gohan’s flailing, but the fit was as short-lived as the rest of them, and every moment he wasn't defeating the river's current was a moment the river carried him farther from his goal. Piccolo raised an index finger and shot a thin beam of ki like the crack of a whip, flash-boiling the water around the boy’s convulsing limbs.
Gohan tried and failed to shriek beneath the rush of bubbles. Finally, some use of ki: he catapulted himself skyward out of the water. But the air would not be safer for him just beacuse he could breathe it. He was met by Piccolo halfway through the upward climb, and with a single outstretched hand he caught the boy around the neck, nearly snapping it with the force of its deceleration.
“That river is the kindest enemy you'll ever face. You think the Saiyans will let you run like this? You think they'll stay on the ground?”
Gohan didn’t seem to hear him, dazed by the pain and sudden drop in air pressure. Piccolo’s hold tightened infinitesimally before relaxing too much.
“Sink or swim, but don't you dare float,” he said as he watched him fall through the cloud cover below, easy with his cruelty.
When Piccolo returned to the river later that night, he found Gohan unconscious on the shoreline. A dull sight, to be sure, but that was all he stared at as the moment dragged on: a boy who climbed from the shallows to sleep in the mud. Shaking his head, he picked him up by his collar and dropped the boy off on a dryer patch of earth. Gohan did not stir, and Piccolo scoffed to himself more out of habit than actual amusement. There was no one around for miles; his commentary was lost on the sleeping child, and this fact tugged loose a stray thread of irritation that he immediately tucked away.
Gohan awoke a few hours later to a bonfire crackling nearby in an empty clearing, drying his wet clothes and warming his frozen body.
And although the day had to come eventually, he was still caught by surprise when Gohan first managed to stay conscious after a full day of training. The sun was down, but there he was—standing on two shaky legs.
The boy knew it, too. “I must be getting better, huh?” he gasped out.
“When you can show me the face you made when you took out that Saiyan, then we'll say you're better.”
Gohan plopped down readily while Piccolo’s frustration mounted at the display of clumsiness still plaguing his movements, the inefficient way he rubbed at his nose. At times like these, it was painfully obvious that Goku had taught his son absolutely nothing, and as Piccolo reviewed all the points in their spar where he could’ve attacked—capitalized on the boy’s inexperience—but chose to hold back, he realized he’d been going easy on him.
“Mr. Piccolo,” Gohan murmured, unaware of how close he was treading to Piccolo's bad side. “Why did he come here, that... Saiyan?”
Piccolo swiped his tail out from under him and yanked it up to eye-level, ignoring the girlish squeal the kid gave in surprise. “This thing, right here,” he snapped. “Your idiot father was a monkeyman like him and put this planet on his radar; now the rest of his kind want to come finish what he started. Weren’t you listening to what he said before he took you?”
“I—” Gohan began, but Piccolo dropped him on his ass before he could finish. “But Mr. Piccolo,” the kid insisted, his rebound oddly quick for someone who’d been totally wasted a few seconds ago. “You can take them, now, can’t you? And I can help—”
At that time, there was no doubt in Piccolo's mind. He was a big fish in a small pond, and he could not imagine the ocean.
“That’s the whole idea of training you,” he said. “As you are now, you’re pathetic, even with what minor improvement you’ve made.”
Gohan nodded eagerly along. “Yes, but you can make me strong!”
Piccolo had no response, opting to fly off to another cliff in the wasteland. The following days were brutal for Gohan, who now passed out at every nightfall as Piccolo thought of new ways to push him. The boy hung tough in the face of every adversity, never developing the grudge Piccolo knew he himself would’ve had in spades if their positions were reversed. When he sat beside the boy’s unconscious body after another long day, he found that Gohan’s hair was soft, far softer than it looked after the months spent bathed in sweat. Further down the side of the boy’s small head, his cheek was full and warm in Piccolo’s cold hand, and when Gohan leaned into his touch as though he felt something comfortable there, Piccolo thought that maybe they could still train like this after the Saiyan threat was gone. He’d grown far stronger than he’d been against Radditz; he could deal with Goku when the man inevitably wanted Gohan back.
It would happen again and again. You think you know who you are. You think you know where you're going.
He was Piccolo, son of Piccolo, and he was destined for great things.
But then the Saiyans were actually here, and Piccolo could barely survive an encounter with the lackey of the two, much less the shorter one in command. Yamcha didn’t even take out a single Saibaman before finding a grave in a crater; Chiaotzu’s kamikaze attack had no effect; and Tenshinhan pushed himself so hard that his heart gave out.
“Three hours,” the short one jeered, sticking out three gloved fingers in illustration. “We’ll wait three hours for Kakarot to arrive before finishing you off.”
And as he tried to think of any way they could live to the end of the day, it suddenly occurred to him, a random thought born from the flurry of his desperate mind: he could fuse with Kami. He knew they could do it, somehow, that it was possible for them to become whole again. He knew they’d be strong enough to grind these shitheads into dust, even the little guy.
He was sure that Kami knew it, too, yet despite his precious Earth hanging in the balance, the geezer had never come forward to present the opportunity. The old bastard hated the idea; Piccolo understood. Goku’s energy rumbled far off in the distance, bursting with his speed.
“Time’s up,” the short one sighed. “What a shame.”
The lackey smirked when Piccolo’s last-ditch plan fell apart, their tails apparently immune to whatever it was that Goku had exploited against Radditz. With a swift elbow to the skull, he struck Piccolo down, and all he could think of in his paralyzed stupor was Gohan, where was Gohan, what were the Saiyans doing to Gohan. Finally, he forced his eyes open and drew the Saiyan’s attention back to him, an effort that was utterly wasted when stupid, stupid Gohan decided to grow a spine and land a hard kick to the lackey’s head.
Piccolo felt the ki build before he saw it. Time both sped up and slowed down, went forwards and backwards, pulling on him in opposite directions till he was inescapably stuck in the here and now. His body moved—
And yes, he was fast enough. Piccolo stood through the entire blast and fell as soon as it was over, though something in him knew that if the attack had kept going, he could’ve stayed up for that much longer, that he would’ve found the strength to take whatever it needed to give. As his heart stalled and senses dulled, all that remained was the shade from Gohan’s head blocking out the sun above them, fading his face into one long shadow and haloing his tousled hair with a lambent wash of distant light.
Death was not the end. He always thought it would be the end.
All the people he (his father) had killed, they had not disappeared like he'd once believed. They must've continued onward like this, their souls dripping like blood through the sieve that separates the living world from the next.
His time in otherworld went quickly despite the forced company of Goku’s pals. Once King Kai grasped just how unamused Piccolo was with his asinine idea of training, he only interacted with him to narrate the goings-on of Namek.
Piccolo grew stronger—not nearly strong enough, he knew, he knew—but when finally revived and summoned to Namek, he had no choice but to charge toward a battle he had no chance of winning. Any attack he could absorb would be worth the pain. Any damage he could deal would be worth the effort. Any trick Kami could pull with the dragonballs, anything at all, would be worth the disgrace of working with him.
“Come on, Goku; only three hundred miles! If Gohan would just play dead, he might make it, but it looks like he’s not gonna stay down till he’s actually been killed. Stupid mortals and your pointless heroics... can’t you see you just need to stall for time? Maybe if Krillin gets up, or Vegeta decides to step back in, that might do it. Come on, two hundred miles. One-eighty. One-forty—ah! That kick, the kid took it directly! He’s... he’s not getting up....”
It may have been that mentality that led him to look at Nail’s offer the way that he did. Freeza was just too strong, and if fusion could give him an edge, if it maybe ended up saving a life, then shouldn’t that be worth whatever the hell it’d mean to be “Piccolo and Nail?”
“How kind. And here I am, passing on the greatest gift a Namekian can give.”
It may be that the nature of a Namekian is to change. Not just any change, but deep change, soul-rending change.
Fusion doesn't just change you. It kills you, first.
But Piccolo had been killed before.
And it shook him to his very core, to be disassembled to accommodate another, touching every part of his every aspect. The power was unreal. Nail was unreal. It was a feeling undefined.
And like a demonic summon of Planet Namek’s call for blood—the product of a curse uttered by his people’s dying breath, that there would be hell to pay—he came to the battlefield with murder in his eyes, just in time to stop Gohan from rushing into something he was going to regret. His newfound strength was enough to spare the boy from ever having get involved with the fight, enough to keep him out of danger for good. He was revived for the singular purpose of fighting Freeza, after all, so that was what he’d do with this new life of his. This feverish rage, the distant spasm of grief: it was Nail’s, and now it was his. His loss became his fury.
It was only when Gohan called out him that Piccolo remembered his name. And it was only then that he—his power—stopped being enough.
Because Freeza could transform, that bastard, that freak, and transform he did, turning the tables in a disgusting instant, overwhelming Piccolo in short order with a hail of rapid-fire blasts. It was Gohan who interrupted the volley, of course, and that drove the stake of godawful failure that much deeper through his chest. Piccolo was supposed to be protecting the boy, yet here he was, forcing Gohan to pick up his slack. With that and his mission to kill Freeza utterly failed, he grit his teeth in so much more than pain.
Finally, Goku finished his recovery and joined them on the battlefield just as Vegeta bit the dust—not before beleaguering them with his “tragic” backstory, of course. The fact that Goku seemed to care dug at Piccolo like a bad itch. He remembered his dreams of stealing Gohan away to raise him as his own, and as he watched Goku jump into the fight on seemingly equal footing with Freeza’s final form, Piccolo understood that he would never, ever be strong enough to make that happen.
But Freeza soon managed to outpace even Goku. He probed at him, drawing out the full extent of his power, and then did what Freeza loved to do: he toyed. And even as a part of Piccolo was wickedly satisfied at his former rival’s failure, it hurt so much to see their last line of defense reduced to the level of the rest of them. It was Goku or nothing, and Gohan, Gohan would be so hurt, because he believed so much in his dad, still had so much faith that he could pull out of this nosedive. Goku didn’t deserve this adoration, yet he had it, and they were all going to die while the perpetrator of the Namekian genocide would walk away scot-free, and if Hell is like this, then Piccolo might as well have stayed dead.
“The Spirit Bomb,” Krillin abruptly whispered. “He must be prepping a Spirit Bomb!”
So, having absorbed what little ki Krillin and Gohan were able to spare, Piccolo played protect-the-king while Goku teased out the surrounding planets’ last bits of energy. Piccolo’s attacks were pathetic, but Freeza was stupid enough to let them play out in his effort to restate how thoroughly fucked they all were, so Goku had that much more time to charge. Each second eked by agonizingly slow, paid for with his blood and ruined organs at increasingly steep prices. It didn’t take long to outbid him; Piccolo lay prone on the stiff Namek turf, his muscles unresponsive, aflame with the knowledge that Freeza’s next strike would be the last.
Of course it was Gohan who saved him, somehow dredging up the ki to fire a blast along with Krillin at Freeza’s unguarded back. Piccolo wanted to laugh at the bizarre swell of pride he suddenly felt, a sentiment quickly swallowed by the shameful relief at Freeza turning his gaze elsewhere. They were all just totally spent.
And then Goku fired Spirit Bomb, and the ground beneath them broke. Water rushed in from every direction, the impact rupturing the bridge of land between them and the ocean. Piccolo had enough stamina to fight to the surface of the flood, but deep below the waves, Goku was being carried away by the current, too fatigued to make any move in the slightest.
It would’ve been so simple, to let him drown. So clean. He could’ve even passed it off as an accident, a regrettable circumstance of the great effort it took to bring Freeza down. Nobody’s fault.
But Piccolo didn’t do that. He wrestled the large man’s body to shore.
And the look of joy on Gohan’s face was everything he hoped it would be.
That may have been the real reason he took the blow aimed for Goku when Freeza surfaced along with them. In hindsight, it was really dumb; without Piccolo, Earth’s dragonballs didn’t exist, and their trip to Namek would’ve accomplished nothing it set out to do. But at that moment, he didn’t think he’d be able to stand it if Freeza ruined that happy look.
As it was, he blacked out before he could see Gohan's reaction. He hoped Gohan wasn't crying. He hoped he'd grow up big and strong.
Life kept working out for Piccolo, just like it kept destroying him.
Gohan visited him often, babbling on about all the little things his mother made him learn. While the young boy played with a friendly bobcat he'd found, Piccolo’s superior ears listened to the voice of Planet Earth, the birdsongs and the rustling of leaves, the faraway hum of humans living their harmless lives in the next city over. It was home.
And when the Androids’ power eclipsed the likes of both Goku and Vegeta, and it grew clear that no one in the world was strong enough to stand up to them, Piccolo knew once and for all that fusion with Kami was their only chance. That awful, angry sense of helplessness he'd felt for so long—it dug through his heart and came out the other side, stapled to his soul.
What did it mean to be Piccolo? To be the Earth Namekian who wasn’t Kami, an incomplete creature that knew only itself; that glorified and clung to its independence; that sought meaning in strife and chaos; that carved out its place in the suffering of man because no other post could hold all its ambition, its malice, its will to survive?
While he waited on the lookout for Kami to reach the same conclusion, Piccolo wondered what exactly it was that he’d been trying to hold on to.