Piccolo had closed the connection himself.
The water surface held nothing but its own reflection, and the room had the specific quality of a screen after the credits roll. Liam straightened up. Android 18 was dead. Android 17 had run, which was tactically reasonable and strategically terminal. He had no energy source to exhaust, no wounds that would worsen, and nowhere on Earth that Piccolo couldn't eventually reach. The math on his survival was poor.
"If we'd known the fusion would make him that powerful," Bulma said, watching her own cigarette smoke rise, "we would have arranged it sooner."
"It wasn't a simple decision for either of them," Korin said, from the doorway. He said it without judgment, the observation of someone who had watched many difficult decisions from high altitude over many years.
Liam looked around the storage room, at the accumulated objects of a centuries-long occupation, and asked: "Are there really no Senzu beans left?"
Korin's eyes narrowed slightly. He regarded Liam with the specific attention of someone recalibrating an assessment. "There are seeds," he said.
"Seeds but no harvest?"
"The production has been unreliable." Korin turned and moved deeper into the room, between stacked items and forgotten equipment, and returned with a grey earthenware jar. The character for a unit of volume had been brushed on the side in old ink. He pulled the lid off with one claw.
Akane materialized at the rim immediately, peering inside. A strange yellow mist drifted up, and below it, catching the light from the doorway, a thin layer of dark amber liquid covered the bottom. Three seeds floated in it, looking like they had no strong opinions about whether they germinated or not.
"That mist isn't Nimbus," Korin said, before Akane could ask. "It's evaporation from the water below. The seeds grow in it, when they choose to. Some years produce well. Other years produce nothing. Recently, nothing."
Bulma leaned over the jar. "Is it the water concentration? Seed viability? What's the variable?"
"Unclear," Korin said, with the honesty of someone who had been tending Senzu beans for longer than most civilizations had been keeping records and had never fully understood them. "Luck may be a factor."
"Luck," Bulma repeated, in a tone that expressed her scientific opinion of luck.
Liam held his palms on either side of the jar, not touching it, and let the Nine Yang aura build between his hands. This was the healing complement to his combat multiplier, warm and dense, oriented toward vitality rather than force. He'd used it to accelerate healing, to push growth, to push life energy into systems that needed it. He had never tried it on a plant before.
The amber water began to move.
"It's sprouting," Bulma said, and her voice had climbed a register.
Korin leaned over the rim so fast his whiskers dipped toward the water. The three seeds were extending, visibly, in real time, putting out shoots that thickened into stalks, the stalks branching into pods, the pods filling and rounding into beans with the compressed urgency of something making up for lost time. The amber water churned as the roots spread. Bean ears multiplied. The water level climbed.
"Enhancement applies to living things," Akane said, with the tone of someone who had just understood something and was narrating it for her own benefit. "Senzu seeds are alive."
The water reached the rim and spilled over. Liam kept the Nine Yang aura running, feeding it steadily, watching the jar fill from the bottom as the seeds consumed the water and the water replenished from the aura input, and replenished, and replenished, until the system reversed: the beans were absorbing faster than the water returned, and the amber surface dropped with a sound like the end of a drink through a straw, and then the jar was still.
The jar was full of Senzu beans.
Korin put his paw in slowly, as a test. Resistance. Weight. The familiar firmness of mature beans, verified by touch. He stood there for a moment with his paw in a jar of five hundred Senzu beans and the expression of someone who had not expected this specific outcome from today.
Liam exhaled and straightened up. Two-thirds of his total aura, roughly. Not cheap. Worth it, probably.
Korin counted out fifty beans into a small bag and offered it to Liam.
Liam accepted. He looked at one bean, turned it over between his fingers, then looked at Akane.
She understood immediately. If he could carry a Senzu bean back through whatever dimensional door the Butterfly Hatsu had opened, they'd have confirmation that physical objects could cross with them. Useful information.
Bulma was already at the shelves, capsule case open, not waiting for an invitation. She filled a capsule with three hundred beans with the efficiency of someone who had survived twelve years of apocalypse and had a professional relationship with resource acquisition.
She looked at Korin. "Thank you."
Korin waved his staff. "I'll keep the rest."
They said their farewells. Getting back to the Lookout was a different problem from getting down: the Lookout was above the Tower's ceiling, and Liam's wind-riding was personal equipment, not a passenger service. He released Jade, who spread her sleeves and drew Bulma in with the smooth economy of long practice. Then Liam leaned into the updraft around the tower, gathered the air currents into something load-bearing, and launched himself upward.
The wind at this altitude was useful. He shaped it into a column, rode it past the Tower's summit, and kept climbing until the Lookout resolved beneath him, pale and wide, and he came down onto the stone with Bulma already materializing a step behind from Jade's sleeve.
Piccolo was in the center of the plaza, seated, eyes closed, breathing in the long measured cycles of someone moving aura back into depleted reserves. The energy around him was pulling inward, concentrated and deliberate.
Bulma walked over, popped the capsule, produced a Senzu bean, and threw it at him without ceremony.
He caught it without opening his eyes.
He ate it.
The effect was immediate and visible, aura flooding back to capacity in a single breath, the physical exhaustion clearing like weather. He sat with it for a moment, then opened his eyes, stood, and walked to the edge of the Lookout.
He stood there looking at the ruins of the world below for a long time, searching. Android 17 had an arm missing and a dead sister and had just watched Piccolo separate his own body into independent attacking units. He had been operating for a decade without meaningful opposition, and the first meaningful opposition had introduced him to concepts he wasn't prepared for.
He was hiding.
Piccolo couldn't find him.
He stood at the Lookout's edge until Bulma set up a capsule house in the plaza, and the smell of actual food started drifting across the stone in the early evening air. Mr. Popo brewed tea and brought it over. Piccolo drank it in one motion, set the cup down, and dropped off the Lookout's edge again, green cape snapping behind him.
Liam and Roshi ate dinner in Bulma's capsule house.
Night settled over the Lookout, absolute and quiet, the stars closer up here than they had any right to be. Liam sat on the edge of the plaza after dinner with a cup of tea, watching them, thinking about nothing in particular, which was unusual enough to be noticeable.
Morning came gray and gradual.
Piccolo returned at dawn, landing on the stone with a controlled drop and the face of someone who had covered a great deal of ground without the result he wanted. He said nothing. He sat back down in his meditation position and closed his eyes again.
Still nothing on Android 17.
Not long after, footsteps came from the deep gate of the temple, and two figures walked out into the morning light. One tall, one shorter. Both moving differently than they had when they went in.