"Is he dead?" Bulma said.
Liam held up a hand. Wait.
In the water, Android 17 walked toward Piccolo's upper half with the unhurried quality of someone wrapping up an errand. His clothes were torn and dusted, which was probably the most honest account of the fight so far. He stepped directly onto the cross-section at Piccolo's waist, and fresh purple blood welled up around his boot. Piccolo's face contorted with what was clearly a scream, though the basin provided no audio, just the silent pantomime of agony.
Android 17 said something. Liam could reconstruct approximately what it was from the body language alone. Something in the register of aren't you impressive now or was this your plan all along, delivered with the particular enjoyment of someone who had never had to work for anything and found other people's effort amusing.
A large, fashionable obstruction entered the frame.
Liam and Bulma leaned back simultaneously. Android 18 had moved into the foreground, circling Piccolo's still-standing lower half with what appeared to be academic curiosity. She was immaculate. Not a mark on her. Her outfit had apparently survived the entire encounter without developing an opinion about it. She peered at the lower half the way someone examines a moderately interesting exhibit, then apparently said something to Android 17, because 17 glanced over at her, nodded, and squatted down next to Piccolo's upper body.
He extended his left palm. An energy ball condensed in it, high-density, the kind that ended conversations.
Bulma pressed her hand over her mouth.
Behind Android 18, at the point where Piccolo's lower body stood, something moved.
It was quiet about it. Biological and methodical, the way a plant grows in time-lapse: tissue emerging from the severed cross-section, building upward, ribs and spine and muscle resolving out of nothing. The regeneration climbed to shoulder height.
It stopped there. No head. No face. Just a headless Piccolo torso connected to Piccolo's original legs, standing behind Android 18 with the patience of something that did not need to see to act.
Liam stared at this for a moment.
He had known, academically, that Namekians could regenerate severed limbs. He had not considered the specific permutation where the lower half, separated entirely from the brain, chose to build a new upper body as an independent project. He had seen Cell reconstruct from near-total destruction. This was somehow more unsettling because it was quieter about it.
The headless torso grabbed Android 18 from behind.
She went rigid. Struggled. Applied what was clearly a significant amount of force to breaking the grip, and the grip did not break. For the first time in the entire battle, something on Android 18's face shifted from composed to alarmed. She shouted toward Android 17. Her voice didn't carry through the water, but the message was unambiguous.
Android 17 started to turn.
Piccolo's original upper body, the one that had been screaming on the ground under 17's foot, stopped screaming. The expression changed. A Ki blast charged in his mouth, the drill of compressed ki spiraling to a point, and he fired it without preamble into Android 17 at the exact moment 17 was looking the wrong direction.
Simultaneously, the headless lower-body Piccolo exploded.
The basin shook. The water sloshed against the sides. The image whited out, a bloom of light that even translated through Korin's scrying tool was too bright to look at directly. Bulma turned her head away. Liam squinted at the edge of the frame.
"Piccolo," Bulma said, smoke from her cigarette spiraling away from her held breath, "is an absolutely terrible person."
"He was a demon king first," Liam said. "The Kami part came later."
"Tactically correct," Korin said, from the doorway where he'd been monitoring proceedings with professional interest. He scratched at his white beard. "Two enemies who fight as a unit. Show weakness, draw the stronger one close, separate them with misdirection, destroy them sequentially. The moment they perceive the advantage shifting back to their side, they'd have fought together. Unlimited energy. Prolonged battle would have gone against him." He paused. "The one who ran made the right individual decision and the wrong partnership decision."
The water settled.
The smoke in the image was still clearing, the familiar slow reveal of what an explosion leaves behind. The street was flat in a new way, compressed and cleared. The headless lower-body Piccolo was gone entirely, which was the expected result of a deliberate self-destruction and was still somehow an uncomfortable thing to see confirmed.
Android 18 was on the ground. Both legs had given way completely. Her right arm ended at the shoulder. The left side of her face retained the specific character she'd had before the explosion; the right side had been worked on. She was coughing up something dark, small clusters of matter that had no business being outside a body, and dragging herself along the ground with her remaining arm.
Android 17 was upright, which said something about the relative power differential between a mouth cannon and a half-body detonation. His left arm was gone, clean, no debris. The rest of him was in poor condition but operating. He looked at Android 18, and then at the sky, and the calculation on his face was visible even at this resolution.
He flew away.
Straight up and gone.
Bulma pointed at the spot where he'd been. "They were twins. Before they were modified, they were twins."
"Different timeline," Liam said. "Different versions. The ones you got are a reduced edition. Strength and personality both."
"The ones here never had a reason to develop anything else," Korin said. "No significant opposition for a decade. No challenge. What would sharpen them?"
Android 18 was still dragging herself across the rubble when Piccolo descended. He landed on her broken leg, which stopped the dragging. She said something. Her remaining eye tracked up at him. Whether it was defiance or something else didn't translate through the water.
Piccolo's breathing, even silent, was visible. His body had run the full cost of everything today. The Special Beam Cannon charged at his fingertip, coiling itself to a point, the drill of energy bright enough to scatter light through the water surface.
He fired without hesitation.
It went through clean, entering her back and exiting the front, and she stopped moving. The light and the violence of it were both entirely disproportionate to her current state, but Piccolo had not achieved his current position by leaving margins.
He stood there for a moment.
Then he looked up.
Not at the sky. Not at the street. Directly at the water basin, directly at Liam and Bulma, eyes meeting theirs across whatever distance Korin's scrying tool crossed, with the flat acknowledgment of someone who had known he was being watched and had decided it didn't change anything.
The water surface convulsed.
The image vanished.
The basin held nothing but ordinary water, rippling gently in the after-silence of whatever connection had just closed.
Bulma exhaled a very long breath.
"He saw us," she said.
"He did," Liam agreed.
"Is that normal?"
Liam looked at Korin.
Korin was licking his paw again, expression neutral. "He is a god now," he said. "Or partly one."