Night had fallen over the area, but one house had all the lights on. Laughter and music emenated from within that house, as well as the occasional clink of silverware against plates. It was a special day in that house. It was Gohan's fifth birthday party. Krillin was there. So was everyone else. Even Piccolo appeared, although he sat off to the side by himself most of the time.
ChiChi hugged her son while he opened his presents. "Well, tell us who it's from." She turned a small box over in her hand and handed it to Gohan, a small part of the paper having been torn off in Gohan's excitement.
"Oh!" Gohan looked at the label. "I can't read it. It's in another language." He laughed.
Piccolo nudged his way through everyone else and folded his arms with a smirk on his face. He knew what the writing said; it was in Namekian. The note said, For the young warrior. Don't stop fighting for what you believe in. I know what you can do.
"Hmm…" Gohan looked at Piccolo and smiled. "Oh, I know who this one's from." He reached down and tore the paper open. He found a box and opened that too. Lying there was a small necklace with a charm that was hand carved from a shiny stone, and the string was a leather strap. "Oh…" Gohan held it up and looked at it. On the front of that charm was the Namekian symbol for virtue and strength. "Thanks Mr. Piccolo!"
"No problem, kid." Piccolo replied, his face an expressionless mask.
"Here ya go Gohan." Krillin handed his present over.
Gohan tore it open to reveal a really nice pen and pencil set. "Hey, thanks Krillin!"
"Whaddya say we get this party going full blast?" Bulma exclaimed as she raced over to the stereo system and turned up the music. "C'mon Vegeta! Let's dance!"
"I'm…not so sure I want to…" Vegeta commented as a massive sweatdrop ran down the side of his head. Bulma grabbed his arm and pulled him into the middle of the room to dance.
Piccolo tossed aside the water bottle that he'd just finished off. "Dammit, what does a person gotta do around here to get himself a damn drink!" he complained, it being too noisey for him to be really heard.
"Hey, Krillin! Let's go get the green guy another water." Said one of Krillin's friends. He was a short red-headed, freckle faced kid named Dave that nobody really payed much attention to. "Besides, I have a joke…" Dave started to explain what he was planning to do as he led Krillin into the kitchen.
"I dunno…he might get mad…" Krillin said warily.
"Naw! Just get something clear. Like this stuff." Dave held up a vodka bottle full of a clear liquid. "He won't know the difference. Besides, it'll be funny when it gets to him and makes him drunk." He dumped half of the water into the sink and poured in the vodka. Then he shook up the water bottle and stuck the lid back on.
"You're on your own if we get caught." Krillin frowned.
"Whatever. C'mon." Dave pushed his way back out. "Hey…um here's your water." He thrust the bottle in Piccolo's face.
Piccolo growled and snatched the water bottle, which Dave had conveniently removed the label from. "Yeah whatever." He unscrewed the lid and took a drink and spit the small amount out of his mouth. "What the hell is IN THIS!?"
"It's mineral water." David lied, then walked away. Krillin shook his head and walked over to Gohan. They started playing a new board game while Piccolo just rolled his eyes and guzzled the contents of the bottle, then crushed the bottle and tossed it aside.
Gohan looked up at his mentor and noticed that he had started to grimace slightly. "Hey, Mr. Piccolo? Are you OK?"
"I'm fine, kid." Piccolo scowled and walked outside. "Oh man, what the heck is the matter with me?" He asked himself as he leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees. His entire stomach was cramping, almost as if he had swallwed acid. He felt kind of sleepy and heavy, so he sat down just outside the door and crossed his arms. "This is not good…"
The party was almost over, and it was getting a bit late. ChiChi noticed Piccolo sitting outside and asked him if he was OK. He just kind of nodded, but didn't turn around. If he had, ChiChi would have noticed how strangely pale and sick he looked.
Nobody even noticed when the Namekian doubled over and started to vomit. He started to vomit and kept doing so until his throat started to swell shut, and by that point, Piccolo finally passed out with his eyes half open and his face locked in a rictus of pain.
"Hey Piccolo I was wondering - PICCOLO!?" Bulma slammed through the door and stooped down next to Piccolo when she realized he was crumpled over. She rolled the unconscious Namek over and managed to drag his cape off so she could look for a pulse. There was one, but he wasn't breathing at all. "Piccolo…so help me…you'll hate me later but this could save you." She tilted his head back, pinched his nose and performed mouth-to-mouth.
"Hey Bulma what's the matter?" Gohan came out and stopped. "PICCOLO! What's wrong with him Bulma!?"
"I don't know. We have no choice! Call 9-1-1 NOW!" Bulma screamed and Gohan quickly nodded and did so. She continued trying to get Piccolo to move some air, but all she was doing was exhausting herself.
At that moment, the alcohol that had done damage to Piccolo's stomach started through his bloodstream, and made it's way into his brain. The second that happened, he was thrown into a violent convulsive seizure. He was convulsing so badly that the EMT's almost couldn’t strap him down when they arrived.
"Very odd case." Said the first EMT as he tried to work an ambu bag. Within a few minutes, the EMT's burst through the hospital doors with Piccolo still convulsing on the gurney. Bloody froth oozed from his mouth
"OK! I want a CBC, a Chem7 and a blood gas!" Called out the main doctor in charge. His name was Dr. Sasinski. All around him, calls for things such as a drug called Dilantin or Albuterol were going up.
Sasinski shined a light into Piccolo's eyes. "He's cyanotic. We need to intubate!"
"We can't!" Cried an EMT. "He's in total anaphylactic shock! Prepping for a cricothyroidotomy." The EMT quickly put a drape over Piccolo's throat, sprayed some disinfectant and made an incision right over the Namekian's Adam's apple. He inserted a tube and taped it down and then started squeezing an ambu bag. "Oh man…what the hell happened to this guy?"
"I dunno. He ain't human." Said an intern. Men and women worked non-stop on Piccolo. He just lied there, motionless, while the doctor's cut his clothes off and attached metal cups to his chest. There were monitors beeping all around, IV bags being hung and needles being inserted.
David was watching all this and lowered his head silently. Regret washed over the young boy as he stood there, Gohan on one side and Krillin on the other. They all watched their friend be hooked up to machines and tubes while people worked on him.
Sasinski started yelling when Piccolo's heart monitor started going haywire. "He's fibrillating!" He grabbed the defibrillators and charged them. "Clear!" ZZAP! Piccolo's body jerked and his heart started. For about five seconds anyway, then it stopped again. "I need an epi! Stat!" A needle was slapped into Sasinski's hand and he made the injection. "Come on Piccolo. Come on…"
"He's asystoling!" Cried one of the EMT's. "I need a central line!"
"Blood gas is in." Said someone else. "He'a acidotic and has a major bilateral hemothorax. Its like something's eating him inside out!"
"Get me some more Albuterol so we can try and open up his airway!" Sasinski called over all the noise. Piccolo was shocked again and again by the defibrillators. "How long have we been working on him?" Sasinski asked while he did hard chest compressions.
"Thirty minutes." Answered an intern.
Sasinski hesitantly stopped doing the chest compressions and glanced at the heart monitor. For a moment there was no sound except for the squealing machine that was signaling a flatline. He sighed and took off his glasses. "Call it. Time of death, eleven-thirty-five p.m.." He threw down his chart and sighed again while the EMT's turned off the monitors and started running a few final tests. Dr. Sasinski got all the test results back, and once he did, he went out to meet Bulma and the others.
Gohan didn't understand yet what had happened, but when he saw the shocked reactions from the others, he easily figured it out. Talk about anaphylactic shock, circulatory collapse and extremely high alcohol levels drifted to his ears, but he ignored it. His best friend was gone. "No…Piccolo! Piccolo!" He started to cry and Krillin hugged him. Gohan shoved him away and grabbed Sasinski's arm as he passed. "Let me see him."
Sasinski knelt down. "I'm not sure that's a good idea, little one. It's not a pretty sight -"
"I SAID LET ME SEE HIM!!!" Gohan screamed as tears streamed down his face. It was something Piccolo would have done, but without the tears of course. Heads turned and eyes shifted to look at the sobbing, spikey haired boy with the glow forming in his hand.
Putting his hands up, Sasinski said, "OK…OK…but I'm warning you, this isn't pretty."
Piccolo had been covered up with a pale blue sheet when Sasinski led Gohan into where he was. He even lowered the bed down so that it was more level with Gohan's height. "Just tell me when you're ready."
Gohan nodded and Sasinski moved to just outside the doorway. In the room, Gohan peeled the sheet away from Piccolo's still body. The Namekian's face was still locked in a rictus of pain; his bloodshot eyes were partially rolled up in his head, his lips drawn back and his mouth hanging partly open, streaks of blood staining the corners. A square of bloody white gauze was draped over his throat from where the cricothyroidotomy had been performed. Touching Piccolo's chest, Gohan pleaded silently for there to be a heartbeat or a twitch. There was nothing but silence and stillness.
"Gohan?" ChiChi stood in the doorway with tears in her eyes. "Gohan, I'm so sorry…"
"He's hurting bad, mama…" Gohan sobbed softly. "His face…look at it…he's hurting!" He put his head down on Piccolo's arm and sobbed, quieter this time. "Please don't let him hurt…"
"I can help that…" ChiChi touched her son's shoulder gently. She bent down and placed her hands gently on either side of Piccolo's pain-stricken face and brushed her thumbs gently over his eyelids, carefully sliding his eyes shut. Then she slowly slid her hands along his cheeks, relaxing the muscles there, and then she gently pushed his jaw closed. His head slumped to the side limply when she removed one hand from his face, keeping the other one gently against his cheek "There we go…" She whispered quietly. "Now he looks peaceful."
Slightly, Gohan nodded his head. "Thank you mama."
ChiChi nodded and laid a hand on her son's back while he leaned down and gave the first, last and only hug he would ever give to his best friend and mentor. He put his head down on Piccolo's chest and started to cry even harder. "Goodbye Piccolo…I'm sorry this had to happen to you like this…"
Outside the door, David's shoulders shook as he cried. Piccolo's death was all his fault. He didn't know that alcohol was poisonous to Nameks. He didn't know that they were all naturally allergic to it, and that it destroyed them from the inside out. And now he would have to live with that mistake on his conscience for the rest of his life.
"It was just a joke!" David finally cried, startling everyone but Gohan, who had his attention on nothing but Piccolo's still body. "I didn't think spiking the water would hurt him! I'm sorry! I'm SORRY!!" With that, the young boy ran from the hospital and into the night, leaving the others in shocked silence.
At that notion, Gohan's cries turned to angry wails and screams. Piccolo was gone. Gone because of a childish prank that shouldn't have been played.
THE END
Author's note: OK, now you're probably wondering why I wrote this dark story. I wrote it because I had a friend have something similar happen, only it was with drugs and not alcohol. That friend is dead now because of that prank :`( and I just want to get the point across that these kinds of pranks are sick and can hurt someone. So please don't ever mess with things at a party, OK?
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