The little oasis on the mountainside held its rhythmic peace.

Piccolo hovered crossed-legged by the lake's edge, the gentle flutter of his mantle his silhouette's only movement. His body's stillness in meditation belied his mindful efforts, mind smeared in all directions, but his attention shifted moment to moment to capture every subtle change around him. He felt the swell of an alpine chough's chest long before its trilling call reached his ears, and he tracked the violence in the flow of life crashing from waterfalls above into the lake's long calm, before being caught in the inevitable pull to the falls beyond. Far to the north, rare blips of life struggled against the icy winds of the tundra, the same winds the mountain shielded Piccolo and his humble home from. And no more than a child's leap away, his student Pan crouched in the tall grass.

She'd hid her life energy as best she could. Piccolo had been tracking her creep from the cliff-edge using the subtle body-shaped hole she left in ambient ki. Her attempts at holding her breath to keep her ki locked away made Piccolo's job harder at a distance, though as she drew closer he'd heard her obvious sharp pants and gasps whenever she ran short of air, to the point his supposed lack of reaction bordered on embarrassing. One day he'd up the stakes by waiting in the lake's central island, but he'd fast learnt four year olds grew disheartened easily, so for now he was content to let her believe she was close to victory every time.

Piccolo sensed Pan's muscles tense, her ki flooding back to propel her tackle. He threw himself to the left at the very moment she pounced, and he caught her by the ankle in the space his head had occupied moments before. She yelped in surprise. He held her upside down, eye to eye - or what would have been if her sweater hadn't fallen over her face.

"No!" Pan yelled through the knitwear, She was in high spirits, flailing around to try and loosen his grip. "I missed!"

Piccolo's lip curled. Pan was in that uniform again, an unfamiliar teal colour and completely nonfunctional, with a skirt and easy-to-scuff shoes, and a hat that already lay on the ground. Gohan and Videl's decision to send Pan to school was one he'd never approved of and he had expressed his fear of the many possible calamities that could occur if she were to spend time around normal Earthlings. When his sound advice went unheeded he soothed himself with the knowledge that, with enough discipline, any child of Gohan's would be more than capable of completing both academics and training. Which was just as well, as Piccolo had plenty of the latter to impart.

"Don't hold your breath," Piccolo said. "I could hear you gulping like a fish."

"But it's hard." Pan went limp, her defeat accepted. "Uncle Goten says he can find me when I don't."

"Then you'll practice ki suppression more with me and your Grandpa."

"Yessir."

Piccolo released her, and she caught herself with her own ki, gently righting herself to stand in the grass. She brushed her sweater and skirt straight and replaced her hat, recapturing some of that affected domestication that still seemed so alien. Piccolo dispelled his own hover, and they each mirrored the other in a bow.

With drilled formalities over, Pan tore back towards Piccolo's house, recounting her loss and learnings in a chattering ramble to no one - No. Wait. Unlike his daughter, Gohan had been far more diligent, suppressing his ki as soon as he'd landed at the ridge too, but Piccolo was surprised to see he'd creeped his own way forward, covering much the same distance Pan had but without drawing any of Piccolo's attention. Piccolo chided himself, and begrudgingly adjusted his mental scorecard.

"What brings you out here?" Piccolo joined both his students on the path to his home. The obvious pleasantries went unsaid, the warmth in the air between them enough.

"I tried calling." Gohan said. "I didn't want to intrude but it was kind of urgent."

"You of all people don't need to call ahead." A call to Piccolo was useless anyway. The phone Gohan had gifted him sat without power on a shelf with other trinkets, becoming just another shiny, black curios. "What's the problem?"

Gohan nodded towards Pan. She was rifling through the school bag Gohan held, flicking between picture books and other superfluous, circuitous nonsense she now had to subject herself to, until with triumph she pulled out a white envelope. It was a little crumpled and scuffed from her bag, but otherwise blank.

"Uncle Piccolo, I want to send you a letter," she said.

A letter? For him? Was this a joke? With some hesitation Piccolo held out his hand to be passed the envelope, but Pan jumped back, holding it behind her.

"You can't have it now, I have to send it to you."

"But... I'm right here." Piccolo said. Pan pouted, and he was lost. He turned to Gohan. "You were never this obstinate."

"You never gave me the chance." Gohan smiled. "Pan has been learning about writing and sending letters at kindergarten, haven't you?"

"Yes." Her eyes lit up. "You write a letter but you have to put the name of the person it's to and the house where they live on it. Then the mailman takes it to their house and they open it and read it. And sometimes you can put where you live on the back, too, but you don't have to do that."

"Yes. Very good." Piccolo though had the feeling Pan needed something more than confirmation of factual accuracy - she usually did when she rattled at length - but with the question so buried this time he struggled.

"This is what we tried to call about," Gohan said. "Pan needs to know your address to send you her letter."

"It's very important," Pan said. "Please?"

Her ask made him fold his arms in defensive guilt. Piccolo had chosen this cliff and small lake in the island's limestone mountains due to the remoteness. There was no connection to Earthling civilisation anywhere nearby; his garden path connected to no road, he had no electricity to charge Gohan's phone, and certainly no mailbox for an address to be attached to. Why an address would be important to Pan Piccolo could not get his head around, but if it was important to her he better find an answer, and fast. Even Gohan's eyes widened in a plea, and Piccolo wished he'd relented and kept that wretched device on.

"I don't have an address, but -" he said, before Pan's lip could quiver, "if it would please you, I suppose you can help me make one."

"Yes!" Pan hopped to it, digging through her schoolbag again to pull out an ink pen. She presented it and the envelope to her father, her small fists clenched tight. "Papa," she said, "can you write it for me?"

"Of course." Gohan dutifully took pen and letter from Pan, settling down cross-legged in the grass to write against his thigh. "First thing we need is the zip code, and I don't -"

"A hundred," Pan said with the confidence only a small child could muster.

Gohan was unfazed. "One hundred it is for now, then. And what region are we in? What's the island's name?"

She hummed to herself, twisting her foot in that way she did when thinking hard. "Yunzabit Heights?"

"Correct," Piccolo said. A jolt of pride ran through Pan at his praise, which Piccolo noted with his own satisfaction.

Gohan wrote the furigana for "Heights" above the kanji and Pan watched intently, mouthing along with the characters she knew. "Next is the city," Gohan said.

"Good luck with that." Piccolo knew only a handful of Earthlings lived on Yunzabit Heights, with most of it a desolate land of glaciers and tundra save this southern, milder region.

But after some thought Gohan had an answer. "Yunzabit West Research Station." He gestured beyond the house. "That must be the main port and where any mail would go."

"Those people drilling?" Piccolo had heard them as he flew over, felt the distant vibration when he tuned into the planet's pulse.

"Geologists, and engineers," Gohan said. "My University has a team perform a rotation there once a year. They're like Papa, but studying rocks," he added at Pan's questioning look.

"Boring," she sang.

"They do a lot of that, yes." Gohan laughed at his own joke. "The area. What's the mountain called?"

And that, Piccolo knew, Pan could help with. "If it ever had a name, it has been lost to time. Pan, what should I call the mountain?"

The responsibility of this ask was not lost on her. Pan nodded, jaw set, and took off at pace. Piccolo squinted against the strength of her wake. She flew high, higher than the waterfalls and the treeline and the snowy peak itself until she was but a dot against the blue sky. Then, just as quickly as she'd left, she returned, barrelling groundward. She killed her speed at the very last moment, landing gracefully and damaging not a single blade of grass - just as Piccolo had taught her. Pan took a breath fit for a town crier.

"Green Mountain!" she announced with much aplomb.

Piccolo nodded, but Gohan cleared his throat. "There's lots of green mountains, honey..."

"It's the greenest, Papa," she said. "I checked."

"Write it down," Piccolo growled, and Gohan quickly obliged, snobbery forgotten. "And my home?" Piccolo said.

"Slug House! By the Pretty Pool."

Pan had a good eye. Piccolo's house looked like no other Earthling structure. It was rounded, longer than it was wide and bulged with cupula windows at front and ridges towards the back. The second floor only covered the front third of the house with one domed window, resembling the head of a crawling creature. Even the lightning rods added to the illusion, one stuck on each side of the supposed head like antennae. Piccolo would take her keen observation. "'Slug House' is apt. Is that enough for your address now?"

"Then we put your name," Pan said, 'Mr Piccoyo...'"

"Piccolo," he corrected, and Pan giggled. She could say his name fine enough now, but she loved to tease, and as much as Piccolo replied sharply each time, it was always warming to know she hadn't forgotten her first name for him.

"'Mr Piccolo'," Gohan wrote with a flourish. He stood to hand the envelope to his daughter. Pan took it with reverence, then spun in a tight circle, searching the area with growing despondence. "Where's the mailman? No one's here..."

"Do you really need one?" Piccolo offered his hand again but Pan papped it away.

"Yes!" she said. "The mailman sends the letters."

"Ah," Gohan said. "Then maybe The Great Saiyaman can help?"

Piccolo scoffed. Any excuse.

With a wink to acknowledge his teacher's perpetual disdain, Gohan twice clicked a button on his watch and his face flickered out of view under The Great Saiyman's visor. His cape billowed as if dropped from a great height. Pan shriek-laughed anticipating the game of pretend they launched into whenever Gohan was in costume.

"My dear Miss," Gohan said, affecting a heroic tone, "are you in trouble?"

She nodded. "I want to mail a letter, but I don't know how." She handed Gohan back the envelope, and he took careful time studying the address, over pronouncing every word and getting Pan to correct him.

In his awkward impatience Piccolo cleared his throat to try and get his letter, but Gohan was set on drawing out this torturous distraction.

"My, my," Gohan said with worry. "This is a very hard to find place. Do you think it's this way?" He started down the path towards the cliff edge. Pan trotted behind him, laughing.

"No!" she called, "Over here, here!" Pan gesticulated wildly towards Piccolo's home, and Gohan wheeled around, guided back towards the house by her little skips. Pan grabbed Piccolo's hand as she passed, pulling him near-enough off balance, beckoning him to follow, too.

But instead of placing the letter inside the darkened entrance, or handing the letter over to Piccolo to finish the sorry charade, Gohan held a dramatic hand to his head.

"Well Miss, I'm grateful for your assistance in this matter but I'm truly sorry, I don't know if I can deliver this letter after all." Gohan spoke slower and more pointedly in Piccolo's direction. "You see, there's no mailbox."

"I'm not making a mailbox," Piccolo said.

But Pan's lip quivered, and whatever boundaries Piccolo had thought to set around using his magic for such frivolity yet again evaporated. His self-disgust at such weakness kept him looking away as he pointed at a spot beside the path. He imagined a red mailbox like the ones he'd seen by homes in small, Earthling villages. And as he willed it, reality bent. Bright light cast deep shadows across the mountainside, and with a sharp poof and accompanying cloud of smoke there appeared the imagined mailbox. Magic and physics had worked together to fill in the details; the red, metallic paint chipped in places to age the box along with the house, the pole bent as though it had taken a knock, and a small key with spare that Piccolo hadn't even considered swung in the lock.

"I'll do it!" Pan said, snatching the letter as Gohan went to complete The Great Saiyaman's task. She reached on tip toes to slip the envelope through the slot and tapped the side for good measure, the metal clanging with her pats. She beamed at Piccolo. "Your turn now," she said.

Piccolo found himself somewhat nervous turning the key in the mailbox's lock, given the level of ceremony he'd endured. He carefully slit the top of the envelope open with one of his sharpened, purple nails, dreading a tear of his students' fine work.

The 'letter' was in fact a folded piece of paper, the front adorned with a crayon drawing of a short person with black hair dressed in teal, and a tall, green skinned person in purple - clearly a depiction of Pan and himself. The corner of his mouth twitched when he noticed the smile she'd drawn on his face. Inside was a shakily-written message with a simple yes-no RSVP below.

To Uncle Piccolo. Please come to the graduation party with me. From Pan. She'd obviously copied the spelling from an adult, but her handwriting's improvement was all her own. He reread the message, and his mind went into overdrive with horrified questions.

You're graduating?" Piccolo asked. "You're barely even four."

"No, silly," Pan said. "it's the party!"

"The party is for all the children - excessive I know," Gohan said, heading off Piccolo's rising disdain, "but it's their fun festival at the end of the year. They can bring three people along and Pan would like to invite her grandfathers… And you."

"Why?" The thought disturbed Piccolo - usurping a parent's obvious position surely broke some kind of social rule - but Gohan expressed no trace of resentment.

"If you come you can meet my other teacher," Pan said matter-of-factly. "I told her you were strong, but she didn't believe my picture. Will you come and tell her?"

"You really want me there?" Piccolo said.

"Yes." Pan tugged on his arm. "You have to sign the letter and send it back, please come..."

"Demonstrate your best katas and I'll think about it."

Pan nodded fiercely, kicking off her shoes and socks. She discarded her hat and sweater on top of her satchel to run to her usual spot by the lake's shore, immediately beginning a Namekian-derived form Piccolo had taught her.

Gohan dispelled The Great Saiyaman suit with the click of the watch. He playfully nudged Piccolo. "She really wants you to come. Please consider it."

"Me mingling with the wider public has never been a good idea."

"And I've tried to explain what a low-profile is, but Pan's told her entire class about all her teachers from home. You're a legend there, from what I hear at the school gates. The kids are dying to meet you."

"That's a first." But his unease was soothed at the thought of being met with Pan's joy many times over. "Gohan... Is it possible to get mail delivered here?"

Gohan hummed. "The mail service for my parents' has a gyrocopter to reach Old Man Gristle four hills over. Yunzabit Heights should have something similar given the research stations dotted around." It took Gohan a moment to catch Piccolo's meaning. "Are you serious?"

Piccolo grunted. "If you want her to go through the school system like a normal Earthling, it makes sense for someone to check she learns to read and write properly - what with all the substandard teaching."

"Of course, Pan would love that." Gohan's sappy face meant he'd read far too much into Piccolo's practical and completely unemotional suggestion, but Piccolo would let it slide this time. "I'll look into it," Gohan said. "Is that the address you want? No promises."

Piccolo reread the envelope. Green Mountain, Pretty Pool, Slug House. It was a ludicrous address.

"I do. As close as they can make it." Piccolo circled the 'yes' inside Pan's invitation, carefully pinched off the RSVP and returned it and the envelope to Gohan. To track Pan's progress, Piccolo would hold on to the letter. There was plenty of space on Slug House's walls to keep it.