Krillin

A short man sat on the beach meditating, basking in the sun's rays. Light glinted off of his head, where new hair began to sprout. Soundlessly, he raised his ki, trying to reach the limits of his power. Beside him, rocks and clumps of sand began to levitate in the air surrounding the man. Suddenly, the man stopped his training, having reached the uttermost limit of his ki. Raising it past the limit would mean using his life force, killing him quickly.

"No... I'm still too weak... I have to get stronger..." thought the man known as Krillin. The memory of being brushed off by Cell, then being almost killed by one of the Cell Jrs was fresh on his mind.

"I'm useless... I can't help my friends... I couldn't even save Eighteen from Cell... I'm a piece of meat, nothing more..." he thought, his memories fueling his despair and depression.

"Eighteen... Where are you?" he thought, looking at the sky "Dammit! Why can't I stop thinking about her? What did you do to me, Eighteen?".

The rocks floating around him, fell to the ground, as Krillin let his ki go, and with them, his morale.

"No! I won't be useless anymore! I have to pass my limit!" he whispered, raising his ki again. The rocks rose higher now, but once again, Krillin found that unseen barrier separating his ki from the rest of his life force. He was angry now: angry that he was weak, angry that he couldn't get anything right, angry that he had spent his whole life living alone on an island with a perverted old man and a talking pig, and it was this anger that made him break his limit, his life slowly slipping away as he concentrated, raising his ki to levels far beyond Goku's Super Saiyan level.

"Krillin! What are doing?! Stop it!" shouted a voice behind him, breaking his concentration. As his ki went back to normal, blackness began to tug at his eyes and Krillin welcomed it, falling into unconsciousness.

Eighteen

"This is the very coinage of your brain. This bodiless creation ecstacy is cunning in." read the woman, her blonde hair moving slightly in the wind.

She was sitting on the roof of a wooden bungalow in the middle of the forest, holding a hardcover copy of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". While her brother still found it highly amusing to waylay travelers in these parts and strip them of their possessions, Eighteen had decided that the only way to truly understand how humans thought, she would have to read what inspired them, so, she began to read. Small books at first, usually cheap romance novels that she could buy with the little money they had, then, discovering a nearby library, she began to read bigger, more complex books, and, slowly, she began to enjoy it. She understood many complex human rituals during the "dating" period, she understood how the justice system worked, she even understood advanced robotics, which, in her case, seemed a necessary subject to learn and process, but, out of all the books she had read, Shakespeare seemed to inspire her the most. His novels seemed to give her the best understanding of human society: "Julius Caesar" taught her the importance of politics and language, "Macbeth" taught her about human ambition, "Romeo and Juliet", her own personal favorite, taught her about love and sacrifice, but "Hamlet" seemed to infuriate her. The main character seemed to only think of revenge, and it reminded her of someone she wished to forget entirely. Dr Gero. The man who had kidnapped her, manipulated her, changed her, used her for his vendetta against Goku. Suddenly angry at the book, she hurled it into the air and destroyed it with a ki blast.

"Why did you do that, sis?" said a raven haired man, walking towards her. Slumped over his shoulder was a deer, which she assumed was dinner, and in his other hand was an old shotgun.

"The book. It talks about revenge. It reminded me of...him." she whispered audibly, and her brother, Seventeen, nodded to show he understood exactly what she was going through.

Suddenly, a huge ki flared to the south, and both of them paled. Whatever it was, it was stronger than either of them, and it definately wasn't Gohan or Vegeta, who lived to the North and the West.

"I'm going to see what that was." said Eighteen "Stay here Seventeen." Looking pointedly at the dead animal she added "And start skinning that deer."