"Dawn is always a hope for the men."
"Seventeen"
Chapter I: Awakened
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He was confused, disoriented, in the grips of a permanent state of alarm when he opened his eyes. The last thing he could remember (and not in a very accurate way) was to be absorbed by Cell.
He looked at the gorgeous nature surrounding him. Birds, squirrels, bugs…
There was no trace of Cell.
And no trace of Eighteen nor Sixteen as well.
He got up from the floor and began to roam around. It was only later when he assumed that the Cell thing was all over and that the "grasshopper" had somehow ejected him.
But, what had happened exactly?
He wandered in the forest in a blank state with blocked memories and finally he reached the shore of a big lake surrounded by tall mountains. The clean and blue sky was reflected in the water like in a mirror. It was truly a site worth to look at and enjoy if only his mind was in a better conditions, but he couldn't think beyond his own need of finding his bearings and seek for his sister.
A herd of elks was drinking water near there. He looked at them but they didn't detect him, of course, they couldn't.
But when he took flight the elks fled toward the wilderness. Seventeen stood still in the air and peered into the forest's vastness. He couldn't even see the end of it, and there were no villages, nor roads and no sign of human life anywhere.
He narrowed his expressionless eyes at thought of how hard will be finding Eighteen when he didn't even know where he was. It was pointless to fly blindly to nowhere. So, Seventeen flew low and slowly over the mountains, over the whole large woods of pines and firs, and over the lake's complete perimeter, until finally he found a sign board and he landed besides it.
It was an old and gigantic forest map with several points of interest marked on it, and there was even a red circle with a short text besides it: 'YOU ARE HERE'
"Here where?" he murmured.
Seventeen eagerly searched through the map for useful evidences to place himself within the globe. But that info remained near the board edges and they had degradated and erased over time. And he finally gave up.
He then continued flying and looking for other signages or even the end of the forest itself (It was huge).
And he began to become bored.
But half an hour later he saw a truck driving slowly through a rough forest path. Seventeen landed in the wilderness, near the road, thinking about stealing that truck and keep his seeking by driving through the F-roads… It would be more fun this way, for sure.
He showed a wicked smile when he came out his spot to meet the truck. The driver braked sharply at the sight of Seventeen in a place where there wasn't anybody seconds before, and he threw himself out of the truck and began to hurl insults at him.
"Do you want to be killed? Get outta here!"
Seventeen approached him like nothing ever happened and stopped only a few inches from the man.
"What is this forest? Where are we?" Seventeen asked, without losing details of the car. It was a cool pick-up truck. He liked it a lot.
"What? Don't you know where you are?" the driver asked.
"No."
"Then, how did you get in here?"
"I woke up here."
"You what? Are you drunk?" the man asked. The boy's answers were not the ones of a sane person. "Someone threw you out of a moving car? We are surrounded by a 800 square-mile forest! You can't have appeared from nowhere, you know?" The man was gradually losing its patience by seeing Seventeen's calm attitude and listening his weird words. This boy was obviosly making fun of him and he hadn't got time for that shit." Ok, now listen, kid: get out of my way or I'll squash you like a worm," the driver said before turning around and walking towards the car.
'Kid'. The android squinted at the man and, before he could arrive to the cabin's safety, Seventeen grabbed his arm and twisted it.
The poor truck's driver left out a cry and fell to the ground.
"Mother fucker!" he mumbled.
"Be careful what you say. You could lose the other arm," Seventeen said with a velvet voice.
The man obeyed and shut his mouth. He didn't know what was more fightening about him: his voice, those icy eyes or that extremely calm attitude.
Suddenly, something called Seventeen's attention from where he was standing: there was a large covered thing in the cargo box. Seventeen was intrigued by it and he walked there. This was the chance for the driver to slowly stand up and reach out to grab something from inside the cabin.
By then Seventeen had already discovered the "thing". It was the corpse of a young elk, smaller than the ones he had seen in the shore. This man was a poacher.
Seventeen took a glimpse of him just before the poacher shot him in the head with a rifle. The ricocheted bullet became embedded on a tree near the side of the road, and the shocked man dropped the rifle. Seventeen then turned his head in a slowly and frightening motion and grabbed him by his jacket lapels.
"There is no fun in killing you now," he roared. The poacher turned white and lost his voice. And then, Seventeen cracked a wicked smile and said, "I have a better idea. Let's go for a ride."
He roughly threw the man to the passenger seat inside the cabin and sat behind the wheel. And then he smiled again while taking it with both hands. He knew it, it was a pretty good car. Seventeen would finally have the chance of driving through the F-roads.
The poacher shrank back in fear when the android reached to the glove compartment placed in front of the passenger seat. And when he opened it some bullets fall down to the cabin's floor, but there was a detailed map of the forest as well. Royal Nature Park was its name.
He didn't know what was exactly his position in that map but it would be fun finding his bearings while driving through the roads.
He looked at the poacher with a crooked smile and said, "I like your jacket."
And then, he started the car.
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Author's note:
This fanfic was written originally in Spanish and its publication is completed on that language. Due to the large amount of requests about translating it into English, and given the greater number of reads it has in Spanish I decided to translate it. Although I'll do the translations without a beta reader, and this will probably lend me to spend a long time checking every chapter, but I've spent two months looking for a beta reader and people didn't even respond my requests. I respect and understand it, they believe that I'm asking for a translator and not a simple beta. So, in the end, I'll do it by myself.
About the story: #17's personality moves between the attitude of a rebel and insolent brat who thinks only about having fun and the one of a killer with a sociopathic behavior in Dragon Ball Z, so I think It is all about finding the right balance between them. But this is a very difficult task! XD
I hope you liked this first chapter. It will take me a week, more or less, to finish a good translation of each one, so I pray for patience and, by the time, let me know your impressions about it (story plot, spelling or grammar mistakes... anything)
As always, thanks for reading!
Dragon Ball © Akira Toriyama