I wrote this story for my little sister, who adores #18. I hope you'll like it. Oh, and please review *looks pleading with big brown puppydog eyes*

Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ... bla, bla, bla, yackedy, smackedy...


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Chestnuts and Metal

Chapter 1

So no one told you life was gonna be this way


Krillin landed softly on the beach, that surrounded the Kamehouse. He looked around and got the feeling that something wasn't right. It took him some time to figure it out.
"Hey master Roshi, Oolong, what are you doing out here? Isn't your favorite aerobics show on right now?" he asked the two figures sitting outside in their beach chairs.
"Don't rub it in." Oolong replied coarsely. Krillin scratched his head. "What's going on? I don't get it?"
Oolong shot him a venomous glare. "Well while you were out in town, having fun with your friends, saying your goodbyes to the future-kid and everything, we got a visitor."
"Correction." Roshi looked up from the dirty magazine he'd been reading. "Krillin got a visitor."
"A visitor? Me? Wow, I wonder who it.."
Oolong cut him of, "And she took over the living room, so now we're forced to sit out here and get sunburn, while we are indeed missing our favorite show."
Now Krillin was really confused. "She?" He didn't know a lot of girls and none of them would ever come visit him here.. The only one who would was Bulma and he'd just left her at the Capsule Corp. There was no way she could have beaten him here.
"I'd think you'd better go inside. I don't think she likes to be kept waiting." Roshi almost sounded scared as he said it. When he saw that Krillin noticed this, he quickly buried his nose in his magazine, obviously ashamed.
Since Krillin was getting rather curious, he walked up to the front door. He had no sooner stepped into the house or he froze. On the couch sat a cool blonde. Her back perfectly straight, her entire posture was rather stiff as a matter of fact; she apparently didn't want to get to comfortable.
After he'd stood there for a few minutes, just staring at her, wondering what in Kami's, correction, Dende's name she was doing here, she sighed and started to speak. "Has the cat got your tong or something? It's not very polite to just stare at somebody like that."
Her tone was harsh and yet he just couldn't help loving the sound of her voice. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.. ehh.. well you know.. ehm Can I.. get you anything? A drink? Or maybe something to eat?"
"I'm an android. I don't need a lot of food or liquids." Her cool, pale, blue eyes stayed fixed on him. It made him pretty nervous. He truly didn't know how to act in front of her. "Oh yeah… I guess I forgot." He put his hand behind his head and put up a big Goku-like grin.
She told herself it looked preposterous, but she had to suppress a small smile, that was trying to work his way on to her face.
"Well." He said as he casually jumped onto the chair to her left, gathering all his courage and focusing just to stay calm and not make a fool of himself. "What are you here for then. Do you need help or something." He regretted saying that almost immediately. Yeah right, like she was gonna come to you if she really needed help.
The words were pretty hard for her to get out; she wasn't used to having conversations like these. "Yes, as a matter of fact I do." she answered.
He was totally stunned. "You do? But what could you possibly need my help for?" he asked, not sure whether he wanted to know the answer.
She took a deep breath. If she was really going through with this, she needed to say it now. She'd thought it over a million times, but she couldn't think of any solution but this one. " I need you to help me build a life."
"A life?" He was a little confused. "What do you mean by that?"
She growled and a scowl appeared on her features. Why didn't he just get the point right away? She didn't really feel like explaining it to him. "Well you little genius, you might not have realized this, but now that I'm not supposed to destroy the world anymore, I kind of need to do something else with my life, if you could even call it that, since I'm not strictly alive. You said yourself, that I should go live a normal life. Well frankly, I wouldn't know where to start. I don't have anything. Get it?" she sounded pretty impatient and she made Krillin feel really ashamed for not realizing any of that.
It stayed quiet for some time, while Krillin tried to figure out, what someone would need to start a whole new life.
Eighteen decided she'd grant him some time to figure things out and started to look around a bit. It was really strange actually, but in the two hours she'd sat in the room waiting for him, she hadn't really looked at it. She'd just been staring out of the window, not really seeing anything, but trying to prepare for the conversation that was to come. It wasn't a very big room, she now noticed, but big enough. There was the couch she was sitting on, two chairs, one that was occupied by the little baldhead, than there was a low table, some plants and the TV set. There were three doors leading from the room, the first led outside, the second probably led to the kitchen and the third led upstairs. It wasn't a bad house and she found that she could even imagine herself living in a place like this.

***

"I guess the first things you need are a job to earn some money and a place to stay." Krillin abruptly interfered with her thoughts.
"A job? I don't thinks so. That means working with people..." she commented.
"Oh yeah, I guess you don't have many social skills." He tried to break the ice a bit, but started stuttering after receiving a glare that would have send any kid home crying. "Oh.. s-ss-sorry… I-I-II d-ddidn't.." He stopped, realizing that this wasn't doing him any good. He took a few deep breaths and tried to think of what to say next.
"What do you do to get money anyway? I mean fighting doesn't earn you anything and from what my data tells me, you weren't born a rich kid either."
Oh great, he thought. She's got data on me, I just hope Gero didn't put any embarrassing in there. "Well actually I do some heavy labor from time to time."
She raised an eyebrow. "Construction doesn't pay that much."
"But it does. You wouldn't believe how glad those guys are with someone who can easily do the job of fifty men all by himself. They're always happy to pay me twenty-five times the normal salary, it's still cheaper for them you see."
"I guess so." She was actually quite surprised, she had never thought he'd be doing that kind of work or that he'd be smart enough to make them pay that much.
"The only way I see you getting money on short notice without getting a job is through Bulma though."
"Bulma?" "Yeah, I sometimes borrow from her if I run out of money and there're no jobs to do. I always pay it back once I get a new job."
"I don't thinks Bulma's going to lend me any money."
"Who says she's gonna know about it?" Krillin got a sneaky look on his face. "I'll just tell her it's for me and pay it back to her later."
"Correction. I'll pay it back to her later." Eighteen looked sternly at him.
He gave her an ingenious smile and said: "Than it wouldn't be secret anymore, that the money was for you."
She wasn't to happy that he outsmarted her and thus he succeeded in getting another hateful glare from her. He decided he'd try to change the subject.
"Bulma won't have to money until a couple of days though. She always needs to do a humongous amount of paperwork."
"That's just great. And how am I suppose to pay for an apartment or a hotel? I'm not about to sleep out in the open anymore. I've had more then enough of that."
"We've got a spare room upstairs. You could always stay here for the time being." It had gotten out before he could stop it; again. He started cursing himself, badly.
She looked at him with dawning wonder in her gracefully, slanted eyes. It was so hard for her to understand this man. First he hadn't shut her down, even though he had the controller and all his friends had expected him to. Then he'd taken care of her after Cell had spit her out and he'd even wanted to wish her human again. Now again he was trying to help her out by getting her money and offering to let her stay at his house.
Krillin himself thought, that she would refuse because she wouldn't be able to stand being in such an environment as the Kamehouse. 'Goodness' (with a little touch of mischief, after all Roshi lived there as well) was in the air, just swirling around. He was surprised she hadn't suffocated yet.
In reality she was just surprised that he was willing to sleep under the same roof with a vicious killer. Somehow he just didn't see her that way; that realization gave her a little twitch in her stomach and she concluded she didn't like it.
Meanwhile Krillin was still telling himself what a complete fool he was and that he'd never get anywhere with the girl if he kept this up. I might as well take the chance and put him out of his misery at the same time. Eighteen said to herself.
"Allright, I'll stay." She stood up immediately, not wanting to see Krillins completely stunned face. "Where's that spare room of yours?" she demanded. He got up immediately and showed her the room upstairs. She looked around and nodded. "I suppose it'll do for a few days."
Since she wasn't really paying attention to him at the moment, Krillin took the opportunity to 'stare' at her. He really thought she was so beautiful. He noticed she was still wearing the same outfit she'd been wearing during the Cell Games and he realized it was probably the only outfit she had.
"You know what?" She turned to him a bit annoyed. He decided to ignore her attitude and continued. "I'll see if I can get some cash from Bulma as well tomorrow." She didn't understand where he was heading. "Than you can do some shopping and get yourself some new clothes. I'm sure you've become quite fed up with that outfit by now." She blinked, did he just actually sense her thoughts? "Sure" she replied. He put up a grin again, quite a charming one to be honest; it gave her that funny feeling in her stomach again. A scowl appeared on her face.
"I guess I'd better leave you to yourself now. If you need anything just give me a call and I'll be right there." He waved a bit clumsily and went out the door. "I'm sure you will be." She whispered. Then she turned and walked over to the window.

***

The soft breeze blew her cornsilk hair back. The air of salty water and sandy beaches crept up into her nose. She sighed, it wasn't that bad here, not bad at all. A sound from below caught her attention. She saw her baldy 'friend' come out of the house and walk towards the others.
"So?" Oolong inquired "Where's the girl?"
"Upstairs." Krillin replied.
"Oh, is she…" Oolong got a very meaningful expression on his face. Krillins head almost entirely turned the same color as the gi he fortunately and as a great exception wasn't wearing today. "NO!! It's not like that! Is that all you stupid pig can think of?"
The pig snorted. "Well than what is she doing upstairs?"
"She's in the guestroom. She didn't have a place to stay, so I told her she could crash here for a couple of days."
"You did what!?" Roshi suddenly sprang to his feet, the terror sounded in his voice. "We live here to you know. Who told you, we'd be ok with having a killer staying at our house? Sure she's a cutie, but she's still extremely murderous!" Eighteen smirked at hearing that. Obviously she hadn't lost her touch, yet.
"Oh come on guys.." Krillin pleaded. "She doesn't want to be like that anymore. All she needs is to start a new life and if we don't help her who will?"
"Charming." Oolong said. " Just a month ago you would have run off screaming if anyone had mentioned one of the androids was staying here. Now all of a sudden your playing mister-nice-guy, just because you got the hots for the piece of molded iron." The next thing the piggy knew, he was flat on his face, eating sand, about ten feet from where he had stood before. He got up and rubbed the bump that was starting to grow on the back of his head, where Krillin had hit him. His attacker, who was turning a lovely shade of red again, glared viciously at him.
"I do not have the hots for her." He didn't sound very convincing with the blush that was already beginning to spread to his bare skull. "And even more important: she's not a piece of molded iron!! She's a very beautiful young woman!!!" The second part kind of contradicted the first, but Oolong got the message anyway. So did Roshi, but even more importantly so did Eighteen.
She'd heard and seen everything. Since she wasn't born yesterday, she now got the fact that Krillin was fond of her, really fond of her. It came as a shock to her. After being turned into a cyborg by Gero, she had always thought that her greatest loss had been not being able to be loved. Who'd like someone that was created to destroy the entire human race? Yet here he was, blushing like he was on fire whenever anybody mentioned her. She felt quite honored. As she climbed out the window and laid down on the roof she decided, that she liked the little baldhead. Especially when he punched the pig. She thought smiling.

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