9
"Okay, so where the fuck do we dump this bitch?"
Trunks flinched slightly under the icy glare and venomous voice of the blonde android. 18 sat on the living room sofa, her posture stiff and straight and her arms crossed over her chest.
She was definitely not in a cheery mood.
Then again, when is she ever in a good mood? Most of the time when Trunks saw her, she was either screaming at him like a spoiled child and glaring him as if he had killed her favourite pooch in cold blood (something he doubt he would ever do, even to 18) or she would just act as a mannequin and stared emotionlessly at him without saying a word. Trunks felt no humanly warmth emitting from her, instead she seemed to absorb all the heat from the room, leaving forlornness and solitude in the room.
Trunks dearly missed his mother and Gohan already. Their smiles and encouraging words can even light up the darkest room and install hope in times of despair and sombreness. How they gave him the drive to continue to survive each depressing day; if it wasn't for them, Trunks would be buried either underground 6 feet deep or the rubbles of a demolished building.
So caught up in his thoughts that Trunks forgotten to give his reply until he noticed how 18's glare was imperceptibly intensifying.
"Oh! Eh…we could allocate her to the sof-" No sooner had the words left his mouth when 18 leaped to her feet and grabbed the collar of his shirt, her action so sudden that Trunks almost dropped the still unconscious Chi Chi in surprise.
18's eyes bulged comically as she held onto his collar with a steely grip. Trunks would at the least crack a smile if it wasn't for the fact that she looked as if she would ripped his intestines out.
"NO! Look at her! She is so dirty and …smells like shit! From her looks, it is as if she hadn't been bathing since we first appeared a decade ago! If you DARE put her on MY sofa, I wi-"
"Ok ok, I get it! She wouldn't be on the sofa." Trunks swiftly raised his hands up in defeat and gave 18 a cheeky smile. 18 looked slightly confused by his action. Apparently, 17 must have been hard to negotiate
"Hey, there is a spare room upstairs, right? So let's just put her there." Trunks suggested, to which 18 nodded her head warily, her icy blue eyes drilled right into his.
"Fine. But you have to feed her and clear her shit because this is YOUR idea and the spare room has no toilet." 18 gave a triumphant smirk as she turned and walked to her room, leaving Trunks gaping in shock and disbelief.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As he placed the frail woman on the mattress, Trunks absently swiped a few stray hair from her pale face. Chi Chi definitely looked much more calm and relaxed compared to her earlier frenzied mood.
Pulling a mouldy blanket that was collecting dust at one corner of the dim-lit room, Trunks bend forward to Chi Chi's ears, his-17's black hair brushing gently on her delicate cheek in the process of doing so.
"Sorry for not seeing you so often, Chi-Chi. I'm sorry for your loss. At that time, I was a mere baby and did not understand what had happened. And when I grew up, I never had the chance to meet you face to face anymore. But now, under this strange and unexpected circumstance, I wished express my sorrow for the death of your husband. I never meet him before, but from the fascinating stories told by my mother, I can tell he was a great man. Don't worry, I'm not going to let either of these bastards harm you."
Wiping off a tear from his eyes with his sleeved arms, Trunks heard the shrill voice of 18 yelling for him to get his ass down now.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Trunks did not question where they were heading to. Firstly, from the tone 18 spoke, 17 is supposed to know what she meant. Secondly, he didn't want 18 to give him the evil eye; it's really not helping him deal with the bizarre situation he was currently in. So he decided to shut his trap and just follow behind the android, at the same time wondering where did the real 17 went.
If he was in 17's body, what chances are there that 17 was residing in his body. He first thought if that when he met Gohan in 17's body and though he tried to cast that thought out of his mind, it hung onto him relentlessly, like a leech. Trunks crossed his fingers (and toes) that 17 had not already vaporized his mother with a ki blast or kill Gohan in his sleep. Since he-17 is an android, he could sense their ki to find out about their wellbeing. Until he decide to pay Capsule Corp a visit, he would be worrying about them a quite some time.
"We are here." 18 announced, an almost undetectable tingle of melancholy in her otherwise monotonous voice.
Both of them landed on a familiar grassy hill. It only took a moment for Trunks to recognize it as the hill he saw in the photo. As in the photo, a small city can be seen at a distance away from it.
As Trunks' eyes darted to and fro, puzzled at the significance of this hill, 18 strolled to the cliff overlooking the city and plopped herself there, allowing her legs to dangle there. By then, it was already evening. The sun slipped silently behind the horizon, trying to hide its blushing face, yet doing so slowly as if peeking to see if anyone was observing it descent. A faint glow of red lit up the darkening sky, obviously losing to the darkness that would soon envelope the heavens.
A sigh escaped from 18's lips as a breeze whipped a few stray hairs off her beautiful face, her body slouching as she placed her hands behind to support herself. Looking at 18 like that admiring the gorgeous sunset, Trunks felt a mixture of wonderment and sadness washed over him. Wonderment at why a murderous, psychotic android would spent her time getting a kick out of seeing sunsets and the reason for choosing this particular spot. Sadness because it reminded him of the time when he was younger. Back then, the androids weren't as destructive as they were now, so he, Gohan and Bulma would sometimes sit at the front porch staring at the sunset. Bulma would point to the night sky and tell him stories about his father and who he was (of course she censored some parts of the gory details for young Trunks), where he came from and how they met each other and fell in love ( or how Bulma fantasized it to be ). When the androids began randomly striking at night, their luxury of sunset watching went up in smokes.
As Trunks stood cross-armed behind 18, he decided to poke the inside of his-17's subconscious. If there were parts of 17's identity remaining inside that prevented him from killing 18, there should be some hidden memories. Squeezing his eyes shut, Trunks poured in all his mental strength, trying to search for anything useful, any-
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"*******! Hurry up! Mommy is going to be mad at us if she found out we have forgotten about the time!" The dark haired boy, about 8 years old, yelled at his twin sister as the both of them sprinted down the barren hill where they had been playing.
The blonde-haired girl, her chubby legs running as fast as it could, panted. "It's all your fault, ******! You were supposed to keep watch of the time! If Mommy scold us, I'm going to tell her that!"
The boy sighed in exasperation, adjusting the ball he held under his right arm. It's bad enough that his sister was a tattletale, but she seemed so honest to their mother that she would believe everything she would say, resulting in countless of troubles he encountered.
Ignoring his sister's remarks, the boy dashed through the entrance of the city. It shouldn't be long arrive back home now, their house was located at the outermost of the city. Now all he needed was an excuse so to lighten the sentence or maybe, if he was lucky enough, declared 'innocen-'
The boy skidded to a sudden stop, his sister crashing into him from behind. The ball fell from his grip and bounced onto the bumper of a police car. "********, what are you doing!? We have to get ho-" The girl stopped her rant as she stared wide-eyed at the rolls of police tape surrounding their abode. The fact that there were police cars and also a large crowd people around didn't ease the sense of dread in both the children.
Amid the flashing lights from the police cars and the hushed whispers of the onlookers, the children spotted their neighbour, Mrs****, sobbing in front of 2 police officers. Immediately the children rushed over to them.
"Mrs*****, what's going on? Why are there so many people? Where's Mommy and Daddy?" The boy asked innocently as he tugged at the woman's coat. Both officers gave each other worried glances as the woman looked at them mournfully.
"Your parents…" the woman blew her nose, trying to compose herself. "You…"
"What's wrong, Mrs****?" the girl asked fearfully.
"There was a sound of …. A 'bang', in your house half an hour ago. It appeared that there was a thief who managed to sneak into your house and he…he hurt your parents really bad, really b-b-ad, r-r-really b-b-bad, r-r-rea-"
Xxxxxxxxxxx
Trunks snapped out from his trance with a gasp, stumbling a little from the shock of what he had seen. Taking a deep breathe to compose himself as he tried to fathom what he just saw. After a while of silence, he treaded quietly to the motionless form of 18. Standing behind her, he asked, with a heavy heart.
"Is there something about this place that attracts you?"
Without turning around, she replied solemnly, "I don't know, it's just…that feeling of familiarity…Don't you feel it too?" "
"Yeah…yes I do."
With that, Trunks took a seat beside 18 and the both of them continued to watch the sunset wordlessly as the last ray of light faded to obscurity.
