It had been years since the sudden simultaneous disappearance and assumed deaths of Cold, Freeza, and their respective forces. Rumors said that Freeza and his men inexplicably perished in the unexplained destruction of an unknown planet, and that Cold ventured to an uncharted sector of the galaxy in vengeful pursuit of a great enemy, only to never return.
It left the remaining skeleton of the Planetary Trade Organization in disarray, and it has been slowly crumbling into itself ever since.
Kaki was shocked to hear such a fate befell not one but two of the three rulers of the PTO - not because she mourned, but because she had always thought of them as invulnerable. She could not stop to wonder what exactly happened, as there was still much work to be done.
It was after countering a coup by an organization with roots in the PTO that she had finally gotten concrete evidence of where their former rulers went - all stored in a small chip, salvaged by a relative of a former soldier and passed around in the cycle of trade.
That was when curiosity got the best of her, and Kaki finally inserted the chip into her ship's navigator, letting it lead her to a blue planet in a small star system in the far reaches of space.
Her expectation of encountering a world still suffering from the destructive aftermath of war was instantly dissolved when she looked upon the planet from the atmosphere. It was untouched, and... beautiful.
Was this really where Cold and his men met their demise?
The navigator found level ground at an island, where her ship lands uneventfully in a forest clearing. She stepped out, shielding her eyes a bit from the sudden exposure to sunlight. Then, she heard a commotion in the distance, and her head snapped toward its direction, her eyes wide in alert.
Thinking of the worst, she took off in its direction. Weaving through the trees, Kaki began to see strange structures, either hanging from trees or fashioned under loosely gathered leaves. She realized that they're traps, but before she could deduce what they were for, she came upon a scene.
It was a stand-off - one against many. However, it seemed the one had it handled, as the many seemed to be at their last legs. She spots more of the traps scattered around the ground, and it suddenly clicks - the traps were for animals. These people were poachers.
One of the poachers tries to make a run for it behind the one stranger's back. Without thinking further, Kaki steps forward and catches them by surprise, easily forcing them down into a headlock.
Seventeen had been fending off poachers for the better part of today's shift, waves of them swarming the coast like wild vultures circling carrion. He had just finished off a gang of them and was about to call the reserve to ask if they had any idea why there were so many today, when out of the corner of his eye he sees one that hadn't been incapacitated making a break for it behind him.
"Oh no you don't," he says, spinning around and raising his arm to blast them. In the split second it took to gather the energy in his palm, he sees a peculiar woman standing in front of him with the poacher in a mean-looking headlock.
Continuing to grow the energy, much slower now, Seventeen's eyes narrow.
"I suggest you leave unless you want to end up like him," he says as he lowers his arm and lets the energy blast release.
With a zing it bounces off the ground at an angle and through the poacher's shoulder, missing the woman's elbow by mere centimeters. That would serve as enough of warning, he thinks.
The man's energy blast catches her extremely off guard.
The poacher cries out, and Kaki drops him to the ground in surprise. She takes a step back as he writhes weakly on the ground, putting her gloved hands up in a non-threatening gesture.
"I only meant to help," she explains, her face slightly apologetic.
She probably meant it, he thinks to himself. As much as others thought of him as emotionless, and distant, he was pretty adept at reading tone and body language. Walking up to the poacher squirming on the ground like a pathetic worm, he pulls a sturdy rope from its place hanging on his hip and kneels to begin tying him up with it.
"What brings you to scenic Monster Island? Tourism isn't exactly our selling point."
"Um. Well."
Kaki looks up and away, stroking her chin thoughtfully. Though really, she was just trying to ignore the fact he was just casually tying a man up in front of her as she spoke.
"I landed on this island in particular because my ship automatically set to land here. It had level ground closest to the ship's trajectory from where it had entered the atmosphere." She shrugs. "It's... mathematical physics that I could never hope to explain."
Tying off the two-column knot he had done a thousand times before, he stands up and hoists the poacher twice his size over his shoulder.
"I need to get this guy to camp quickly so he doesn't die on me." He jerks his head towards the direction of his camp. "Walk and talk?"
Kaki's mouth hangs open for a second, eyes flitting between him and the man he carried. Then, her jaw shuts, and she gives him a nod.
"Yes, of course."
They get on their way, Kaki easily keeping pace with the busybody stranger. She glances at him from the corner of her eye as they move, furrowing a brow.
"Is it cruel of me to ask why you're bothering with him?" she says, with a vague look of disdain as she regards the man slung over his shoulder.
He grins at the fellow bleeding heart.
"I'm a civil servant. I'll lose my job if I kill people. Even breathing garbage like this." He pauses from speaking to hoist the large body higher on his shoulder. "Besides, when he goes it should be in a less picturesque place than this."
As if on cue, the poacher groans in response, which earns a look of indifference from Kaki.
"I suppose you're right," she says, her brows raised slightly. "It would be unfortunate to lose your job over something such as this."
He peers at her from the edge of his vision. "I used to. Killing that is. Not for fun or duty or anything like that, just to..." He trailed off. It was strange. Usually, he didn't feel so compelled to talk about himself, much less to a woman with magenta skin that he had just met.
"Camp's just up ahead on that cliff."
He loads the poacher off his ragdoll position on his shoulder and dumps him in what he hopes, but has not confirmed, was the woman's open arms.
"Here. You take him. I'll get the first-aid set up."
Kaki tries to meet his gaze as he speaks at first, waiting to see what else he would say. But he doesn't, and she feels a twinge of understanding in her chest at what is left unsaid.
She can't dwell for too long, as he gives her instruction and hands over the injured poacher, who she shifts in her arms to comfortably sit splayed on her shoulder.
"All right," she says with a nod. "I'll meet you there."
And so she takes a soaring leap toward where he directed, as to not waste any more time.
After a few minutes of fumbling with the small first aid utensils inside the tent, he rips off his gloves in frustration. Why were his palms so clammy? It wasn't in his nature to get worked up about anything, it had always been as if he was hardwired to stay cool.
After his fifth time of trying to open the antiseptic only for it to slip out of his hands, he chucks it across the tent. It hits one of the poles, bending it, and falls right next to the pistol Seventeen had been issued when he became a ranger. He hardly uses it, in fact, it still had the same round of bullets he had originally loaded it with. As much as he tries to pull his punches and keep his energy blasts to a low burn, his hatred for these pieces of shit always burns brighter.
Eventually, he comes out of the tent without the medical supplies, walks up to where the woman had placed the poacher in the campsite, aims the pistol directly at the fucker's head, and pulls the trigger.
She's standing there for a minute or two, waiting for the man, looking down at the poacher as he breathes heavily and sweats in his suffering. Her face is unreadable, but gears are turning in her head - recalling memories of her time in the Medical Corps, and how in situations like this, even with the best medical care, the average person would usually not survive the kind of injury he sustained.
Her head turns at the sound of the tent flap opening as her new acquaintance comes out, a strange look in his eye. Her expression turns to concern as he approaches, and just before she makes sense of what he's about to do-
A nearby flock rushes off their places in trees at the sound of a firearm going off and reverberating through nature all around.
Kaki stares down again with slightly wide eyes and steps away from the pooling blood inching towards her boots.
"Ah," she begins, her face twitching a bit in conflict. "That was... rather efficient first aid."
The android is breathing heavily, his heart racing, as well as his thoughts. He lowers the gun and looks over at the woman, trying to mask the obvious distress he was under at what he had just done. He kneels and looks at the body.
It was no longer in the world of the living.
"Fuck," he mutters under his breath before rising.
"I'm Android Seventeen by the way," he says. Finally, he walks over to her, and extends his hand. "Can I hitch a ride off this world?"