Chapter 2

Clash Of Two Indestructible Forces

Android 18 honestly didn't know if they were in the past or not. When the time machine disappeared and reappeared, she and her brother found themselves in the desert; a complete barren wasteland like all the other cities she and her brother laid waste to just for fun. For all 18 knew, this "time machine" just teleported them from one place to another. 18 looked over at Bulma, who was still sitting in front of the controls of this time machine. Bulma kept looking around the area, her face full of confusion and tears. 18 folded her arms.

"Well?" 18 asked Bulma. "Did it work?"

Bulma nodded, although 18 couldn't tell if the blue haired scientist was answering her, or if she was just shaking in fear. Most likely some combination of both.

"It did," Bulma wiped the tears from her face. Her voice crackling, you could hear the grief in them. She was probably still worried about her son after the vicious beating 18 and her brother gave him. Well, Bulma needed to stop worrying about her son and needed to start worrying about herself, because if they weren't in the past then that meant she just wasted 18 and 17's time. And if she wasted 18 and 17's time then she was as good as dead.

"Are you sure?" 17 looked around with the same doubt in his face that 18 had. He shoved his hands in his pockets. "How can you tell?"

"You can see it on the computer," Bulma pointed at a small computer monitor that was at the center of the time machine's control panel. On the monitor was the number 773 in big, bold yellow letters. "This is when we're at right now. The year 773."

"Not saying we believe you," 18 said, who was still skeptical about the whole thing. "But why would your machine bring us specifically here? In the middle of nowhere?"

"Because this is where Goku's going to be," Bulma said. She pressed one of the buttons on the time machine, and the dome covering them opened up like a mouth. Bulma stood up off of her chair. "In about fifteen minutes or so Goku's going to be flying in on a spaceship about 15 miles west that way," she pointed at a particular direction. "You fly over to that spot and you'll meet him there."

She didn't know why, but when Bulma said they'll meet Goku there 18 felt a little spark light up in her stomach. It was like she was about to meet a celebrity, or some mythical figure that only existed in fairytales or religious books. 18 was sure it was Dr. Gero's programming making her react this way, but as soon as she heard the name 'Goku' she was dying to kill him. It was an itch she'd had for thirteen years the Android couldn't wait to scratch.

Although 18 kept her emotions in check, her twin brother was all smiles and the excitement on his face practically made his eyes shine.

"Are you sure?" 17 asked, you couldn't help but to hear the enthusiasm in his voice.

"I'm sure."

"You know we're gonna' have to take you with us, right?" 18 said. "We don't know exactly where Goku is going to land, I don't want to risk us missing that spot."

"Goku's coming in a huge spaceship, you won't be able to miss it." Bulma said.

18 approached Bulma.

"Still, I don't want to take that chance. Besides, I want to make sure Goku shows up and this isn't some scheme of yours, because if he doesn't, you're dead."

18 picked Bulma up on her shoulder. Bulma squirmed and fought a little.

"C'mon, is this really necessary? I'm giving you two what you've asked for, how about you two leave me alone!"

"We'll leave you alone as soon as we're face to face with Goku," 17 said, speaking over Bulma who was still whining. "Now shut up and take us there."

18 and 17 flew through the sky and followed Bulma's directions, which led them to an area in the desert that was not unlike the rest of the barren wasteland the three of them were currently stranded in. They landed, and 18 tossed Bulma to the ground where she fell with a loud thud. She winched in pain as she struggled to stand up, brushing the dust off of her clothes.

"You couldn't be more careful," Bulma muttered.

18 looked around with her brother. The area was quiet. Too quiet. There were no signs of life other than the three of them, it felt like the planet itself had died off. And they were just standing inside the Earth's corpse.

"I don't see anything," 17 said.

"She said he'd be here in fifteen minutes. It hasn't been fifteen minutes yet." 18 told 17.

17 kicked a pebble that was on the ground, lying in front of him. He groaned.

"I'm not sure I can wait that long."

"We waited almost twenty years to come face to face with Goku. We can wait 15 more minutes." 18 said.

Although she saw where her brother was coming from. For whatever reason, the 15 minutes they were about to wait for Goku felt longer than the twenty years they'd spent without him. But it wasn't like they had a choice. So they decided to wait.

"Don't you move," 17 told Bulma.

Bulma shrugged.

"Like I'd have anywhere else to go."

18 scoffed, but she kind of admired Bulma's smart mouth and feisty attitude. She reminded 18 a lot of herself, although she wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. 18 walked over to a nearby boulder and took a seat on it, 17 paced around a bit while Bulma stood at the center, constantly peeking at the sky like Goku was peeking back at her through the clouds. She sighed and looked over at 18, then her brother.

"Let's say you two do end up killing Goku, then what?" Bulma asked them.

"What do you mean 'then what'? We do the same thing we did back in the future." 17 said.

"Terrorize the Earth? Why? Why can't you guys find some other way to spend your time? There's more ways to kill boredom than to kill people." Bulma said.

"Not for us." 17 said. "And best thing about this is that it'll be a lot more fun this time around. More people to kill."

"Aren't you two curious about your past selves, though?" Bulma asked. "Here, you guys can start off on a clean slate. Completely reboot your lives. You can even free your past selves from Dr. Gero if you wanted to, spare your past selves from being Dr. Gero's puppets. It was Dr. Gero who turned you two into this, after all."

"Just stop worrying about what we're gonna' do and start worring about whether or not Goku's gonna' show up." 17 said.

Deep down, though, 17 was probably thinking the same thing that 18 was. Bulma did have a point. There was a small part of 18, probably the part where her human self still existed, that was curious about their past and how much they could change things. Dr. Gero was probably somewhere experimenting on their past selves right now as they spoke, putting past 17 and 18 through unimaginable mental and physical torture to groom them into the perfect killing machines. 18 couldn't help but to feel a pang of sorrow thinking about herself 20 years earlier getting probed and prodded and dehumanized by Dr. Gero's cold laboratory instruments. Her blood was boiling, and she almost wanted to get off of her rock to do something about it immediately.

But she couldn't. Not until Goku was taken care of. That was their primary objective, everything else came second.

So they waited. And waited. And waited. Pretty soon, 18 was sure that fifteen minutes had passed. Or it was getting close to it. She stood up and stretched.

"Where the hell is he, Bulma?" 18 asked Bulma jumped at the frustration in 18's voice. "It's gotta be way past 15 minutes by..."

As if Goku himself was responding to her, there was a rumbling in the sky that shook the planet to its core. 18 and 17 looked up. In the sky something was flying towards them, getting larger the closer it got. 18's heart got caught in her throat when they realized they were looking at a spaceship. It was the shape of a donut, painted in silver and black and gold, and looked about as otherworldly as Bulma's time machine. Small rocks scattered as the spaceship drew closer, the breeze coming off of it felt like a mini tornado, howling in despair. 18's closed felt like they were about to fly off of her.

"Looks like she was telling the truth!" 17 shouted.

Although 17 was practically screaming the words out, the breeze was so loud that 18 could barely hear him. Eventually, the spaceship was just a few feet away from them, and it was only when it landed that 18 realized how large the metallic flying creature was. It was about the size of an asteroid, so big and heavy 18 could almost feel its weight shift the planet as it settled on desert ground. The wind stopped, the spaceship stood still. 18's heart was pounding. She felt like jumping up and down. She felt like screaming for joy. This was it. Finally, after two decades, they were going to kill Goku. They were going to fulfill their life's purpose. God, this made 18 feel so sick. She knew that this was what Dr. Gero programmed her to want, which made it feel like even after his death he still had some form of control over her, and that was another reason why she was so excited to kill Goku. Killing the legendary Saiyan would've finally, undoubtedly, freed both her and her brother from Dr. Gero's control for good.

The door to the spaceship opened. 17 walked over to 18, posing next to her. She could feel her excitement too, rubbing against his.

"This is it, sis," 17 said. "Tell me I'm not the only one feeling goosebumps, here."

18 smirked.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't.

They could hear footsteps coming from the spaceship.

First there was a shadow.

Then someone stepped out...who wasn't Goku.

The smirk caved into a deep frown on 18's face when a complete freaking stranger walked out of the spaceship. Followed by more strangers, about 18 to twenty of them, and none of them was Goku. Not one!

"Well, this wasn't what I was expecting." 17 whispered to her.

Neither was she, but 18 reserved judgment and continued to wait, hoping that Goku would eventually walk out of the spaceship. After all, the spaceship landed here just like Bulma said it would've, so he had to have been in there, right?

"Hey, don't these guys have on the same outfit that Vegeta was wearing when we killed him? Come to think of it, it looks like what those other two Saiyans had on when they first came to Earth, too." 17 said.

And he was right. These guys were, in fact, wearing Saiyan armor. Not the one Vegeta had on, but the classic armor; the ones their database showed Raditz and Nappa wearing when they came to Earth. But she doubted they were saiyans. For one, Vegeta clearly said that he and Goku were the only two full blooded Saiyans left. Well, after Raditz and Nappa died. And two, these guys just didn't look like they'd be a part of a proud warrior race. They just looked so...weak. To be honest, Saiyans were pretty much weaklings in general, but these guys seemed weaker than that. Just total dweebs.

"So this is Earth, huh?" 18 heard one of the strangers say. "Not bad."

"Who the hell are you two?" One of the other strangers said, talking directly to 18 and her brother.

"Where's Goku? Is he inside the ship? Did he hitch a ride with you guys?" 17 asked.

Their strangers' mouths dropped. Their eyes went wide. How peculiar. They reacted to the name like they knew him, so maybe he was inside the ship after all.

"You guys know Goku? You must be one of his friends." One of the strangers said.

"Goku's friends are here already? That's good to know. Here I thought I was going to have to go through the effort of tracking down that monkey's loved ones, but I do appreciate you making it so much easier for me." A voice said from inside the spaceship.

Two more people floated out of the spaceship, except these guys were probably the most alien looking out of all the others. They looked like humanoid lizards, except one was clearly bigger than the other, his cape flapping in the wind like a proud country's flag. The lizard next to the big one was even harder to describe. It was so small, about the size of the bigger one's leg, but it was mechanical, too. It was literally half machine, half alien, as fifty percent of its body was mechanical, with stiff robot legs that looked like car parts. 18 couldn't believe she was thinking this, but seeing this clear abomination of a robot made her appreciate Dr. Gero a little. If he was going to kidnap her and turn her into a cyborg killing machine against her will, at least he made sure that 18 kept her good looks and didn't end up looking...well, like whatever that thing was.

The twenty or so strangers all bowed when the two lizards descended onto the ground, standing in front of their spaceship and a couple of feet away from 18 and her brother. What the hell kind of aliens were these things? And better yet, where was Goku?

The smaller, robot lizard had the nerve to look at 18 and 17 all strange, like they were the ones with car rims attached to their bodies. The robot lizard's eyes went wide.

"And who, exactly, are you?" The robot lizard asked. "

"One of your friends already asked us that. It doesn't matter who we are, just tell us if Goku's with you." 17 said.

"Watch your mouth, you little brat! Whenever you talk to Lord Frieza, you show some respect!" One of the strangers shouted, pointing to the robot lizard.

Frieza? That was his name? 18 never heard of him, and there was no record of this creature in 18's database. He must've been someone Goku might've met during their time in space. In hindsight, Dr. Gero probably should've followed Goku and the others to space as well, because there were way too many gaps in their databases because of it.

The robot lizard, 'Frieza,' smirked.

"The only way Goku would be on this ship is if his head was mounted on my wall, which will very soon be a reality. So, I take it you two Earthlings do, in fact, know that dirty Saiyan." Frieza said.

18 gathered two important information from what this Frieza person said. One, by what Frieza was saying, he wanted to kill Goku too. And two, Goku wasn't on that spaceship. Which meant, for whatever reason, Bulma lied to them.

18 turned around to ask Bulma what the hell was going on, only to see that Bulma was gone. She looked around all over the place to see if Bulma might've been hiding. Maybe she was. But from the looks of things, she'd vanished.

"She's gone, 17." 18 told her brother.

"What?"

17 turned around. Shock came over his face. He flung his arms in the air.

"Oh, c'mon, you gotta be kidding me! Where'd she go?" 17 asked.

Bulma waited until she saw Frieza's spaceship descending onto Earth to make her move. Thank God Frieza's spaceship landed in the same exact spot it did all those years ago. She was afraid that, because of time travel, Frieza's spaceship might've landed at a different spot. Or worse yet, might not have landed on Earth at all. It was nice to see that the butterfly hadn't taken affect yet, and that their time traveling hadn't changed anything in the past yet. The Androids were distracted, gawking at the spaceship like it had them hypnotized. She waited for the spaceship to get closer, until it was at its loudest, to make her move. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a capsule, and threw it on the floor. A hoverboard appeared where the capsule used to be. Bulma hopped on the hoverboard, revved it up, and sped out of the area, hoping to Kami that the Androids didn't hear her. Fortunately, they didn't. She looked back and the Androids were still mesmerized by the spaceship landing in front of them. Bulma looked ahead, revved her hoverboard's engine again, and stomped on the gas as hard as she could. If she was right in her calculations, which she usually was, Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo and the rest of the gang were already on their way over to this location. Hopefully, Frieza would distract the Androids long enough for her to meet up with her old friends and warn them of things to come.

She teared up. Her heart was shrieking. Bulma was really about to meet everyone again, alive and well, three years before tragedy would turn their whole worlds upside down. She couldn't wait. But more importantly than that, she was going to see Vegeta, the love of her life, once again after so many years had passed, and she honestly wasn't sure if she would've been able to contain herself.

Bulma wiped her tears and tried to focus. She couldn't think about reuniting with her love right now, all that mattered was getting to the others in time, handing Goku his heart medicine, and keeping Goku as far away from the Androids as possible. Because if they lost Goku again too soon, then the past was going to suffer the same fate as the future.