It was night by the time Dr. Gero's drone had come back to his lab. His radar started ringing the moment it was in the airspace, and he opened up the makeshift sunroof he built as a means to release his legions of drones. The machines were no larger than the size of a large insect, but what they were able to do was an incredible feat of science.

It had been years since Gero began plotting his revenge. Once a gentle genius, his work for the RRA had illuminated an interesting opportunity: One that would showcase his intelligence and bring him fame and fortune. While his friends in the scientific community developed technology to cure disease and improve the quality of life of Earth's inhabitants, Gero was drawn to something much less good.

When General Red approached him as a young man, he was promised a life full of wealth, access to the best technologies in the world, and the chance to do any kind of experiments he pleased with no limitations. This was an attractive enough offer for him. For years in university, he would ask questions of his professors that made them squirm. He proposed editing genetic structures on live humans, of creating creatures completely from cells, and of using this knowledge for profit.

It was enough to make his peers wary of him. But not Red. In fact, Red saw Gero's research as a means to create super human androids that could be used as weapons. In his quest to rule the world, soldiers such as Gero would make the RRA unstoppable. So he turned the other way when villagers would go missing from nearby towns. He did not question when Gero wanted to build a bunker underground outfitted with apartments that looked more like jail cells. And he was more than willing to ignore the blood curdling screams coming from Gero's laboratory late at night.

But after the RRA had fallen and disbanded, the scientific community ostracized him. No one was able to prove exactly what sick experiments he was performing behind the scenes, thanks in part to Goku. During Goku's final battle with General Black, Gero's laboratory had been completely destroyed. Just as he had finished perfecting his android soldier it was gone. The blueprints, the records, the boxes upon boxes of findings and studies.

On the day the RRA fell, Gero was left dejected amid the compound's ruins. He looked up into the sky and saw a little boy flying away on a cloud. When he surveyed the other survivors of the blast, they informed him that that kid was no mere child. He was an otherworldly being named Goku and he had defeated the army single-handedly.

In the weeks following, many abandoned the compound. Some found work elsewhere, but most struggled. At first, many stayed behind in the RRA ruins and made makeshift campsites. The police would come by every so often and clear them out, so Gero decided to start building his hideout hidden inside. Each day, he found scraps of material he could use to start his lab over. It took him years, but it was the only thing he could do. No one was willing to take him back—not after he worked with what many equated to be a terrorist organization.

For a while, he thought about repenting. He wondered if he groveled enough—a scientific flagellation, he called it—that maybe a former teacher or peer would see him for the pitiful man he had become and give him a chance to change his ways. But as the days went on and on, his bitterness cemented itself. There was no other choice for him than to create the weapons he had always dreamed about and destroy the young boy who had left him the laughing stock of his world.

His first order of business, naturally, was to seek out his only living android—Android 8—and observe him. It bothered Gero to no end that Android 8 had a soft nature and pacifist's will. To top it off, it was Goku who set him free. That was the problem with using human-based androids. No matter how much you changed them, their emotions always seemed to present themselves. He considered his options. He could send shockwaves inside their bodies that would force them into submission. When he tried that, though, and found their bodies would overcharge, their hearts exploding like a bomb.

Then it hit him. Like a collar on an errant dog, there had to be a solution to control them on the outside. He played around with literal collars, but found their bulkiness slowed combat. That's when he tried fashioning other accessories. Belts, shoes, cuffs-none of them seemed to deliver the amount of force needed to control to the right areas of the body without severe effects. It wasn't until he figured out how to channel these shocks through the ears that he had any real success.

It took him years to perfect his control earrings. With the push of a button, he could have his creations keeling over in pain. And if trained properly, they would know they had no means to fight it.

Over the years he had abducted dozens of people, usually unsuspecting backpackers looking to get a glimpse of the RRA compound. So many had gone missing over the years that there was a rumor it was haunted by a demon that took onlookers to hell, while local authorities chalked it up to inexperienced hikers getting lost in the thick woods.

After many years, he stumbled across an opportunity that had yet to present itself. Two children wandered near the compound alone. They were twins, a boy and a girl, and they were playing atop one of the RRA's old turrets. The girl was much more cautious than the boy. He had dark raven hair and bossed his blonde sister around. They both had mesmerizing blue eyes. Gero stalked them through the compound before approaching them in a courtyard.

"Hello," he smiled deviously at them. They couldn't have been older than 10 years old. Despite their size, the boy instinctively shielded his sister from Gero.

"What do you want, old man?"

Gero's mischievous smile made the children uneasy. He slowly crept toward them, his hand extended, with two pieces of candy resting in his palm. They looked cautiously at his hand, then back at his face.

"Our mother told us we're not supposed to talk to strangers," the boy said confidently, his sister gripping onto his shirt as she cowered behind.

"Oh, I'm not a stranger," he said sweetly. "In fact, your mother sent me here to come get you. It's almost time for dinner. Follow me, she's waiting over here."

The twins exchanged glances at one another before relenting. What were they to do, really? They were from a small mountain village nearby, one where everyone was trusting and kind-especially old men. Dinner would be ready soon, and it wasn't the first time someone from the village had come to collect the adventurous two. And if they ran and he was telling the truth, they didn't want to face their mother's wrath.

They followed him to the back of the ruins, through a crumbling building and then behind a rundown bookcase that hid a steel door. They would not emerge for many, many weeks.

Part of Gero felt bad for preying on children. But part of him was reminded they were the best subjects to work on: Their bodies were still growing and were more equipped to take the biomechanical engineering he had planned. These two would become super fighters, he thought to himself, and would defeat Goku.

The twins had grown and become extremely diligent fighters. He would take them out of their isolation pods from time to time to test their strength and measure which parts could be improved. What was even more encouraging was their assimilation into this life. When they were children, they were rebellious and difficult. They cried out for their mother and vowed to escape Gero's clutches.

He told them their mother had come looking for them not too long after they had come to stay with him (saying it sweetly like that made it seem like it was a choice), but that once he had explained his very important mission for her children, she relented. In truth, she had come to the compound with a group of volunteers searching for the children. Gero watched as they came back time and time again, never getting any closer, never finding any clues.

When the twins were teenagers, she had come back once more. She had aged severely by then and had lost most of the light that was once behind her eyes. Gero felt a small twinge of guilt for what he had done, albeit a small, small amount. He sighed as he watched her kneel down in the grassy knoll before the compound, sobbing uncontrollably, clutching a stuffed bear as she wept.

This moved him enough that he decided to pay her village a visit. He was known to go to villages for food and supplies, though he had purposefully avoided going to that particular one. He reasoned it was irresponsible to go to the village where his finest creations came from. What if, for some reason, someone recognized him and tied him back to the ruins? What if they figured out he was their abductor and captor? But curiosity got the best of him.

As he walked through the streets he saw fliers with the twins' pictures posted on light posts and on community bulletin boards. They were all tattered and faded.

If you've seen Lapis and Lazuli, please reach out to Ruby, they read, a number scrawled below.

"It's a shame," an old man said to Gero as he looked at the poster outside a supermarket. "She never found those kids."

"Oh?" Gero asked politely.

"Yeah," the old man sighed. "She died last week."

Gero never returned to that village. Was it relief that washed over him when he found out she was dead, that she would no longer send search crews every year on the anniversary of their disappearance? Or was it a sense of sadness that he had caused this innocent woman to suffer? He reasoned with himself for many, many years that he had done those kids a favor. He made them elite fighting machines. He gave them a purpose.

But now, on this cool spring evening, they were resting securely in their pods.

His drone came into the laboratory and landed on the table to his left. It has been quite an eventful day for the scientist—a boon, really. For years he had been tracking Goku and his friends as they fought, finding them as they discharged energy blasts into the Earth. Using his seismic technology, he was almost always able to identify a fight. His drones would travel to the location of the explosions and stealthily take genetic samples from the fighters and record the onslaught for Gero to study carefully.

So far in his collection was Goku, Yamcha, Tien, Krillin, Master Roshi, Piccolo, Vegeta, Radditz and Nappa. He considered testing Goku's son, Gohan, but his power was a mere sliver of his father's. He thought he had collected all the data he needed until his radar went off. It detected a huge impact on the Earth many miles away and he quickly dispatched his drone. It came back many hours later with three different types of DNA: two aliens and one that looked Saiyan. He uploaded the video and saw something he had never seen before: A fighter transform with golden hair (and a female fighter no less).

Listening to the recording, he deduced Frieza and his father King Cold were also looking for revenge on Goku. The girl was looking for him too, and transformed into a Super Saiyan, much to Frieza's surprise. These samples would be just the thing to put his androids over the edge.

A wicked smile came across his face as he looked over his specimens in their capsules. He poured himself another cup of coffee and clicked on the radio as he prepared to file this DNA away to work on in the morning.

A deadly new virus appeared in West City over the last week, causing sudden heart failure in healthy adults. Experts warn it is highly contagious…

Gero sipped his drink and wondered to himself if he knew the doctors working on a cure.