Android 18, a slender, curvy, and beautiful young woman with fair complexion and blonde shoulder-length hair that parts over her left temple, furrows her brow in confusion when she sees droplets create small dark circles on the carpet before her. She wipes at her cheek with the base of her left palm and is surprised to find it wet.
"Have I been crying?" she asks herself.
She looks around and realizes that she is in the w-sitting position on the floor of a small and simple living room that is strangely familiar.
Android 18 calls out the first name that comes to mind, "Seventeen?!"
But only the silence responds.
"Oh right," the android sadly tells herself. "He left me. And who can blame him? Things are amazing during the good times, but when we fight-" Tears start to well in her blue eyes again. "Gods! I said such horrible things to him. I didn't mean any of them! I was just so angry. If I could take them back, I would! I'd-!" She lowers her gaze and stares at the damp circles on the carpet. "Except I can't. It's too late. He's never coming back. Story of my life. I always push people away. And now I've pushed away the most important person in my-"
Her thoughts are interrupted by the stench of something burning and a sudden intense heat. She raises her head and is shocked to find the walls of the room covered in flames.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" she screeches.
The fire quickly devours everything; the curtains, the couch, the coffee table. It spreads to the ceiling and rains fiery splinters all around the young woman. One of them falls on the shoulder of her pink jacket, and she frantically brushes it away with one hand.
"SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!" 18 cusses as she bolts to her feet.
With her forearms shielding her face, she propels herself right through the wooden door.
Z
Android 18 grunts as she falls on her stomach. She hurriedly gets up to one knee and is about to run away from the blaze when she realizes that she is not outside.
She is back in the same small, simple room with its curtains, furniture, and yellow walls completely intact, as if none of it was being engulfed in flames just mere seconds ago.
"What the hell?" 18 exclaims out loud.
She stands up and walks to one of the walls. She touches its surface with the fingers of her left hand. Not only is the wall undamaged by fire, but it isn't even hot. However, she does notice a circular crack the size of a fist.
"Wait a minute," the android tells herself. "I remember this. Seventeen did this when- No. He wasn't Android 17 yet then. It was before we were modified. He was still Lapis, and I was still Lazuli. He got so mad at Mom and Dad that he punched the wall." Her eyes widen when she comes to a startling realization. "Oh gods! I'm back home!"
She looks around as she begins to recognize the room and the vague recollections attached to it. Distant memories long forgotten start to return unbidden.
After the initial shock subsides, she thinks, "No. That's not true. This is our old house, but it was never our home; not to me and definitely not to Lapis. This was more like our prison. But how did I-?"
Before she can even finish the thought, she is flabbergasted to discover that she is somehow once again at the center of a raging inferno.
"OH, COME ON!" Android 18 yells.
She hurriedly throws herself through the wooden door to escape the blaze.
Z
"AGAIN?!" Android 18 shouts in frustration when she finds herself sitting on the carpet of her old house's living room.
Every inch of the space has been completely restored save for the crack on the wall where her twin threw his fist in anger a very long time ago. The android stands up, but when she takes a step forward, she notices an object in her right hand.
"What is this?" she asks. "Was I holding onto this all this time?"
She uncurls her fingers and finds a rectangular metal lighter with a hinged top on her palm.
"I know this," she says. "This is my father's lighter. But why do I have it?" She gasps when a frightening thought sends a shiver down her spine. "Oh shit," she cusses. "Was it me? Did I start that fire?"
"Of course you did," a woman's voice answers. "If you hadn't, I wouldn't be here."
Android 18 looks up from the lighter and finds the ghostly translucent image of a sylphlike lady dressed in white robes and with long flowing dark hair. She appears to be floating a few inches from the ground, and her most distinctive feature is that she has only one enormous eye right above her nose. This does not bother the android one bit. After all, she knows a martial artist with three eyes.
"Who the hell are you?" 18 asks.
"The people of your world call me Karma," the lady gently answers. "And it seems I've finally caught up with you."
"The hell's that suppose to mean?"
"A long time ago, when you were still a human teenager, your twin brother asked you to run away with him. You wanted to, but you were scared. Not going with him that night is your biggest regret."
"W-Wait. Stop-!"
"You begged him to stay. You were so sure he would choose you. And when he didn't, it broke your heart."
"I said stop it! I don't wanna talk about this!"
"He was your protector, and he abandoned you. After he left, you were defenseless and all alone…with them. Then, one night, the humiliation and the abuse became too much to bear. So you waited for your parents to fall asleep, stole your father's lighter, and-"
"BULLSHIT! That isn't what happened! You did something to my mind. You're messing with my memories. You're rewriting my past and turning it into some…sick, twisted fan fiction! I couldn't have burned my parents in their sleep because I DID run away with Lapis that night! We were free! We were happy! And then… And then…"
"And then what? You were abducted by the Red Ribbon Army and transformed into cyborgs? And now you and your brother defend the Earth alongside the last survivors of an alien warrior race? Come now, Lazuli. You were a bully, a rebel, and a troublemaker all your life. Do you really think you have what it takes to become a heroine?"
"SHUT UP! You don't know anything about me!"
Android 18 throws a punch at Karma, but she is surprised when her fist just passes through the specter.
"Don't fight me," the one-eyed woman says. "I'm not your enemy, Lazuli."
"Stop calling me that!" 18 yells. "You have no right to call me by that name!"
She turns and runs through the only door to escape. However, she ends up right back where she started, so she rushes through the door again, and again, and again,…
Z
Android 18 falls to her knees in the center of the small, simple room of her old house. She covers her ears, shuts her eyes tight, and screams in frustration. Then, she lowers her hands and sobs helplessly.
Karma kneels next to her and speaks in a soothing voice, "I can understand how you feel. Lapis was your whole world. You were lost without him. You felt betrayed. You didn't mean to do what you did. Something inside you just…snapped."
Android 18 looks at her and sniffles, "After I burned my house, did I ever find my brother again?"
"I'm sorry. No."
"Oh gods," 18 whimpers.
"You tried, but you never found him. And your mind protected itself by making up a story where the android modification conveniently erased most of your memories. But even though you couldn't remember your sin, your heart retained the guilt. And you've been carrying that guilt all this time."
"W-What should I do?"
"I think you already know. You have to make things right. You have to pay for your sins. An eye for an eye."
"But…how?"
"It's easy. Just ignite that lighter in your hand."
Android 18 stares at her father's lighter.
She worriedly asks, "Will it hurt?"
"Only for a little while. And then you will never feel pain ever again," Karma promises.
The android opens the lid of the lighter. She puts her thumb on the wheel.
"My fingers are shaking," she tells the specter. "Help me."
"I can't," the other woman replies. "You have to be the one to do it. But I'll be here with you the whole time. Don't worry."
"Will it be enough though? I mean, shouldn't I turn the gas in the stove on or something?"
"The fire itself doesn't matter, Lazuli. Only your choice matters. I'll take care of everything from there."
"Oh. Okay. Thank you, Karma."
Android 18 takes a deep breath to steel herself.
She raises the lighter before her and tearfully says, "I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry, Lapis."
However, just as she is about to flick the lighter's wheel with her thumb, she hears a thump.
"What was that?" she asks.
"What was what?" Karma asks back.
"I heard something."
"I didn't hear anything."
The android hears a second thump.
"There it is again!" she says.
Karma sighs a little impatiently and tells the other woman, "Stop stalling, Lazuli. Haven't you stalled enough? Don't you want to finally stop carrying all that horrible guilt around with you?"
"It came from over there."
Android 18 points at the wall with the crack on it. Then, before her wide surprised eyes, the crack grows in size and spreads across the surface of the wall after a third, louder thump from the other side.
Karma's demeanor changes, and she rather frantically says, "Lazuli, ignite the lighter."
But 18 is too focused on the wall with the growing crack to hear her. A fourth thump. Dirt and tiny pieces of the wall rain on the floor.
Karma furiously shouts at the android, "Ignite the lighter, you bitch!"
The wall explodes inward, and a handsome fair-skinned lean-built young man with narrow light blue eyes and straight shoulder-length black hair that parts above his foreheadleaps into the room.
"S-Seventeen?!" 18 squeals in disbelief.
Without slowing down, 17 grabs his sister by the hand, yanks her off the floor, and yells, "Come on!"
The lighter slips and falls from 18's other hand.
Karma shrieks, "NOOOOOOOOO…!!!"
Z
Android 17 shatters the wooden door into splinters with his forearm and pulls his sister through. To 18's astonishment, they don't end up back in the same room like she did several times before. Instead, they exit into a seemingly endless black void. Android 18 can feel some kind of surface under her feet as she runs, but it is so dark, she can't even see it.
She looks back and sees their old house crumble into dust before vanishing entirely. Then, she notices two muscular, dark-haired men running alongside them to their right.
Android 18 squeaks, "Goku?! Vegeta?!"
"Yo!" Son Goku, the taller of the two men, cheerfully greets her with a casual salute.
The other man, the Saiyan prince Vegeta, says nothing to 18. He doesn't even look at her. Android 18 turns to her left and spots a young man and a young woman running together.
"Gohan and Videl are here, too?!" she asks her twin brother. "What the hell is going on?!"
"I'll explain later!" 17 answers.
"Dad, look!" Son Gohan yells while pointing at the distance.
"I see it!" Goku replies.
Android 18 looks at what the younger man is pointing at, and she sees bright light shining through a glass window the shape of a massive eye.
"Kakarot!" Vegeta says, calling Son Goku by his Saiyan name.
"Right!" the taller Saiyan responds.
Both men levitate off the ground. Their well-built frames are enveloped in blinding energy, and their hair and eyeballs turn blue as they transform into Super Saiyan God Super Saiyans. They rocket towards the light. Goku and Vegeta roar. The aura around them glows brighter, and they fly faster. The enormous glass eye shatters when they crash through it.
"Let's go!" 17 tells the others.
He leaps out of the shattered window hand in hand with his sister, closely followed by Son Gohan and his wife. As they fly upward, 18 looks down and is shocked to discover that they had just flown out of a giant Karma's eye. The blind giantess snarls furiously while lashing at the air with her arms in an attempt to recapture the flying escapees.
"Vegeta! Let's end her!" Son Goku shouts. He draws his cupped hands to his side and says, "Ka-me-ha-me-HA!!!"
Vegeta places the palm of one hand behind the other and yells, "GALICK GUN!!!"
Both Saiyan warriors thrust their hands forward and fire powerful streams of energy right into the gaping hole where Karma's eye used to be. The giantess howls in agony. Her colossal body seems to flicker. Goku and Vegeta snarl while putting even more power into their already devastating energy attacks. Karma slowly vanishes, and her dying scream becomes a fading echo.
Z
With their enemy dispatched, Goku and Vegeta revert to their dark-haired base forms.
Android 18 touches the side of her head and says, "Wait. I think I'm starting to remember everything."
"You're disoriented," 17 explains. "It was the same for all of us."
"Karma was some kind of witch, wasn't she? She was looking for the Dragon Balls."
"That's right. I don't know what she was going to wish for, but she was destroying villages and murdering people to collect the balls. We had to try and stop her."
"We were too powerful for her," Vegeta interjects. "She was no match for us even after she used her magic to become a giantess, so she cast a spell on us."
"But even then, she couldn't destroy us," 17 continues. "She needed our permission. So she used illusions and her psychic powers to mess with our memories and put us in scenarios where we'd want to kill ourselves."
"In my scenario, I was made to believe that I had reached my limit and could no longer get any stronger no matter how long or how hard I trained," the Saiyan prince grumbles.
"In my scenario, I had gotten too powerful. There was no one left strong enough to give me an exciting fight. I was so bored!" Goku informs them. "Also, I was bald and wearing a white cape, but I don't know why."
Videl shivers fearfully and says, "In my scenario, I lost my entire family."
Gohan tells everyone, "In my scenario, I had accidentally deleted all of my research."
"Wait, WHAT?!" his wife angrily shrieks. "That's it?! That's your greatest fear?! That's what made you want to kill yourself?! It has nothing to do with me or your daughter?!"
"W-W-W-W-Wait, Videl! Lemme explain!" Son Gohan stutters nervously.
"Wait a second," 18 says. "I couldn't escape from my scenario. Believe me, I tried. How did the rest of you break free?"
"Well, you can't do it on your own," her twin brother answers. "Someone else has to do it for you. Except for Goku, that is."
"Yeah, I tried using my senses to search for a worthy opponent, and I accidentally detected everyone's ki signature," Son Goku explains to 18. "Then, I used Instant Transmission to teleport to Vegeta's scenario. After setting him free, I rescued Gohan and then Videl. Android ki can't be detected, so we had a harder time looking for the two of you. After some searching, we eventually found Android 17, and then he found you."
"Wait a minute!" Gohan interrupts. "Dad, you detected us at the same time, but you saved Vegeta first? He's just your rival. I'm your son!"
Videl snaps, "Don't try to get out of our conversation, Gohan! I'm not done with you yet!"
"V-V-V-Videl, I'm sorry already," Son Gohan meekly apologizes.
Android 18 grabs the front of her brother's shirt, and with her head lowered, she tells him, "I should have known better." She smiles up at him and says, "I should have known you would never leave me."
Android 17 smiles back. He gently pats her on the head. Android 18 throws her arms around his neck. Her brother wraps his arms around her waist and holds her so close, they can feel each other's heart beating.
END