Well, I haven't posted anything for this story lately, so here's a nice long chapter that I hope will entice you not to take vengeance on me ^_^;
"Trunks!" Krillin cried from behind him. They were flying to wherever Trunks thought this lab was. "How do you know where it is?"
"I've trained there." Trunks answered staring straight ahead. "A long time ago. Of course there wasn't a laboratory there then." He chuckled.
"Oh." Ten minutes latter Trunks landed. "I can see why you'd train here." Krillin said looking around. The landscape was barren, only a few thorny shrubs clung to huge boulders that littered the ground. It almost looked like a giant took a hammer and smashed it here, or a Saiyan. "So where is it Trunks?"
"There." He pointed. A large building was barely visible off in the distance. "We should go the rest of the way on foot to keep out of sight. Something's wrong," he muttered, "I can sense them now but it's like they're buried. They should have been able to escape by now."
"Yeah," Krillin said focusing on the distant building. "You would think that Vegeta would level that place by now." He said attempting to lighten the mood, but Trunks seemed not to have heard.
"Let's go." Was all he said. They took off at a slow run, darting from boulder to boulder. They stopped just out of reach of the building watching the entrance of the lab. The place was huge, but the white building seemed to have minimal security, if any at all.
"This isn't right." Trunks muttered again.
"C'mon Trunks let's go." Krillin got up.
"Krillin!" he had reached the door and Trunks had no choice but to follow him. Surprisingly, the door slid open as they approached. A small room met their eyes as the door slipped into the wall on it's own accord. Krillin stepped onto the shining tile covering the floor and Trunks followed him into the room. They slowly advanced to the only door leading out of the room and into the compound. The door behind them snapped shut with a dull clunk and the door in front of them opened up into a white hallway with doors alternating along it every six feet or so. They walked in, trying to look in every direction at once, the place seemed to be deserted. Not even a breath of air stirred down the hallway.
"How are we going to find them in this!" Krillin said standing on his toes he peered into a room through a small square window set at the top of a door. "Nothing." He muttered and dropped back down. Trunks looked in. It seemed to be a lab. Glass beakers were set neatly on the counters and sparkled in the cold light of the room. Bottles containing chemicals were all precisely labeled and tucked into cupboards set into the walls. Not a thing out of place. Trunks sighed.
"Let's keep looking." He said and crossed the hallway to the next door. Krillin nodded and continued down his side of the hallway. They walked down, quickly glancing into every room before advancing to the next, and soon, they ran out of hallway. Their path ran into another one and stopped. The new hallway went off into two different directions. Trunks looked one way, then the next. Both ways looked the same. Trunks felt uneasy about splitting up but it seemed that if they were going to find Vegeta and the rest soon, they'd have to. Trunks hesitated.
"I don't like it but it looks like we're going to have to split up." He said at last.
"If you say so." Krillin muttered. "I'll go this way." Jerking his head to the right.
"Alright, signal if you see them. I'll see you soon."
"Okay." Krillin answered and Trunks turned to go, "Hey, Trunks," he glanced back at Krillin, "take care." Trunks smiled.
"You too." He said and continued on. His boots made dull sounds as he walked deeper into the compound and Krillin's footsteps soon faded. Trunks' blue eyes darted, alert for danger but the only thing to see was the gleaming white floor and white walls. His ears picked up a soft whrrrrr of machinery echoing ominously down the hallways. Trunks' breath caught in his throat as his hallway ran strait into a wall. It couldn't be a dead end! He quickened his pace. As Trunks got closer to the wall, he realized that the hallway made a sharp turn. Rounding the corner, he nearly ran into a large mettle door, he lifted the latch and pushed. It opened up to a room that was different. Cautiously stepping into the room, Trunks felt uneasy and once both of his feet toughed the floor, the door slammed shut behind him. Trunks gasped. He couldn't sense his father or Gohan anymore! Was he too late? He took a deep shuttering breath, but it didn't calm him any. He couldn't stand the thought of loosing Gohan again.
Trunks woke up. He was lying flat on his stomach on the huge towering rock that he and Gohan had been relaxing on when…
"Hu? Gohan?!" Trunks struggled to his feet to stare down at the ruined, smoking pile of rubble that had been a city not to long ago. "Oh no!" Trunks growled "Darn it Gohan!" he yelled down at the still city. "Why'd you go alone!" He took off and searched the city for any sign of Gohan. The androids had left long ago and the only sound was the rain splattering down on the broken city, as if even heaven itself was morning the loss of all those innocent lives…of Gohan's. Trunks shook his head. He couldn't believe Gohan was gone, even if he couldn't sense him. He was just hurt. He had to be!
"Hu? Gohan!" Trunks landed and slowly walked up to Gohan's still form, still not believing. "No no, NO!" Why did you have to do that? Trunks thought Why did you have to leave me! It's not FAIR!
"Oh gosh no!" Trunks said, his voice choked with tears, "What'd they do to you Gohan? You were my best friend, you were EVERYTHING to me! Everything. Gohan?" Trunks turned him over to stare into his sightless eyes. "Gohan!" he cradled Gohan's head in his arms. "GOHAAAAAAAN!"…
Trunks shook his head and shoved that memory back into the depths of his mind, but Gohan's face still remained. He stood up, he hadn't realized that he had fallen to his knees.
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A little red light blinked at Semadd from his panel, bathing him in a crimson light in the otherwise dark room.
"What's this?" he pushed the button under the light and it stopped blinking as his monitor turned on, flooding the room with it's light. Semadd saw that lavender-haired youth he spotted earlier in front of the Capsule Corp. before he had taken his prize. The boy seemed distressed, good!
"Hmm. Looks like I missed one." Semadd growled. He hated making mistakes. The room that was shown had sensors built into the walls and ceiling that detected the energy a person inside was emitting and estimated that person's ki. This one's power rivaled that of Gohan's.
"Afraid are we?" Semadd said to the boy on the screen. The energy reading slid up and down in wild patterns. "I think I will take you to replace one of the youngsters when he expires." He watched as the youth slid across the room and the light flashed again as another warning was triggered. Semadd hit the button again and another monitor added its light to the room. It showed the other, extremely short man that had been accompanying the youth when he saw them last. Semadd glanced at the energy reading and sighed. Although his ki wasn't as high as his two kids', he could provide a minimal amount of energy. Semadd sighed again, he might as well take them both, but how to capture them without damaging their beautiful power.
"I guess the defense line is the only thing that will contain them." He had thought about the chance, however remotely slim it was, that his power source might escape, so he had also invented an automatic system that seeks out an above-normal ki and absorbs it, sending the owner into unconsciousness.
"It's about time I activated it anyways." He said flipping a switch.
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Trunks paused before he reached the end of the room, the hum had suddenly taken a higher pitch and he could hear a clanking behind the walls of the room, circular panels in the walls slid open like great gaping maws, hungry for anything. Trunks hardly dared to breath and kept a tight lead on his ki. He let out his breath and relaxed when nothing happened.
Trunks gasped and threw himself backwards as a segmented, gleaming mettle tentacle shot out of one of the holes in the wall, just missing him. He caught himself with his hands on the floor and flipped himself back onto his feet and out of the tentacle's reach. It withdrew back into the wall but Trunks was given no peace. Another tentacle darted out of the darkness of the wall. Trunks stepped back and the tentacle missed him, but he had to drop to his knees as it swung around to wrap him up. It closed on empty air. He leaped to his feet as two more came at him. He knocked one aside with his hand and as soon as his hand touched the cold mettle, it served him a small shock of electricity. The amount of it would have sufficed to easily knock out a normal human, but Trunks wasn't normal…or human. But the shock was unexpected and the other tentacle managed to pull a foot out from under him. Trunks struggled too his feet as three more tentacles darted towards him. Something was causing him to become weak. One tentacle latched onto his left wrist, while the other two took his write wrist and his legs.
Trunks screamed as electric shocks traveled along the tentacles and tore threw his body, while somehow managing to suck him of his energy, yet he still struggled to get away.
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Krillin paused in the middle of the room. Something was different. He dropped into a fighting stance as holes opened in the walls. He leaped backwards as something metallic shot by his head. It whipped around and wrapped itself around his face. He tried to pry it off with both hands as something dragged him to the ground…
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Semadd watched as his two new prizes struggled against the first defense. He rubbed his hands in anticipation. It didn't really matter if these two escaped, so it was a perfect opportunity to test out the system! Theoretically, he knew it worked perfectly, but it was never actually tested. The short one was the last into the 1D2 chamber, and the first one down. The youth had a little better luck with the TCs but he too was soon out.
Semadd grinned and sent instructions to his android assistants to take the two of them and dump them in a Chamber. The Chambers aren't as efficient as the tubes but they would take whatever energy they gave off and convert it just as the tubes would. But the tubes took power directly from the bodies of the inhabitants and should leave nothing left to go to waste, but for some reason they were leaking a very minimal amount of energy. When he ran tests on humans, nothing escaped. Vegeta's tube seemed to be the most defected out of the four. Semadd sighed and went to work on that problem.