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Crawling in the Dark

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Just outside the Lab, later...

Dende paused as the door to the Laboratory slid open. As Piccolo watched, the young Namek seemed to shudder for a second. "Something wrong, Dende?"

Tightening his grip on his staff, Dende replied in a soft voice. "Yes. Very. Can't you sense it, Piccolo?" Dende looked up at his predecessor. "Can't you feel the... ...Wrongness at work here?"

Piccolo frowned. "No. But I do know enough to be sure we shouldn't stall any longer than necessary. Not if what Vegeta said was true..." With that, Piccolo walked passed the young Guardian and into the lab proper. Sighing, Dende steeled himself for the worst, and followed him.

The young Guardian quickly came upon the Saiyan. She was encased in a vertical glass tube, which itself was half embedded in a maze of conduits and machinery. Dende's attention, however, was immediately drawn to the Saiyan herself. Still clad in her tattered armor, she was propped up inside the unit, strapped to what resembled an inclined operating table, with some cables running to a breather unit on her face. Though obviously unconscious, her muscles were clenched, and her expression stern. Around her, frost had begun to gather on the glass, and wisps of chilled vapor floated upward.

For a moment, the sight took Dende's breath away.

"That's her," Piccolo needlessly informed. He then turned to Bulma, who was sitting with Puar at one of the displays. "Everything going smoothly?"

With a sigh, Bulma pushed herself away from the console. "Yeah. As far as I can tell, it is. When we first put her in, her lifesigns went wild for a bit, but they've since settled down. She's been holding steady for the past half hour..."

"Good," responded Piccolo, noticing that Yamcha and Tien had also joined them around the stasis unit. "Dende?"

Placing his hand on the glass, Dende closed his eyes. Tentatively, his senses reached out to the girl. "Yes," he whispered, "this is the source of the wrongness. I can feel it. The sickness. The disease. The pain... Her mind is... Not as it should be."

"Hmp," Yamcha scoffed. "Tien could have told us that." Tien elbowed Yamcha in the ribs, silencing him.

"Bulma," Dende continued, oblivious to the interruption, "check your readings. I can still feel her mind... I can still feel... It... She is not truly in stasis." Though his voice remained a whisper, but become more forceful nonetheless. Opening his eyes, Dende drew back. "You were right to be cautious with her. There is a great evil inside her..."

Bulma was already back at her console, checking the readings from the stasis unit. "Er... Are you sure about that Dende? My readings are normal..."

Tien eyed Dende with a stern expression on his face. "You sensed a great evil inside her. The virus?"

"To call it a 'virus,' is to oversimplify it," Dende quietly informed them. "It would be akin to calling a Human an animal. It is true, there is so much more to be said..." Dende paused, never taking his eyes of the sight in front of him. "What infects the girl, is much more than a virus. It is a construct. It is someone's creation. It has a purpose. Almost a consciousness..."

Tien's eyes widened. "What?"

"This virus is not natural," continued Dende. "There is... A force behind it. I can sense it..."

"A force?" Asked Yamcha. "What... What kind of force?"

Dende closed his eyes, once again letting his senses flow towards the girl. "Yes... The virus is linked to the Eternal Realm. Its drawing power from there. Each virus..." Dende paused, obviously concentrating hard. "The viruses are acting like portals. Drawing Mystic power away from the Realm, and giving it to the girl. And they have infected the girl's cells. Changing them. Using their resources to produce more viruses..."

"That's what all viruses do," Bulma quietly informed, though her comment was mostly ignored.

"But, I can sense more..." Dende continued after a pause. "There is a consciousness being transmitted along with the power. It is fighting for control of the girl's mind. I don't believe it has to fight hard any more..."

"What are you saying?" Piccolo nervously rumbled.

"What I am saying," Dende opened his eyes and looked met Piccolo's gaze. "Is that for all intents and purposes, the girl has been possessed."

"Hold on now," Tien angrily interjected. "That's not anything like what Vegeta told us."

"No," Dende sternly responded. "Vegeta told you what he knew. Which was nothing but legends and hearsay, from a superstitious, barbaric, and godless race who could have cared less about the truth. Do you truly expect accurate information from a source such as that?"

Tien stepped back, subdued. "I guess not..."

"Heh, looks like you're not the only one with a low opinion of Saiyans..." Mumbled Yamcha, a smirk tugging at his mouth.

After a short pause, Bulma spoke up. "Dende, how could a virus, well, do all that?"

Dende turned to Bulma, his expression softening. "As I mentioned, this virus could not have developed naturally. Someone created this. Some god or demon engineered this virus to turn living being into batteries of Mystic energies. A battery devoid of its own will, and consumed by evil. A killing machine." Dende shook his head. "But for the life of me, I cannot tell you why such a virus was made..."

It was Yamcha who spoke up next. "Look Dende, we all lived through Gero. We understand this sort of thing. Aimless vengeance on a cosmic scale and all that..." Yamcha paused, anxiously rubbing the back of his neck. "But that's really not important, is it? What's import is if we can beat this thing. ...Can we?"

"Hey, if this was created by a god, it could be destroyed by a god," added Tien. "Which means you might be able to do something, right Dende?"

"I'm afraid I can't," came the Guardian's quiet response. "The power I sensed from the girl... It is far beyond what I am capable of handling."

Piccolo frowned. "Dende..."

"I can't, Piccolo. I just can't..." Dende stared forlornly at the stasis unit. "Whomever created the virus... Whomever still drives the virus, is just too powerful. I fear that if I attempted to intervene, it might take notice of me." Dende looked back at his friends. "The virus and I both draw upon the same power. If we clashed, there is a chance that I too could come under its influence. The virus was obviously engineered to be unstoppable. I'm afraid it just may be..."

"Whoa," commented Yamcha, trying to comprehend what all that had meant. "Um, maybe launching the girl into space isn't such a bad idea after all..."

"No, Yamcha," began Tien, forcefully. "There has to be a better option than that."

"Hold on a second," came Bulma's somewhat distracted voice. "Dende, you said that the individual viruses aren't what are influencing the girl. That some... I don't know... Some demon is controlling her? That the viruses are just transmitting the demon's will?"

Wearily, Dende closed his eyes in resignation. "Again, that is oversimplifying the situation, but yes. There is no demon of sorts, merely a consciousness obsessed with evil. The viruses themselves are doing very little to the girl herself."

"So we kill the virus, we cut the demon's control of her," Bulma mused.

"And then we just have a regular Saiyan left to deal with," finished Piccolo, picking up on Bulma's line of thinking. "But if Dende tries to eliminate the virus, the... Consciousness would notice, and lash out at him."

"Yes," Dende confirmed. "But not physically. Mystically. Through my connection to the Eternal Realm. And I fear it could easily defeat me as such."

"I don't get it," cut in Tien. "It didn't attack me earlier. And I drained the girl's life force! Directly! Shouldn't it have noticed that?!"

"No," corrected Dende. "Because you attacked the girl. You did nothing the to source of the Consciousness' control. Nothing to the virus itself. Had you attacked that, which is what you would have me do, there would certainly have been a backlash."

Yamcha scratched his head, not quite getting it. "Uh, okay, whatever... So how do we go after the viruses, without getting attacked?"

Silence fell over the room.

Finally Piccolo spoke up. "The Saiyan immune system--"

"Hasn't done anything," interrupted Yamcha. "If it did, little miss anonymous wouldn't be sleeping on ice."

"Hmmm..." All eyes turned to Bulma, who was rubbing her chin thoughtfully. After a moment, and without acknowledging the others, she walked over to another console and began tapping away at it.

Dende was the first to voice his curiosity. "Uh, Bulma?"

Puar, who was still perched on Bulma's shoulder, piped up next. "Bulma, why are you looking up... Nannies?"

"Nanites, Puar," Bulma curtly corrected. "Nanites. Small, usually microscopic robots. Dende said the viruses themselves were originally 'constructed' by someone. In a sense, biological nanites. So I'm thinking we could design our own nanites, which we could program to destroy the viruses."

"But then wouldn't they be targeted?" Asked Tien.

"Of course. And they'll probably be destroyed in pretty short order," Bulma commented off hand. "So we'll probably half to give them some sort of self replicating abilities..." Trailing off, Bulma returned her attention to the console in front of her.

Yamcha eyed his ex uneasily. "So, you want to fight the virus, with robots? Robots small enough to actually fit inside a Saiyan blood vessel? And to still be able to replicate themselves, and fight off a Mystically powered virus?" Yamcha looked at the others. "Am I the only one who thinks that's just a little bit more than robots can do?"

Dende responded with an uncharacteristic smirk. "Yamcha, to paraphrase one of the great warriors of our times, 'We all lived through Gero. We understand this sort of thing. Technological progress run amok, and all that...'" Had the situation been less grave, Dende would have laughed at the expression on Yamcha's face.

Piccolo ignored the joke. "Yamcha has point, Bulma. Can you actually build a 'nanite' that will actually do all that?"

Bulma paused her typing, and gave Piccolo an earnest look. "I can try. Between me, my dad, and the tech we've picked up from salvaged Saiyan equipment and Android 16, we might be able to bang something out. It'll take time, of course, but..." Bulma glanced at all the assembled warriors. "Do we have anything better to try?"

After a moment's silence, Tien shrugged. "I guess not."

"Okay then..." Bulma nodded and kept her gaze on Tien. "You, take Piccolo to the crash site and see if you can find what's left of whatever brought the girl to Earth. If you find anything that looks even remotely salvageable, bring it here. At this point, any bit of tech we can find could be useful."

Tien nodded. "We're on it."

Bulma didn't give him a second glance. "Yamcha, go get Dad and bring him down, and tell Mom to bring us coffee. Pots of it. Dende, I want to know everything you can tell me about the virus. Physical details. Roughly how big it is, what it's composed of, what materials are in it..."

Bulma's voice faded away as Tien and Piccolo left the laboratory. "Tell me Piccolo," started Tien as they ascend the stairs to the surface, "did you understand even half of what was being said down there?"

After a thoughtful pause, Piccolo shook his head. "Not really, no."

Tien sighed. "Well, at least I'm in good company..."

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