Chapter One:
Yamucha pushed himself up on one finger for what felt like the millionth time, although he was, in reality, only up to just past six thousand. Still four thousand more to go before he could rest for the afternoon. Sure, for someone of his strength that many pushups, even on one finger, should have been easy. But he was a little out of shape after slacking off for so long, and at five hundred times gravity, any exercise was hard.
Why was he bothering? Well, there were reasons, some more important than others. He didn't like to fight much anymore, but the idea of being totally weak didn't much appeal to him, either. Seeing the levels Krillin and Tien were pushing themselves to now that the saiyajin were gone had sort of inspired him.
That's right, the saiyajin are gone. Allow me to back up here, leave Yamucha dripping sweat onto the gravity room floor and tell the story the way it should have been. From the beginning.
Krillin flew through the air so fast that the mere noise of wind over his body deafened his ears from all other sound. Very fast, but not his top speed. He wanted to get to Goku and ChiChi's house, not blow over it without seeing it.
Goku was the last. The last warrior of saiyajin blood left alive by that virus.
How many years has he survived with it now? Krillin wondered. Four, almost five? But if ChiChi say's he's going, then he's going.
It had been almost five years since the virus had first shown up, though when it first appeared on earth none of them knew. Just a little under half a decade since Goten and Trunks had caught it at almost exactly the same time.
That was just after the defeat of Buu. The boys were amazingly strong for their age, but they were children still, Trunks nine and Goten eight years of age. They had withered like plants in a desert. Two weeks after Bulma found the virus in their systems, they were gone.
The thing about it was, this virus killed people in a horrible way. It basically cannibalized them, eating away at their bodies from the inside until finally all that was left was what looked like a mummy.
And it only affected saiyajin. That was the first thing the lab tests had confirmed. Only those with saiyajin DNA.
Gohan had contracted the disease shortly after that. He had held on for almost a month, longer than any of them had expected.
But in the end, it had killed him. ChiChi and Videl both had been on the brink of a nervous breakdown, and nothing would have stopped it if Goku hadn't been there. They still had their problems, and were often crying, but having the hero of all their lives still around was comforting.
But even then, though he kept it a secret, Goku had already noticed symptoms of the virus on himself.
About the same time Vegeta got it, Bulma had finally figured out why none of the standard procedures even made a dent in it.
Apparently, this virus had some kind of shifting quality. Every time the body manufactured the right antibodies to combat it, it simply mutated into a very slightly different form. So no matter how strong a saiyajin was, their immune systems could not beat it.
And even though Bulma and Dr. Briefs now understood the virus and were working around the clock, a cure was simply impossible. How do you make a vaccine for something that is always changing into something different?
And Vegeta...
Krillin shuddered a bit when he thought of Vegeta.
The saiyajin prince had known what was happening, and known that he could not survive this virus. In a short note that for all it's crudity (he had not yet fully mastered earth's writing systems) had been more heartfelt than anything the prince had said in his whole life, he had said that he simply wasn't willing to put Bulma and the rest of the Z group through taking care of him. Not if there was no hope.
It was Yajirobi who finally found Vegeta's body, almost a week later. Strangely, it hadn't been picked over by animals, even though it had been in the middle of the woods.
Vegeta had blasted himself through the chest. In his own words,
'I'm going to end it before it ends me.'
The expression on his face had been one almost never seen on a corpse.
He had looked worried. No one had to ask why, there were dozens of reasons.
Where would he go when he died? Would he keep his body? Would he still be able to see what was going on down on earth?
Would Bulma be okay alone?
It had been almost a year then since the virus first appeared. Goku was showing obvious signs of being sick. He was weakening. Already he had been far weaker than his human friends.
When Bulma ran a test on him to tell how bad he was, she had almost gone through the roof. The level of contamination in his body told them all what Goku had refused to say: That the virus had been in him for close to a year.
Bulma said it was amazing he was still alive at all, and reluctantly gave an estimate of one more month before the hero would go.
Well, she was a little off, I guess, Krillin thought with a ghost of a smile. She forgot to take into account that we're talking about Goku here.
Four more years. That's how long it had been since that day. Goku had lived for four years, until it was very clear that he was hanging onto life by sheer will. His body had long ago given out; it had been ages since he had been able to stand by himself, let alone walk.
And Krillin was hurrying over to the Son house now, because he had just gotten a call from ChiChi. Being Goku's best friend, she had called him first.
She said Goku was going.
He landed in front of the house and saw that Tien, Piccolo, and Yamucha, living closer, had all beat him there.
"Is he still...?" Krillin asked hesitantly.
Piccolo nodded once. That was all he needed. He raced into the house, moving fast but making sure to not make a lot of noise.
And he saw Goku, lying on the pallet that had been his home for the past two years, since he had lost the ability to walk. The saiyajin hero was gone.
So that's why they were all training. Not just Yamucha, but Piccolo, Tien, Krillin, Yajirobi, and Choutzu. Juunana-gou and Juuhachi-gou were as well, though being cyborgs they could really only increase their skill and not their power.
We're all stronger than we've ever been, Yamucha thought. But what good will it do if another enemy like Majin Buu comes? We'd still all be wiped out.
His thought was only partly true. They would probably not be just wiped out like nothing, not even by Buu.
Piccolo was training off by himself somewhere, so none of the others really knew how strong he was.
Tien had been training like a madman, and was now at least as strong as Goku had been when he first fought android nineteen. Not very strong for a super saiyajin, but unheard of for a human.
Krillin wasn't quite as strong, but he was the fastest of them all by far. He too was now able to contend with super saiyajin power.
Yajirobi had been training as well. He could now fly easily, and fire a kamehameha. He wasn't as strong as the others, but he was almost as dangerous. Just after he had learned the kamehameha, he had figured out how to project ki into his sword, making it able to cut literally anything. It was even more powerful than a blast made with the same amount of ki would be.
Choutzu had never responded as well to training as the others had. It was just the way his ki worked. But he had gotten a little stronger, and he also had been working on his concentration, so that he could use psychic attacks more effectively.
They all thought that Videl had been training, but her power level was still only in the hundreds. She could definitely kill a whole mob of normal humans, but still didn't hold a candle to the Z fighters.
At least, Yamucha assumed. He really didn't know, since Videl lived with ChiChi now, and she almost never talked to any of them, he wasn't sure how strong she was. He didn't think the others did either.
That leaves me, Yamucha thought with a slight grin.
He pushed himself off the floor for the now eight thousandth time, wondering. He wasn't as strong as Tenshinhan, or as fast as Krillin, but he wasn't a slouch either. He guessed that if Frieza were to show up now, he would have no trouble turning the planet pirate into dust.
He was getting older, though it didn't really show much. His hair was a little thinner now, and perfectly straight, pulled back in a ponytail behind his head. There were a few very faint lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth, but so faint that you wouldn't notice them unless you were inches away and really looking for them. He was dressed in one of his old orange Kame gis, a little worn now but still durable.
Not too bad for someone who just turned fifty three. Not bad at all. In fact, he was willing to wager that he looked about thirty, give or take a few years. All that training has paid off in at least one way.
And hopefully in others. Because even though they all knew that it could happen, none of them expected that a threat to their lives was already drawing close to arriving.
Krillin slowly pushed his arms out in an exaggerated push, moving like liquid, every muscle in his body relaxed. He was practicing a kata that was very similar to most sets in a martial art known as Tai Chi Chuan, in which the emphasis was on peace, rather than strength. The focus of this particular set's slow movement was self control. Many techniques that were very easy to do quickly were unbelievably hard when done at such a slow speed.
Pulling his arms back in, he rotated his torso so that he was facing across the room, catching a glimpse of Tenshinhan as he did.
Tien was performing the exact same kata as Krillin, but many times over and at a furious pace. This wasn't out of discourtesy; Tien would have left the room without complaint had Krillin asked. But the former monk liked to do the slow sets amidst things that were moving faster. It made them more difficult, therefore, more effective.
The walls of the room were stained a dark red that was really closer to brown, and there were various ancient woven tapestries and hangings on the wall depicting mythical monsters, religious gods, and other things. Incense burned in the urns at one end of the room, and the only light came from two torches at the other.
Though none of the Z warriors but him would have known the place, it held a special memory for Krillin. He had first studied martial arts here, in a place called the Orijin Temple.
The monks here had taken him back in easily and with a very friendly welcome, even though he was not a monk anymore and his wife had come with him. They understood his situation, and wouldn't have dreamed of turning him out, or any that came with him.
The fact that he helped teach martial arts to a few of the best students helped matters greatly.
He and Tenshinhan were held somewhat in awe here. The students that studied in this place were the best in the world, and yet they weren't 'gifted', as so few humans tended to be anymore. Krillin, Tien, Yamucha, Choutzu, Yajirobi, and Videl were the only 'gifted' humans still alive.
Understand that by 'gifted' I don't mean that they could control their ki. Any one of the Orijin students could do that, though very little. It was how well they did it and how strong they could get that made them so. None of the monastery's students could hope of ever being so strong.
But that didn't stop them from trying, or from seeking out the two reputed masters, going into the deep lower halls of the huge building and asked to be trained.
Krillin smiled. Not that all of the students wanted to be trained once they had seen some of the two warrior's exercises for themselves. Most of the prospective students were right back up on the main floor of the monastery as soon as they saw the four and a half foot, thin man lift a five hundred pound weight with finger and thumb.
There were a few dedicated souls, however, who were willing to go the distance. Those few went through some of the hardest training of their lives, but it always paid off.
And it got harder once Krillin was done with them and Tenshinhan started giving them strength training.
But right now they were in the training room alone. Outside, the moon was setting, and it was drawing close to dawn. The monastery was just waking, a few servants and monks in training rising to do chores. But for the most part, all was quiet.
Krillin finished his kata and stood straight. "Tien, I think it's almost dawn." he said.
The tri-clops stopped his set in mid move. "Already?"
Krillin nodded. "We were all supposed to get together today at capsule corp. to train, weren't we?"
Tien nodded. "We were. But we don't have to be there for another four hours."
"I've got something in mind." Krillin said. "We should stop at Korin's."
Tien shrugged. "Whatever you want to do. It doesn't make much of a difference to me."
"Then let's go." Krillin said.
"Now?"
"Yup."
The tri-clops sighed. "Okay, sure. Just let me go wake Choutzu."
Five minutes later, Tien, Choutzu, Krillin, and Juuhachi-gou were in the air headed for the tower, a few of the order's monks on the ground, watching them go.
"Huuuuuraaaaaaa!!!!" the cry ripped through the frozen waste, the only noise besides a howling wind and cracking ice.
The wind was natural, it would be happening anyway. The ice cracking was not natural at all. It came from a large, green warrior who was training at his physical threshold.
"No..." Piccolo grunted in frustration, looking disdainfully at the place where an enormous mountain had been just a second ago. "I can do more. I have to become stronger..."
Piccolo's ki began to rise again, pushing snow, ice, and anything else that was under several hundred pounds away through the air. He roared with power as the waves of ki began to radiate more harshly, destroying most of the surrounding icecap, digging down until earth that hadn't seen sunlight in untold millennia was bare to the wind.
He found it easy to think in the midst of the swirling hurricane of his own power, much easier than he could in a normal state, and even easier than during meditation sometimes. It was almost peaceful, in all it's chaos, but more than that, it was his entirely. Surrounded by nothing but the substance of himself, he was shielded from any outside distractions.
The others are training even harder than I am, he thought with not a little amusement. They never trained this hard, not even when we were sure that Goku wasn't going to be back. None of them did. So why now?
Truth be told, he thought he knew. Even with Goku gone, they had always had Gohan, and Vegeta, and himself. They still had him, but something about the way the strongest warriors had just died had unnerved them, made them aware that if something else showed up to threaten their now peaceful lives, they would have to be ready. Goku wasn't around to save them anymore.
And the Dragonballs couldn't bring the saiyajin back. The virus undoubtedly fell under natural causes, although it was pretty obvious to all of them that any virus like that would have to have been genetically engineered.
The Dragonballs hadn't been able to cure it either. When Gohan came down with it, the first thing they had done was collect the artifacts and ask Shenlon if he could destroy the virus, or at least cure it or send it away. The dragon had said no on both counts, but hadn't said why.
So their hopes were shot on that count.
But the humans weren't doing bad, even Piccolo freely admitted. In fact, they were doing exquisitely well.
But even so....
Even so, Piccolo still felt it was his duty to protect this planet. Twenty years ago, he would have simply stolen a spaceship from capsule corp. and vacated this little mudball, but now part of him (probably Kami) insisted that it was his planet now as well as theirs, and he was just as responsible for it.
So he stayed.
Videl swung her sword, which was very old, used, and worn, the handle wrapped in cloth tightly, but still in good shape. It was a gift from the man whose swipe she had just blocked; Yajirobi.
Meeting the samurai/martial artist/monk had been a complete accident, really. She had simply been up at Korin's tower one day (which was where they were now), hoping to get some senzu beans to help with her training, and he had dropped the suggestion that a sword might make a huge difference in a fight, making up for her lower power level considerably.
"Good. You're getting better." Yajirobi remarked as he pulled his wooden boken (wooden katana) away and regarded her critically. "But you still stick sometimes on the blocks. If I was really fighting, you could be dead."
She nodded, listening and knowing it would be pointless and probably unintelligent to disregard the tip that was disguised as criticism. Yajirobi, though he tended to try to keep out of the major fight both because he wasn't as strong as the others and because he considered himself the backup to wish people back with the Dragonballs, was a hard teacher, but a good one all the same. He used a wooden sword both to slow himself down and to avoid injuring his student.
"Always remember to counterattack immediately." Yajirobi instructed. "That way no one can get a surprise in on you."
She nodded again, and renewed her assault on the samurai's almost impenetrable guard.
She didn't have to worry about hitting him, at least not lethally. He was just too good a swordsman. He promised her that when she got fast enough to even remotely endanger his life that he would make her use a boken as well. But aside from having years more training and being very good at what he did, Yajirobi also wore armor under his robe. He didn't trust his instincts that much at least.
She tried to get a cut in across his stomach, but he blocked it easily enough. He didn't let his guard down, though. She wasn't moving at full speed, though neither was he.
She spun, remembering to pull away right after the block, and lashed out at his face, and the look of surprise stamped across his features as he barely dodged back was quite satisfying. She was getting faster.
Again she remembered her training (Yajirobi had given her quite a few more pointers besides to attack directly after a block), and continued the rotation that she had begun with the cut, bringing herself around and turning it into another attack, this time for Yajirobi's legs.
He jumped over it, realizing that she was using the tips he gave her, and smiled. "Yup, you're definitely getting better, kid."
She stopped in mid swipe in front of him, returning the smile with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. Turning the blade ninety degrees, she made a swift upward cut that. If he wasn't wearing armor, would have disemboweled the samurai. Another look of shock crossed his face as he thrust the boken down and blocked the oncoming cut.
Videl had swung her weapon with such ferocity that it embedded itself almost an inch into the wood of the boken, causing Yajirobi to flinch and pull the weapon away.
"One of these days you're gonna break this thing, kid." he said, pulling the sword out of the wood and handing it back to Videl. "Then I'll end up wearing my guts for garters if you aren't able to pull your attacks."
She smirked. "If you weren't so slow that wouldn't be a problem."
That was the way they trained. They fought and insulted each other, neither bothered a bit by it.
"Are you two going to stay out there all day!?" Korin yelled. "Or am I going to eat Mr. Popo's dinner by myself?"
Yamucha was slightly relieved to have his workout in the gravity room interrupted when Bulma came in to ask him for help fixing a capsule car. He honestly didn't know why she bothered to fix things; it wasn't as if she didn't have hundreds more. But he didn't mind, because he needed an excuse to quit this early morning torture session, and working on a car was as good a reason as any.
She looked almost guilty. "If you don't want to, it's okay. I can probably take care of it myself."
He shook his head with a smile. "No, that's fine. I needed a reason to quit anyway."
He pulled a towel off of it's hook on the wall and wiped his face and head free of sweat, still breathing a little hard after hours of working out in so much gravity, all before dawn. It never crossed his mind to wonder why Bulma was up at this ungodly hour. Ever since the virus had hit, and even more so since Vegeta had died, she had been living more and more on her own hours, not relating to anyone outside of capsule corp. at all. It wasn't an odd sight to see Bulma working madly at a lab counter, mixing chemicals or fixing some machine at three o'clock in the morning.
Yamucha threw the towel over his shoulders and followed her out of the gravity chamber and into the residential section of capsule corp., where he now lived. It was a strange arrangement. He had begun paying her a reasonable rent, though she had tried more than once to get him to stop paying and just stay for free. The reason he had moved in was because he was worried about her, losing her whole family so quickly. Strangely, she had bared up almost to a point where it made him worry more. He saw no tears, except for the occasional one that slipped out at any random moment.
She seemed rather melancholy this morning.
Of course, he knew the other z fighters watched him, wondering at his motives, though they all knew he would never do anything to Bulma against her will. He had always cared for her, more now than ever since her personality had leveled off from that of a snobby teenager to a smart, much more pleasant adult.
The garage was on the other side of the building, so it took them a few minutes to get there. When they finally did, Yamucha wasn't surprised to see one of the huge car/planes that capsule corp. mass produced on a set of lifts. Bulma often needed help with these, because the parts were all large and heavy, and the ones she fixed often had broken or badly jammed parts that had to be forced off.
He walked underneath the car and looked up into the engine compartment. "So what's wrong with this one?"
"Not much, actually." She replied, pointing up at various parts. "General maintenance, oil changed and stuff. There's a cracked head, and I'm pretty sure the fan on the left engine is rusted out. That's what I really need your help with."
He nodded, and floated into the air to look at the engine. Almost right away he noticed a problem, besides the heavily rusted fan. Just behind the fan, there were two hoses that let air through, and one was cracked wide open. He called down.
"Hey, this looks a little more extensive than you thought."
"I didn't get to look at it all that closely." She said, sounding worried. "What's wrong?"
As well as he knew the parts by sight, Yamucha had always been very bad with names. He hesitated for only a second before she said, "Bring me up and let me take a look."
He floated down, and she wrapped her arms around his neck while he held her by the waist. Lifting back up, he was quite suddenly aware how close she was pressed to him, and had to mentally tell himself to get real, this was Bulma, that was ancient history.
"Look, back there." He directed her with his eyes. "The hose is cracked."
She cursed under her breath. "I don't know if I have one of those here. Maybe in the warehouse…"
She turned, and they were looking eye to eye. Electricity seemed to flick back and forth in their gaze, and Bulma's mouth tilted slightly in a smile. Did her arms tighten a bit and pull him closer, or was it just his imagination?
Quite suddenly, the peace was shattered as a huge wave of force slammed through the air, the ground almost moving, and they were both thrown to the ground, Yamucha's small flight aura not even helping. Luckily he landed on the bottom, and the only thing that fell on them was a huge tarp, though a few chunks of the ceiling actually came loose and fell perilously close.
Another wave hit, and Yamucha fought his way out from under the tarp, Bulma still held in his arms. He dashed out of the garage and into the steel re-enforced building, where he thought the ceiling would most likely not be coming down around them. He was right, and as soon as they were in the hall he set her down.
"Stay here." He said shortly, and was gone quickly, outside already.
In the south, he could see ki blasts going off in the middle of a city.
He flew straight towards them.
In a bunker, far below ground, miles in fact, a computer was ticking away tirelessly. As it had been for decades.
It had been built years ago by Dr. Gero, his master computer to which all his others were connected and to which all data was sent to be stored as a backup. It was also working on several projects that the doctor had been either to busy to finish, or had had little hope for. Recently, some of those had come to fruition.
The computer Gero had created was huge, and very advanced, much better than any used anywhere else in the world. It had so much memory and was so fast and efficient that Gero had even been able to program the computer to infer, and to use logic. So, though it could not feel emotion, this masterpiece of science had the ability to learn, and was almost able to be considered artificial intelligence. Many would say that it was.
One of Gero's projects had been a specific toxin or virus, one targeted to a specific flaw he had found in Goku's DNA. Although the doctor hadn't known it then, he had set his computer in motion to one day set loose a virus that would kill anyone with saiyajin DNA. It had been completed years ago, released only days before Goten and Trunks had fallen ill.
But Gero hadn't done one thing. He hadn't programmed the machine to put a halt to other plans if one succeeded. So even though Goku was dead, the computer worked on.
Taking up one whole side of the room was another of the doctor's failed projects. It had been his best yet, but the risk factor was simply to high for him to waste his time. These machines had only a one in one hundred chance of ever working.
Gero may have been a super genius, but he had been incredibly short sighted when he had estimated what his super computer would be capable of.
On the far side of the room, there were two stasis pods, the kind used for androids seventeen and eighteen. Engraved on one was the number 21. The other was open, and the number not visible.
Behind the tube was a hole bored into the wall, tunneled through solid granite. It led back and upward.
A small bit of sunlight leaked through from the top, over ten miles up. The dull sounds of explosions also came down, vibrating the entire room slightly with each thud.
Another of Dr. Gero's creations was loose in the world.
