Chapter Four:
"Choutzu!!!"
The shout was audible all the way up on the lookout, faint but perfectly understandable. Choutzu was an expert at hiding his ki, but no one, not even the most adept psychic, could mask their own death as it happened, the horrible ripping sense as a larger than average ki was suddenly taken out of existence.
The surge of energy came as Tienshinhan's power rose in a torrent, and a white streak took off from Korin's tower and blasted across the horizon, faster than the other humans could hope to move, with the possible exception of Krillin, and out of sight almost as soon as it came into being.
Yajirobi stared after it, for the moment totally frozen in place with shock. Everything had just begun to calm down a little bit, and then he had suddenly sensed Choutzu's ki flare up, and then die. It took him a second to get his mind jumped again.
The kis of Piccolo, Krillin, and Yamucha all suddenly blazed forth as well, and three more streaks of ki blasted off from the tower, following Tien.
"Ah, crap." The samurai muttered under his breath. "Hey, Dende, could you contact Videl for me?"
The wide eyed guardian nodded. "I'll find her and tell her what's happened."
"Thanks." Yajirobi said, pushing his own aura to the surface and blasting off from the top of the lookout. He wasn't as fast as the others, but he could at least minimize their lead by flying higher in the sky where the air was thinner and offered less resistance.
He flew off, following the others to the coming battle.
Flying at top speed, it took Tien only a few minutes to reach Gero's old lab. The problem was, when he got there, there was no one waiting to fight him. And the android, of course, had no ki signature.
"Damn."
He looked around, scanning the area below him, back and forth, not sure what to do. He could just blast the whole area clean, but that would be a useless expenditure of energy, and he couldn't afford that. If this one was as strong as the one that beat Yamucha, or even stronger, he was going to need every bit of power he had.
Not to mention the fact that Choutzu's body was down, under the ground somewhere. He wasn't just going to vaporize it along with the rubble.
Tien grit his teeth in frustration. If only those androids had ki…! How was he supposed to find the thing if he couldn't even sense it?
"You coward!!" he screamed suddenly down at the ground. "You have the courage to kill someone weaker than you, but not to fight me? Show yourself!!"
As the last word left his mouth, there was a sudden displacement of air behind him. He began to turn, painfully aware, knowing he was too slow, and a hand closed over his mouth, legs wrapping around him from behind and pinning his arms to his sides with unbreakable strength.
Videl Satan stood in the center of a huge crowd. Her face was almost completely obscured by the dozens of microphones that were being thrust at her from every conceivable angle, not to mention the TV cameras that were far too close to her. Most of the crowd around her were civilians, but the ones closest were all reporters. Ever since she was a kid she'd always had to deal with them, being the daughter of 'earth's greatest hero', and instead of learning to get used to them, she seemed to get more and more agitated every time one of the obnoxious bastards stuck their mic in her face.
She had to deal with them this time, though. After Gohan's death, she had given up the old Great Saiyaman disguise, fighting crime as simply herself, like she used to. So it was up to her, the most publicly recognized of the remaining z warriors, to tell people what they needed to know. That a city had been vaporized, but the person responsible was dead.
And all the while, while the journalists asked their questions, many at the same time, her trying to think up answers with just the right amount of truth mixed in with well-meant lies to keep the public from going into a panic, she was trying to sense everything that was going on with each of the other warriors.
It was maddening.
"Miss Satan, do you have any leads as to who may have been responsible?"
Videl sighed. She had answered this question, in many different forms, no less than a dozen times in the past half hour. "None as of yet, only that the person who actually destroyed the city had been destroyed." She was careful to censor her language. She would probably get quite a bit of backlash for saying something so blunt as 'killed' on television.
The questions were fired at her with machine gun rapidity, and she did the best she could. But something suddenly flashed into her mind, a white hot flare that made cold fear run from her heart all through her body.
Death. There was no mistaking the sense of a living ki suddenly going out, violently, when someone was killed. Choutzu had just been violently murdered, and not very far away.
She shut out all the voices around her instantly, focusing her entire attention on ki. Tienshinhan's energy shot suddenly up to almost full power, and he began to move, rapidly, toward the spot where she had just sensed Choutzu die. A moment later, all the others powered up and took off in the same direction. Lastly, her sensei, Yajirobi, took off as well.
"Crap." She muttered. Her ki rose, aura forming around her and lifting her into the air. Heedless of the shouting coming from below, she blasted off.
Tien's ki was draining rapidly; much faster than the other android had drained Yamucha's. Almost as soon as he felt the hand close over his mouth, a horrible pulling jolted through his whole body, from the center of his stomach, radiating outward through his arms and legs, to the tips of his fingers and toes. It was horrible, like having his life forcefully ripped from his body.
If he wasn't so angry, just that horrible pulling might have knocked him out. He could feel the energy draining, far more rapidly than he had ever felt before. Even using the Kai-ko-ho didn't drain him this fast. Even with the surge of adrenaline moving through his blood, fatigue instantly made his arms heavy, his efforts to break free made futile in the space of a few seconds.
It shocked him, but his mind was sinking into a fog, a few more seconds moving by and his vision becoming hazy and dim. It was astonishing, in a few seconds he had been reduced from a super powerful warrior, full of energy and in the prime of health, to something as tired and helpless as a child.
He tried to struggle, but the arms and legs held around him like iron. Dimly, as if from a great distance away, he heard a voice laughing.
"Struggle if you want to, but it's a waste of time. It's almost over now."
So this is it. The warrior thought to himself, acceptance of death coming quickly and frightfully easy. I'm going to die right here, and most likely I can't be wished back. The earth's dragonballs won't work on me since I've been wished back with them before, and no one alive knows the instant transmission, so it would take months of dangerous travel to get to namek in a spaceship.
Maybe it was better this way. Hell, he had died often enough before, hadn't he? Hadn't he already used up his chances at life? Really, he was living on borrowed time.
He realized with sick horror that now he couldn't even feel his body, and even attempting to move was out of the question. His arms, which had been tensed with the effort to escape, were now hanging limply at his sides like they were made of wood.
Another sound penetrated through the fog that had lowered over his sensory input. What was it? A low beeping, like a scouter. The androids from before, some of them had had machines much like scouters implanted in their eyes.
The thought had barely completed itself when there was a hard blow dealt to the back of the android's neck, causing it's hand to leave his mouth and it's arms and legs to unwrap themselves from around him. The kis of Krillin, Piccolo, and Yamucha registered themselves in his brain, along with others, but he wasn't sure who had saved him; that is, if he could still live after so much ki had been sucked from his body.
The imprisoning arms and legs no longer holding him, Tien's body fell down through the air, and when he hit the ground with a bone rattling thunk, he blacked out.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, the way it always did when he was in the middle of what was or was going to be a fierce battle. Krillin hit the back of the android's neck hard, the force enough to have killed any normal person a thousand times over. There was a convulsive movement as the former monk's elbow slammed into the skin, the gray spikes of android 21's hair seeming to jump up and stand on end for a second, his arms and legs spasming out. Krillin instantly noticed this, and made a mental note that apparently the back of the neck was something of a weak point for the android.
Tien's body fell to the ground, and Krillin let it go with a slight pang at letting a comrade just fall into the dirt. But there was no time to fly down and catch Tien, as he and the others now had to be on their guard every second.
Piccolo dropped to Krillin's right side, defensive stance perfect, and Yamucha dropped down to the namek's other side. The three of them stood stock still while they studied the android, watching to see how it would react.
21 was composed again almost instantly, his arms and legs lowering to their normal positions as he turned. The android turned cold silver eyes on the three z warriors.
Piccolo spoke first, his voice steady and strong sounding. It said in an undercurrent just below the words that the owner of this voice was someone not to be taken lightly. Piccolo was able to keep the tone in his voice, masking the fact that he was good and scared.
"You must know who we are, so I guess we can dispense with that part of the introduction." The namek warrior said balefully. "So why don't you tell us who you are, and why you're attacking our friends."
21 smiled. "Why should I tell you anything?"
"Because," Piccolo's face contracted in a snarl, "I like to know who I'm killing, and why."
Oddly, this seemed to satisfy android 21. He laughed, crossing his arms over his chest, silver eyes gleaming, the see-through forehead allowing a view of the human brain, making the whole figure surreal and strange.
"Very well, I guess there's no harm in letting you know, since I'm going to kill you anyway."
"I am the greatest work of the genius Dr. Gero-sama. Android 22 and myself were designed as the ultimate killing machines to destroy Son Goku and his allies. But our construction proved to be incredibly difficult, and time consuming, due to the high amount of power we were to possess. The Doctor therefore decided that we should be turned over to the computer, so that someday, if his other plans failed, we would come to wreak havoc on the earth."
"With us and various other projects now taken over by the master computer, Gero-sama turned his attention to a more short term project. The creation of the earlier, less efficient androids seventeen and eighteen, and the remodeling of android nineteen. He also programmed a separate computer to grow the creature named Cell."
"So I can see that the computer finished it's work. Did it create the virus that killed Goku and the other saiyajin as well?"
21 smirked. "Yes."
Halfway through the word, Piccolo swung his arm as hard and fast as he could, catching the android in it's left eye-socket, sending it hurtling to the ground where it struck and spread several deep cracks in the ground around it, throwing up a cloud of dust.
He made a quick motion with his hand, telling the others to hang back, and flew down, ready to follow up with another attack. Charging through the smoke, he laded with one leg on either side of the android. It was lying where it had fallen, it's eyes closed, a small trickle of mixed blood and oil running from the corner of it's mouth.
Almost too easy. Piccolo thought to himself, extending his arm, palm down, to get rid of this android as he had the last.
But before he could deliver the blast, 21 came suddenly to life. Faster than Piccolo's eyes could see, he swung his arm up so his palm was facing Piccolo's head, but in an instant the hand was gone, a quick series of clicks and it was replaced with the barrel of a blast cannon, it's dark muzzle like an eye socket.
Piccolo saw the malicious grin on the android's face, and had time for a very brief second of regret and recognition of his own stupid carelessness, and then a huge explosion of power blazed out of the cannon, vaporizing him from the waist up.
Author's Note: This fic is going to be one, possibly two more chapters long, plus an epilogue. I know how it's going to work out, but you'll all have to wait for me to write it down. Oh, and for anyone who wants to know my response to Cell and 21, just read in my bio, since I'm too lazy to re-type it here.
The Rev.
