A/n: Meep, I'm sorry I'm late, but i made up for it with an extra long chapter! Lot's of 'mature' content in this one. If you don't like blood, don't read. This chapter's pretty heavy, not a lot of fluff in it.

Oh, and don;t expect much from me for about a month *dodges tomatoes thrown at her by angry readers * I've discovered that I get to go away somewhere incredibly cool for spring break, and I'm going to have to work my ass off for the 7 days of school I'm gonna miss. Not to mention It's dominated my every thought since I found out. See if you can guess where it is if i give you the name of the country in it's native language: Nippon. Now that you all hate me, I give you:

Chapter 17!

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Disclaimer: (A poem today!)

I own Nothing, but I like coffee

Coca-cola chocolate!

Cafiene is good for writers like me!

DBZ is not mine

If I said so

I'd get fined

Now go read the chapter

before I drive you off

with my bad poetry! (damn, that didn't rhyme)

***

Chapter 17: Shadows

***

Now that the adrenaline of battle had worn off, Krillen really started to feel the anguish in his eyes, like someone had bored holes into them with flaming pokers. He could not even see patches of light and dark. However he could still feel his wife's cool arm around him, guiding him, and he could smell the acrid scent of burnt metal and flesh, not to mention the perspiration that arisen on his brow during the battle. He could hear the quiet rush of the wind around them, and the muffled struggles of the captive demons.

His Ki sense was active as well, for which he gave a quiet prayer of thanks that he could still do that. He may have been physically blind, but he could still see.

Sort of.

He felt a guiding hand direct him to the ground. He searched out and found the Ki's of Korrin and Yagirobe, both seeming quite frantic. He could almost sense a palpable horror or revulsion from them. He guessed that they had either seen the demons or his face. His wife may have been good at hiding her reaction to his appearance, but he knew that those to had constitutions that were slightly less well developed.

"By Kami's grave what happened to..." It was Korrin's voice. Krillen guessed that 18 had cut him off in mid sentence, probably to spare him a description of his undoubtedly grisly state. He could already feel his other wounds starting to take a toll on him.

"Can You fix him?" She asked coolly, barely masking the concern in her voice behind a facade of artificial emotionless.

I Must be more messed up than I thought, if 18 is acting this emotional. Krillen thought.

"I May be able to, though his wounds may be beyond the ability of the Senzu. If you had one when it had happened perhaps, but when this much time has elapsed... It's no sure thing."

Despite his resignation to the situation, Krillen still felt lost, and hopelessness over his situation. Would he never be able to see the faces of his wife and daughter again?

"Do what you can." She ordered.

"Miss, I should also see to your wounds. They are quite extensive and they really should be seen to..."

"Bulma can fix me up later. I want you to attend to my husband."

"Of course." Krillen felt a fuzzy paw touch his hand, the neatly manicured nails drawn in, so as not to injure him further. The cat guided him to a bed, where he was instructed to sit down. He did so, not sure of his legs strength any more.

"Eat this." Korrin pressed a particularly plump Senzu into his hand. Krillen brought it too his mouth and chewed throughly, feeling the nutty taste of the bean on his tounge {1}

Instead of the usual invigorating rush he usually felt, he suddenly felt very tired, and the desire to lay down on the bed and sleep overwhelmed him. He did so, and was fast asleep in minutes.

****

"What did you do to him!" 18 said, her rage barely controlled. She was getting more emotional than she liked, and she was never emotional. She figured it was the presence of those demons that had made her that way "Senzus are supposed to heal their wounds instantly, and rejuvenate warriors! Not make them fall asleep!"

She resisted the urge to rush to his side, unfamiliar protective emotions coursing through her. She sometimes felt this way about Marron, but never this strongly over her husband. It was puzzling, giving her a head ace. Her circuits were overloading. Instead she walked quietly over and touched Krillen's cheek, oblivious to the gore and blood that stained it from his ruined eyes. It was the normal temperature for a human.

"Normal Senzus are sloppy, they leave work unfinished, and not well healed. Broken bones may have permanent quirks in them that might cause them to break more easily. I've been growing a new type of been, this one works more slowly, but in greater detail. For something as complicated as an eye, i was afraid that the normal Senzu would leave permanent damage or scars in his eyes that could cause him to have bad or partial vision, if indeed they healed them at all, instead of just putting a skin patch over them." The cat explained hastily, not wanting the blond android to be angry with him.

She moved her hand lower, towards his neck and felt for his pulse. It was slow, and would have been much faster if he were a normal human. However the level of physical fitness that Krillen had obtained through his martial arts training had helped him to lower his resting heart rate to well below the normal level.

The next of her checks would have been to see if his pupils were dilated, but with the state of his eyes, that task would be almost impossible. So she lay her hand on his chest to make sure that he was breathing properly. He was, nice long even breaths. Though slightly more than was normal for him.

"Please, may I see to your wounds?" Korrin asked her again, worried that the acid burns on her skin and metal frame could cause her permanent damage. Plus the fact that half of her face was gone scared him a little bit. Normal wounds he could handle, but melting robots were a bit much.

"I told you. Bulma can fix me later."

"But the acid... and he won't be up for hours and..." Korrin tried to convince her weakly. She showed no sign of having heard, so the cat reached up with a swab to clean some of the metal before his hand was swatted away.

"I'm not important. Fix him"

****

"Well, that was unexpected." Dende said, pretty much to himself. He knelt down to check on Bulma, who seemed to be breathing regularly. Shin poked his head in the door.

"Please tell me there is a perfectly good reason that my best demon catchers just ran down the hallway, assaulted Kibito, then jumped off the lookout and flew away?"

"Um, I think that they were re-possessed somehow."

"Re possessed!? And you let them just waltz out of here? What in HFIL were you thinking!" Shin looked to be on the edge on a nervous breakdown.

"Would it help if I said that there would have been no way that I could have detained them, considering Gohan is one of the most powerful people on the planet, and Videl had him wrapped around her finger, and she decided to leave?" Dende asked hopefully. Shin looked thoughtful for a moment and then looked at Dende again.

"No not really."

"Alright then, I won't bother." He got up and dusted off his robes.

CRASH

Shin, mentally unstable as he was at the moment shrieked like a girl and dashed outside to find--

****

"Crap, not another one of you little buggers? How many freaking checks are there? What the hell is wrong this time? Do I have an ounce of Otherworldly spinach in my teeth? Is the shape of my shoe not optimized for cross world travel?" Suian was hopping mad.

"Nope."

"Then what is it?" You could hear the thinly concealed threat in her voice

"You appear to be the carrier of several dust motes that we simply cannot allow to the living world. If you 'd just let us locate them and remove them, then we might be able to let you through."

"FOR CRAPS SAKE!" She snapped and pushed the scrawny little frog man against the wall, lifting him by his neck . Not that this mattered much, as the frog had a thick layer of fat around his neck, but it was the look of things that mattered. She pushed her wizened blue face up to him. The frog gulped, his round , bulbous eyes searching franticly for a way out . "You listen to me. If I am not transferred to the living world within the next five seconds, you lose an eye. Every minute after that, you lose another limb until I can get out of here myself." She said this in the calm, hostile tones of one who knows exactly what they want, and are willing to do anything to get at it.

The frog reached out a swollen hand and brushed what seemed to be invisible dust off of her shoulder. He swallowed again and said " You can go now" Suian let the little man slide to the floor and promptly walked over to an empty space of floor and dissipated.

****

He was so close he could taste it, the sweet flavor of flesh freshly separated from the bone, while the victim writhed in fear and pain. He knew that after even 7 years of waiting, waiting to come in to existence, that he still had merit as a keeper. That one promise broken, so very long ago, was one that needed to be paid in blood.

That promise so long ago, not to fail, to try hardest, had ended up in a death, caused by the incompitance of the promise breaker. Though he had avenged the death, it was too late. The death had occurred, and that had broken the balance. It was not right. He could feel the waves radiating from the event, affecting the time stream nearly imperceptibly. Now he was closing in on his destination, an island in the sky. He was weary, but he had a purpose.

He was a Keeper. He was going to restore the balance as he saw fit. He could almost taste his victims blood.

****

"Dammit! This is definitely where I saw it last!"

"Sarah, when are we going to stop chasing shadows? I'm getting tired, and I'm on a double shift tomorrow" Caleb whined, sweeping his flashlight over the corners of the alley way. A scared cat darted out of the way of the beam. Sarah was poking around in the corners, her gun drawn, the safety off. She whirled around to face him. She still had her gun in hand, leveled as if ready to fire. She lowered it slowly. It was night , and very dark, with only a sliver of the half moon showing through the clouds. The yellowed street lights barely illuminated the street, which was empty and cold, the blacktop painted orange Grey in their light. Bits of old garbage lay astray over the road.

"I don't care. I'm absolutely positive that that thing is what is causing the crime in Satan, And i intend to find it and wipe it out. It is my duty as a police officer, and that should be your duty too. Besides, if you would just drink that tea like I told you to, you might be able to sleep better." Caleb made a face. It was not that the tea was unpleasant, well, yes, it was that the tea was unpleasant, even ghastly, it was just that she constantly had these little pieces of advice for him.

Shraclk chrissk

They looked up. It was a raspy noise, like a man hole cover being dragged open. Caleb drew his gun, and with a nod to Sarah, they turned on to the main street, only to find that a manhole cover was being dragged open. However, it was no ordinary man doing the dragging.

He was tall and thin, and had a disreputable look about him. Not only that, but he wore what looked like a black robber's mask over his eyes. Sarah started with recognition, before yelling "FREEZE! POLICE" Caleb was unsure what was going on, when Sarah landed three rounds into the man's chest.

"What the Hell! Are you crazy!" Caleb shouted, and tried to wrestle the gun from her shaking hands. But she pushed him off and shot again and again. He watched in horror as the figure staggered and fell back, dark blood spraying from the back of his torso. The man coughed up what looked like blood . Caleb knew that he was a goner.

Or so he thought.

There was a faint hissing, and a barely perceptible cloud of gas surrounding him. The strange man looked up, and his eyes seemed to glow red in the faint moonlight. He snarled and staggered to his feet, drops of black blood falling to the pavement and sending up even greater clouds of gas. Caleb backed away in revulsion, and raised his gun. Sarah placed two more rounds into the figure's chest, the sound of the shots echoing into the night providing an odd accompaniment to the hissing of the pavement. Distractedly Caleb concluded that this creature (He had lost the status of man a while ago when he got back up after 5 shots to the chest) must have been highly acidic. The steps of the creature echoed raggedly in the night . Sarah's next three shots went wild, one of which clipped the figure in the shoulder {2}. She was frightened, Caleb could tell. She was an excellent marks woman normally.

"You dare shoot me?" The figure asked, though his voice shook, almost in shock that the shots had hit him. "No Human can touch me!" He shrieked, and started to lurch forward. It was almost like a scene from a bad horror movie, only it was all too terribly real. Sarah fumbled with her gun, struggling to reload. The discarded cartridge clattered to the ground, and the new one slid into the gun with a click. She pulled the gun up in front of her face, her hands trembling only slightly. She involuntarily took a few steps backwards , and so did Caleb. He held his gun like she did, and moved a few steps away, so that they could take him from both sides. The policeman in him was beginning to overthrow his horror at the situation

" Put your hands Up!" It was a standard police officer response to adversity. The creature swung around from his advance on Sarah and lunged brokenly for Caleb. He couldn't even remember pulling the trigger but he hear a series of loud bangs. He kept pumping the trigger, but the thing just kept coming, like a zombie. Suddenly Caleb was crushed against the wall, and felt a burning sensation as the creature's blood got on his arms. He heard one last shot, and there was an odd sensation in his arm and a warm wetness spreading over his shirt and pants. The thing collapsed, and he looked down,with a surreal aura , to see a dark red stain all over his shirt. He looked up to see Sarah holding a smoking pistol.

I'm a desk officer He thought This isn't supposed to happen.

Everything was fuzzy, until it was dark.

****

War stepped out of a portal, a rip in the fabric of space , to a lonely outcropping in the mountains. Well, at least it used to be empty, he mused. Now it was filled with sweating young men, and striped silk pavilions. There were acrobats and little tables of fresh fruit and chocolate scattered everywhere. All of the activity, however, seemed to be centered around the largest pavilion.

There lounged lust, laying face down on a table, a muscular young man perched over top, massaging the muscles of her naked back. There was a pungent odor of lavender and other exotic herbs polluting the clean mountain air. She also seemed to be watching a bowl of quicksilver rather intently.

"I thought I felt a rather glutonus waste of power here" War said, throwing down his blood red cloak onto one of the many plump chaise lounges that were scattered around the tent. He lay down and picked up one of the grapes on the table next to him and popped it into his mouth . He put his feet up on another table, soiling the rather expensive looking silk table runner there. Lust did not even bother to look up from her pool and massage.

"I am the child of Gluttony and Greed" She retorted. "Nice to see you made it on time."

"I Come on my own time girl. IF this is not important, I'm leaving" He paused to fondle one of the pretty serving girls. She skirted away, but from a stern look from lust, she remained on her previous course, to bring fruit to war.

"Of course. You are a busy man aren't you . So busy that you haven't managed to stir up a war in yet. What's wrong, couldn't get a big enough army?" She taunted. She rolled over onto her side, and held a towel up in front of her chest. Not so much for her own modesty, but more for the cold. The serving girl returned and bent over war to put more fruit on the table. War reached up inside her shirt, and a disgusted look passed over the girl's face. He brought his hand back and slapped her so hard that she clattered to the ground and did not move. Lust looked at her prostrate form in disgust.

"That was one of my favorite pets you know. I don't appreciate you killing my pets." She sounded sour and sultry.

A black robed figure glided through the doors, and through the chaise that War was sitting on, not to mention through War himself. He knelt by the dead serving girl and held her head in his long white hands. He seemed to lift her up, a pale, ghostly version of her, and smiled, and said something that no one else could understand. How ever, it was hard to tell with the dark cloak that covered his face. However the girl smiled as well, tears in her eyes as she faded faded into the sunlight. The dark man turned, and walked out through lust this time. His body faded into the shadow at the back of the tent until he was indistinguishable from the silk. Then he was gone.

Neither War nor Lust spoke for a moment, sitting to appreciate the gift that death had given the girl. He was not a demon, not in the sense they were. Nor was he an angel, or a god. He was the final authority, the last judge. He was death, a force outside of everything.

"Have the body taken away I don't want to look at it anymore" Lust said to two of her porters. They weren't pretty enough for her to consider them as fruit bearers or acrobats, but she still had use for him. They had not witnessed death's passage, and were awed by the demon's silence. "War I have a sue for you. I want a war, A great big global war, I want it to be one of the most spectacular events this planet has ever faced."

This was not an offer war could refuse. He waited until the girl's body was carted away before replying. He neck was obviously broken, as was apparent from the odd angle it hung at.

"My lady, I would be honored." He said, with a devilish smirk on his face.

****

"Issac, Something is coming"

"I know my love, I can feel it."

As they flew in the night over a ruined city, they could not hear the sounds of gunshots in the night, the unholy scream of pain that wafted over the streets, nor the sobs of anguish that followed. All they could hear was the sound of each other's heartbeats, and the war drums that pounded int their heads.

All they saw was the face of the other , and all they could feel was the body of they other where they flew pressed up against each other, Desperately clinging to the only other thing that made sense in a world that had gone crazy, that was strange and unfamiliar.

Lastly there was the haunting tone, that there time was limited, that they nor anything else was real, like it had all happened before. Every line seemed stolen from a time long ago, and every touch was a repeat of one that had occurred. Every kiss, every breath, fell into a pattern, that looped around like eddies in a river, dragging them along helplessly until they went over the edge, again and again, only to start over after they reached the bottom.

It was cold.

****

{1} How am I supposed to know what a Senzu tastes like?

{2} I'm well aware that a normal handgun holds only 6 bullets at a time. Work with me here people

I won't bother you with more author notes, I'll Just polietly ask you to review, and for everyone to kill a certain virus protection program that stops me from reviewing !

(I should thank people more often, I get lotsa reveiws! )

Thank you all who reviewed, Yes, Actually the concept of 0 was originally a Hindu concept, though it was the Arabic number system that we ended up using. Sorry for not updating sooner! That's why thins one was extra long! (that's a lie. I got off a writer's block and couldn't stop!)

Chau

~Min