11. Rude awakening
Leela's mind drifted to her younger brother, her damn creators and those stupid androids. But she didn't have the heart to tell Trunks about it. It would not only hurt her own heart, but it would be an extra weight on Trunks' shoulders. Besides, how could she bring the news? 'Hey Trunks, wanna know something ironic? You're the reason I'm an android.' No way, besides, she wasn't even sure.
She was now more than ever determined to go to the place where she was made.
-
-
"Leela wait!" it was Bulma. She had run out the kitchen and outside to stop Leela from going... where exactly? Bulma didn't know.
Leela heard her voice and decided to land before her. After the conversation with Trunks, she thought she could handle one more with his mother. "Hello Bulma."
"How is your wrist?"
"Fine, thank you."
"I uhm…I'm sorry for having done that without your permission, but it just couldn't heal by itself. You know that, right?" Bulma obviously sought an easy way out of blame.
"Yes, I know. But whatever gave you the right?" Leela wasn't going to let her off the hook that easily.
"It's like I told you. If you wouldn't let anyone help you, it would've only gotten worse."
"Were you alone when you did this?" Leela held up her left-arm strictly.
"Well no, there was that doctor I told you about."
"Was Trunks there too?"
"No, why?"
"Then I can assume you told him about it, why?" Leela demanded.
"He's still my son and he deserves to know."
"It was mine to tell when I was ready."
"And when would that have been?"
"After we destroyed the androids. He already blames me for something I did not do. Letting him know I'm an android doesn't make things easier between us."
"I thought you guys cleared out your differences?"
"No, we put them aside." Leela saw the puzzled look on Bulma's face. "Like a book on a shelf that needs to be read in better times." Leela tried to explain but it didn't help much.
"So anyway, where are off to?"
"Oh, nowhere. Just flying around, enjoying the blue sky."
"Don't you think that's a bad idea? The androids..." could she still use the word 'android' now that she knew Leela was one? But Leela didn't say anything about it, so it would probably be all right. "...are still out there."
"I'll lower my energy-level and fly low. They won't sense me."
"Wouldn't you feel safer if Trunks goes with you? I mean, with your wrist and all. You can't fight now. It'll break again."
"I'll be fine."
"Just to make sure, maybe you would like to take the device with you?"
"Yea." she chuckled. "That would be suicide."
"Oh, right! Silly me." Bulma remembered. "That's why you left so fast when I was about to demonstrate it."
Leela didn't bother to answer that. Instead she said: "By the way, thank you for drugging me into sleep and fixing my wrist." she meant it. Without the drug, she would've never had that dream that urged her to find out more about her history.
"You're welcome." Bulma smiled. "Just be careful from now on."
"I'll be fine." Leela flew up. For once and for all, she would find out her true memories...
-
-
She flew high in the air, instead of low, like she said she would. It didn't matter; Bulma wasn't here to check up on her anyway. Neither was Trunks and she didn't see or sense either one of the androids. She was enjoying every free moment of flight she had. Never did she enjoy it this much. As she was thinking about this, she may never enjoy it again, after the final battle with the androids…
-
The nearer she got to the place of her "making", the slower she flew. She was nervous; afraid she might actually find something within the mess that would tell her something she didn't wish to know.
Soon she reached a big crater. There used to be a house here, if it wasn't for the androids. But the lab she was made in was below ground; below the house; the basement. As she stared down into it, her eyes fixated on a semi melted door on one side of the crater. It showed there was a stairs behind it. The same stairs she had walked not too long ago, when the androids had destroyed the place. She was free to escape, for her creators hadn't survived. Even though their lab was below ground, the energy the two androids threw around could easily burn up the room above and melt the metal door to the basement. She remembered how the two creators had treated her like their project, not like a human, or even like an animal, but like a thing with one purpose, like most robots had: one purpose. And her purpose was to assassinate two murderers.
She hovered above the crater and sighed. This was it. With a mixed feeling of anger and a pain which matched a broken heart, she was literally looking at her past, thinking how this could have happened in the first place. But the answer was too obvious and already told: her only purpose was to save human-kind and therefore destroy the androids; that's why she was made. Her creators choose her, because she was already dead. But then, who was she before all this? She had two different memories, which one was true?
She knew she promised herself to wait until she had completed her mission, but all of the memories kept raising questions she could not answer. It was driving her crazy; she just had to find out as soon as possible.
She flew down and landed before the melted door and pushed it aside. She hesitated at the top of the stairs that led to the basement.
What if she didn't like the person who she would turn out to be…? Maybe there wasn't even any information about her left…? If there wasn't, she would never find out which memory belonged to her, and which to those creators! Did she really want to know? What if the memory of Trunks turned out to be true? That it wasn't Juunanagou, but Trunks who actually fired and killed her and her brother? How would she react if Trunks really was the reason behind all of this? And how would Trunks react if he found out he killed her? She sighed and despite this feeling, she went down. She needed to know. After all, it was what she came for.
The only light in the basement came from where the door once stood. It was reflecting some sort of a large water-tank right in the middle of the room. The glass was broken. She remembered it. Research, they called it. She felt humiliated when she thought about it. They kept her paralyzed inside that tank. There were wires all around her. She was naked and broken, unable to speak or move.
Embarrassment was to be read from her cheeks. How she hated this place from the bottom of her heart. How she hated those two men who had made her be what she was now. Half flesh, half machine…who made them gods?!!
BOOM!
The tank exploded; glass was flying around the room and then hit the ground.
Leela hurried to lower her power-level, hoping the androids were too far to sense her. She should've controlled her anger, not release it!
She stared at the space where the tank had been a few seconds ago before she blew it up as a result of her uncontrollable emotions. She pulled her eyes away from it and focused them on the rest of the room. There, in faint light, she could make out the shape of a desk against the wall on her left. She remembered it as deep-purple. Dust covered every part it. Glass creaked underneath her boots as she neared it. The sound was aggravating her.
Her hands touched the desk and fell on several books and documents. There were so many, how would she ever go through this much? It would take years!
She sighed in disappointment. "Dammit!" she called out and with one sweep she threw everything from the desk across the room.
This would lead nowhere! What was she thinking anyway?! That she would find a neatly stashed pile of paper all about her miserable little life? She should've known better than that.
She turned and strode across the room to the stairs, stepping carelessly on top the books, papers, glass and... what was this?! Her eye fell on a thin document. "UNICO" it said. It sounded so familiar. She picked it up and blew the dust away. She looked at the big, dark letters: "UNICO". It was a title. What did that mean and why did it sound so familiar? She turned a page and saw it again: "UNICO". But this time there was something written below the word:
-
Unico; her name. Or so she told us. We did not ask further for she was too angry, sad and confused to even know what she was talking about. She was unreliable at the time. So instead, we kept her drained and quiet inside the tank. Because we were curious what had happened to this female that made her so unstable, we searched her memory after we had linked her to the computer. This was, of course, in a late stage of the project. First, we had to replace the damaged organs by highly advanced technology in order for her to fulfill her purpose.
Now, that she is completed, there is only one thing left for us to do: Awake her.
This project's name: Akhila Nyati.
This project's purpose: Destroy the androids and save human-kind.
-
Leela remembered introducing herself as Unico when the little girl Lilly asked for it. So that was her real name after all: Unico.
Her eyes went back to the document:
-
UNICO:
Her mother (Faye, housewife) and the Father (Lain, hardworking businessman) were both killed by the androids at the same time. Unico and Orion were not at home that day:
Faye and Lain had send Unico out to get her baby brother from the crèche not too far from their home, while they would make preparations to leave the town that was soon to be endangered by the androids.
When Unico, holding Orion in her arms, came back, she saw she was too late; the whole neighborhood she grew up in was gone. Orion was too small to understand, but Unico knew exactly who were responsible for this.
-
With every word she read, she could clearly see it happening inside her mind, as if she witnessed this all before, and she had. Her memories were flowing back inside her mind with every sentence as she kept on reading:
-
AKHILA NYATI:
Akhila Nyati is a saiyin, like Trunks. Planet Vegeta was about to be destroyed so the parents left it for another. But the planet they were staying on was threatened to be destroyed soon, too. Meanwhile the mother had given birth to the girl when they arrived on the planet. But because the spaceship could not hold three, the parents decided to only put their daughter to safety, for they didn't want to leave each other, but they did want their daughter to survive. She was send down to Earth. There she was taken by a couple. The family welcomed another child, this time one of their own blood. A boy: Orion.
-
Leela tried to see this just as she did with Unico's story, but this one felt empty to Leela, unlike Unico's, which was filled with emotions. She felt almost nothing for Akhila Nyati.
I cannot be Akhila Nyati. Leela thought. This is not my memory. It's all made up. I'm not a saiyin at all! They made me believe I was. Akhila Nyati's memories aren't mine.
She had been an ordinary human; only half human now! The other half was nothing more than metal and wires!! How could they have messed with her body so much? Not to mention her head?!
But there was more:
-
UNICO'S DEATH:
Orion (at the age of 5) had wandered off to see what the loud noises were. Unico had found him near the battle between Trunks and the androids. One of the androids, the male, had placed himself in front of Orion so Trunks couldn't see him. The android was challenging Trunks to shoot. Just when Trunks was about to do so, Unico ran to Orion to save him. Trunks shot his energy-ball to the male android who dodged it, knowing it would hit the child behind him… and it did; Orion didn't survive.
Unico got swung back against the wall behind her and fell unconscious. Enough damage was done to her for us to take her and bring her to our lab. There, we created someone far more powerful than a human being.
-
Leela thought about the dream where Trunks was the one who killed her brother, but she thought she died too...?
-
AKHILA NYATI'S DEATH:
Akhila saw her brother getting killed by Juunanagou. His Ki was so great, that it made her swing back against a wall. She hit her head so severely, that she died instantly.
We found Akhila and revived her, giving her the strength to destroy the androids.
Akhila Nyati will feel a bond between her and Trunks due to her being a saiyin as well. They will fight the androids together to increase the odds of their destruction and to save human-kind.
-
No! This was all wrong! She wasn't Akhila Nyati back then, she was Unico. Akhila Nyati's memories were not hers, they were fiction. A story of two men who then made sure she wouldn't take her revenge on Trunks, for he had killed Orion and knocked her out. That's why she had been so afraid of him. She couldn't figure it out at first, because she couldn't remember. But Juunanagou had tricked him into it! This wasn't Trunks' fault!
Orion died and Unico became Akhila Nyati; false memories included. She wasn't a saiyin, she had never been a saiyin, she was human, an android now. Could she still be Unico? It were those memories that belonged to her…
Unico's memories, her true memories…
…!!
The words on paper were getting blurry as she tried to fight back her tears when she suddenly realized: "I survived." she whispered. "They created me while I was alive…"
They could've saved me…instead they made me a robot…I could've been human still.
She tore the pages in anger: "I could've been human!!" she cried out and threw the shreds away, watching how they slowly touched the glass covered floor; covering her past.
-
She immediately went to her room, passing by Trunks down the hall.
"What's the rush?" he asked, but got no answer. He watched her go inside her room and closing the door with a bang. He sighed annoyed at her behavior, but then realized she was crying. He heard her shedding tears softly. Should he enter...?