03: begin

"Hey man, back off!"

"Back off? You want me to back off?" he laughed. "You want me to back off you? Sorry, asshole, but to me, one good turn deserves another."

"What? What are you talking about? Do I even know you?"

Seventeen sneered thick as he felt a rage shudder through his body. His white-knuckle grip on the man's silly t-shirt tightened and he shook him hard back into the wall the young saiyan was already backed against. "Do you even know me! Hah! You really are just some pretty boy bitch like I thought. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, with how you couldn't stop yourself from staring at my SISTER!!"

Seventeen's fist wailed across the jaw of the saiyan with his last words. He watched with deep satisfaction as the stunned saiyan slumped to his ass clutching his face, now partially caved in. The darker haired twin sneered, fists held tight at his sides, and he gave his head a quick shake, looking up to the darkening sky. This felt...far better than he anticipated.

Days passed. Eighteen was almost back to one hundred percent. Almost. As the days grew shorter, her stamina increased, her enhanced blood thickened, and her resistance to the cold air in the mansion grew strong. She was beginning to feel almost like her old self again. Almost. After that awkward night at the noodle house, Eighteen hadn't expected or dared ask her brother to go back there, no matter how good the food had been. Certainly, she was surprised when he offered to take her out again, only a few nights later. He had gotten home early that afternoon, let out of his "work" for the day at the fighter's gym. Since he'd been invited to participate in an especially "prestigious" (haw haw) tournament, part of the contract was a daily training routine at their facilities. He didn't really care. It was interesting enough, and they were paying him to be there (or they would be, since he was going to win, he told her).

Let's have dinner in town, he said to her that early evening, a smile on his face to find his sister another day stronger. Dinner in town, she thought, and found herself craving the sweet taste of those egg noodles, all wasted on a bad feeling in her stomach that night. Lord help us if we get another saiyan as a waiter. Tch...if we go there at all. The thoughts passed by at a bitter crawl, but she responded to him with a serene face.

"Who am I to decline such an offer?" she smirked, spinning lightly on a heel to go get dressed. Seventeen came upstairs shortly after, just as she was pulling on a pair of loose, straight leg jeans. Sort of boyish, but the cut was cute. She looked over her shoulder to her brother, who perked his eyebrow at her quickly.

"Are those mine?" he asked, genuinely curious. She laughed at him, glancing down to notch her belt (with jeans like these, you had to have them hang right on your hips or else it was pointless) .

"No, but you bought them for me, remember? From the catalogue?"

"Ohh..." he said, giving a nod, his calm blue eyes looking over her outfit as he changed into a fresh shirt. He never quite got her sense of style, even before they were cyborgs (as he could recall, anyway). But if it made her happy, hey. Now she was wearing these jeans he wouldn't have ever guessed she'd care for, belted at the hips, with a simple long-sleeved white tee underneath a looser one. It was soft green, somewhere between clover and ivy, and it reminded him of the stuff you'd see peasants wearing in renaissance pictures. What were they called? Tunics? Yeah. When did those come back in fashion? It was still pretty cute on her, he had to admit, and with a modern touch so it wasn't so...fantasy nerd. He found himself smiling at her, reminded for perhaps the third time that day that his sister was back...even if she wasn't exactly like he'd remembered her. That was something he just attributed to Gero and to the state she was in when he found her. How could you not come out of something like that a little messed up?

"Do you think I'll need a coat tonight, Sev?" She asked this in a casual tone, preening in the mirror standing in the room's quiet corner. Seventeen pulled himself out of his wandering thoughts and came to stand beside her in the mirror's reflection. She glanced over to him with a little smile, reaching over to swat at his fine hair, an old, playful habit he was more glad to see than he initially realized. He hugged her then, as if to say don't ever go again, and Eighteen must've realized this because she squeezed him tightly a moment later. The mirror silently reflected the image of the twins, with their matching snow-shadow eyes, united once more. But what life will I lead now? Eighteen found it difficult to banish this obvious thought from her eyes, though it seemed of little matter. Seventeen's eyes were as far off as hers.

Yeah...tonight's gonna be a real nice "night on the town," and with no stupid fucking saiyan waiter to screw it up...

Even though Eighteen was now on the verge of being her "old self" again, she had never before been so aware of the firm mattress pressing back against the weight of her body. It was late. Outside, the moon was waning, though somehow managing to still cast a good portion of its luminous eye onto the world below. Their room had a large double door window on the wall facing the garden, and perhaps it had once led somewhere, to a balcony perhaps, but now it only led the way to crumbled stones and the unruly garden below. Seventeen didn't mind that she often liked to sleep facing the window. In fact, he preferred the darker side of the room, now that she insisted to sleep with the curtains still drawn. Her thoughts touched on his words and she let out a slow sigh against the pillow. Why was it that sometimes she could flop on the bed during the daytime and want only to sleep, and now, when she needed to sleep (well, not really, not nearly as much as before), her mind couldn't stop chattering. She couldn't stop watching the progress of the snow. She couldn't fall away from the sensation of her own skin. She couldn't stop thinking.

Since she'd come back, they had never had such a good time as they had earlier that night. Eighteen was certain Seventeen had planned it as apology for their first night out, which was (for some reason) surprising to her that he would bother to do such a thing, being the stubborn person he was. They left early, first visiting that noodle house. He ordered for them, to a pleasant little human girl with short brown hair, grinning and talking to her with a cadence that made Eighteen raise her brow at him. (Of course, when she asked if he was flirting with the girl, he vehemently denied it.) The food was good, simple, and fresh. They washed it down with two full pots of steaming hot tea, and finished off the meal with a sort of sweet rice soup (it was purple and Eighteen didn't know if she wanted to ingest purple rice at first, for the sake of what would come out later). She left feeling full, satisfied, happy with the world. Her brother had done nothing but make her laugh. On the way out, she remembered...maybe it was that saiyan's night off tonight?

Afterwards (it must've been around seven), he took her shopping, all night till they returned home. Eighteen gave a lazy glance to the fancy paper bags still sitting near the foot of the bed, just barely able to make out their forms in the darkness. God... He put up with all those stores, all the "just a few more minutes," all the trying things on and wondering whether or not to get them. It was, to say the least, amazing. Thankfully, there weren't that many worthwhile shops on that main street, and she had succeeded in not testing her brother's patience...not too much.

She looked back to the rectangular shapes of shopping bags by the bed again. November had just started and all the stores were decked out in their holiday season decorations. Funny how they always did that the second Halloween was over. She didn't really mind. Nothing was on sale, though, which was a drag, and made her feel guilty for having Seventeen buy her some of the things she wanted (though he insisted). Christmas would be coming soon, just around the corner. Eighteen would definitely be in shape by the time Christmas came around (but just in shape?). Would they get a tree? She couldn't remember a time when they had, but trusting the memories in her head wasn't such a good thing anymore, she'd learned. Getting presents for Sev was going to be the hardest task anyway, not because she didn't know what to get him, but because she didn't have any way to get them. For some reason, he frowned upon just taking things now, and he was the only one with money. And he kept good track of it, too. Getting a job...feh. Getting a job...well...we'll see, she thought. Just thinking about stealing something for him made her feel a little guilty. Why, though? She was the older sibling! Don't the older siblings set the standards? Whatever. They had no parents to play around with that kind of stuff. It was just the two of them. It always had been. Just...him. And her.

(oh, yes, now I'm starting to feel a little numb.)

She let out another slow sigh, trying to send out all her unceasing thoughts with a controlled exhale. Maybe it worked. Her eyelids began to feel heavier (maybe it's just the nanos he injected the other day...), and it was finally time to pull her leg back onto the mattress from its previous place dangling over the edge. It was just him and her, ordinary people now, regular people. People that had to adjust instead of doing things their way and letting everyone else figure it out.

(che...I can't bother to think about this anymore.)

The bed's moving...why is the bed...

Whatever it is that's capable of rousing partially enhanced humans out of bed before they mean to crawled into Eighteen's body the next morning and made her aware of the extra weight bearing down on her side of the bed. Shortly after becoming aware of this sensation, she felt the chill air of the poorly heated room sink into her skin. Her eyes slowly pulled open, and there he was, her dear obnoxious brother, his face hanging inches away from hers with a laughing grin on his face.

"Time to get up!"

"Ugggh...mooove," she whined, her expression souring as her hands rose to his chest. He did this, thankfully, not too often, reminding her of that bratty little boy side still in him. She expected him to resist and stay there laughing at her feeble attempts, maybe mess up her hair or yank the covers away for good measure, and she was not at all in the mood for such antics. In the mornings here it was always freezing and that made her cranky, and...and then she realized that she wasn't as groggy as she usually was. It wasn't as cold as she first thought, either. Eighteen pushed him off of her with an ease she wasn't used to (maybe because he let up on her too) and sat up, letting the blankets fall slack against her legs as she rested back against the wooden headboard. She raised a hand to her wrinkled brow as if to smooth it out, reaching back further to make sense of the blond mess of hair on her head after. Seventeen sat back on the edge of the bed, looking at her with an anxious expression, like some little boy about to blurt out happy birthday to his mother or something. She glanced at him, befuddled (and slightly annoyed...almost), and then looked out the snow-frosted windows to her right. Did he do something to her? She didn't feel the same. She felt good. No nagging hunger in her belly, no cramped muscles, no blurry eyes. She slipped her legs from out of the covers and sat on the edge of the bed, tugging down on the bunched up boxer shorts she was wearing.

Seventeen noticed that she noticed, and had to admit she was being pretty cute now, fidgeting with herself like this, trying to figure out what he did to her. This is better than I expected, he thought to himself with a grin. I should've given her those nanomachines sooner. I could've pulled the rx-IN out earlier. But...I guess I did the right thing waiting till the experiments were done. She doesn't seem to be in as nearly a bad mood as I thought she was gonna be, either. She's not gonna want to go down to the lab now though, not this early...

Eighteen looked over to her brother again, now standing (without her slippers on, for that matter) with her fingertips pressed against the cold windowpane. A hand ran through her hair, smoothing it out further, and then slipped to the nape of her neck, to the input jack which so often gave home to that little blinking cylinder.

It wasn't there.

She felt a rush inside her at this realization, something that coursed throughout her entire body, danced up her spine, that made her shiver. It was the sense of her own power, something once lost and faded away now returned. Her forehead touched the windowpane, one hand still against the glass, the other forming a fist by her side. As much as she wanted, at this moment, to hide it from her brother, she could not suppress the grin tugging at the corners of her lips. She squeezed her eyes tightly together and then turned to him, the grin changing into an all-out smile. It lit up her whole face and the urge to laugh overtook her. She hopped over to him, blue eyes wide, and wrapped her arms around his narrow body, yanking him up off the bed, off his feet entirely.

"Am I back to normal?" she practically squealed. She saw him hesitate in responding, just a moment, as though he wasn't sure if he wanted to tell her yes just yet, but then he couldn't help himself. He couldn't deny the elated look on her face.

"Yeah...yeah, you are. Almost," he laughed, looking down at her. She really did squeal this time and hugged him so tight he had to cough from it, one brow tugging low over his forceably squinted eye. "Don't get too excited now, E. Put me down before you wear yourself out."

"No way..." she mused, setting him back on his feet with a confused, absent-minded expression on her face. "What'd you do to me? Where's the ar-ex?" Her brow lowered down flat across her eyes. "This isn't some joke, is it? Cause it'd be a real shitty one if it is..." Seventeen threw his head back with a laugh, one hand clapping on his forehead.

"Why would I do something like that to you?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Knock it off, E. This is for real," her brother replied, with a tone serious enough to believe. But the beat he let pass and the little grin forming on his face was too much to ignore. He laughed at her expression and tossed his hands on her shoulders, giving them a firm shake. "My dear sister, rest assured, there is no prank being pulled on you." She still gave him a suspicious look. He only smiled back at her, though it was turning to another grin with every moment he delayed in telling her what was going on. "I took out the rx-IN after you fell asleep. Okay?" His brow perked at her, waiting for her response. She continued to wear a wary expression.

"But that's not all you did. Is it."

"Course not," he grinned. Irritation danced across Eighteen's eyes. "After I removed the ole' rx-IN, I gave you a juicy, new nano injection," he continued, a reassuring look in his eye as he reached around to tap the invisible input jack on the back of her neck.

"Yeah? What about these nanos?"

"They're special, you see. So special, I can't even explain them to you without a projector and a pie chart. At the very least," he grinned. His fair-skinned sister rolled her eyes.

"Does this mean we have to go to the lab?" she groaned in realization.

"You got it!" Seventeen exclaimed, throwing his hands up over his head, gesturing at some imaginary studio audience. "Can we get this girl a prize?"

"Knock it off, nerdball," she groaned again. "Cripes..." Seventeen looked at her and laughed.

"Did you just say cripes?"

"Yeah? Is there something wrong with that?"

"Whoa. I, uh, guess not. Nothing wrong with cripes, ma'am," he replied, his hands held up to his chest defensively. Eighteen looked away, rolling her eyes. Guess he forgot about their little joke with that word. No, she had to remind herself. No, that was before.

She folded her arms and felt a curl in her lip come and go. Hopefully her brother wouldn't see it. He'd probably say something about it if he did, and she wasn't sure another one of their fights was something she wanted to go through at this time of morning. But if Seventeen's work was solid, and these nanos really did whatever job he meant them to do, then maybe she wouldn't mind fighting so much if she could hit him again. Yeah, they used to fight a lot before...

There she goes, thinking again, he thought to himself with a brief frown. "Well I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?" she said quickly, a little startled by the somber tone in his voice.

"To get your breakfast," he replied, a little less serious this time. Eighteen's brow perked. "You are still hungry, right?" She nodded. She was quite hungry. Seventeen's face snapped into a light-hearted expression, and he was off, the sound of his familiar jogging down the stairs just another of the many new experiences Eighteen would come to refamiliarize herself with today.

Breakfast had been amazing. Food had never been so good before, and to this she laughed openly, sharing all her thoughts with her brother. Everything was crisper, more vibrant, as if before today the world had been hiding under a grayer, duller version of itself. Now it was all alive, bright, and Seventeen could barely keep her in her seat after she'd finished eating. He thought about offering to get her slippers from upstairs for the trip down into his painfully frigid lab a level below, but the little curl in her lip and the anxious shake taking over her right leg told him it would be prudent to get her down there before she got ahead of herself. Or himself. Or things in general.

For a long moment, in that same short passage with which her brother contemplated the day's coming events with his newly re-juiced sister, Eighteen found herself being temporarily...dulled by the new world. Memories. There was something important there, lurking, something that needed to be thought about, but that was just too out of focus. Too much to think about now, now that she was on the verge of life. Freedom. It was a little intimidating if she committed any thought to the fuller meaning of the word, a little too complicated for right now. But it was hard to ignore it. Freedom... Freedom from what?

She didn't think her brother was ever interested in the science that birthed the two of them. Well, he wasn't back then. Back then he was just worried about being bored. For a time, there was destruction. For a time there was sex. Everything was a twisted game and there had been a lot of games played. But in all of the time they'd had to pass back then, Seventeen had never once shown an inkling of interest in their origins, in their science. To him, they were perfected beings. Eighteen never really disagreed with him back then, but she never quite bought into the notion that they were the new young gods. She didn't really hate humans like he did. They were annoying for the most part, and she'd killed just as many as her brother (did she?), but thinking back on such far away memories now, she couldn't remember why she'd ever agreed to go on the rampage. Just because?

Things were...nicer here. Yeah, adjusting was a little difficult to do at first, but she liked this "normal" life. She loved her brother, more than anyone, and it was a peculiar but welcome change, the attitude of his personality here. No wild rants on their superiority or the mistakes Dr. Gero made in creating them. Her brother's arrogance was not overwhelming, merely another facet to his complex personality. Was he complex before? Was she? No, they weren't. They had been completely mindless.

Eighteen's face drew together as she tried to think about why. Memories. Lots and lots of dully surreal memories. The past; she knew what she had done in that recent life. She remembered things. But it was all quiet. The sound was off. It was like watching the television on mute - you can see what's going on and understand the basic idea, but all the finer points are lost. She had been a killer. A murderer in a genocidal pair. And what of it now? She didn't remember their faces, their screams. Just that she had done it. A cold, hard fact, as unfeeling as the rusted spiral steps which brought her down to the laboratory.

If she was ever going to have a shred of compassion for her dead, it would be no time soon. With these fresh nanomachines, she could feel the shadow of a lost power looming behind her. But she was free. Free of the dark past, free of a feeble body. Today, if her brother's science held true, the world would change.

Today, for the first time in many droning weeks, the blond cyborg made her way down the narrow, shaky steps to her brother's livelihood, without the help of the slick railing. Walking in front of her as usual, Seventeen did not look back at his sister, though it was a bit of a challenge. The metallic shuffle of her nimble footsteps was confirmation. at least for now, that he didn't have to be so careful anymore, though he eventually did look back, just in time to catch her hoping over the last two dangerously rusted steps (which she'd always whined about him fixing). He'd always told her to just wait. Well, it was all over now. Maybe he'd even remove the stairs all together...

Eighteen made her way over to the pristine, agonizingly medical table and hopped up on the edge, much like she'd done so many times before (except without the agile little hop). Her brother's lab, as far as she was concerned, was an anomaly that conflicted with her brother's devil-may-care personality (oh wait...that was the old one...). The lab was pure, structured, and there was never anything out of its place. A mixture of unbroken silver lines and virginally white instruments. Containers were all beautifully clear. The aesthetic he'd created was amazing.

The lighting was sharp, quiet, and lacking the harsh cruelty of the only other lab the pair had known (though this was something Eighteen was yet to become fully aware of). Every time she came down here, no matter how cranky she'd been, the immaculate efficiency of it all would lull her in and make her forget. And as much as she disliked her brother's "checkups," the calm of the lab was always able to take her mind off the painful goings-on. She wondered now, if Seventeen was a rich man, would he decorate all of the house so precisely? If he was a rich man ... The fact I even thought about that is more amazing than the nanos my brother created.

"So how'd you get me working again?" Eighteen watched as her brother moved around the sprawling quiet of the basement laboratory, turning monitors on and gathering a small collection of peculiar electronic instruments. Looked like there were some new ones in the bunch, now. Briefly he set everything down and hopped in front of one of several computer stations. That was the one with no mouse, which was troublesome for her because that was the "cool" computer, with the big monitor. Seventeen had recently managed to alter things so that he didn't need a mouse anymore - the computer would take input directly from him.

She watched briefly how the little white arrow followed his adept gaze and wondered if he was going to be able to do that now.

Finally, her brother returned to the table, where she'd taken up an idle swinging of her bare legs.

"Well?"

"What? How'd I 'fix' you?" he asked, a little grin at the corner of his lip. Eighteen gave a nod. His head canted to one side in a thoughtful motion, to which a long beat then passed. "I just did, I guess," he said finally, his voice carrying that gentle sedateness to it. "You really were broken. At first, I thought that your previous nanos needed reprogramming, because hardly any of them were performing the duties necessary to maintain the generator in your body. They were barely keeping you alive, which I'm sure you already knew," he said, his gaze lingering on hers for a moment. Then he took one of the instruments he'd gathered off of the table and turned it on, holding it in front of her, the screen towards him. Eighteen thought it looked a lot like a pocket PC, but for what it was doing, she didn't think it was something you could buy off the market.

"Did you make that?"

"Modified," he said with a grin, his eyes steadily focused on the mini color screen before him. Eighteen smiled, amused at her brother's current fascination with the new data he was gathering.

"I didn't know my brother was some nerd IT specialist." Seventeen glanced up with a laugh.

"Blame it on Gero?" he answered with a shrug, then looked up at her again. "And you know, being a cyborg, it seems fitting I just know these things." Now his sister let up a short laugh. He went back to the recorder's screen. Looks like the nanos he built were still doing fine, which was what he'd expected. Finding out what they'd been busy doing from last night to this morning would come next. Again he glanced up at his sister's curious face.

"You know, you were really almost dead when I found you," he started, somber tone creeping into his smooth voice. "I think you would have been dead if not for the new nanos in you that were functioning properly. And I can't even say that" He shook his head. "It was only about four or five percent and they weren't even carrying out your generator's normal tasks. They were just sustaining your ordinary life functions, your human ones. I mean, well... I can't be sure," he said again, shaking his head.

"Sure of what?" Eighteen replied. While not terribly surprising, this whole dead nano thing seemed to be a bit more serious than she anticipated. Seventeen put down the recorder and sighed.

"It makes the most sense, but I really doubt Gero ever programmed a survival mechanism like that. He made so many stupid mistakes with us in the first place, and I'm sure he was too concerned with our power and too confident we wouldn't lose to worry about keeping us alive if we failed. I mean, he put bombs in our chests, E. You have to remember that much." Seventeen shook his head, disgust steadily seeping into his features. Eighteen found herself a little relieved to finally see her brother complaining about the good doctor.

"Yeah, Sev. I do remember that," she said, lips drawn tight across her face in a thin line. Her brother drew in something of an exasperated breath and reluctantly picked up the recorder again.

"Anyway...what's more is that I never found any such kind of desperate survival programming in my nanomachines."

"Well I always thought you were the prototype out of us two, and Gero decided because of how you were after to make me not as strong..."

"True, but...it just strikes me as odd. I wish I had kept more information on myself before I started upgrading, so I had something to compare you to." He paused, shutting off the recorder and setting it back down on the table beside her. "Anyway, you're lucky. I only built the rx-IN a few days before I found you for myself. I was getting too beat up at the tourneys lately and needed something to keep me going through the downtime. Imagine if I'd never met that sleaze ball promoter, Carrnaje. I woulda never built that thing and you would've died right after I found you."

"Oh, so am I supposed to be grateful now that you get your ass kicked on a daily basis?" Seventeen feigned an insulted posture and then gave up a lighthearted laugh.

"You're so mean to me. You're supposed to be my sister, E..."

"You are so lame, Seventeen," she laughed. "So lame." Seventeen backed away from the table with his hands held defensively in front of him.

"Fine. I can go back upstairs if you wanna be like that." Eighteen snorted at her brother's words.

"No you won't. You're too excited to see how your little nanos are doing."

"You're kidding me," Seventeen shot back, looking insulted once more. "Hah. Watch if I ever do anything nice for you again."

"Oh, shut up. You will," she said, grin forming on her lips. Seventeen looked at her for a long, defiant moment, and then picked his recorder back up.

"Can't fool you..." he muttered, walking off to plug the recorder into his mouseless computer.

After a few more tests and observations (none of which were nearly as bad as Eighteen anticipated), the darker haired sibling confirmed that his nanos were carrying on beautifully. He'd have to check on her every day for the next week or so, but this was definitely the start of something new.

When he had finished gathering all his information, Seventeen brought his sister over to his wundermachine computer and showed what exactly it was coursing through her bloodstream now.

She was amazed. Certainly, the fact she had never really been aware of what went on inside of her many fine, bionic augmentations in the first place led to an increased sense of awe. Not only had her brother reprogrammed the existing working nanomachines in her body to carry on their initial duties, but he had built and introduced an entirely new group of nanos. Really, they were just modified versions of the existing ones in her body, and partially based off of the ones in her brother's body currently, with a few extras here and there. They were entirely self-maintaining and self-replicating. The new nanomachines told the old nanomachines the new programming, and unified, they carried out all new tasks and routines, along with the old ones (though the old routines would eventually be weeded out for more efficient ones).

The nanomachines, in the time span of perhaps fifteen hours, had already constructed several entirely new classes of cells in Eighteen's body, all of which would serve to make her stronger, faster, and more agile than before. The exact scientific explanation Seventeen gave her as to what exactly the new groups of cells did didn't really matter to her. She was going to grow more powerful with each passing second, even more so when she fought. The nanos would learn, they would increase her stamina, her senses, her overall prowess, and what's more is that they could even heal her to a certain extent.

Her "endless energy" generator had been fortified by the same nanos. It would run more efficiently, and was more in synch with her organic body than ever before. Previously, the nanomachines she had served only to keep her organic body on level with the unyielding, tireless energy her generator provided her with. When first making her a cyborg, if Gero had only put the generator in her and no nanos, her body would have long since tired itself out and fallen apart from the constant use, even with the nightly regenerative period of sleep, necessary of all humans. But with the nanos, her body could keep up. They would rebuild dead cells, replace them at an accelerated rate, and create new carrier cells so things like vitamins and hormones could reach what part of the body needed it more efficiently.

As Gero's cyborg, she never had to sleep again. Her muscles and bones had been fortified so she could punch through walls and rip through steel. She could even fly, through some strange mystic method of artificiality (something her brother admitted to still not figuring out - there was one credit to the doctor).

Now she was her brother's cyborg, and she had become something more.