Author's Note: Song Lyrics in italics are from "Out of Exile" by Audioslave. I obviously don't own them, because I would then have an imprint of Chris Cornell's foot in my head.
Chapter 15: The First Days
Just before dawn, Trunks was jolted awake by a loud thud. He quickly bolted out of bed, and then winced in pain as his wounds from yesterday cried out in agony. The Saiya-jin healing process was no picnic. Rushing out of his bedroom and into the living room, he was stopped by a tall, slim figure in the doorway.
"Good morning, sleepyhead." The figure said in a monotonous tone. Trunks was at least partially relieved by the familiarity of the voice. Seventeen was up early.
"Good morning yourself." Trunks mumbled back. His next stop was the kitchen for breakfast. He had intended to eat everything in sight, until he found out that the fridge was empty. As well as the cupboards. There was no food at all in their cabin. Trunks began to whimper in defeat. He had to choose the place without any food. Of course, who could think about such details when your guts were in pieces?
"My, my. Forgetting something?" Trunks was ready to go Super on the spot. You did not make fun of a Saiya-jin when he was hungry.
"Yeah, we never bothered to go shopping…" he muttered.
"Well, you didn't." Seventeen said, and walked back outside. Trunks, curious about this last statement, followed the android out into the early morning sun, and was stunned. Sitting in front of him was a small truck with "NutriTech Markets" plastered on the side. His mind began to analyze the sight, until he remembered that Nutri had something to do with food, and food meant…food! His wounds forgotten temporarily, he darted to the rear of the truck, where he saw Seventeen, standing in front of the biggest lode of groceries he had ever laid eyes on. Seventeen merely looked at him with an icy grin.
"Figured it was the least I could do after roughing you up yesterday, and for you taking me to paradise." He said, cocking a thumb at the verdant forest several yards back.
"Where'd you find this stuff?" Trunks asked, incredulous.
"Found a store that was abandoned a couple of days ago. They left the cooler on and everything, so I decided to help myself. I don't eat, but you do and I want you in tip-top shape for the next few months."
"Gladly." Trunks replied. These next few months were going to be fun, and not in the literal sense, but if motorhead was going to be this generous, things could work out pretty well…
….
When I first came to this island…
That I called by my own name…
I was happy in this fortress…
In my exile I remained…
Far away from the verdant mountains, another android awoke in another paradise, yet unlike her brother, she didn't see it as such.
Having spent the night on the beach without so much as a rock for a pillow, she awoke wet and covered with sand, and she immediately knew which parts of her were human because those were the ones that hurt. Besides that, her hair and clothes, which weren't in stellar shape from the previous day, were in an even greater wreck than before. For the first time in her life, Eighteen was thankful she was at least ten feet from a mirror.
With a groan, she pulled herself to a sitting position and looked around. Things didn't seem too different from last night: she was still on a tiny island with a rickety old shack and one palm tree, with no other land in sight.
Besides that, her internal global navigations system had been knocked out. Whether beyond repair or not, she couldn't tell without more advanced diagnostic equipment. Until the repairs were complete, though, she had only the slightest idea of where she was.
Eighteen continued to groan as she lifted herself to her feet. Everything sore and soaked, she turned and began to walk toward the house in hopes of finding some new clothes and a shower.
Last night had been blissfully unusual. Eighteen rarely slept, because for the most part, she didn't need to. Besides that, the twins usually avoided the night. One advantage of their power and speed was that they could traverse the Earth rapidly, covering thousands of miles in a matter of hours. Because of this, they could always outrun nightfall. Whenever the sun began to set, the two androids would fly east, keeping ahead of the darkness.
Last night, though, Eighteen could not run from sunset. She was kept in place by a man who wasn't her brother, and who didn't know or seem to care what night had meant to the twins. He had forced her to stay.
But her sleep was peaceful, and this in itself was strange. Her life always had its share of demons, within and without, and the legion had always kept her occupied with some form of torment or another. Now a new figure had entered her life, and whether he was demon or not remained to be seen. She had not seen the Saiya-jin since last night. She shivered, remembering him.
She continued her walk across the sand toward the house, now realizing that going into the house meant coming face to face with her captor. It was inevitable; the island was the size of a tennis court. She wondered why he had picked a place so cozy and swore that if the monkey tried anything, she'd disembowel him.
Eighteen, mustering a façade of fearlessness, steeled herself to walk inside the house. The door stood in front of her. She reached out to grip the handle and turned. The door opened.
……
Robbie opened his bleary eyes, prepared to get out bed, and then promptly fell face first to the floor. The impact echoed throughout the house. Robbie muttered a string of curses, pushed himself off the floor and found himself plastered to the ceiling. Beyond pissed, he freed himself from the plaster, screamed an epithet at the offending surface and walked out of the room scratching his head. Damn Saiya-jin muscles…
Being a Saiya-jin, his first instinct was food. His stomach protested loudly, and he could only imagine the depth of his hunger with the amount of recovery he had been through in the past night. He had been beaten nearly to death and broken the Saiya-jin power barrier yesterday, yet today he had only a few aches and pains. His body seemed to equate yesterday's events to merely a hard workout.
Robbie quickly realized that he was in an unfamiliar house, after he turned a corner and ended up in a closet. Murmuring to himself, he turned around and looked for the stairs.
The last thing he remembered from the night before was limping into the house, falling up some stairs, and flopping onto the softest surface he could find. In the light of day, he could now see that that was an old twin bed that looked like it hadn't been used in a decade. Thinking back to what he knew of Roshi's house, he tried to remember which hero might have slept there, but that was more of a Dragonball question, and he had only been interested in Dragonball Z. Either way, no one had slept or lived in this building for a long time. The windows were frosted over with dust, along with every surface of the room, and the walls were yellowed and covered with peeling paint. Mold stank in the air. Robbie muttered to himself about 'fixer-uppers' then turned and headed downstairs.
The bottom of the stairs was shrouded in darkness despite the bright morning. Heavy sheets covered all the windows, letting only a dim haze of light through. Other pieces of furniture lay similarly covered throughout the room. As far as Robbie could count, there appeared to be two couches, a chair, and what looked like an entertainment center next to the front door. To his right was the doorway to the kitchen. This room was similarly dark, though all the furniture was uncovered, which here only consisted of a single kitchen table with only one dusty chair. Mildly intrigued, Robbie began to rifle through the cupboards, but was only greeted by more dust, and not a single scrap of food. The refrigerator yielded similar results. Robbie hung his head and sighed. Being a Saiya-jin had its downsides, he realized.
Dirty, sore, and worst of all hungry, he turned and walked out of the kitchen. There was really only one thing left to do this morning, and he was, understandably, not quite thrilled about it, especially without breakfast and a few cups of coffee in him. Yet where the old human boy Robbie would have shirked his duty and wasted time in some obscure corner of the house, the new Saiya-jin Robbie could commit no such blasphemy against honor. Like it or not, he was hardwired to do right by his new Saiya-jin code of ethics. Exhaling loudly and squaring his shoulders, the young fighter marched out of the kitchen and out to the front door. Hesitating for a nanosecond, he gripped the brass handle that much harder out of frustration and swung the door open.
Sadistic sunlight stabbed his eyes. Wincing, he drew back and cursed himself for not remembering one of the most basic of optic rules. However, almost as soon as the light struck him, his eyes adjusted for the glare and his vision returned to normal, with his face still screwed up into mid-wince. Sheepishly, he relaxed and looked ahead. Standing in the doorway, her body strangely arched forward in preparation for opening the door, was Eighteen, the chore Robbie would have sold his tail to avoid.
Standing there, face to face, Robbie was reminded of his early days becoming acquainted with the opposite sex in middle school. His first date had been a dance in the seventh grade, and as he fumbled for the courage to ask the girl out beforehand, the situation had presented itself with an awkward tableau uncannily similar to this one. Robbie could barely suppress a belly laugh as he realized that he would be asking the android girl to "dance" very soon…
He quickly suppressed this line of thinking, and hardened his features into a businesslike, expressionless mask. The easiest way to deal with her would be in this way. It didn't look like she was going to say anything from the half-rueful, half-reserved expression on her face, so he decided to take the plunge.
"Morning." Best to keep it simple. The girl's face wavered slightly, the spell of silence broken.
So, this is how it starts, Eighteen thought as the Saiya-jin's greeting echoed in her mind. With that awkward moment past, she decided it was her turn to at least be courteous.
"Morning yourself. Get out of my way," she said, pushing past the Saiya-jin and into the house. Halfway up the stairs, she was already flogging herself at her botched first contact, but by the time she reached the top, her thoughts shifted to finding a shower. Checking in room after room, she finally came to an old dusty bathroom. Luxurious would never be a word to describe the meager facility, but it had a mirror, a shower stall, and a toilet. At the moment, that was all a girl could ask for. Eighteen walked inside and, reaching into the stall, turned the steel handle over to what she hoped would be the warmest setting. She was rewarded with a generous spurt of water, and after a few seconds, it was even decently warm. She basked in the day's first joy.
Reluctantly, she turned off the water, knowing she needed clothes to change into. Searching the rooms again, she found a dresser, and one that had apparently belonged to a woman. To her fortune, she found every article of clothing she would need. Unfortunately, whoever owned the dresser not only had horrific taste, but also insisted on wearing nothing but dresses. She picked up the barely functional items one-by-one in disgust. At very least she wouldn't be naked, but she would need a few new pairs of pants pronto.
Gathering up a dark blue dress and some underclothes, she proceeded to the bathroom, only to be stopped by a dark figure in the hall. His displeasure was apparent, even in the dimness. "You know, you could be a bit nicer."
"Look at my clothes; do you think I'm in any condition to be nice?" Ice-blue eyes and an impassionate mask met brown eyes and a disgruntled expression. Robbie realized he should've expected a rather icy start to things.
"Do you hear my stomach? I'm a Saiya-jin and I haven't eaten in about a day. This is just a tad bit more problematic."
"Then why don't you find some food?"
"In a house that looks like it hasn't been lived in in about 20 years? And if I do find anything, it sure won't be much beyond edible. What about you? Do you need to eat at all?" Eighteen stopped. His tone seemed to indicate he was actually concerned. This wasn't something she had been expecting. For a split second, her impassivity wavered.
"It's complicated."
"And…?" Robbie asked impatiently.
"I can eat, and I feel better when I do, but technically I could live the rest of my life without food. Can I get to my shower now? I need to change rags." Robbie snorted at the ironic fashion statement.
"Fine. But I think we need to make a supply run after you get out. Assuming you can fly in a dress." Eighteen suppressed a shudder at the thought of her behind blowing in the wind, and she never even thought of what a landing would be like…Her mind was quickly made up. She threw the clothes back into the bedroom with a grunt of triumph and turned back to the Saiya-jin.
"Let's go now." She said, pushing past him and trotting down the stairs. Moments later, she was outside, and her cybernetically-enhanced eyes quickly compensated for the glare. Robbie followed close behind.
"So," he asked "Where is the nearest city? I'm not from around here, so you'll have to be the guide. One on a very short leash. Got it?" Eighteen hmphed in agreement. As nonchalant as she tried to be, and as genial as he seemed, she was still a captive.
As for the nearest city, she remembered there was a city just a few klicks from here on the mainland, up until she and Seventeen…
Something unwanted gnawed at Eighteen's heart, forcing her to grit her teeth and shake her head to clear it away. There was. She shook her head again and flipped her hair back. She faced forward, artic eyes hardened. "There should be some abandoned stores on the mainland, and we won't have to get that close to any cities."
"You're sure the people have fled? No offense, but I really don't feel like walking into a crowded store with you."
"Whatever. Yes, I'm sure. People always panicked and fled even when they were nowhere near us. They had to leave something behind."
"Right, and most of the stuff will still be good for eating." Robbie sounded almost gleeful. "Shall we?" He asked, pointing to the sky. Eighteen responded with a nonchalant "Fine." In seconds they had lifted off from the island and were tracking toward the mainland, their eyes scanning the shores for any signs of life.
They soon found a road heading inland, and it became immediately apparent that they wouldn't run into any civilians anytime soon. Abandoned hover cars littered the roadway in a packed bunch, the obvious remnants of a horrific traffic jam. The line of cars stretched for miles, long abandoned by their drivers. Robbie couldn't sense another human for miles. There had to be towns and villages around, but he couldn't find them. Damn, thought Robbie, this place just had to be remote.
The parade of silent steel continued for several miles more. Eighteen's eyes still scanned the area for both signs of life and civilization. However, as none were becoming apparent to even her sensitive internal instruments, she could only track toward the horizon and hope for something to appear soon. She was one in the opinion of all people who knew Saiya-jin's, in that she didn't want to be alone with a hungry one.
Her eyes suddenly fixed on the object of their search: a small village laid ahead only a few klicks. She could sense that power was still on, and, even better, the place was uninhabited. A quick surge of energy brought her neck and neck with Robbie, and she quickly relayed the news with him. He nodded, and kept his pace toward the village. Eighteen was surprised at his self-control. Meanwhile, she dropped back a few meters.
Below her, outlying farms and homes passed by. In one abandoned field, where cattle and sheep were once fenced, she saw that the gates had been left open, and now many of the animals were grazing freely on the hills and fields. Fields of corn and wheat were soon trampled and devoured by these and other livestock. Barn doors and gates swung idly in the breeze.
Passing moments brought the pair closer to the town. Litter blew idly through the desolate streets. Broken windows opened into deserted storefronts. Hovercars that couldn't be driven were left askew on the side of the road. Again, not a person was seen.
Robbie took the sights in and concluded that this was to be expected. He thought he saw the shadow of a city off in the distance, and even from here he could tell it was abandoned. He thought if he could just get close enough, he would make out the half-decimated monoliths of crumbled concrete and twisted steel. He'd seen it before. He was absolutely satisfied that there wouldn't be anyone around.
Musing over the Androids' handiwork, he unconsciously glanced back, and realized that Eighteen was falling back and losing altitude. By the time he had turned around, she had already touched ground in a farm field next to a stand of trees. Darting to the ground, he landed moments after her.
Coming to a stop, Eighteen leaned heavily on the nearest branch she could find and sighed like a gust of February wind. Her relief was short-lived, however, as Robbie came bounding up behind her. To him, she looked like a runner who had just finished a marathon, but he knew that it would take more than a little flying to tire her out. However, Robbie, lacking in diplomacy to a Saiya-jin degree, burst angrily on her silent reverie.
"Do you mind explaining the holdup?" he said roughly. His only reward was a heavier sigh from Eighteen. "Hey," he said again, "I'm talking to you!" His fingers closed around her hanging arm, and she jerked, growled, and stalked away. Robbie yelled after her, until she turned on her heels, face flushed.
"Can't you just leave me alone?" She screamed back. She took a few more steps away from him and stopped. Looking ahead of her toward the town, their destination, she shook her head, turned, and walked briskly back the way they had come. Robbie, still impatient and becoming more so by the second, stalked after her, not knowing or caring about her odd state.
"Um…Eighteen? The town's that way!" he said, jabbing a finger behind him, which, with her back turned and putting distance between her and the Saiya-jin, she couldn't see.
Robbie materialized directly in front of Eighteen. Her ice-blue were facing the ground, but flashed upwards momentarily when he appeared. Recognition glimmered for a second, then disappeared as she swept past him.
Robbie appeared again in front of her. She stopped this time and looked up. Her words came like a frozen stream.
"Get the hell out of my way." Again she walked around him.
He appeared the third time, a sardonic grin on his face, with his own icy words.
"I can play this game all day." Eighteen's face contorted into a glance that betrayed panic, frustration, desperation, and outright anger. The muscles in her neck and arms tensed, right before she swung a left hook straight for Robbie's head. A flash of white fire was her only warning before she was slammed roughly into a nearby oak, one hand around her throat and the other clutching the offending arm.
"What the hell is wrong with you?! I told you not to piss me off!" Robbie screamed angrily. Eighteen didn't respond. Her eyes fell, her tensed muscles slackened, and she slumped to the base of the tree. Robbie was further perplexed, but laid her down gently and fell back into a crouch.
Robbie, still frustrated but less so than a few moments ago, observed her features. She lay still and nearly in repose, except her eyes were open and staring lazily at the cluttered roadway. She suddenly spoke, her lips moving slowly and her voice nearly inaudible. Robbie doubted that he would have heard her without Saiya-jin ears.
"Lucky fools," she said, "Night was falling…and we had to leave. Destroying West City took longer than we thought, and then there was that stupid kid we just had to play with…" Her eyes rolled away from the scene and toward the woods to her left, then fell down to her lap. "How ironic…the two strongest fighters in the world…and they're scared of the dark…" She laughed bitterly, her head rolling side to side against the tree trunk.
Robbie had seen drunk people before, but she hadn't had anything to drink in at least 48 hours, and he doubted it would have any effect if it did. Eighteen, he thought, would have to down the whole Jack Daniel's plant just to get a buzz.
He soon became aware of his own naiveté, and kicked himself again, not only for that but for forgetting himself in a Saiya-jin rage. Here he was, trying to enlist her help in the salvation of his home world and build a team, and instead he was blowing it at every possible opportunity. He wanted to punch something, namely his own face.
Saiya-jin anger burned again inside him, but this time, it was the shame of failure. Instead of letting it take over, though, Robbie exerted a measure of his own tenuous self-control and fixed his attention on the android.
"Eighteen." He said lightly, or as lightly as he could. The girl's eyes cleared slightly, but glazed over again. "Eighteen!" he said, louder, but lacking the caustic edge. This time she looked at him.
"What?" The one word dropped like an iron weight. Those ice-blue eyes that glared at him were flat and cold, and it was clear that the last thing she wanted to do was help him. In his naiveté he could only guess at the first thing.
"You know what. We have to get going." Eighteen sighed and turned her head away.
"The town's over there," she said, making a weak gesture toward the cluster of buildings only a klick or two away, "the lights are on and no one's home. Why don't you just get the food and let me wait here?"
"No dice. I don't need you pulling a Houdini while I'm out shopping. We're going. Now."
"What the hell do you need me for?! I already told you I wasn't running! Besides, I'm sitting here because…" The fixed expression on the Android's face wavered, and her eyes wandered to the broken monoliths of West City. "I'm sitting here because I can't move anyway." She turned her face to the ground and simply stared. Robbie examined her closely, and even through his own fatigue and impatience he made an effort to understand.
"I can carry you, if you want." He said. Eighteen sniffed, but didn't look up. "Listen, I know it sounds kind of weird and undignified, but I'm just trying to get this over with so we can get back to the island. Okay?"
"And you're going to carry the food how?"
"I'm a Saiya-jin; I'll think of something." Eighteen rolled her eyes and looked off toward the horizon where the decimated city lay. She breathed heavily again. Robbie tried to hold his own emotions in check long enough for her response.
"Nevermind," she said and she rose to her feet and dusted herself off, "I'll go if we can just walk there."
"Brisk jog and you've got a deal." Eighteen rolled her eyes again.
"Fine."
Their brisk jog took them across the few kilometers to the town in a few minutes. Not stopping at the town limits, they raced past shattered store fronts and down refuse-strewn streets until they came to a supermarket.
The low building stood just at the northern edge of the town, its brightly colored 'Nutri-Tech Markets' sign almost glowing in the sunlight. Eighteen slowed as they approached the door, but Robbie charged through, the glass storefront shattering behind him and the body-shaped hole he had left. He disappeared among the aisles of brightly colored boxes and cans.
As Eighteen looked around, she saw that it was another abandoned store. She was surprised to see the place in such a good condition, since people usually looted whatever they could carry. Some towns were still standing when the citizens left; most weren't. This one simply looked like a place that closed down for a holiday and waited to be reopened once the normal pace of life resumed. The sunlight came through the windows and glinted off of shining tile floors and metal ceilings. The reflection carried into the darkened rear of the store, where there were no windows.
Eighteen walked through one of the checkout lines and continued into the store, the only sounds being the muffled slap of her bare feet on the floor and the nebulous rustles and bangs from the rampaging Saiya-jin raider. As she turned down one aisle and walked to the rear, she soon picked up a low humming. The power was still on, and chances were that the coolers would be full. Eighteen herself was ambivalent either way, but she was relieved that her 'hungry Saiya-jin' problem would soon be solved.
The rustling and banging continued for the next ten minutes, and when the sound of shattering glass rang from the back of the store, Eighteen knew Robbie had found the coolers, and cries of triumph disturbed the otherwise peaceful silence.
"Sausage! Yeah! Two hundred pounds worth…not as much as Bulma made, but it'll work…"
She left him to his work and meandered through the eerily ordered environment, the bright designs on the packaging standing out even in the dimness. Cans and boxes she might have bought just to look at if she had any money, and if there were any cashiers to take it. If there were still employees at all…
Reaching the middle of the aisle, she found another aisle leading across the store, and turned left. Rubbernecking, she lazily glanced down aisle after aisle of foodstuffs stacked neatly on endless shelves. Then she passed books, housewares, cleaning supplies, and then beauty supplies, and saw rows of shampoos and soaps. She turned right and started looking for a good conditioner, thinking about her habitually dry hair.
As she compared labels and looked for the best moisturizers, she was struck by the strangeness of the place. Thinking back, she had been in a supermarket a total of seven times in her life, all of them in cities Seventeen and she were about to destroy. They had been filled with people either screaming in fear or cowering in terror, and she usually associated those places with sycophants pleading for their lives rather than value or quality hair products. She had never been a shopper, except at clothing stores, those also sycophant-ridden with no one to comment honestly on her hips, and the idea of simply walking into a place and getting what she needed for the day or week was completely alien. Yet, not 5 klicks from one of her most recent conquests, she was alone; she was just browsing.
Returning to the first aisle with a bottle of shampoo and conditioner, she sat down on the cold, hard tile. Sighing heavily, she closed her eyes and simply listened to the cool silence, only lightly disturbed by the salvage activities of the Saiya-jin.
As her mind drifted, a din of new activity reached her ears. From the front of the store, beeping sounds and alarms could be heard, punctuated by disembodied voices echoing above her, calling for John in Grocery or Jane in Customer Service, along with the clack of caster wheels over metal plates and tiles, and questions from myriad voices. From the aisle she was in, the clicking of tin cans and the rustling of cardboard and plastic could be heard, punctuated by the sometimes violent contact of products with metal baskets.
Eighteen opened her eyes in time to see two shoppers, an elderly man in a well-tailored brown coat and matching hat and a young woman around her own age wearing a white t-shirt and denim shorts, pass in front of her without a sideways glance. Strange, Eighteen thought, since they must've known who she was. They passed each other as well, each going to an opposite end of the aisle. Eighteen rose to her feet, brow furrowed, and turned to walk down the middle aisle, narrowly avoiding a red-shirted young man pushing a cart crammed with diapers. He neither turned to her nor offered an apology for nearly running her down. Eighteen, for her part, didn't care.
She walked through the commercial din, watching shoppers both eagerly and absently plucking their desired products from the shelves, some chatting away on cell phones, some laboring to keep noisy children in check, others patiently comparing nutrition facts or ingredients. Walking down past several more aisles, she came to beauty supplies where she had been before, turned the corner and stopped.
Standing in front of the conditioners where she had been was a tall woman with long blonde hair wearing a sky-blue business suit. Her eyes, blue but of a livelier, more human shade than Eighteen's, were intent on a bottle of conditioner identical to the one she now carried. The woman talked softly to herself, and Eighteen could just make out something like 'hair drier than a bone in the desert…' But she wasn't quite talking to herself. Next to her was a little girl, no older than 10 and a near mirror image of her mother, wearing a simply pink dress. The girl looked up at the woman with large blue eyes and smiled brightly. Eighteen only stared.
Then, turning down the far end of the aisle came first a young boy, same age as the girl, with long black hair, dark as obsidian, and blue eyes. He wore tan slacks and a white striped blue collared polo shirt. His eyes sparkled and he smiled brightly when he saw the tall woman. He was holding a man's hand when he turned the corner, but he let go and bounced over to the woman when he saw her. Eighteen's face became pale, and her legs wobbled.
Then the man appeared, a bulky imposing figure with tidy black hair, and wearing a black suit and red tie. The appearance of his face suggested benevolence as he greeted the tall woman with a kiss on the cheek, and then leaned down to kiss the girl on her head, who had left her mother's side to happily embrace his leg. The conditioner quest was forgotten momentarily as the happy family simply enjoyed a reunion in a supermarket, no doubt after a long day apart, and anticipated going home to a joyful supper together.
So intent was the family that they didn't notice the ragged young woman approaching down the aisle, hands fisted, breath increasing. She stopped five meters short of them and simply stared, her eyes narrowing to slits. The tall woman was the first to notice her, and her blue eyes widened over her children's heads as she took in Eighteen's wild hair and her torn, sodden and dirt-stained clothes, the shirtsleeves ripped off at the shoulders. Eighteen's artic eyes bored a freezing glance into the other woman.
A look of consternation came over the woman's face as she noted the glare. Her brow furrowing, she reached for her son and pulled him close to her. The father, his hand stroking his daughter's hair, paused in mid-smile, frowned, and quickly lifted the girl to his chest.
"Can I help you?" The tall woman asked in her most professional, amiable tone. Eighteen only laughed at her, cold and caustic, as she would laugh at an enemy.
"Isn't this a joke. Left your dirty needles at home and decided to get domestic? What a laugh." The woman only frowned with recognition and then confusion.
"I think you have me confused with someone else…" She began to say, but Eighteen cut her off as she advanced closer.
"How could I confuse you for anything but a strung out, wasted, burnt out old witch!" She shrieked. "Maybe none of these fools can see it," she motioned to the slowly gathering group of onlookers, "but it's clear as crystal to me. C'mon, pull up those pretty sleeves and show your true colors." A look of consternation crossed the man's face as he stepped forward.
"Young lady, I don't know what you think you're doing, but I can assure you…" Another shriek of rage from Eighteen cut him off. This time, there were no words, only noise to convey the purest rage she could fathom. He quickly fell back in line with his family, still clutching his now terrified daughter. As the girl began to cry louder, Eighteen's eyes locked with hers, and the expression on her face softened into pity.
"Don't be afraid," she whispered, "I'm going to help you." She looked into the man's eyes and continued speaking. "I'm going to take you away from here, and you'll never be abandoned again…never be hurt again…by anyone. Nobody will ever touch you, and nobody will ever walk by while you scream in the night!"
Tears ran down her face as a ki-ball formed in her hand. The family cowered in fear as she brought her hand up to eye level, finger pointed like an accuser, and fired. The blinding light incinerated the family in moments, destroying everything behind them. But before they disappeared into the next dimension, a change occurred for all to see.
The woman's blue eyes went dull and sank into her head. Her hair, dry to begin with, became even drier, as well as flat and frizzled. Her sleeves disappeared to reveal the tracked out veins of a perennial junkie. The man also changed, the black suit disappearing to reveal a body racked by rampant alcoholism. The children changed, their bodies wasted by malnutrition and bruises covering their skin. The truth was revealed as they dissolved into nothing.
When it was over, Eighteen turned to the people who had been cowering behind her. They all crouched on the tile floor with hands on their heads and stared at her like she was a monster. She only stared back, contempt set in her jaw and blazing from her eyes.
"You let this happen." She said. The people jumped in alarm, but stayed where they were, only looking and cowering. "You saw the truth, and simply let it all go on." She now turned fully toward them, one hand now raised in the air above her head. "And because of that, you're dead."
A blazing spire flamed from her body and jumped up through the ceiling, clawing for the heavens before it exploded, destroying the store and all its occupants in one terrific flash. Eighteen was lost in it all, the destruction of fools who deserved no pity because they gave none as she died each day before their eyes…
"Eighteen!" A voice cried through the cool silence. Eighteen opened her eyes and lifted her head from the shelf behind her. Everyone was gone.
Robbie stood at the end of the aisle, hands on hips and tail swishing nervously. When Eighteen looked over at him, a smile broke across his face, the first smile she had truly seen on him, ever, and one of the first she had seen in years of battles and massacres. She almost turned her head away. "Food's up! This place had a restaurant in the back, so I just turned on the grills and started making sausage. Then I found some pancakes and threw those on too. Anyway, after finding a bunch of other stuff like fruit and cereal, I've got a pretty good spread going, and I might need help finishing it all."
"Why do I highly doubt that?" Eighteen replied. Robbie just shrugged.
"Yeah, whatever. I'm sharing, like my mom taught me. So, you ready to get the day rolling?"
…..
So that's the 15th Chapter it took me two years to write. Meanwhile, you've all been waiting so patiently (as you sent reviews and private messages to my inbox to prod me along) for the story to continue. So here it is. It may be prideful of me, but I think I did something totally new in this chapter that I haven't done before and that many DBZ writers haven't done. Of course, I haven't read too much DBZ fiction lately so maybe I'm not the best person to be making that claim, but it definitely surpasses everything I've done in the past. Overall, I'm happy to present you the latest installment, and I eagerly await the comments of those who have been waiting so long.