Epilogue
"It's all the same, yeah
The excuses don't ever change
Wasted life, yeah
Too prone to hesitate
It's gone on much too long
I just sit and think
Analysing everything
Don't know what to do
Why, where, or how to
They say if you're ever stuck
In a rut
Just go with your gut
My reflection is very clear
Is to stare into the mirror
What's in front of me
A view of insecurity
This moment's wearing thin
It's now time to begin
It's time
It's time to begin
So much I kept inside
Never sharing, never trying
Every can't becomes
A means to an end
No more will I sit and wait
For my answer's in my fate
For now this will have to do
'Cause it's time"
Witness-Tryad
Epilogue
"This is the way it has to be," Mejai said softly as Amotto's mind grew foggy. She'd resisted his Mind Cloud as long as she'd could, but she'd long since reached her limits. The others collapsed around her and she sank heavily to her knees, the edges of her vision going black. Mejai turned his back to her and moved towards the two heavenly beings awaiting him.
"The way what has to be?" she demanded in a mumble. "Why...won't you tell me...what's going on?" He stood between the self-proclaimed God of Destruction and his Attendant and turned back to face her.
He chuckled and she frowned. He and the others were just dark shapes beyond her field of vision. "Sa'vta, most of these rules are out of my hands. I just do what needs to be done, and try to enjoy myself a little along the way. Besides, none of you are ready for what comes next for me. And be thankful for that."
"I don't-" Like a kick to the head her world was sent spinning around her. Her body melted beneath her and she was glued to the ground as white clouds and blue sky swirled into one another.
"Be thankful you get another chance...That nearly never happens." The words pierced through her chaotic world as darkness dropped over her and everything went quiet and dark, leaving her unable to even ponder their meaning.
A rough hand grabbed hers weakly but firmly.
Broco…?
DBZ
Seripa opened her eyes and sat up in a rush. She blinked in confusion as she took in the sight of so many either sitting in groggy slouches or lying flat-out unconscious.
"What the hell?" she mumbled as she spotted Seluri and Aurah lying unconscious with Zarbon and a large Flazerian female to either side of them. The Flazerian female was showing signs of stirring, but the former three were still deeply unconscious. She frowned, unable to wrap her head around what had happened. She couldn't really remember anything coherently after Bardock had been killed.
She remembered...a bipedal hairless feline and an effeminate...angel?
She frowned and shook her head firmly. No, that was ridiculous. She had to have dreamed it.
Right?
She climbed to her feet as the Flazerian groaned and opened mirrored eyes. She recognized Tettuce lying near Aurah and her eyes went wide with her surprise.
"I must be dead," she muttered as she looked around at the unconscious crowd of people.
"You're not," a voice said firmly from just behind her, making her jump and spin around to find Amotto glaring past her to the towering starship casting shadows over them.
"Amotto, what's-"
Amotto looked at her sharply, her expression fierce. She offered her friend a smile and nodded to the ship. "I'm taking that."
Seripa blinked and looked back at the ship with a frown. "What? Why?" She blinked again and looked towards the ship but stopped as she spotted Zether wearily climbing to his feet. She narrowed her eyes and transformed, the ground cracking beneath her feet. Her former rage at Bardock's assassination came rushing over her and she charged that aggression into pure power. Several people around her, some still unconscious and others half-awake, were thrown outwards from the shockwaves she was throwing out. She was vaguely away of Tettuce positioning himself between her and the unconscious form of Aurah.
She'd been interrupted before, but nothing was going to stop her from killing the Gylderian bastard this time around. Zether looked at her in surprise and she saw the apprehension in his gaze. She snarled and prepared to lunge at him.
Tettuce appeared in front of her and she growled at him as he glared at her. "Outta my way!" she snarled at him, malice dripping off every word.
"We need to talk," he said sternly. "Before you do something stupid."
Seripa's aura pulsed and the cracks spiderwebbed beneath her, her feet sinking into rubble as she clenched both fists tight. "Last warning!" she cried. "Outta my way or I'll take you down with him!"
A sudden pressure of power rose behind her as Amotto transformed as well. She placed a restraining hand on Seripa's shoulder and she looked over her shoulder to scowl back at her.
"What's this?" she demanded harshly. "You gonna keep me from my revenge, too?!"
Amotto shook her head. "Of course not. But it's not Zether who deserves your vengeance, as odd as that sounds."
"Odd is putting it lightly," Seripa snarled in a dangerous tone.
Amotto grinned back at her. "I know. But trust me. He's not your enemy. Your enemy is up there," she said as she pointed to the sky. "And that's why I intend to take that starship."
Seripa blinked and frowned as she looked up to the blue sky and then to the towering starship. "Who's my enemy then?" she asked as she looked back to Tettuce who had been distracted by a now-stirring Aurah; he was kneeling at her side. Beyond them Zether was sitting up, his golden eyes unblinking as they met hers evenly.
Amotto removed her hand and powered down. After a moment's hesitation Seripa did, too. "They're called Aquatians. Long story short they're building an army across Time by possessing the minds of some of the strongest beings throughout all of History."
Seripa looked at Amotto and blinked in utter disbelief. "You've got to be kidding me." It wasn't a question.
Her friend grinned her fierce grin again. "Afraid not."
"Is this true?" Aurah's voice asked. Seripa glanced at her to see her staring almost angrily up at Tettuce as he nodded slowly.
"It is."
"And what does this have to do with you and Zether?" Her luminescent eyes shifted to glare at the former General, who gave her a sheepish grin.
"Too much to tell right this instant, but Amotto is right to want to go after the Aquatians." He glanced around and met her gaze. She nodded to him and he looked at Seripa. "I don't know how this will end, but we're all a part of it now since they decided to possess Bardock and Zether. They involved us. I say we make them pay."
Seripa looked to where Bardock's motionless body lay all-but forgotten. She had seen Zether kill Bardock. Every bit of her common sense screamed that she should kill him slowly and painfully. She narrowed her eyes and looked sharply at the Gylderian.
His expression was solemn as he her met steely gaze. "I don't regret what I did, Seripa." He grinned as she absorbed that comment, her fists clenched so tight her knuckles had gone white. "Hate me now, but he can be brought back the same way we were."
She blinked and her anger faded. He jumped to his feet and smoothly brushed dirt from his golden armor. "He's not getting off that lightly. I still owe him a beating." That extinguished the last of her anger and despite herself she found she was smiling.
Amotto stood beside her and gave her shoulder a friendly nudge. "No rest for the weary," she said to Seripa as she looked around at her.
"I guess not." She sighed and looked towards the starship. "So where exactly are we going?"
Her friend gave her a mischievous grin and she raised both eyebrows as she looked at her in confusion.
Amotto chuckled and started walking towards the ship. "The coordinates to the Namekian Homeworld are stored in the ship's database. I'm willing to bet we'll find more Dragon Balls there." She chuckled and shot a glance over her shoulder. "I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to wait around another year for this planet's set to re-energize."
Seripa's mouth fell open into a wide grin and she took off into a full sprint, Amotto matching her pace immediately as she reached her. They shared knowing smirks as they ignored the voices calling after them.
DBZ
Etapa had picked her way through Gohan's demolished hut, her eyes wide at the destruction laying before her as nearby hilltops bore the distinct scorching of ki attacks. Trees had been uprooted in a trail leading deep into the nearby forest and there was no sign of Kakarot. Unfortunately she'd found Gohan's fresh grave beneath a nearby tree.
She'd woken suddenly in the ruins of Orange Star City after feeling the searing intensity of the killing blast heading her way to find no trace anywhere of any of the Ginyus. Understandably confused she had briefly searched the area for any signs of life before heading back to Gohan's house in the mountains. She had no idea what was going on or what had happened, so she figured it would be a good idea to check up on Kakarot and find out what Gohan knew.
Her first thought upon seeing the devastation was that the Ginyus had made their way here and destroyed the little hut, but she dismissed that thought quickly because she hadn't seen any other signs of destruction before reaching Mount Paozu.
But as night drew closer during her investigations, it quickly became apparent exactly what happened when she saw the remains of what had once been a moon just becoming visible with the setting of the sun. She had grimaced and glanced to the grave. Kakarot must have seen the moon and accidentally crushed old Gohan in his mindless rampage before traipsing through the forest.
And not recently, either. It had to have been several days at least, judging by Gohan's grave. So Kakarot was lost somewhere in the woods.
She rested. At dawn she packed some supplies and followed the trail of destruction deep into the forest. Though not as deep as it had originally appeared when just after a mile the trail abruptly ended and she was forced to search for signs of a lost toddler. It took her some time but she finally found tiny footsteps leading back towards the devastation.
She followed them back towards Gohan's hut but they abruptly vanished just outside of the forest and she felt helpless. Now she had no idea where the child could have gone. Had a predator picked him up? That seemed most likely but she saw no signs of large animals so she had nothing to go one. Eventually she took to the air and scoured the area for hours which eventually became days with her growing ever more desperate.
Finally she gave up, though it hurt to do so. She had no choice. She had to accept she was unlikely to find Kakarot like this. So she left Mount Paozu behind and made her way towards the People's Palace, unaware of anything that had transpired since her apparent death and resurrection.
What she couldn't know was that an old friend of Gohan's had decided to pay him a visit to find out the fate of his four-star Dragon Ball, following an event that had robbed him of his own three star ball. This old friend had stumbled upon the scene she'd found and had buried Gohan before finding Kakarot and spiriting him away mere moments before she had come upon the scene. She couldn't know because the old man had sensed her approach and had left hastily upon determining her power to be far greater than his own.
He couldn't know that she wasn't a threat to him, especially given his recent experience and subsequent theft of his Dragon Ball. He couldn't know the future he was about to see unfold, or just what significance the child he'd found would hold throughout existence. He would someday look back on this moment and wonder if he could have changed anything by doing even one thing differently.
But he could never know. No one ever knows what impact their actions will have. All they can do is hope for the best and bear witness.
Witness
(And so ends Witness for real. Sorry this took so long. I set it aside to focus on some other projects, one of which is the sequel I mentioned...
Fun fact: Zether, Falmer, Diamond, Berik, Nepu, Sushinae, Blythe, and probably some other ones I'm forgetting, are actually characters from my first ever fan fiction that I completely hand wrote over the course of three years in high school. Which I never translated digitally and absolutely will never do. I've still got the damn stories and they were all written on college-ruled paper and they total over 600 pages. FUCK going through that mess and revising it and then uploading it here. Nope. Never gonna do it. Besides I much prefer the newer versions.
Another fun fact: Tettuce's name is a pun within a pun. Because not only is it a pun on Lettuce, it's also a pun on the Japanese spelling of Turles, T-U-L-L-U-C-E, which is also a pun on Lettuce. So it's a Super Punny Pun. At least to me.
I remember when I started writing Witness. I went in with this kind of excitement because I hadn't written any stories in a couple years and I was eager to get back into the swing of things. Of course I was much more out of practice than I had imagined...Since, you know, it took seven years to write this damn thing.
I owe a HUGE thanks to Shadowmajin. I've mentioned him many times before and I really hope those of you that haven't will go check out his works. He's an amazing writer and he was a huge help in me getting this one finished. He's literally reviewed every chapter I've written from the first to the last.
And I don't honestly know if my next story is gonna take years to complete or if I'll finish it much quicker. Life is unpredictable and addiction sucks.
So yeah, if I ever seemed overly appreciative or just...I dunno...odd, in any [all] of my notes...I'm a still-recovering drug addict and this story is one of the too-few anchors that kept me from going too far down that path because it was always in the back of my mind: "gotta finish Witness…" When you feel you've got nothing left, even the smallest things will seem worth sticking around for.
Kids, don't do drugs. I do not advocate trying them.
Adults...so long as you're consenting…
But seriously, we're all human and humans do some weird things to get their jollies. I'll freely admit I'm basically a hippy. I'm a recovering drug addict warring with severe bouts of Depression from years of {insert white trash cliched experience here} and I've seen and done things I ain't proud of.
But yeah. When I started Witness I was far down the path of drug experimentation and on my way into addiction. It happens fast, that's why some people don't survive addiction. By the time you realize you're addicted, it's usually too late.
Some of us get lucky. I've been clean a few years now, but it's not something that ever truly goes away. Anyone who's smoked cigarettes and quit those will understand what it's like. Or can at least get an idea. Drugs are...well, they're fantastic. They make you feel fantastic, anyway. But they're really not.
Again, I'm a big hippy. I've totally got this whole Dark Zen thing going and it makes me feel good. Makes me feel like a real person and that was probably my biggest problem for a long time, I think.
Rural life is...contained and fixed...And judgey. And being yourself was...frowned upon if it didn't include a large belt buckle and a can of snuff and I couldn't accept myself because I wasn't accepted, even though I never really wanted to be accepted...Make sense?
No, of course not. Lol
Anyway, I'm a deranged individual with a mind that's all over the place and I have the personality of a god damned squirrel. Partly the drugs, partly OCD, partly ADD, partly because IDGAF.
But really, I do give a fuck. This may be just another fanfiction on the great wide Interwebz, but in some ways it helped save my life and that's because of all you that have read, reviewed, followed and just kept coming back. That actually meant something to me and still does.
I've wanted to finish Witness for my own sake, but for y'all's as well.
And maybe I should just finish my ramblings here with this: sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all for reading this story and finding some enjoyment in it. I don't think I can ever really express what that truly means to me. So thanks.)
I.L.
