Chapter 4
Nearly two years had passed since the events around the alien warrior Tapion and the demonic creature Hildegarn.
After the battle against the monster, only Gohan, Trunks and the Androids had remained out of the fighters. Just like it had been before.
Like Gohan had predicted, the Androids had been back less than a week later.
On the first look, things were like they had been before.
But something had changed.
In their initial rampage, after they first appeared twelve years ago, the Androids had completely destroyed five larger cities and over a dozen smaller settlements within just a few days.
They appeared without warning at one place after the other, blew up buildings and entire districts, killed humans by the thousands, devastated everything and when they had enough, blew the entire towns off the face of the planet... and killing off any survivors...
... and they had also killed the Z-fighters and two human armies that had tried to stop them...
... all in all nearly ten million people in five days.
After that however the Androids had `slowed down´ their reign of destruction. They had not longer been targeting major cities regulary and had not actually completely destroyed any of them anymore in the following years.
This however was no act of mercy by any means.
As Seventeen himself had stated more than once that they did not want to destroy humanity `too quickly´. Because if there were no more humans left, they would have nothing to entertain themselves with anymore.
That of course did not mean that the Androids were peaceful the rest of the time. They usually randomly showed up somewhere nearly every day, just caused some mayhem and destruction, maybe blew up one or two buildings, killed a number of people, just enough to quench their first for destruction and left again.
From time to time they destroyed a town completely. But that only happened once or twice every year.
For ten years, attacks where they actually wiped out entire cities at once had so far been the exception
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Now however they had, alone in the first year after the battle against Hildegarn, destroyed more than fifteen towns and ten more in the current year. Not to mention hundreds of more attacks on remote settlements, refugee groups, militaries etc.
And their rampage showed no signs of stopping.
Their first target had been the already badly damaged East City that they had wiped off the face of the Earth. Then followed Boulder City in the Northern Districts and Gailtown in the South... and many others.
It was clear that the Androids had started another wave of complete destruction around the planet.
Gohan had no illusion about the fact that they did it right now was not a direct response from them for the foiling of their plan to use Jaco´s space-ship to reach other planets.
But he also knew that it had it had always only been a question of time until it had happened.
The Androids had also made it clear that their goal was to destroy the human civilization and eventually the human race itself. They just took their time with it. But it was always only a question of time until they stepped up their game again.
If it had not been this what triggered it, it would have been something else.
But that didn´t mean he didn´t feel terrible about it. The Androids were devastating the Earth and killing millions and he was unable to stop them.
He had become stronger after the Hildegarn battle. But it was still far from enough.
Gohan had faced them seven times during this last year. Whenever he had been quick enough to react to one of their attacks. But he had never been able to really do anything besides helping some survivors escape.
A few times Gohan had been close to death himself. Depending on how well he fought, how lucky he was or how much the Androids were in the mood to `play around´ with him.
At the very least the Androids had been stopped from getting loose on the rest of the galaxy, he thought.
As little of a consolation that was right now. If the Androids continued their rampage in this speed, they would wipe out half of the human race within the next year. Somehow they needed to get stopped.
Gohan knew he needed to get better or everything would be lost. And if he couldn´t, there was only one other person left who eventually could have the power to defeat the Androids.
But he did not want to leave this burden to Trunks.
This chapter is a short interlude.
The next full chapter will probably be ready later today or by tomorow.
Authors Note: The idea of the Androids `taking it slow´ for the first decade with their destruction is my fan explanation for why during the Trunks Special there are still some places completely intact 13 years after they first appeared.