Gohan lingered through the dusty tomes that were kept in the ancient ruins beneath New Namek. He grabbed a book with a crimson spine and drew it out of its confinement. He opened the book and glanced through the pages. He couldn't read a single word. While he wasn't versed in the Namakian language, he could tell that these books weren't written in it. There were glyphs and symbols similar to those painted on Dende's staff. Maybe after they dealt with Lord Slug Gohan would ask Dende to teach him Namekian and perhaps even some magic. It couldn't hurt to have knowledge like that under his belt. Gohan slid the tome back into its place before striding back into the common room.
Everyone's power levels were suppressed severely in an attempt to hide from Slug. The tension it put on the air was undeniable, like a ravening shark beneath a frozen lake. The energy pushed and whipped, wishing to be free, but was locked under the surface with no hope to escape. The faces around the room were tired with eyes that stared but did not see. It was a pitiful sight.
"Dende…you really returned, did you? I almost thought you were gone. You are a reckless child, though perhaps not quite as reckless as your brother was." Rasped an older Namekian. His skin was a dark forest green, and his forehead weighed down by a host of wrinkles. Dende's eyes were distant at the mention of his brother. Gohan had overheard the monster known as Medamatcha during his and Dende's fight. Dende's brother whose essence he kept with him so Slug couldn't have it. Gohan could only think of one thing that that could mean, but he had kept quiet. It wasn't his place to intrude on such a matter.
"Yes, I have returned, Elder. And with me I have brought the Super Saiyan." Dende said, gesturing to Gohan. Gohan waved sheepishly at the room of about a dozen namekians. One could never be sure what to say to a room full of people that considered you a heroic savior. The elder shuffled over to Gohan, craning his neck to inspect Jim.
"I heard the Super Saiyan had a spiky golden head and blue eyes. Also, that he wore orange. You don't look like any of those things to me." The elder complained, jabbing a clawed finger into his stomach. Gohan looked to Dende for help. Dende shrugged. It wasn't like he could rebuke any of the elders' words as they were all true.
"It's my hair that gets spiky and blonde, not…my head." Gohan said, rolling a few strands of ebony hair through his fingers to show him. "And my eyes turn blue. It's a transformation. I'm not like that all the time, well, not lately. Dende asked me to drop the transformation so Slug's sensors couldn't find us." Gohan explained. He elected not to try and argue about the clothing. It didn't really feel worth it. The elder namekian grumbled but accepted the explanation.
"That boy Slug, why if Gastro was here, he'd give that upstart a right whipping across his backside!" The elder exclaimed. He was very different from other namekians Gohan had met. Perhaps there was a namekian form of dementia?
"Gastro, the Battle Magic guy?" Gohan asked. The namekian lifted his head with wide eyes, clearly surprised that Gohan was familiar with the name.
"That's right. Quite an old one, there. Most of these young ones have never heard of Gastro. I know more than a lot of people here, though. Gastro was Slug's master; he taught the sprout magic. Slug was a prodigy. He learned about everything Gastro had ever created in a matter of years. He had a thirst, though. A dark unquenchable desire to test the limits of the arcane." The elder rambled on. Gohan listened aptly, and Dende too leaned forwards to gain the information. His mouth hung open in awe. Dende had told Gohan that they didn't know much about Slug aside from the era that he was possibly from. It was clear that the old namekian was holding out on him.
"Elder, why have you never told me any of this?" Dende asked.
"Is it really all that relevant? Slug's past doesn't change our circumstances." The elder said with a huff, "But there's no point in hiding it any longer, either. Yes, even though Slug was of the Warrior Clan, he was Gastro's student. His final student. He was brilliant, doing things with the magic that Gastro never could've dreamed of."
"Like forced fusion." Dende said with a growl. The elder nodded with a sagely remorse.
"Yes, his ambition darkened his soul. Slug sought ways to expand already existing namekian rituals, such as the fusion ritual. He discovered that there was a way to rewrite the ritual, to bypass the need for consent. It was his own brother that he first absorbed, that poor lad. His brother was of the Dragon Clan with a decent breadth of knowledge and power. The fusion only served to bolster his evil desires. Slug was banished by Gastro, his own teacher. It was before the cataclysm ever struck. Why, at that point, a namekian hadn't been banished for who knows how long. After that, Gastro forbade the usage of his magic, locking it away with enchantments and wards until you managed to break through them, Dende." The elder summarized, shaking his head with a wry look.
"Does Slug have any weaknesses, elder?" Gohan asked. Gohan couldn't say with any certainty whether he could take on Slug in a fight, having not been around the namekian to gauge his strength. He was also almost entirely unaware of how to combat magic which was a weakness on Gohan's part. Even if Gohan was able to physically overcome Slug, the villain might have some underhanded arcane power to turn the tides.
"Not in any traditional sense. He's weak to a metal hand pounding his skull silly, I'd say. In terms of magic, he's skilled enough to counter or nullify pretty much anything that might be thrown at him, unless his opponent was of a similar skill and strength." The elder said, turning his head to look at Dende, "Your skill is prodigious, Dende, but you don't have the centuries of experience and study Slug does, but…" The elder said, trailing off and stroking his chin.
"What? Do you think I have some sort of advantage?" Dende asked. His eyes were wide, clearly searching for something in the elder's face. Dende had brought Gohan here in the hopes that he would be able to take on Slug regardless of the banished namekian's power, but Gohan sensed that he didn't want Gohan to defeat him. Dende wanted to take Slug down himself, that much was evident. Gohan was a weapon to hopefully weaken Slug, but there was a fire of vengeance in his ally's eyes. Was it vengeance for his people, though, or was it more personal, for his brother?
"Advantage? No, nothing like that. A chance though, maybe. If you can destroy his focus, it may weaken him enough for you to be the superior spellcaster." The elder explained. Gohan raised an eyebrow at the elder's words. Admittedly, he wasn't really sure what a focus was.
"A focus?" Gohan asked.
"Like my staff. The tool a namekian mage uses to communicate with the planet. I wasn't aware that Slug had a focus though. I thought he did all of his magic by stealing the planet's power. I figured a focus would do him no good." Dende rationalized.
"He does a lot of that, yes. It won't cut it all the time, though. Some spells and tricks Slug can't do with stolen power, he has to get it the traditional way." The elder explained.
"How could he possibly get permission from the planet, after all that he's done?" Dende said with a fury. It boggled his mind that his world would even think to lend an ounce of willing power to the tyrant that was Slug, not after all that he had done to it.
"He's got a special focus, you see. That crystal orb harnessed to the fool's chest. That's his focus. It's Derth Crystal, mined from the caves twisting deep down underneath the planet's surface. When struck, it makes a peculiar resonance, a singing of sorts. A song that is in tune with the song of our lovely New Namek. He communicates with the planet through manipulations of that crystal. The planet doesn't have any way to tell that it's Slug manipulating the song. It's a nasty little trick, it is. He used to have two of those things, too. That ridiculous helmet he wore had one as well. Your brother managed to destroy that one when he tried to take Slug's head off." The elder explained. Dende's frustration was writ across his face. He looked like a demon, the way the air hissed between his sharp fangs that were revealed with a snarl.
"How dare he…to steal the planet's power outright and then trick it into giving him even more. The planet probably thinks it has been giving its power to a worthy warrior to save it." Dende said with a growl. He slammed his fist into the stone table beside him, spidery cracks racing across its surface. Dende quickly got up and strode towards the exit, his scarf whipping wildly behind him. "Thank you for the insight, elder." Dende said as he trudged up the stairs.
"That boy. I wish he didn't have to carry such burden with him." The elder sighed, hobbling towards the back of the ruins to rest. Gohan strode for the steps, emerging underneath the eerie, sunless sky of New Namek. Dende stood there allowing the wind to harass him, his clothes tugging away from his body. His green skin was cast an unnatural shade of crimson by the malicious sky above. The normal green skies and three suns of New Namek did well to compliment the natural tone of a namekian's skin. The drained sky of this day did no such favors.
"Dende, I don't mean to pry, but I've been able to deduce that your…holding something back from me. I know it's not really any of my business, but I can tell something is eating away at you. Gohan said, approaching carefully. He knew how careful you had to be when speaking with a person so burdened by rage. He hadn't spoken to his own mother in over a decade for he was still too embarrassed at how he had blown up at her. All she had suggested was that Gohan ease up on the training, to come home more often. Not like how she had been in his youth, demanding that Gohan's studies took precedence over the safety of Earth. She just wanted her son to be happy and safe, and Gohan had screamed at her with all the fury in his soul. She didn't deserve it.
"You know what's eating me up, Gohan? The fact that the tyrant that is Slug is out there, stealing our planet's energy and then stealing it more. The fact that despite our people being nothing but peaceful and benevolent, we keep being assailed by tyrants and murderers, conquerors and murderers! The fact that after all this time I'm still not strong enough to deal with it myself! I have to rely on an alien warrior to get the job done for me. I harbor my brother's own power and I'm still not strong enough." Dende roared, the anger dying down into a regretful sigh by the time he finished.
"Your brother, what happened to him?" Gohan asked. Gohan knew what it was like to be haunted by loss. Dende was just as haunted by the decimation of the namekians as Gohan was by that of the humans, of course. The loss of his brother was a personal loss, though. It was a driving force for Dende, just like how Gohan had first ascended to Super Saiyan at the loss of his friends. It was something that Dende carried with him in every action, through every day. A loss that dragged at his ankles like a set of chains, begging to be noticed, begging not to be forgotten.
"My brother, Cargo, you remember him? Frieza killed him personally, right before you saved me. He was a prodigy. He was one of the strongest members the Warrior Clan had seen in generations. He was even stronger than Nail was. He was the one who was leading the assault against Slug and his Demon Clan, back when Slug hadn't absorbed so many of our people that his power was insurmountable. Cargo had challenged him to a duel, one on one, no magic. From one Warrior Clan member to another. A Warrior's Duel is a tradition seldom used, and my brother was foolish enough to think that Slug would abide by its rules." Dende sighed.
"Your brother actually fought Slug, head on?" Gohan asked. He remembered Cargo, vaguely. A namekian child a bit stouter than Dende, who had been struck down by Frieza's diabolical energy. He must have been so young, less than a year even, to have been that small and be a part of the Warrior Clan.
"He did and he was winning. It was incredible. We thought Cargo was actually going to free us of the damned despot. Slug cheated, though, when he noticed that my brother had the upper hand. He began to draw on magic. Cargo noticed and interrupted the ritual by shattering that dumb crystal on his head. Neither of us knew that it was a focus of his, but it definitely made him mad. He went back on his word and all of Slug's Demon Clan members ganged up on him. They beat him within an inch of his life, but they didn't kill him. Slug planned on stealing his power and taking it for himself." Dende explained. The words spilled out of his mouth as his eyes gazed into the distance. Gohan wasn't even sure if Dende remembered he was here. He could see it, how Dende was lost in the memory.
"You fused with him, didn't you? That's why your base power is so high despite your being a member of the Dragon Clan. You carry his power with you." Gohan realized. As he spoke, Dende's eyes came back into focus, and tears fell freely.
"He begged me to. So that his power would rest with someone he loved and not with that monster. I fused with him and managed to beat Slug and his cronies back enough to give me time to escape. There wasn't any time to heal him. He would have killed and absorbed both of us before I could do anything. I carry Cargo's legacy, his power, and I'm still too weak to save us all." Dende growled, slamming his staff into the ground in frustration. Gohan resonated with his namekian ally. He had felt the exact same way when he had transformed into a Super Saiyan only to still be too weak to kill the androids.
"We'll kill him, Dende. Together, you and me. We'll avenge Cargo I swear." Gohan said, resting a firm hand on his friend's shoulder. Dende looked back at him, eyes glinting with gratitude.
"Right, let's kill those bastards."
Trunks nearly dropped the sword as the deep, soothing voice echoed around his skull. The Brave Sword, it had said. Was he imagining things? Did he just pick up some crazy, cursed sword like one of those manga protagonists? Maybe he should have listened more to his mom when she told him not to touch unfamiliar things. Maybe there was just someone else in the cave that he hadn't noticed. Someone who was so good at hiding their power level that Trunks couldn't sense them whatsoever.
"Who was that? Where are you?" Trunks called aloud. There was no answer aside from his own voice bouncing around the empty cavern in an echo. Trunks examined the sword further. It reflected a pure, white light across the length of the blade even though the only light source in the chamber was Trunks's own energy. The wrapping around the grip looked like it had been oiled recently and no part of the blade looked as if it had been touched by rust or wear of any sort. It was like someone had just come in and set this sword down moments before Trunks had entered.
"You are looking at me, young man." The voice spoke once more, its words drilling directly into Trunks's mind. There was no doubt about it now. The sword was talking to him in his head. Trunks had led a pretty strange life so fat, he had to admit. He was the half alien child of an evil conqueror from space. His home world's population had been razed by two insanely powerful robots who looked like teenagers with no fashion sense. His mentor was a legendary messiah with a legendary power who had traveled off of Earth in an attempt to save another alien race from destruction. There was all of that and yet the talking sword was still the strangest thing he had ever come across.
"But you're a sword." Trunks said dumbly. What else was he supposed to say in a situation like this? Swords weren't supposed to talk.
"I am not a sword. I am a spirit. The sword is just my home. Here, perhaps this will help you." The sword said. Trunks lowered the sword as the air directly in front of him shimmered and a figure appeared. It was an apparition of some sort. Trunks could see right through their translucent form if he focused hard enough. The apparition was tall, maybe even taller than Gohan was. He wore a dark blue tunic that was accentuated by a gold belt and an orange cloak hung from his shoulders. Underneath the hood of the cloak Trunks saw locks of violet hair spill out.
"You're a spirit…trapped in a sword." Trunks said, still trying to grasp the situation.
"Something like that, yes." The spirit confirmed. His words no longer entered directly into Trunks's mind, but they still echoed around the room with a ghostly reverb.
"So, this isn't a magical talking sword?" Trunks asked.
"The sword is magic, but it does not talk." The apparition confirmed. Trunks nodded slowly. That was good. It was just a spirit trapped in a magic sword rather than a magic sword that talked. Trunks had no idea how a spirit could be trapped in a sword. That also had to be magic of some sort if Trunks had to guess. The spirit didn't look human, either. Where could this sword possibly have come from?
"Who are you? It's not every day a person comes across a magic spirit sword. There has to be a story here." Trunks said. At this point, finding Gero's laboratory was all but forgotten to him. Videl was out there searching for it, and he was sure she would understand that Trunks had to stop his search to interrogate the magic sword in the cave.
"Indeed, it isn't. In fact, no one on this planet has come across me since my original wielder died. There has been no one with a stalwart enough will, a pure enough heart, for me to reveal myself to them. You must be a special individual indeed, young man. Who am I, you ask? I am Koh, the last wizard and once guardian of the planet Konats." The spirit answered. Trunks was familiar with the role of a guardian. Gohan had told him of the once guardian of Earth, Kami, who had perished alongside his other half, Piccolo. The guardian's duty was evidently to watch over their planet, to keep it safe from harm and serve as a spiritual guide for their people. What had happened to this supposed guardian that he found himself inside of a sword on another planet entirely?
"Well, it's nice to meet you Koh. I am Trunks, warrior of Earth." Trunks said. It was strange to introduce himself to a sword, but he didn't want to be rude. The sword had introduced itself first, after all. Was it rude to hold the sword, knowing that a spirit was housed in the blade? Trunks pondered the question but kept hold of the sword anyways.
"Warrior indeed. I can sense your power even through my steel body. You carry saiyan blood, don't you? Would your name happen to be Vegeta?" The sword asked. Trunks was startled to hear that name from the blade. He had heard stories of his father from his mother and from Gohan, but the man had died before Trunks could ever come to know him. Did Koh somehow know his father? It wasn't impossible. His father had traveled all across the universe, so it was possible he had come across the planet Konats in his ventures. It was less likely that his father had left the planet unscathed.
"No, my name is Trunks. Vegeta was my father's name." Trunks said. The spirit nodded slowly, absorbing the information.
"I see. I had sensed the royal blood flowing through your veins. Vegeta is an ancient saiyan name possessed by many kings of the planet. It was merely a guess on my part. Interesting to see a saiyan so far away from Planet Vegeta." Koh mused. His eyes slowly scanned Trunks, eyebrows knitted together in scrutiny. From what Trunks had been told, he didn't look like much of a saiyan. That was probably what had Koh so curious.
"I'm sorry if this is a prudent question, Mister Koh, but…how are you here? Why?" Trunks asked the guardian's spirit. The question snapped Koh out of his musings, and he looked back into Trunks's eyes as he considered what the young man had said. It was hard to read his face and Trunks wasn't sure if it was because he was a ghost or because he was just like that.
"It is a long and ancient story, Trunks son of Vegeta, involving demons and gods, betrayals and sacrifices, heroes and villains. It is a grand story that I would be happy to tell you another time, but first I would like to address how you are here." Koh said. The statement confused Trunks. Why he was there didn't seem to be that important. It was just a random cave in the North Mountains. In fact, Trunks was surprised that someone hadn't come across this place and found the sword sooner.
"Well, Mister Koh, a friend and I are looking for a laboratory around this area. I just happened to stumble across this cave." Trunks admitted with a shrug. Koh shook his head.
"You misunderstand, young Trunks. I have lay dormant inside of the Brave Sword for hundreds of years. I have inlaid this cave with enchantments so that only a warrior possessing great strength and a pure heart could find me. The Brave Sword was originally wielded by a Konatsian warrior named Tapion Slayer of Hirudegarn, my pupil, for whom the blade was forged. It is a blade of great strength and magic and after my pupil died, his efforts expended against Hirudegarn, I wanted to make sure the Brave Sword would be inherited by someone worthy." Koh explained. Trunks shook his head as he was barraged with this ancient information. An ancient alien warrior who had slain some Hirudegarn on their planet hundreds of years ago? A sword of magic and strength for which he was worthy. Trunks felt like he had been thrown into some old fantasy book.
"You think that I'm worthy, Mister Koh?" Trunks asked, his voice barely a whisper. Even if it was by some strange sword spirit that he had never met before, Trunks felt relief spread across his body like a cool wind. The acknowledgement of his strength, even in such an obscure and abstract form, was pleasing.
"At the very least, Trunks, I would like you to wield me for a time to prove that you are. If I deem you of sufficient character then perhaps I will later unveil my secrets to you." Koh bargained. It was a hard bargain indeed. Trunks had no way to tell if this sword was some sort of trick he didn't understand. He had no way to tell if this spirit who named himself Koh was truthful in his words. It was clear that Koh's knowledge was vast, and Trunks had a good feeling about him. His hand tightened around the grip of the sword, and he nodded.
"I accept, Mister Koh. I won't let you down." Trunks confirmed. He felt a sudden feeling of warmth wash over him and a startling vigor awaken in his bones. This was going to be very confusing to explain to mom and Gohan. Trunks had to wonder if Dende would return at any point. The namekian was obviously versed in magic and he had to wonder what he would make of this sword with its magic secrets.
"I am elated to hear you say so. I will speak with you again later; it seems you have company. Now that you have arrived, my wards have served their purpose and have vanished. Luck be to you in your search." Koh said. He did something unfamiliar with his hands and Trunks couldn't decide whether it was some incantation or a Konatsian farewell. Either way, Koh faded into a thousand motes of sparkling light that died in the darkness of the cave.
"You forget how to sense energy or something, kid? I've been trying to signal you for like fifteen minutes." Videl's voice echoed throughout the empty cave. Trunks turned around to face her. She raised an eyebrow and didn't even try to suppress a giggle as she saw the sword in his hand. "Where'd ya get the sword?"
"Uh, over there in the floor." Trunks said, pointing to the spot where the blade had formerly been. Videl looked past him to where the gouge was in the cave floor.
"You pulled some random sword out of the ground in a cave? What are you Emperor Artor or something. Off to form the Knights of the Square Table?" Videl said with a cascade of snorts and giggles. Trunks didn't exactly get the reference, but he could tell that she was making fun of him. Trunks rolled his eyes and pushed past the giggling woman, bracing himself in the cold wind and squinting in the harsh sunlight. He felt as if he couldn't have been in that cave for more than five or ten minutes, but the sun had angled significantly in the sky.
"Did you find something?" Trunks asked. He held up the sword to witness it in the daylight. The sun glistened off of its sharpened edge with a startling brightness.
"Yeah, follow me."
"You're sure this cloaking spell will work? Slug is like some arcane genius or something like that, right? He won't see right through it?" Gohan asked. The two of them were trying to set a plan in motion to take down Slug and his two minions. Dende had suggested the idea to use what he called a veil. It was apparently some sort of powerful spell that would hide them from detection, like the kind that Wings and Medamatcha had used to get the drop on them. The young namekian mage crouched down, drawing sigils into the dirt as he worked his spell.
"Well, if all goes according to plan Slug shouldn't even be there. Hopefully we'll just be going up against Angila and Zeeun. If we had to fight all three of them at once, it would be tricky. Those two are much more resourceful and adept at magic than those idiots we took down earlier." Dende said. Gohan wondered how strong these other two Demon Clan members could be in comparison. Wings hadn't been a match for Gohan. He wouldn't have been even if Gohan hadn't mastered the Super Saiyan state. From what he saw of Medamatcha in his fight with Dende, the same was true for him. "Maybe Slug could see through my spell, but not those two. They might be superior in magic compared to their fallen allies, but they're nothing."
"How strong are these two in comparison to the others?" Gohan asked. He wasn't sure if Dende was aware of the full breadth of his foes' powers, but it couldn't hurt to ask.
"They're more powerful, that's for certain. Angila less so than Zeeun. That ogre is Slug's personal disciple. With all the power Slug has given him he has to be at least as powerful as Frieza's third form. Stronger even, maybe." Dende said. That was nothing to Gohan. He could deal with these lackeys with no issue. Then came the problem that was Slug. Dende seemed to be pretty confident that it was best to get the Demon Clan members out of the way before they could face Slug with any certainty.
"Dende, you know I could deal with these guys in no time flat. You want them out of the way, so they don't interfere in our fight with Slug I understand but…why? How strong exactly is Lord Slug, Dende? I can't sense his power from here, so he must have some sort of way of hiding his and his people's energy. But you know, don't you? You've been fighting him for so long, you have to at least have an estimate." Gohan said. Even if you can't sense a person's energy the way Gohan could, there was always a way to gauge someone's strength. When wills and fists clashed, the soul measured strength. Dende didn't match Gohan's gaze and Gohan saw his jaw tighten in anger, in discomfort.
"I don't know, Gohan. He's…too strong for me to measure. He has the combined power of hundreds of my brothers along with who knows how much of the planet's energy. I don't think he's as strong as you, Gohan, but he might be close." Dende admitted. There it was. The confirmation. Slug had become so abominably powerful from his energy theft that he had even risen to the levels of a Super Saiyan. Dende wanted the Demon Clan out of the way because he knew he wouldn't be able to deal with the two of them while Gohan battled Slug. It was smart, Gohan couldn't blame him.
"We have a saying back on Earth, you know. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." Gohan said with a chuckle. He was trying to reassure Dende that even if Slug may be close to his power, Gohan was still stronger. He would still come out on top.
"I don't know what either of those things are, Gohan." Dende said. Gohan frowned. He hadn't thought about that. Dende finished his spell, and his friend's outline became translucent. Dende had said that he worked the spell so that the two of them would still be able to see and sense each other, if vaguely. It was funny, seeing the grass sway through Dende's semi-visible form.
"Let's go."
Trunks and Videl stood before a massive iron door, its two sides interlocking with each other, surrounded by dozens of shining iron rivets. Trunks raised his free hand and rapped his knuckles against the bulwark. The thuds were quiet, being absorbed into the thick iron.
"This stuff is thick. It's gonna take some force to bust it down." Trunks admitted.
"What, we can't hack into it or something? Maybe there's like a voice password or something." Videl suggested. Trunks shook his head.
"Maybe my mom could hack into it, not me. I've picked up some robotics and whatnot from her but even I don't know how to hack into a giant slab of steel." Trunks sniped. Videl rolled her eyes and sighed.
"Fine, do it the hard way, musclehead." She spoke. Trunks nodded; he would do just that. He raised a fist and laced his bones and muscles with roaring energy. He cracked his neck and raised a leg as he through his entire body weight forwards, through his shoulder and down his arm. Into his fist and finally releasing against the thick gray iron. The metal crumpled beneath his fist, leaving a knuckle shaped outline, and exploded backwards into the room beyond. Trunks nodded with satisfaction and the two of them entered the room.
It was an eerie chamber, like a haunted reflection of his mother's own workshop. There were the same iron worktables and loose tools but they were smeared a ruddy brownish-red that Trunks could only assume was dried blood. The lights above flickered every so often, giving the lab an unsettling feeling. On one side of the room there were four chambers that were labeled with the numbers sixteen through twenty. As was expected, the chambers that bore the numbers seventeen and eighteen were empty, their doors lying on the floor haphazardly. Within the chamber for nineteen was some sort of cybernetic skeleton that was outfitted with metal panels and unsecured wires. It must have been an unfinished project of Gero's. Trunks was glad at that moment that the androids escaped when they did. For a third one of them to have been on the loose? The idea was horrifying. The chamber that was labeled sixteen was still closed, showing no sign of tampering. The one that really drew Trunks's focus was the chamber that was labeled with the number twenty.
"Is that…a head?" Videl asked, the words accompanied by a retch. In the chamber was the decapitated head of an older man. He had long, bushy white hair with an untamed mustache to match. His skin was wrinkled and covered with liver spots and atop his head was a cylindrical black hat that was adorned with the symbol of the Red Ribbon Army. Most curious were the wires that were sticking out of the man's decapitated neck.
"This must have been Gero. I guess he turned himself into an android…and the androids killed him when they made their exit." Trunks said with a grimace. It matched the androids MO, that was for sure. Trunks took his mind off of the decapitated head and began to make his way around the room. There was a plethora of schematics for machines and inventions that Trunks didn't understand. He was sure his mother would, so he decided to make things simple on himself and rolled up every blueprint and schematic he came across and stuffed them into a crate that had contained assorted mechanical bits before he dumped them out.
"Hey, come look at this." Videl said. Trunks looked up to see the woman on the other side of the room. Her eyes were wide at the sheets of paper on the table before her. Trunks strolled over to take a look at whatever it was that had so enraptured her attention. They were missing persons reports, two of them. One had the image of a young woman with bleach blonde hair and a silver lip ring who had a largely uninterested look on her face. The other held the image of a young man with identical features but with raven black hair and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, the smoke obscuring half of his face in the picture. Trunks recognized the two people on the posters. There was no doubt about it, those were the androids.
"Lapis and Lazuli, nineteen years old. Reported missing from Easy City, last seen at Kregg's Bar." Trunks said, his voice barely a whisper as he read the reports. He wasn't prepared for the flood of realization that dawned on him. The androids weren't androids at all. They had been wrong about them all along. Those two weren't machines that had been built from the ground up to destroy all of them. They were people. They were two delinquents that Gero kidnapped from East City and turned into killing machines. They were vengeful cyborgs that were out to take revenge on the world for hurting them. His head hurt from the realization. The realization that the evil androids that he had come to loathe with all of his being were just two hurt teenagers.
"Wow, who would have thought? Even after everything they did to our world…it almost makes me feel bad for them" Videl said, and Trunks couldn't help but sympathize. He was stricken from his thoughts as he felt an entirely unfamiliar energy flare to life. It was baffling and it almost hurt Trunks to sense. It was like a dozen different energy signatures had been crammed into one place and burst to life. It didn't make any sense and it was overpowering Trunks's ability to sense energy. Videl was similarly stricken, clutching her head as a headache began to drive its way into her mind. Trunks was caught off guard yet again as he began to sense something familiar. It was Gohan's energy, jammed in there along with all of the others. It didn't make any sense; Trunks had watched Gohan and Dende leave Earth. There was no way Gohan could have returned without them knowing and even if he had what would he be doing here?
The bundle of energy was approaching, rising from somewhere underground. It lashed out, each different energy signature spiking out in a different direction. Trunks forged ahead towards the energy while Videl stayed behind clutching her pounding skull. Nestled on the other side of the room was a set of stairs spiraling down into the darkness. Trunks had never seen a real monster before, but the thing that crept up from those stairs fit what he would have imagined. The creature that bore the chimeric energy towered above Trunks even hunched as it was, and its thick, needled tail slithered across the floor behind it. Its skin was dark green, chitinous like an insect, and mottled with black spots. Its eyes were slits, the sign of a dangerous predator. There were many other strange features of the monster that approached from the stairwell, but one took precedence in Trunks's mind.
It was injured, violet blood spilling from a variety of cuts across its body. It breathed a heavy breath, filled with clicks that sounded unhealthy. Its fingers twitched weakly, and its pupils dilated and constricted as it approached Trunks. About two feet before it reached him, the creature collapsed to its hands and knees, its breath having grown shakier.
"Help…me…"