FicWad

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters nor do I lay any claim to the series and intellectual property they're a product of. No money is made off of this.

Author's note: The main character in this is not Trunks. Although he's mentioned in passing, it's actually Juuhachigou (Android Eighteen). For some unknowable reason FicWad doesn't have a character tag for her, so I just used him. Interestingly enough, Sharpner has one. Go figure. Feedback is genuinely appreciated. Thanks for reading!

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I've killed. A lot.

I've killed men, I've killed children, I've killed women. Fathers, daughters, brothers, sisters... I could tell you the number, it's a big one. You could say I'm a murderer I suppose. I'm not, not in any true sense of the word, that's my brother's title, I just tag along.

Honestly, and I'm being sincere here, sometimes I wish the humans were all dead.

In the beginning they fought, they had courage, they thought they could win, but then of course we took away their toys; crushed their tanks, blew their aeroplanes out of the sky like so much confetti. Then they ran.

My opinion of them increased somewhat.

They hid from us then, scurried and huddled in their buildings, behind their concrete walls and within their bunkers. As though that would protect them. Please.

We made them their tombs.

'24'

That's when they came. We knew. We'd been waiting for them. My brother and I were their assassins.

I can't help the smile that curves my lips.

The tall one, Piccolo, that's what he'd called himself. Funny name. He was brave.

The short bald one. He was kind of cute; cute in a pathetic, meager sort of way. I regret shooting him through the heart. I really do.

The one with the third eye. You'd think he would've seen Juunanagou's fist coming. He didn't.

None of them did.

The one with the hair, and the ego, he was arrogant in addition to being short - an amusing combination to be sure. Perhaps he was compensating for something? Who could guess what.

The little man irritated me. Egotistical ranting notwithstanding, there was something in the way he spoke, and the way he looked at both Juunanagou and myself, as if he could, as if he would.

We left him in a shallow pool of his own blood.

Together they'd thought they could beat us. They were wrong.

'25'

But I'm straying from the point, aren't I?

Everyone that has raised a hand against us, be they Goku's friends, or their pathetic humans, they fell, they fall; lives forfeit in our wake. We trample them as we were made to, leave nothing behind. They hate us, the humans. That's fine by me. If I hated them that would be an accomplishment, I only want to see them dead.

Why?

'26'

That's what they all ask. When I'm not picking them off one by one from a discrete distance. When I'm up close. When I pause, give them time enough to contemplate their fast approaching demise. In a second. In between them begging for their lives. Sometimes they ask. I never answer them.

Why?

Why not. I do it because it's easy. I do it because I can. Do I care you ask?

I don't.

Hate.

The emotion is familiar to me, I see it often.

The boy with the sword, the one who hunts us. I see it in his eyes. He doesn't realize how much they give away. I can read them like an open book. I like them, his eyes. They're expressive, an open canvas to his pain. We've wronged him, I can tell.

I like that to.

I won't lie, I look at our meetings with a certain anticipation, one I reserve for few things.

His hate for Juunanagou and myself is a palpable thing. I wouldn't think a single person could hate that much, but he does. Maybe it was that friend of his, the one whose arm we took ... maybe they were brothers... whatever, I don't really care about the reason. We beat him till he fought no longer, until his outs began to more closely resemble his ins. I think that might have had something to do with it.

He fought well. Before we killed him, left him for dead in the rain, he'd fought well.

We'd thought he wouldn't be able to fight without an arm, imagine our surprise when he kept fighting. If anything he was even more aggressive, although inevitably, he still died just like all the others, just as the boy with the sword will. They get tired and can't keep up, they're human and they make a mistake, we get bored and break them. They all die.

Fear.

I see it in grown men... women, in the old, those already dying; they all fear me.

They should fear me.

I don't torture, usually, not like Juunanagou, so much noise and no finesse, when I do it I take my time, make it last, I make it burn.

The expression, the look in the eyes, the hitch in their breath, there are so many subtleties. I can make a grown man cry without a touch, force the hardest individual to their knees. They beg for death when I'm finished. I give it not to those that ask; for that would be kindness, and I don't deal in favors for the weak, sympathy for the helpless. No. I keep it for those foolish enough not to ask, not to beg, nurse it close to my breast for any that would think they could yet escape it.

Want is unbecoming, and expectation anticlimactic. I don't kill men twice. I don't need to. I need only do it once.

It gives me something and I take it. I don't feel sympathy, nor regret. My sympathy is little, so their cries fall on deaf ears.

I can't tell you how many times they've pleaded with me to spare their lives. They're pathetic. So much whining and cowering, and the few that try to fight me... well they're just fools; fools and so much road kill under my feet.

The cowards, they would try to offer me money, right, as though I need it. Power, as if I don't already have it. Sometimes they even offer their very bodies. I just laugh.

That's just beneath me.

Juunanagou gets that far more than I do. It's especially funny when the men do it.

I've had parents offer me their children in exchange for their lives. Would you believe that? Sick.

Spite.

This one's close to hate, but just that little bit more proactive. They curse me even in their dying breath, try to spit on me. I smile, wipe their heads clean off their shoulders with indifference and a flick of my wrist.

Regret.

This one... this one intrigues me... I can see it in their eyes sometimes, when I have them at my mercy, right before their deaths. What do they regret?

I wonder...

They're meaningless. Their lives are so short, worth so little. We aren't the only ones that kill, they do it to. They did it before us, they called it progress, they called it man's ambition, an inevitable eventuality brought on by man's ambition and inability to live with one another. They fear themselves.

There hasn't been a day in their history they haven't fought one another. We're just finishing what they started. It's a game. It's all a game, they're just on the losing end.

Even now they fight, even as we pick them off, thin their flock one by one. They rape, they steal. They build ant hills of the ruins we leave behind, squabble and kill each other for the resources. I watch them. They value their own lives so little.

I don't hate them, don't envy them. Why would I? They annoy me, they're better dead than alive. Do I need a better reason to kill them when they don't even need one themselves?

And yet...

And yet... they regret. I see it in their eyes in those final moments. It intrigues me.

What do they regret?

Do they regret something they did... something they didn't do?

I want to know.

What future would they have? What's worth living for to them? I don't understand. There's hardly anything left, I know that for a fact, I heard it from the horses mouth, in fact.

Is it love?

I've never felt it. Not even for my brother. If I do I wouldn't know, I wouldn't be able to identify it.

I've seen them sacrifice themselves for one another. Is that love? I've seen mothers offer their lives for their children? Is that?

The men sometimes do it for the women; couples sometimes. Is that love? Is it?

I want to know.

'27'

Sometimes, on occasions infrequent enough to be rare, I have dreams. On occasions even less frequent, nightmares. Frightening would not be the right word to describe them. You might think that's funny, what could be frightening enough to scare me? Right?

Plenty of things.

You could ask, I'd put my fist through your abdomen, smile and wipe the mess off on the side of your collar, but you could ask.

None of them am I willing to admit to, not even to myself. Except for this.

'28'

In one, and I remember this one far to vividly, I can't move.

I can toss cars like soda cans, obliterate cities with a wave of a hand, but in this one I simply can't move.

'29'

I can't see anything, except what's ahead of me, what I'm facing. Wires, wires, and more wires. Which, suffice it to say, really unnerves me, because I know there's something there, just outside of my field of vision, I just can't see it, and I can't move.

I remember that, in the dream, the compulsion to turn is all encompassing.

My chin really hurts though, so I forget about the fact that I can't move my head for the time being. I realize, with a sort of placid fascination, one reserved only for dreams and the mortally dumb that something's in my hair. If I could move a limb, I'd wipe it away, maybe bring it to my face to see what it is, I can only blink though, feel it easing it's way down my farhead like a slug on glass.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

It moves slowly ... so slowly, that I can tell its consistency; wet and warm and just a little thick. It gathers in my lashes for a moment like a drop of water on a branch, then it's in my eye. I blink again, and again, but I can't get it out, not without the use of my hands.

I've forgotten about them though. My hands. That I can't move or feel them.

'miss'

It's like a movie I know I've seen, but the details I can't recall, that way I'm always surprised by the ending.

The warm thing, it's at about the level of my nose now, and I can almost smell it, though in truth, my senses are sort of dulled for some reason, but I know it smells coppery, sort of raw.

I look to my left, my heart's beating a mile a minute, or it should.

Do I have a heart? I can't feel it.

The thought terrifies me, but not as much as the image of the doll sitting in the corner of the room.

Maybe someone moved it into view, I couldn't say. All I know is I can see it now. It sits in the corner, this little lifeless doll. Wires; a few of them, stick out here and there. In other places there're are other contraptions.

'miss'

Did I mention it has no head? I thought I had.

'miss'

I think it's me. In the dream that is, I have that thought. In point of fact, I know it is.

I open my mouth to scream just as the mystery liquid finds it's way past my nose and to my lips, find it filling my mouth like a slow stream of red, I taste my own blood.

This is about the point I usually wake up. Sometimes. Other times the nightmare continues, shifts into other forms.

These are nightmares, I know that. They're not real, I know that to. I'm aware of what I am, beneath the flesh, and the blood, within the bone and throughout. I have an explicit understanding of what rests beneath my smooth, pretty skin. Gero made sure of that.

And yet the dreams linger.

"You're getting sloppy, sis, that's the third one in a row you've missed."

Juunanagou's voice finds me as I hover a dozen or so feet above the ground. It's hot, and the heat of scattered, innumerable fires burns the ground beneath me, I can feel it licking at my ankles.

I ignore my brother's voice, instead attend to my aim, let one fly.

The air is heavy and thick and the heat of the flames seems to give it an added weight that it usually lacks. It makes it heavier, that, and the screams... there's a different sound to each one, one for every tone of voice, every distinct style of speaking. If you listen closely enough; pause and enjoy the roses, you can catch them, pull them out of the air to tell them apart.

This is familiar. It makes me feel alive.

"30." I count out loud while brushing an obtrusive lock of hair out of my face.

I've mentioned this to Juunanagou, told him about these dreams. Perhaps I was looking for a further commonality between us, as there usually is. We're siblings after all. Twins. He shrugged when I told him, suggested I ignore them. Does he?

Sometimes I wonder if he's the strong one. Sometimes... sometimes I think he's the better of the two of us, that I'm strong on the outside, but weak everywhere else; everywhere that counts. You'd never know this, I go to great lengths not to show it.

I look over at my brother. He tosses a truck to the side with a push of one foot, up and a little above the ground it travels, until it's above his intended targets. He fires, watches it rain flame and shrapnel down on the humans. He's having the time of his life.

I raise my arm, it's habit beyond habit so the motion is smooth.

So why can't I?

'31'

FIN