They were aware that something was wrong. Trunks could tell that something had changed the second that Juuhachi-gou’s head snapped up and her ice blue eyes found his. Within just a split second, the female jinzouningen went through a fascinating transformation. Her eyes were no longer rimmed with tears and full of sadness. She looked at them with the cool detachment that can only come from a killer’s heart. The trembling chin and pleading frown were gone as well, replaced with a barely traceable smirk. Also, her body no longer seemed to be fragile and tired --- instead she crouched, coiled like a snake that was ready to strike at any moment. The change was startling, and both he and Goten took a step back, not sure what to think. Perhaps Juuhachi-gou had not been lying. It certainly seemed as though there were two of the female android. There was the wounded, crying one that they had spoken to just moments ago, and this new, evil Juuhachi-gou who looked at them with eyes so cold that they seemed to freeze Trunks’s heart.

“Juuhachi-gou?” Goten asked quizzically. Despite the fact that his friend should have known better, Goten took a step forward, as if he were concerned. The android’s head snapped over to stare at him, ice blue eyes halting any movement. Though she did nothing else, there was an unspoken threat hanging in the air, just as plainly as if she had spoken it: stay away from me.

Trunks gazed at her, crossing his arms tightly across his chest. This was the Juuhachi-gou that had destroyed the city. Now he understood what she had been babbling about before the change came along. This evil Juuhachi-gou and the Juuhachi-gou that was their friend had been sharing a body all along. Now that the balance of power had been shaken up, they were both fighting for control of her body, at the expense of the other. He remembered Juuhachi-gou’s chilling last words then: I’m still here. That meant that somewhere inside of those cool, hollow eyes, the real Juuhachi-gou was trapped and fighting to escape again. It was hard to believe, looking at the jinzouningen’s eerily expressionless face, but the real Juuhachi-gou was indeed inside of there somewhere. That would make it even harder for them to fight her, if it came to that. Hopefully, they could just get her to surrender without having to hurt her. After all, the real Juuhachi-gou had known her limitations. Perhaps this one would recognize that she could not win against two of the strongest warriors in the universe as well.

“If you give up now, we won’t hurt you. We want to help you.” Trunks eased, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. He spoke slowly, not knowing how much information the jinzouningen would be willing to take. “But you have to agree not to hurt anyone anymore. Can you do that?”

She stared at him, unblinking.

“Obviously not.” Goten muttered under his breath.

Trunks steeled himself, uncrossed his arms, and tried to look as intimidating as possible without seeming like a challenge to her. He curled his fists at his sides and tucked his chin down close to his chest, keeping his eyes on her the entire time. “Juuhachi-gou, you can’t keep hurting people. If you don’t surrender now and let us help you, we’re going to be forced to physically contain you.”

In reply, the female jinzouningen’s smirk grew. She lifted a hand to toss her short hair back behind her ears, and then narrowed her ice blue eyes into an unsettling glare. Then she took a step forward and began striding towards them, her poise completely infallible. She stopped only a stone’s throw away from them, then lifted her hands and held them in front of her, concentrating. A small gathering of light began there, starting off in a shade of cool blue, then growing brighter as it grew. Her eyes never moved from Trunks’s, but her smirk grew into a smile as the attack grew larger and larger. She was daring him. Threatening him.

He stood his ground. No son of Vejiita’s was going to back down. Especially not when his opponent was nothing but a tin can. He let his ki soar, rising it to a much higher level than necessary, feeling his body crackle with energy as he balanced right on the edge of becoming Super Saiya-jin. When she took another step forward, he tipped the balance, his vision turning completely red for a moment before his sight returned and his eyes became pupil-less and jade. A golden aura blazed around him, lighting up the broken city and dwarfing the light of the fire in the background. His eyes narrowed and he glared at her tilted his head slightly to say that he accepted her challenge and would meet it, crush it, annihilate it. Friend or enemy, he wasn’t about to let someone try and intimidate him. Not when he knew for a fact that he could win. This didn’t mean that he was going to kill her, of course. He would simply have to contain her --- hopefully without hurting her.

Next to him, Goten also changed, his hair turning from deep black into a bright, sparkling gold. Their auras blazed up, gold melding into gold as they stood next to each other with their arms tight at their sides and their fists clenched. Together, they faced Juuhachi-gou with matching expressions, refusing to let her scare them into submission. Whatever the female jinzouningen was planning to do to them, they were ready for it.

His arms were folded tightly over his chest to prevent the others from seeing them shake. He didn’t want anyone to know how deeply this was affecting him. For one, it was a simple matter of pride, and for another, it looked immature and unprofessional. If Gokuu and the others had seen his tears down in the city below, they probably would have thought that he wasn’t capable of making rational decisions or even fighting the jinzouningen. At the moment, he was a little shaken up, but that did not mean that he wasn’t qualified for a fight. He had the strength, the intelligence, and the skills. The fact that the jinzouningen had a very personal affect on him should not matter. If anything, that would help the battle. He knew how to control his anger and when to use it to his advantage. His anger was anger that came straight from the heart, anger as pure as crystal and full of deadly strength. It wasn’t the irrational, unthinking anger that usually came up at moments like this. He knew that the fury he held in his heart for the jinzouningen would only assure him victory. However, the others had a different view of victory than he did.

Victory to them was not defeating the jinzouningen, it was capturing them. Juunana-gou, the male jinzouningen, was alive and dangling in a headlock from Piccolo’s arms. Instead of eliminating their threat without question, they were merely knocking them unconscious and keeping hold of them until they could find a solution. Although Mirai Trunks trusted Gokuu, Piccolo, and the others, he had to admit that this seemed like a pretty stupid idea to him. What was going to happen when the jinzouningen woke up? They could not keep Juunana-gou unconscious forever. And what if they never found a cure for whatever was happening to the androids? If they could never find a way to heal them and turn them back into the good little jinzouningen that they used to be, then they would have to keep them contained forever. They would never be able to be with their family again. What was the use in that? It made more sense just to kill them and get it over with.

“So then, what is the plan?” Mirai Trunks asked Son Gokuu, standing in mid-air across from him.

They had been standing in mid-air for several minutes while Piccolo, Gokuu explained the recent events to him. The woman, who Gokuu introduced as his mother, Koronu, was silent during the explanation, her dark eyes trained on Trunks the entire time. Her long brown tail lay curled around her waist and her arms were crossed in a very Vejiita-like fashion over her chest. She had a pretty face; she was much more attractive than what Trunks had always imagined a female Saiya-jin to look like. Her scowl though, was deep and perpetual, much like his father’s. Trunks thought that she looked every bit as disturbed about the situation as she was. She was eyeing the unconscious android with such distaste that Trunks could only assume that she would have rather seen him dead as well.

Gokuu looked over at the unconscious jinzouningen and shook his head. “I don’t know yet. I thought we would bring them to Capsule Corporation and try to contain them there somehow. I don’t know much about science, but I was pretty sure that either Trunks or Tayhei could find some way to keep them docile for awhile. Now that your mother is here though, it will make things much easier. Having the best scientist in the world on our side is definitely going to tip the scales. Do you think she could help us?”

“Hai.” Trunks answered, but the thought of his mother so much as touching the dangerous twins made the blood freeze in his veins. “Her whole purpose in coming along on this trip was originally to find out more information about them. She found some of Dr. Gero’s old files about them and had discovered a few interesting things. She thought she could talk to the jinzouningen here and find out more about what compelled them to cause all of that horror and destruction.”

Piccolo looked down at Juunana-gou as well, tightening his hold on the android’s neck. His intelligent eyes narrowed at him. “Well, it looks as though she is definitely going to get her chance. Our timeline’s jinzouningen might not have known anything about causing destruction before, but they certainly do now. I’m not sure if they are going to be willing to communicate with her, however. Juunana-gou didn’t appear to be very talkative when he was awake.”

Gokuu and Koronu chuckled at that. He saw a smile break the Saiya-jin woman’s face for the first time. It looked almost unnatural. Despite himself, he couldn’t help his mind from traveling back in time.

He was suddenly back in a beautiful field of wildflowers, the pink of the sunrise surrounding him on all sides. He was swept up in the intoxicating smell of the flowers and the even sweeter smell of the girl that was lying in the field next to him, holding a delicate pink flower in her hands. It was beautiful there, perfect there. In that peaceful field of gold and pink, there was nothing haunting him and no shadows plaguing his soul. He was light, he was free, and he was in love. Her green eyes found his, seeming to search his soul as she gazed, her expression content and calm. Her hands were warm and soft on his face, delicately touching the smile that had appeared on his lips. She spoke in a voice that was quiet and smooth, playful and serious at the same time:

“Did you ever think that when Kami created everyone, he handed out a certain number of smiles to each person? Every person only got a certain amount of smiles and was supposed to ration them throughout life?”

It hadn’t made sense to him. In that peaceful field where the sun had just begun to rise, drenching the world in pinks and reds, he knew nothing about life. He knew nothing about the end of life, or what it meant to lose someone that you were in love with. He had taken her words as poetry then; as something beautifully said that held no deeper meaning than what was scribbled on the surface. But when Tayhei had been taken away from him, he understood. He understood all too well. There was only so much happiness in life, only so many smiles that fate afforded you. To be able to hang on to those bits of happiness, you had to cherish them, guard them. Because if you were careless; if you took those gifts for granted, then eventually you would have nothing left. Fate would refuse to give you anymore happiness, because what little joy you had already been given had been tarnished and over-used.

He rarely smiled himself now, terrified of the possibility that if he let himself be happy again now, he would never have the greatest joy back in his life again. If he was content to live as he lived now, there would be no chance of finding love again. He had to let fate know that he refused to live without her. Being without her was not living, it was surviving.

With a mental sigh, he looked down at the city below him, trying to shake himself out of those thoughts. During such a time as this, it just wasn’t rational to be thinking of love. After things with the jinzouningen were settled, then he could start thinking about what he was going to do. He could tell that his happiness was close. He had felt that as soon as he had looked into the eyes of the Tayhei of this timeline. Things would happen here, things that would change his life --- hopefully for the best. He was tired of trying to survive life without the woman that he loved. He was tired of the guilt and the sadness. He had been through so much of that already; he didn’t know if he could take anymore of it. Without love, he was nothing. Hope was all that he had left --- just a tiny shred of hope hanging onto his heart for dear life. And this, he knew, was his last hope. This world, this Tayhei, this past timeline. If he couldn’t find love here, he wouldn’t find it anywhere.

As he stared down at the raging fire and the obliterated buildings, a flash of something below caught his eye. At first it was just a bright white light, then it began to glow with the sparkling radiance of gold that could only be found in the aura of a Super Saiya-jin. He uncrossed his arms and stared, curious. It continued to glow, then was met with another, glowing right beside it. Unconsciously, his hand crept back to the hilt of his sword; a movement so familiar that he no longer even realized when he was doing it. His companions looked down as well, their eyes falling to the two blazes of gold amidst the destruction of Satan City. He let his heart search for a moment, locating the ki that he knew must be raging in the city below him. Understanding came to him quickly and his eyes widened in horror. He didn’t recognize one of them, but other was one that he knew well: the young Trunks. Undoubtedly, the younger Trunks had found Juuhachi-gou. Regardless of his feelings toward the younger version of himself, Mirai Trunks felt instant fear. He didn’t want anything to happen to the boy. Frozen in place, he could only watch.

Almost as suddenly as the golden auras appeared, another light appeared as well. It glowed light, translucent blue at first, then grew deeper and brighter turning into a raging storm of power. It was released and half a second later, a huge explosion occurred below them, throwing glass and concrete up into the air. The resulting boom violently shook the earth with its force, and thick black smoke poured up into the air, following quickly by a rain of debris. Mirai Trunks knew that attack. He knew it well. He had seen it hundreds of times in his young life; at times, he had even been on the receiving end of it. He knew how powerful Juuhachi-gou’s attacks were and he knew how badly the younger Trunks could get hurt. Horror and nausea bubbled up in his stomach and his heart froze, forgetting to beat as he stared at the rolling smoke below him. Suddenly and without a word to the others, he unsheathed his sword and leaned back to take off in flight, ready to defend his counterpart’s life.

“Hold it.” Piccolo’s hand came down on his shoulder like a clamp, holding him firmly in place.

“But she’ll kill him!” He sputtered, feeling suddenly short of breath. His heart was pounding in his chest and there was a vague look of panic in his sky blue eyes.

“Goten and Trunks can take care of themselves, Mirai Trunks.” Gokuu informed him with a grin. He placed a hand behind his wild black hair and looked down at the city beneath him, where the smoke from the explosion was settling. “For their age, they have astounding power, especially when they fight as a team. There is really nothing to worry about. If anything, I’m concerned about Juuhachi-gou. As soon as the smoke clears, we’ll go down there and help.”