“Vejiita seems angry.” Piccolo remarked, looking down on the battle below them.

Vejiita was fighting particularly viciously, slamming his fists against Juuhachi-gou’s perfect face as if it were steel. Even from this far away, Piccolo could still clearly see the fury in Vejiita’s eyes. He was Super Saiya-jin now, and the golden aura was billowing out from his body like burning golden waves, so bright that it almost stung his eyes. He had seen Vejiita fight hard before; in fact, he couldn’t remember a single time when he had seen the Saiya-jin prince show anyone any kind of mercy. But this was particularly vicious and almost un-characteristic in brutality. He had a feeling that Vejiita wasn’t just fighting Juuhachi-gou --- he was fighting off all of the ghosts and demons that had been haunting him ever since Bulma’s death on Sukuashi.

At his comment, Koronu shrugged and moved her eyes from side to side, following the Saiya-jin no Ouji’s movements. She folded her arms casually across her chest and a hint of a smile appeared on her face. “Vejiita always seems angry. I don’t know why he’d have any particular fury directed at the jinzouningen. He was probably just having a bad day.”

“Hai.” Gokuu agreed, his eyes also following the movement below. He cast a glance up at Piccolo, giving him a quick smile. They both knew Vejiita much better than Koronu; if anyone really knew Vejiita at all. Pride was the only thing that made Vejiita keep living, and the only thing that ever affected him in any way. He wouldn’t have displayed his anger so openly if it were something as simple as a bad day. There was obviously something deeper brewer within the Saiya-jin no Ouji’s heart. There was no way that Koronu could know this now, but she would learn in time. Anyone who had spent a large amount of time with Vejiita came to realize very soon that there was very little that could ruffle his feathers and actually make him angry. He showed anger most of the time, true, but it was very rare that he ever let himself display full fury and show any kind of emotion.

“Is Juuhachi-gou stronger than her brother?” Koronu asked Piccolo suddenly, wiping the smile off of his face and breaking him out of his thoughts. She looked at him with dark, slanted eyes, her mouth pulled into a deep scowl. “She seemed to do a lot of damage to the city.”

Piccolo thought for a moment, then frowned and his intelligent eyes narrowed as he looked down at Juunana-gou’s unconscious body. “They are about the same. The only reason she was able to cause so much destruction is because none of us knew about it until it was too late. If I had caught her in time, just as I had caught Juunana-gou, none of this would have happened. She would be knocked out and hanging in a headlock as well. That was nothing but bad judgment on my part. I saw Juunana-gou as the enemy, not her. If I had been watching her instead of Juunana-gou, I probably would have been able to stop this.”

“I don’t think that really matters.” Gokuu assured him. He placed his hands at the back of his head casually and narrowed his eyes in thought. “If you had been watching one, the same thing probably would have happened with the other, Piccolo. Either way you look at it, the city would have still been in danger. There is no way you could have known which of the jinzouningen was going to attack.”

“You already managed to capture one of them.” Koronu agreed. “That’s half of the battle. And as soon as Vejiita finishes with the other, we’ll be able to figure out some sort of plan. If this Mirai Bulma is as smart as you say she is, she should be able to come up with some way to keep them from hurting people. Without killing them.”

He lay sleeping, but he was not asleep. Ice blue eyes were open beneath eyelids, and his mind was awake and aware of his surroundings. He was waiting. Like a tiger hidden beneath the brilliant green of the trees, he was crouched, waiting for his moment to strike, waiting for the others to let their guard down. He let his body lay limp, feet dangling, hands growing numb. On the outside, he was unconscious and dormant, dead to the world. On the inside however, a battle raged. The evil fought against the purity of the soul, a bitter, angry war that was full of fury and spite. In the distance, a memory of the puppet master arose, wriggling his fingers skillfully as he wielded his weapon. Ice blue eyes glared, hating the doctor, hating everything, hating everyone.

Hate had been the doctor’s plan all along. That had been what propelled him to do this; to create these monsters. Hate had burned so brightly within him that it could no longer be contained and he had to have some way to carry out his malicious intentions. But because he was weak and because he could no longer fight the way he used to when he had been younger, he had to fight his fight through someone else. His wishes would be carried out through someone else’s physical strength and indestructibility. He had hunched over his desk and his computer for hours, researching, hypothesizing, dreaming. Insanity crept into his mind then, silently lurked about in his head while he stared, hypnotized by the blue of the computer screen and the methodical whirring of the ceiling fan above his head.

Ruling the world was a childish goal. Why rule a world that was so full of hate and envy and malevolence? There was nothing good here, nothing that he could see within the walls of this dank, rancid cave that served as his makeshift laboratory. The world had been corrupted long ago; the human heart itself had been corrupted. Human nature was no longer full of wonder and excitement; they were bitter and cruel and selfish. This cruelty had spread among the people like a disease until no one managed to stay untouched by the wretched workings of the inner human soul. They now lived in a world of thieves and rapists and murderers. Rule this world? No.

Destroy this world.

Create two perfect beings. Two perfect beings who had been stripped of all facades and false pretenses. They would represent what the world truly was: cruel, unyielding, bloodthirsty, and evil. And these two perfect beings would take their power and their unflinching cruelty, and they would use it to murder every human being and destroy all of their pretentious cities and supposedly cozy homes. Bit by bit, they would slice civilization away until there was nothing left but craters and dust and bodies. Everyone would be dead then, everyone who had once thought themselves to be above death and above pain. They would all know what it felt like to be alone, to be insane. The insanity would sink into their minds slowly and deeply, sliding through the darkness in their souls and the fear in their hearts. They would all see the world as it truly was then: inherently evil. And it would be too much for them; their mental capacities could not take the fact that their precious lives were nothing more than miserable, never-ending facades. They would die off, one by one, unable to shoulder the responsibility of such a world, and unable to live with the dark, ugly evil that they now knew surrounded them. There would be no one left to argue, no one left to try and stop these perfect beings. The world would be cold, dead, lifeless, and empty. The oceans would drizzle down into streams, the mountains would crumble to the ground, and the sky would break apart and shatter into a thousand pieces.

And when it was all over, the puppet master would stumble out of his laboratory cave and begin to live. Alone.

Juunana-gou hung limply from Piccolo’s grasp, his body still. Inside of his head, the war still raged; it was violent and terrifying, dark and deep. The fight continued until he could not take it anymore and laid his weary head down in defeat. The evil won then, and rose over his head like a thick, ugly cloud, wrapping strong fingers around his mind and stealing it away. The evil flamed within him, burning his soul and chasing away every bit of human goodness that still remained. It ate at him until there was nothing left at all --- except for just one thing. And that one impulse, that one thought, that one instinct, was to kill.

And in the corner of his mind, a broken, bleeding Juunana-gou screamed in horror once again.

In the vast expanse that was Piccolo’s mind, he began to feel a strange tingling sensation at the back of his neck. It was nothing too terrible, just a vague feeling, as if someone had brushed hair against the skin, hitting the sensitive nerves that resided at the base of his neck. But that small sensation sent warning signals flying, just as if someone had wrote ‘danger’ in gigantic red letters in the sky above his head. It made his body tense up instantly, his muscles tightening as adrenaline surged through him in cool, anticipating waves. Wearily, his eyes scanned the area above and below him, searching for any signs of impending danger. But other than the increased beating of his heart and that tingling sensation at the base of his neck, there was nothing.

The air seemed to grow still around him for a split second; a tiny moment in which all time and reason was temporarily suspended. The sounds of the battle below and the light chatting of his companions faded, then disappeared all together and Piccolo’s ears and eyes took in his surroundings. Against his arm, he could feel the pulse of Juunana-gou’s jugular vein, pumping steadily underneath his skin. Then, another movement, as if the jinzouningen’s body had been still for so long that it could no longer contain itself. Understanding, fear, and amazement crashed into his mind all at once: Juunana-gou was awake.

He looked down at the android just in time to see a fist slam straight into his nose.

The strength and shock that came with the hit momentarily shut Piccolo’s mind down as his head was thrown back with the force of the punch. Unwillingly, his arms relaxed and his muscles died. He tried to hold on and keep control, but it was too late and the damage had already been done. As Juunana-gou wrenched out of his grasp and into the open air, Piccolo watched him from a distance, dizzily floundering as he flew, trying to regain his sense of direction.

The jinzouningen wasted no time. He took advantage of Piccolo’s lack of awareness and spun around with his leg outstretched, catching the Namek in the stomach. The kick landed hard and Piccolo doubled over, his mouth dropping open and a small stream of blood trailing out. Then Juunana-gou clasped his hands together and brought them down on the back of the Namek’s neck, sending Piccolo spinning quickly and viciously down to the earth.

As soon as Piccolo was out of reach, Juunana-gou took off with a blast of power, heading east, and flying as fast as his body would allow him to.

Before he hit the ground, Piccolo managed to get a grip on his direction, pausing in mid-air before shooting back up into the sky. He hurtled back towards the original sight of the tussle, only to find Juunana-gou gone and his companions staring at him with shocked expressions.

“Shit! I knew this would happen!” Koronu exclaimed before instantly shooting off into the sky after Juunana-gou. Her long tail snaked around her waist so tight that she could scarcely breathe, and she could feel it twitching and shaking with anger, the wiry brown fur standing on end. She felt a tingling sensation run through her body and travel out to her fingertips, causing her hands to grow cold and numb. It always happened this way before she fought. The Saiya-jin blood that ran so proudly through her veins began to boil with even the slightest hint of a good fight. And she knew that the male jinzouningen would be more than enough to quell her hunger for battle. Her muscles had been lazy for far too long now, used only to spar and practice. The last time she had actually used her full power and fought with all of her strength and heart was when she had fought Sukuashi. Though it had only been months ago, it felt more like a decade to her as she chased after Juunana-gou.

The air was cool on her face as she flew after the android, her arms tense at her side. She narrowed her dark eyes as she saw him dip down, barely skimming the tops of the pine trees as he raced away from Satan City. She wouldn’t be allowed to kill him, she knew that already. But not every good fight had to end with death. Besides, the main reason for chasing after Juunana-gou was simply to stop him from hurting anyone else. The devastation that his twin sister had caused in the city was atrocious, and she didn’t want the same thing happening to another city. Now that she knew just how powerful the jinzouningen truly were, she wasn’t going to let her guard down for a second. This was her world now too. And she would do anything to protect it.

Gokuu watched his mother fly off into the distance, chasing after Juunana-gou with the persistence of a seeking missile. He had seen in her dark eyes that she was serious about hunting him down and stopping him, and was certain that she could do it. When Koronu set her mind on something, absolutely nothing stood in her way. He supposed that was what had kept her alive all of those years on that awful, snowy planet. She was filled with the kind of determination that put most warriors to shame. He was grateful that at least part of that resolve had leaked into his own blood as well. It was nice to finally know where he had gotten all of these attributes from. Finding his mother on Sukuashi had been one of the best things that had ever happened to him and his family.

On a whim, he looked back down toward the battle between Vejiita and Juuhachi-gou. Unfortunately, Sukuashi didn’t give such pleasant gifts back to everyone. They had lost Bulma. And Gokuu knew, though Vejiita would never say anything, that Bulma’s death had killed a large part of the Saiya-jin no Ouji too. It was going to be hard for him to have to face Mirai Bulma now, especially since he was obviously still grieving and still unsure about what he was going to do. He had saved her just now though, which was something very uncharacteristic of the bitter Saiya-jin prince. That had to count for something. And with the way that Vejiita was attacking the female jinzouningen right now, it looked as though he were pretty upset with the fact that she had just tried to kill Mirai Bulma. In fact, it worried Gokuu just a bit to see how viciously Vejiita was attacking Juuhachi-gou. His power outweighed the android’s power by far --- using that much anger and brutality in this fight was unnecessary.

Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with Mirai Bulma at all. It was possible Vejiita just had too much stress and anger stocked up and needed to get rid of it somehow. Gokuu knew from personal experience that he only way Vejiita knew to vent his frustrations was to give someone a good beating. But he didn’t feel as though that was the best course of action in this case. Although he wanted Vejiita to be able to feel better and be normal again, he didn’t want Juuhachi-gou to get hurt. Taking out frustrations with fighting was perfectly acceptable, but killing someone over those frustrations was not.

He floated downwards, closer to the city, closer to the fighting, and narrowed his eyes at the Saiya-jin no Ouji. Then he flicked his gaze back up to Piccolo, who was staring at him as if waiting for a command. He crossed his arms. “Piccolo, follow Koronu and make sure she doesn’t do anything to harm Juunana-gou too badly. Try to keep them away from the cities, if that’s possible at all. I’ll stay and watch Vejiita.”