To comemerate the new board (yay!) I've decided to put out a Fan-Fic of my own. I must warn you that so far its pretty long and looks to get longer, I have two chapters worked out so far but I'll post one at a time and see what response I get. If you don't want to read it I don't mind, thats your choice.
But if you do please leave an opinion, I'd appreciate it (good or bad).
(P.S: I'm not really back, just popping in for a visit.
)
*** *** ***
She walks along the torn and broken road, leather boots scuffing against the ground and sending up little smoke signals of dust to show her passing. Her steady gait isn't hurried, its been going steady for hours and shows the intent of continuing for hours. Ahead of her a city is growing closer, still far enough off that the destruction isn't immediately evident. Walking along a deserted road, tall buildings looming over the horizon.. You could almost believe this wasn't a world brought to its knees.
["You're leaving, aren't you?"
Hand on the door handle, she hesitated. There had been a time in her life when she wouldn't have, when she would have forced the door open and never looked back. That time was gone now, and she had the childlike figure standing behind her with solemn eyes to thank for it.
"This isn't the first time I've left," she replied, not turning to face him.
"It will be the last though, wont it?"
She had tried to be discreet, as discreet as possible in a small wooden cabin with three rooms in total. At all times she had felt paranoid, had been looking over her shoulder to make sure he hadn't been watching her. He hadn't but it wasn't as if he needed to. Turning slowly and brushing the unruly golden locks of hair from her eyes, she regarded Choutzu.
"I can't stay here, I have to do something." Choutzu smirked humorlessly, a disturbing look on his innocent face.
"What will you do? What can you do that our friends could not.. that.." he winced and trailed off, not that he needed to finish. She knew what he would say.
In more ways than she could count, she missed him. He had taken her in, a confused jumble of anger and fear, and with Choutzu had helped her to become as close to normal as was possible. And, though shy, she could feel him drawing closer with every year. And then they had come and taken him away from her, leaving her all alone in the wilderness; Choutzu had felt the pain of loss too much to comfort her. They had taken him from them, from her.. Her..]
".. Tien." She was closer now, the cracks that spider webbed up the walls of the buildings nearby gave the city a decaying look.
Of course the corpses hanging out of the window helped with that.
The devestation was mixed up, some of it had happened days, possibly even weeks ago, while other holes and craters were obviously recent. Those who could leave had done so a while back; leaving all but the barest of supplies by the looks of it. Kicking idly at a half opened back-pack, she reflected on the stupidity of mankind. Sure getting out of the city saved you from the present danger, but what happened out in the desert when you have no food and no water. She didn't have to wonder, the road had been lined sporadicly with the dead. Some from starvation, others from assault and, from what she could make out, theft.
"Welcome to the world of tommorow," she muttered under her breath, sitting on the warped wreckege of an old hovercar and taking a swig of her bottled water. "United people my ass.."
The world had been a happy place once, she could remember smiling faces. A wedding? Son marrying some girl he hadn't seen for years, God was there to do the service apparantly. Memories of those times were hazy, after all she had two sets. Trying to merge them was impossible, they could only be seen through the eyes of two people who didn't exist any more. For the moment at least.
The happiness was there though, in both versions she could remember the laughing and the smiling faces. There had been destruction and terror but in the end there were always happy faces. Not this time though. This broken world had been robbed of the innocent grin, the ****y smirk, the reserved smile. Those faces that she could remember so well out of her murky past, they were gone and that was why the world was still broken.
Lying back, she tried to collect her thoughts which were becoming more and more jumbled. It was, she suspected, a result of being further and further from Choutzu's influence. He had warned her, he had said that she could suffer a..
["..relapse, you know what that means."
"I know," she replied, leaning back against the door and twirlling a revolver in her hands in the idle way of one who isn't really aware of what she's doing. "I understand what might happen.."
"Will happen, and thats not the least of your problems!" It wasn't often that Choutzu raised his voice, even in battle. It made it bite even harder and he appreciated that fact, using it to try and force her to back down. "The Androids are more powerful than you can possibly imagine, even Goku wouldn't have stood a chance.."
The gun froze in her hands and she glared at Choutzu, as if daring him to say it again. It didn't work with Choutzu though, he just stared right back until her eyes began to water. Trying to hide her uneasyness, she shrugged and looked at the ceiling. She needn't have bothered, she couldn't hide anything from Choutzu that he really wanted to know.
"I'll think of something.."
"I know you!" he snapped, his soft tones turned hard and malicious, "You'll try and shoot him and get yourself killed! You'll end up just like Ti-"
There was a resounding click that echoed through the cabin, the revolver was c.ocked and aimed at Choutzu's chest..
"Careful," she whispered. After a momentary gasp of shock, Choutzu brought himself to his full, if diminuative, height.
"Pull the trigger then," she closed her eyes as he spoke, feeling the gun grow minutely lighter in her hands, "if you're serious about leaving then pull the tri-"
Choutzu was cut off again, this time by a deafening bang that escaped through the cracks in the walls and the door and sent birds scattering into the sky. From the vantage point of an over hanging Birch, an aggrivated squirrel glared at the offending building. Before it could resort to violence (aka, throw nut) it was spooked into scampering down the tree and towards safety, fleeing from the blue glow which was coming out of the windows..
Inside, Choutzu was enveloped in a aura of blue light. His hands were raised and his eyes focussed on hers. The spinning ball bearing floated in the air surrounded by its own blue glow, bobbing up and down like a tiny world.
"I knew you didn't want to really harm me," he raised two fingers of his right hand, "but I need to make this clear."
Choutzu's eyes hardened to that of blue steel and he swept his hand around. The ball bearing blurred sideways, slicing a hole in the side of the wall and shooting through the forest and the occasional tree trunk. Then he opened the palm of his other hand, her gun flew spinning out of her grip to come to a halt a few feet from her face. His gaze burning into her, Choutzu closed his hand into a fist.
"I am nothing compared to the Androids.."
Before her very eyes the gun seemed to implode, crumpling up into a sphere no bigger than a golf ball.
"Yet I could destroy you.."
The ball began to glow red.
"This house.."
The surphace bubbled and hissed.
"THIS WHOLE FOREST!"
Choutzu snapped his fingers like the crack of doom and pointed at the tiny hole the ball bearing had made. Then the boiling sphere of metal began to actually pour through the air and out through the hole, going where she couldn't see. When she looked back Choutzu was resting on a wooden chair next to the plain table on which they had eaten so many meals, his head held in his hands.
"I'm sorry, I went too far.." He rubbed his eyes and looked up at her through the tears, "I know you think you have to go, I know that nothing I can do will convince you otherwise." He looked at his hands again, "And I know I cant make you stay."
In the few seconds that had passed she hadn't moved, but now she did. She knelt beside the little man, caught eternally in a childs body, and kissed his forehead softly. It was more compassion than she would have given to her own family a few years back, if she had ever known any of them.
"Thank you Choutzu, this is something I need to do.." He nodded and stood up, following her to the door and watching as she walked to the edge of the clearing. She waved to him and turned to go.
"Lunch!" called by her name, Lunch turned back to see the small boy smile sadly at her, "I'll keep the home fires burning for you.."
The significance of the phrase wasn't lost on her, but it made the burden on her heart a little harder to carry all the same.
The image of Choutzu sitting by a fire, staring into it until the day he died, was hard to shake. For Lunch didn't intend to come back.]
Groaning, Lunch leaned up and shielded her eyes from the dark red of the sunset. She berated herself while stretching out her limbs, that was a few hours she could have put to good use. The area was already starting to cool down, soon the heat that saturated the ground would seep away and she would find herself in a very bad position. She needed to find shelter and find it quickly.
It was then, as she scanned the area for a convenient doorway, that she noticed the clouds of smoke and dust that hovered in the sky. She strode to the end of the street and peered cautiously around the building to see three figures dance in mid-air.
The first two figures she knew to be the Androids immediately, along the road she had met a few survivors, each baring a tale of loss. The descriptions were always the same, what they wore and how they looked. What most of the poor broken souls seemed to focus on was how normal they looked, they didn't appear that different from everyone else. And yet they drove cars into people, tore others in two and delighted in the general misery they created together. It was from those descriptions that the 'Plan' had taken root in her mind and slowly but steadily grown throughout her travels.
The other figure though was unfamiliar, the only recognisable feature she could make out was his spikey blonde hair. Tien had described the transformation that Goku had been capable of, which led her to the conclusion that this was the son she had never met. Gohan.
Whoever he was, he was clearly outmatched by the tag-team style fighting they were inflicting on him and was being bounced around and through several buildings. Once or twice he was knocked out of his golden state, giving Lunch a glance at his curious purple colored hair, but he stubbornly kept changing in order to fight. She followed the fight as it moved along the city, staying far enough away to go unnoticed but close enough not to lose track.
Eventually, having reached the outskirts of the city, the Androids seemed to tire of him. A blast which looked small compared to some of the earlier ones sent the tired warrior skidding backwards along the grassy turf. Caught between self preservation and loyalty to Son's child, Lunch held one hand open behind her back and concentrated. A second later it was holding the reassuring weight of a fully loaded Magnum, most powerful handgun in existence. As far as she knew.
Lunch was a woman of few words and in the early days that word had been "Die!" When it came to plans she had been completely at ease settling herself in the 'Shoot first, ask quetions later' philosophy. But that was then and this was now. No matter how terrible her headaches were, how horrifying her nightmares were becoming, how she longed for the peace Choutzu had been able to instill upon her with a mere thought, she refused to fall back into the way she had been back then. It brought peace, yes, but a fragmented peace. There would be no more blackouts if she could help it, no more waking up not knowing what she had done the night before.
This Lunch could and did think, and this is what she thought..
I may not be able to beat them, but the boy can. So I'll hang the plan and draw their fire..
Not the most brilliant of plans but Lunch was set. While the two Androids bickered over who would finish the boy off, Lunch crawled into a broken office and climbed her way through the rubble and into the first floor. Leaning out of an elephant sized crack in the wall, she steadied the gun on her arm and aimed a little over the male Android's head..
"Sister," came his mocking voice, "I clearly hit him more times than you. Therefore I win, therefore I get to deliver the final blow."
"Brother," replied the strained tones of an older-sister, "Your games stopped being funny years ago, before the one we handled together you killed the last warrior so I claim this one as my own."
The males head twitched towards the purple haired boy's form, "that midget was only half a fight. I demand the child to make it a full go, besides you got to destroy Piccolo and he was worth two Vegeta's whom you also, if I remember correctly, destroyed. Even though it was my turn!"
"He insulted me."
"He said you looked like a fashion reject, which in fact you d-"
The gunshot was heard from miles around, echoing between the dead buildings, ulluating through the alleyways, shocking Lunch so much that she almost fell through the crack she had been leaning against. She had the perfect vantage point to see what happened next, the male Android flipped his hand around and a chunk of wall beside her fell away as a bullet moving near the speed of sound sliced right through it and embedded itself in the wall on the other side of the building.
"Monsters!" a bedraggeled old geezer was stumbling towards the Androids, moving through the street beside Lunch's building with a revolver clutched tightly between his wrinkled hands. "My son! Give me back my son!" The gun flared into life again and again the Android flicked the bullet away. The gun sounded out two more times, the old man getting closer with every second, until he was standing right infront of the pair, glaring at his gun in frustration. The male gave the old man a lopsided grin.
"All outta bullets?" He turned back to his sister and beamed, "All outta bullets." She merely rolled her eyes and pretended to take interest in the sky.
"You can be such a child, Seventeen." He shrugged and turned a cold smile on the old man.
"No appreciation for humor," he shrugged again and pushed himself away from the wall he had been lounging against. "I have to say it was brave of you to try this. Stupid, but brave." The old man was still staring at his gun, shuddering with frustration. "Look, I'll give you a ten second head start to make it fun. What do you say?"
In one movement the old man looked up, pressed the revolver which still contained one more bullet against Seventeen's neck and pulled the trigger.
"I say your cruel games are over, monster!" He turned from Seventeen who was frozen where he stood and glared at his sister, Eighteen, who was trying unsuccesfully to stifle her laughter. Aggrivated further, the old man dove one hand into his pockets for another bullet.
"You just wait missy, I'll see you join your brother soon enough!" He pulled his hand from his pocket, scattering bullets onto the ground. Cursing and grunting, he kneeled down and tried to pick bullets from the dusty ground while the female's s******ing grew louder and louder.
"Damn it all!" he pressed his hands against the ground and looked at her again, "what the hell are you laughing at?!" A foot caught the old man in the small of the back and pressed him firmly against the ground.
"I was wondering that myself," came a cool voice, edged with malice.
"Really brother," Eighteen's monosylabic voice replied, still containing hints of humour, "you were caught completely off guard by some dithering idiot."
"Yes," he could almost feel the monsters penetrating glare on his neck, "yes I was, wasn't I? This, sister, is what happens when people disobey the rules of the game. People who dont play fair dont get to have any fun next time round." The voice tightened in a terrifying kind of smuggness. "And there will be a next time round."
The Android's unaccounted for foot smashed down on the old man's right arm, giving out a sickening crack as the old bones snapped like twigs. The proccess was repeated on his left arm and both legs, reducing his limbs to useless lumps of flesh and pain.
"Now," murmured Seventeen brighty, "we'll see how fast you can run."
It only took 2 hours for the Android's to grow tired of cheering the old man on as he edged his way back towards the city. And then it was only after what had passed for the life that had embodied the old man had slipped away. By that time, if they had remembered to look, the purple haired boy would have been missing. Along with a working, if dented hovercar. If someone had to die for someone else to live, so be it. But if this one was to live on, he'd have a chance at least.
The plan was complete.
But if you do please leave an opinion, I'd appreciate it (good or bad).
(P.S: I'm not really back, just popping in for a visit.
)*** *** ***
She walks along the torn and broken road, leather boots scuffing against the ground and sending up little smoke signals of dust to show her passing. Her steady gait isn't hurried, its been going steady for hours and shows the intent of continuing for hours. Ahead of her a city is growing closer, still far enough off that the destruction isn't immediately evident. Walking along a deserted road, tall buildings looming over the horizon.. You could almost believe this wasn't a world brought to its knees.
["You're leaving, aren't you?"
Hand on the door handle, she hesitated. There had been a time in her life when she wouldn't have, when she would have forced the door open and never looked back. That time was gone now, and she had the childlike figure standing behind her with solemn eyes to thank for it.
"This isn't the first time I've left," she replied, not turning to face him.
"It will be the last though, wont it?"
She had tried to be discreet, as discreet as possible in a small wooden cabin with three rooms in total. At all times she had felt paranoid, had been looking over her shoulder to make sure he hadn't been watching her. He hadn't but it wasn't as if he needed to. Turning slowly and brushing the unruly golden locks of hair from her eyes, she regarded Choutzu.
"I can't stay here, I have to do something." Choutzu smirked humorlessly, a disturbing look on his innocent face.
"What will you do? What can you do that our friends could not.. that.." he winced and trailed off, not that he needed to finish. She knew what he would say.
In more ways than she could count, she missed him. He had taken her in, a confused jumble of anger and fear, and with Choutzu had helped her to become as close to normal as was possible. And, though shy, she could feel him drawing closer with every year. And then they had come and taken him away from her, leaving her all alone in the wilderness; Choutzu had felt the pain of loss too much to comfort her. They had taken him from them, from her.. Her..]
".. Tien." She was closer now, the cracks that spider webbed up the walls of the buildings nearby gave the city a decaying look.
Of course the corpses hanging out of the window helped with that.
The devestation was mixed up, some of it had happened days, possibly even weeks ago, while other holes and craters were obviously recent. Those who could leave had done so a while back; leaving all but the barest of supplies by the looks of it. Kicking idly at a half opened back-pack, she reflected on the stupidity of mankind. Sure getting out of the city saved you from the present danger, but what happened out in the desert when you have no food and no water. She didn't have to wonder, the road had been lined sporadicly with the dead. Some from starvation, others from assault and, from what she could make out, theft.
"Welcome to the world of tommorow," she muttered under her breath, sitting on the warped wreckege of an old hovercar and taking a swig of her bottled water. "United people my ass.."
The world had been a happy place once, she could remember smiling faces. A wedding? Son marrying some girl he hadn't seen for years, God was there to do the service apparantly. Memories of those times were hazy, after all she had two sets. Trying to merge them was impossible, they could only be seen through the eyes of two people who didn't exist any more. For the moment at least.
The happiness was there though, in both versions she could remember the laughing and the smiling faces. There had been destruction and terror but in the end there were always happy faces. Not this time though. This broken world had been robbed of the innocent grin, the ****y smirk, the reserved smile. Those faces that she could remember so well out of her murky past, they were gone and that was why the world was still broken.
Lying back, she tried to collect her thoughts which were becoming more and more jumbled. It was, she suspected, a result of being further and further from Choutzu's influence. He had warned her, he had said that she could suffer a..
["..relapse, you know what that means."
"I know," she replied, leaning back against the door and twirlling a revolver in her hands in the idle way of one who isn't really aware of what she's doing. "I understand what might happen.."
"Will happen, and thats not the least of your problems!" It wasn't often that Choutzu raised his voice, even in battle. It made it bite even harder and he appreciated that fact, using it to try and force her to back down. "The Androids are more powerful than you can possibly imagine, even Goku wouldn't have stood a chance.."
The gun froze in her hands and she glared at Choutzu, as if daring him to say it again. It didn't work with Choutzu though, he just stared right back until her eyes began to water. Trying to hide her uneasyness, she shrugged and looked at the ceiling. She needn't have bothered, she couldn't hide anything from Choutzu that he really wanted to know.
"I'll think of something.."
"I know you!" he snapped, his soft tones turned hard and malicious, "You'll try and shoot him and get yourself killed! You'll end up just like Ti-"
There was a resounding click that echoed through the cabin, the revolver was c.ocked and aimed at Choutzu's chest..
"Careful," she whispered. After a momentary gasp of shock, Choutzu brought himself to his full, if diminuative, height.
"Pull the trigger then," she closed her eyes as he spoke, feeling the gun grow minutely lighter in her hands, "if you're serious about leaving then pull the tri-"
Choutzu was cut off again, this time by a deafening bang that escaped through the cracks in the walls and the door and sent birds scattering into the sky. From the vantage point of an over hanging Birch, an aggrivated squirrel glared at the offending building. Before it could resort to violence (aka, throw nut) it was spooked into scampering down the tree and towards safety, fleeing from the blue glow which was coming out of the windows..
Inside, Choutzu was enveloped in a aura of blue light. His hands were raised and his eyes focussed on hers. The spinning ball bearing floated in the air surrounded by its own blue glow, bobbing up and down like a tiny world.
"I knew you didn't want to really harm me," he raised two fingers of his right hand, "but I need to make this clear."
Choutzu's eyes hardened to that of blue steel and he swept his hand around. The ball bearing blurred sideways, slicing a hole in the side of the wall and shooting through the forest and the occasional tree trunk. Then he opened the palm of his other hand, her gun flew spinning out of her grip to come to a halt a few feet from her face. His gaze burning into her, Choutzu closed his hand into a fist.
"I am nothing compared to the Androids.."
Before her very eyes the gun seemed to implode, crumpling up into a sphere no bigger than a golf ball.
"Yet I could destroy you.."
The ball began to glow red.
"This house.."
The surphace bubbled and hissed.
"THIS WHOLE FOREST!"
Choutzu snapped his fingers like the crack of doom and pointed at the tiny hole the ball bearing had made. Then the boiling sphere of metal began to actually pour through the air and out through the hole, going where she couldn't see. When she looked back Choutzu was resting on a wooden chair next to the plain table on which they had eaten so many meals, his head held in his hands.
"I'm sorry, I went too far.." He rubbed his eyes and looked up at her through the tears, "I know you think you have to go, I know that nothing I can do will convince you otherwise." He looked at his hands again, "And I know I cant make you stay."
In the few seconds that had passed she hadn't moved, but now she did. She knelt beside the little man, caught eternally in a childs body, and kissed his forehead softly. It was more compassion than she would have given to her own family a few years back, if she had ever known any of them.
"Thank you Choutzu, this is something I need to do.." He nodded and stood up, following her to the door and watching as she walked to the edge of the clearing. She waved to him and turned to go.
"Lunch!" called by her name, Lunch turned back to see the small boy smile sadly at her, "I'll keep the home fires burning for you.."
The significance of the phrase wasn't lost on her, but it made the burden on her heart a little harder to carry all the same.
The image of Choutzu sitting by a fire, staring into it until the day he died, was hard to shake. For Lunch didn't intend to come back.]
Groaning, Lunch leaned up and shielded her eyes from the dark red of the sunset. She berated herself while stretching out her limbs, that was a few hours she could have put to good use. The area was already starting to cool down, soon the heat that saturated the ground would seep away and she would find herself in a very bad position. She needed to find shelter and find it quickly.
It was then, as she scanned the area for a convenient doorway, that she noticed the clouds of smoke and dust that hovered in the sky. She strode to the end of the street and peered cautiously around the building to see three figures dance in mid-air.
The first two figures she knew to be the Androids immediately, along the road she had met a few survivors, each baring a tale of loss. The descriptions were always the same, what they wore and how they looked. What most of the poor broken souls seemed to focus on was how normal they looked, they didn't appear that different from everyone else. And yet they drove cars into people, tore others in two and delighted in the general misery they created together. It was from those descriptions that the 'Plan' had taken root in her mind and slowly but steadily grown throughout her travels.
The other figure though was unfamiliar, the only recognisable feature she could make out was his spikey blonde hair. Tien had described the transformation that Goku had been capable of, which led her to the conclusion that this was the son she had never met. Gohan.
Whoever he was, he was clearly outmatched by the tag-team style fighting they were inflicting on him and was being bounced around and through several buildings. Once or twice he was knocked out of his golden state, giving Lunch a glance at his curious purple colored hair, but he stubbornly kept changing in order to fight. She followed the fight as it moved along the city, staying far enough away to go unnoticed but close enough not to lose track.
Eventually, having reached the outskirts of the city, the Androids seemed to tire of him. A blast which looked small compared to some of the earlier ones sent the tired warrior skidding backwards along the grassy turf. Caught between self preservation and loyalty to Son's child, Lunch held one hand open behind her back and concentrated. A second later it was holding the reassuring weight of a fully loaded Magnum, most powerful handgun in existence. As far as she knew.
Lunch was a woman of few words and in the early days that word had been "Die!" When it came to plans she had been completely at ease settling herself in the 'Shoot first, ask quetions later' philosophy. But that was then and this was now. No matter how terrible her headaches were, how horrifying her nightmares were becoming, how she longed for the peace Choutzu had been able to instill upon her with a mere thought, she refused to fall back into the way she had been back then. It brought peace, yes, but a fragmented peace. There would be no more blackouts if she could help it, no more waking up not knowing what she had done the night before.
This Lunch could and did think, and this is what she thought..
I may not be able to beat them, but the boy can. So I'll hang the plan and draw their fire..
Not the most brilliant of plans but Lunch was set. While the two Androids bickered over who would finish the boy off, Lunch crawled into a broken office and climbed her way through the rubble and into the first floor. Leaning out of an elephant sized crack in the wall, she steadied the gun on her arm and aimed a little over the male Android's head..
"Sister," came his mocking voice, "I clearly hit him more times than you. Therefore I win, therefore I get to deliver the final blow."
"Brother," replied the strained tones of an older-sister, "Your games stopped being funny years ago, before the one we handled together you killed the last warrior so I claim this one as my own."
The males head twitched towards the purple haired boy's form, "that midget was only half a fight. I demand the child to make it a full go, besides you got to destroy Piccolo and he was worth two Vegeta's whom you also, if I remember correctly, destroyed. Even though it was my turn!"
"He insulted me."
"He said you looked like a fashion reject, which in fact you d-"
The gunshot was heard from miles around, echoing between the dead buildings, ulluating through the alleyways, shocking Lunch so much that she almost fell through the crack she had been leaning against. She had the perfect vantage point to see what happened next, the male Android flipped his hand around and a chunk of wall beside her fell away as a bullet moving near the speed of sound sliced right through it and embedded itself in the wall on the other side of the building.
"Monsters!" a bedraggeled old geezer was stumbling towards the Androids, moving through the street beside Lunch's building with a revolver clutched tightly between his wrinkled hands. "My son! Give me back my son!" The gun flared into life again and again the Android flicked the bullet away. The gun sounded out two more times, the old man getting closer with every second, until he was standing right infront of the pair, glaring at his gun in frustration. The male gave the old man a lopsided grin.
"All outta bullets?" He turned back to his sister and beamed, "All outta bullets." She merely rolled her eyes and pretended to take interest in the sky.
"You can be such a child, Seventeen." He shrugged and turned a cold smile on the old man.
"No appreciation for humor," he shrugged again and pushed himself away from the wall he had been lounging against. "I have to say it was brave of you to try this. Stupid, but brave." The old man was still staring at his gun, shuddering with frustration. "Look, I'll give you a ten second head start to make it fun. What do you say?"
In one movement the old man looked up, pressed the revolver which still contained one more bullet against Seventeen's neck and pulled the trigger.
"I say your cruel games are over, monster!" He turned from Seventeen who was frozen where he stood and glared at his sister, Eighteen, who was trying unsuccesfully to stifle her laughter. Aggrivated further, the old man dove one hand into his pockets for another bullet.
"You just wait missy, I'll see you join your brother soon enough!" He pulled his hand from his pocket, scattering bullets onto the ground. Cursing and grunting, he kneeled down and tried to pick bullets from the dusty ground while the female's s******ing grew louder and louder.
"Damn it all!" he pressed his hands against the ground and looked at her again, "what the hell are you laughing at?!" A foot caught the old man in the small of the back and pressed him firmly against the ground.
"I was wondering that myself," came a cool voice, edged with malice.
"Really brother," Eighteen's monosylabic voice replied, still containing hints of humour, "you were caught completely off guard by some dithering idiot."
"Yes," he could almost feel the monsters penetrating glare on his neck, "yes I was, wasn't I? This, sister, is what happens when people disobey the rules of the game. People who dont play fair dont get to have any fun next time round." The voice tightened in a terrifying kind of smuggness. "And there will be a next time round."
The Android's unaccounted for foot smashed down on the old man's right arm, giving out a sickening crack as the old bones snapped like twigs. The proccess was repeated on his left arm and both legs, reducing his limbs to useless lumps of flesh and pain.
"Now," murmured Seventeen brighty, "we'll see how fast you can run."
It only took 2 hours for the Android's to grow tired of cheering the old man on as he edged his way back towards the city. And then it was only after what had passed for the life that had embodied the old man had slipped away. By that time, if they had remembered to look, the purple haired boy would have been missing. Along with a working, if dented hovercar. If someone had to die for someone else to live, so be it. But if this one was to live on, he'd have a chance at least.
The plan was complete.
