Number: 08 Title: Sooner or Later Type: Crossover Dragonball Z Chronicles of War ---------- Synopsis: ---------- Here on earth, life is rarely easy, but it isn't like we live in caves. Okay, that's all well and good, but the caves might be where we end up if the androids are left to run amok. A young man, calling himself just James, has had his life torn apart by the evil known as the androids, #17 and #18. With everything that mattered stripped from him, he's gone looking for revenge. James is no dumb jock, though. He's fast, intelligent, and morever, motivated. After living through Hell, he comes after the androids with his sword. Then he gets to survive the beating of a lifetime (because, after something like that, he'd just as soon be killed). And after that, boys and girls, he tries to finish up his training, only to find his new friends forming a resistance group have been killed. He joins an extremely powerful blonde kid (that would be Trunks) to fight the androids, but they still come up with zero. [Eh, kill the resistance group idea and go with the hermit. It's more DBZ-ish.] After all of this, he tracks down Trunks at Capsule Corp. and asks if he can train with the boy. James then works his way up in the power levels for a few months before leaving on a journey. By the time he finally decides to hoof it, he's close to cracking. Returning to the ruins that used to be home, he finally drops the charade and goes 'beyond.' Onimous, ne? ---------- Outline: ---------- James and his family are running from the androids to a cave outside of town. For fun, the androids take pot-shots at much of the population, then stop and kill his parents at the entrance to the cave. ---------- Thrown clear by the blast, James just manages to survive off the land, treating his wounds and keeping hidden like a wild animal. ---------- After recovery,he starts training. First, to get stronger, then to get faster, and finally, to kick ass. ---------- James meets a wise old hermit who teaches him sword-making. He leaves some months later a strong, capable fighter. ---------- First encounter with the androids: James goes into battle with gusto, and seems to be doing actual damage a first. It soon becomes apparent, however, that he really hasn't done shit. THEN he he gets trashed. ---------- After being left for dead again, James finds himself at the hermit's house. His sword is shattered, along with many of his bones. Over the next few months, he slowly heals. Then the hermit's place is attacked while James is out on a walk by the nearby stream. Only by hiding carefully does he escape the androids. He looked down at his master's broken body. Only pieces remained, most of his physical form burnt away in the heat of the ki-blast that had leveled his tiny house. Various iron implements stuck out of the ground in random places. As his dull gaze shifted around the sight, James could see charred blood on several of them. There, not far away, a bit of a hand. Just grizzled bone and smoking tendons. He blinked back tears. How dare they... How DARE they... James' heart skipped a beat. Breathing deeply, he staved off the anger, forcing back his emotions with sheer will. By the time the world came into focus again, his shirt was soaked in blood and various other body fluids. His mind still roaring, he set Master on the ground. Might as well bury him here, a cremation wouldn't accomplish much. ---------- Sword in hand, and lost family and Master in mind, he finishes his training in a fury and tracks down the androids. Along the way, he meets an old flame and stops to visit for a few days. ---------- Coincidence is Hell. The androids flatten the town without warning, only James and a handful of other people escape the blast. James come for them with his sword swinging, to suddenly find himself fighting with a partner: a young man like himself, with hurt in his eyes and blonde hair that almost seems to glow. ---------- Scenes: ---------- He supposed there was a time when he didn't hurt inside. It was something he could only think of in academic terms, like distance across the entire Milky Way galaxy. Could one man walk across the Milky Way? Could one man cover that insane distance on foot without dying a million times over? Could James ever absolve his mind of the horrors engraved upon it during the last three years of his life? Well, anything was possible. Then again, he'd never met a person who had walked from one edge of the Milky Way to the other. --- Even as Trunks looked at the boy, he seemed to crumple inside, loosing whatever passed for sanity in his life. The figure dropped to it's knees, hands clutching loosely in the dirty air. He then felt the sensation of someone raising their ki. James was an incredible fighter, but the boy himself had said he lacked the raw power to put it to good use. Since someone's ki was directly linked to their emotions, it stood to reason that the more he let his emotions run free, the more powerful he would become. Transforming into a Super-Saiyjin the first time was a nerve-wracking experience, to say the least. But humans couldn't turn into Super-Saiyjins, they weren't Saiyjins to begin with. James couldn't draw _that_ much power from just his emotions... could he? They would need only one more thing to make this scene complete, to play things out to the very end, to finally bury their demons once and for all. Oh, look, thought Trunks, here they are now. --- James glared at 18 across the jagged hole in the earth. The dark clouds gather rapidly above their heads were ignored, as were the city's ruins spread around them. The two fighters had eyes only for each other, fixed on another, examining each other in every detail. 18's ice-gray eyes remained motionless and unblinking as she sized up the young warrior standing across from him. His combat skills were highly refined, far above the level of the young kid with the changing hair. The sword this fighter held before him, though, now that was a tough one. Theoretically, she should be able to shatter it with one blow, but the weapon was sheathed in a mysterious energy invisible to the naked eye. The one unknown in this fight; she had to get it away from him. James let his mind stop thinking, sliding all 'thoughts' aside, and clearing his mind as his sensei had taught him. As his eyes adjusted the shadows that seemed to grow deeper and more onimous around the two fighters, he let his vision center on 18, and yet not center on her. By allowing his focus to roam freely, he could almost feel the lifeless metal robot with his ki--and follow her in combat. His dark blue eyes finally centered on her, and the only thing that filled his mind was not a thought as most people knew it. It had no logic and no clear path, no means to an ends, but it did have purpose; and purpose gave it direction. It spoke directly to his body, bypassing all conscious attempts to understand it, and speaking to his spirit in a way that transcended any experience he had ever been though. It had only one thing to say: Kill the machine.