Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Monster ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

Attention: I do NOT own Dragon Ball Z or any of its characters. The following chapter contains extreme gore, violence, ideas or content that some may find disturbing. Read at your own risk.

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I awoke within the very earliest of hours, seeing the very faint blue of the sky beginning to lighten, the stars fading as quickly as my fantasy. I wanted to grasp it. But I let it go. Too much to sacrifice. Too much at stake. Too much to live up to.

I'd become my own enemy it seemed, being the strongest, being the bravest. The one with the purest heart. The wicked? No one expects heroics out of the wicked. But the hero? No one expects wicked out of the hero either. And so I lived up to my name, my reputation, my honor, each day it seemed in everything I did. I became another person, my ignorance magnifying itself to hide and smooth over every flaw, the very truth of the matter. That in many, many ways, I was what you would call……… just human.

Chi Chi. She was near me. Always there. Like the reality that I so hated. Don't think that I hated her. Its nothing like that. Simply a reminder each day when I awoke from dreams of being myself. I could smell her, taste her in the back of my throat. The same being that was always there to slap me away from the grotesque being I could become if given even the slightest chance. They always say stay true to yourself. Nice theory. But what if "staying true to yourself" meant sacrificing everything that to extent made you the true self?

I got out of bed. Enough dwelling. Had it done me any good? I doubted it. I simply sat there staring like an adolescent youth at my wife, her tangled bits of stringy hair, her furrowed eyebrows. It was like she was plotting harsh things even in her sleep. So strong. So proud. So…… I had to laugh…. So Saiyan!

I walked into the kitchen, my stomach, as always, a constant reminder of who I was. Saiyan. There was a time before when I hated the word, as I hated hell, as I hated death, as I hated loss. Now? Well, I suppose I couldn't answer that. Maybe in a dream. But not now. Maybe Saiyan was as much of me as my dreams. As much as my true self. Concealed, but crucial.

But I forgot, pushed the thoughts away. I needed fresh air.

I walked out onto the lawn, my belly agitated with my denial, I sighed, wondering if everyone appreciated a blue sky as much as I did. Did others think like me? Or was I the only one who dwelt on everything? On life, on others, on myself? Was it selfish to be so fascinated with the being I mutated into each night, and transformed once more by day?

I sucked in a great wisp of air, my head feeling dizzy as he stood there. The being I hated more than anything simply for what he reminded me that I was. The being I envied for his admittance to the evil that lurks from within. The being I secretly admired for reasons I wont even bother to admit to you.

Vegeta.

Prince of my race. Obsessed and infatuated with his own hatred. Drowning in it in fact. At which point in my life had I come to loath him so much? When he began to envy me………. Or when I began to envy him? What was it like to wake up each day, knowing that you're rotten inside, and love it? To rile in a stone cold heart, not deny it, not hide it? God, if only things could be so easy.

"There's been another attack." He said simply, as if I was supposed to delve into his mind and extract all the bitter facts for my own knowledge.

"Where?"

Without a word his feet left the ground, hoisting his sculptured body into the air. Was that what caused my immediate disliking of him from the start? His appearance?

Jealousy had never been an issue in my life. It always seemed so petty. So fruitless. Jealousy when it came to fighting was invigorating. It was a challenge. A means to make goals for yourself and achieve them. But jealousy towards another man's attractiveness? Ha! Never.

Was it the smooth skin that covered his face, just that tan complexion that stretched over beautifully shaped bones and muscles? Or maybe it had always just been his eyes. Always the right shape, always the right size. So mysterious, making women swoon like prepubescent boobs. It was people like him that made you see your own flaws, even invent ones you'd never actually considered before.

My eyes were always too big. Too sweet. Too innocent. And while I suppose that only aided in my determination to isolate my true personality, my wide, round eyes gave off the immediate front of incompetence. My nose, well….. I guess there was really nothing wrong with it. And my mouth was simply a caring mouth, small and prettily shaped, always purplish red. Wide and inviting when I smiled, small and compact when my serious side took over.

Maybe it was just everything about him that made me want to hate him so much. No, I didn't WANT to hate him. But damn it, I truly did. How is it that I, I worked SO hard to be innocent, to be something completely contradictory to my nature and yet, he LOVED that part of himself. Not only that, but he was RESPECTED for that inhuman lust for cruelty. Forgiven! Overlooked! Even Bulma, lovely daughter of the richest man alive, future president to the most lucrative company in the world, MY BEST FRIEND, could barely contain her obsession with him.

It was so obvious. I wanted to vomit when I saw the way she held in her breath when he came around. Like some dog, taking his every command, bowing down to his every whim, even holding back her normally vicious tongue when his inevitable insults came flying. I had to catch myself before I rolled my eyes. Even he knew her loyalty to him. Harnessed it, used it. Used her. But that was just him. He was forgiven.

Charleston City. Population, 2.

I didn't bother to close my mouth, letting it gap open and breathe in the putrid air, rank with the smell of decaying bodies. It was sour smelling, moist and musky, making my eyes almost water and my nose to wrinkle with distaste. And I might have fled the scene altogether, covering my face from the wretched smell until a later time.

But to say I even noticed the stench would be somewhat of a lie.

My eyes glanced over the mounds of dead bodies, threatening to tear up even when I knew for a fact they wouldn't. I wasn't going to cry. I never cry. But the warmth was there and I felt my throat contort with a lump growing within.

Blood. It was everywhere, just like on one of those cheap horror flicks, staining walls and puddling on the sidewalks. Mutilated bodies one by one scattered across the ground, bloated and festering. My stomach twisted unforgivably at the sight of a dead child, no more than probably five years old, no older than my own son, dead with a toilet plunger stuck through his eye, the wooden end coming out of the back of his head.

"What do you make of it?" Vegeta asked in a dull voice, his hard, mean eyes glancing over to me. How could he seem so heartless, nudging the ribcage of a dead woman with his shoe and wincing with disgust? How could he care so little?

He knew the answer though, didn't he? He knew what had happened here, same as I did. It was the same thing again and again. Entire cities laid to waste over night, no rhyme, no reason. No pattern of any sort. Random towns, villages, cities, it made no difference. One day they would be normal, functioning as they had for a hundred years. The next day, there would be no one alive to tell what had happened.

But I'm getting too far ahead of myself. Let me tell you how it all began.

A small town, out in the middle of Iowa, called Holy Ghost. One gas station. No traffic lights. A man passing through, a trucker as they're called, filled up at the station, paying inside as he waited for the pump to stop.

Talking to the cashier, the trucker was to find that the children in the small town had been acting strangely that day. Angrily. Unusually. Violently.

"My own boy just this morning," said the attendant with a scowl. "Found em' bashing the brains out of his kitten. Just like this here," he demonstrated, flailing his hand about. "Right up against the wall."

The cashier shook his head in dismay.

"Damn shame too. He loved that cat. Just bought it for em' two days ago."

The trucker was shocked to learn that other children in the town had been reeking havoc upon their parents and each other, one girl said to have pulled a substantial amount of hair straight out of her sister's head.

"I don't know what to make of it." sighed the gas station attendant. "You ask me, it just don't seem right that a four year old girl has the strength enough to pull off something like that. And it isn't just that," he said, moving forward towards the trucker. "Folks round' here probably wont tell ya, but its something else about them kids that's got everyone riled up and anxious."

"What?"

"Its them eyes." Whispered the man, leaning real close. "Them eyes, just like eyes out of the devil himself. Black all the way up to the lashes. Like one big dog eye, black, black, black! Now let me tell you buddy," he said, grabbing ahold of the trucker's shirt collar. "You drive up outta here and you don't stop for nothing and no one, nohow. You got me?"

The trucker had left as quickly as possible, an unusual fear taking over him as he rushed from the scene, the cashier's words about never stopping echoing in his head. Only an hour and a half later was he to hear a distress signal over his radio, a neighboring trucker having stopped at the town and screaming out words of burning bibles and damnation.

And I guess that's how it all started, though more than that, I cannot know.

Rescue teams and police had arrived at the scene to find the proud, forty five year old trucker, who had reported the occurrence, balled up into the back of his semi, sobbing like a child. There was no one alive but him and claims that if he had come but thirty minutes prior he would be dead, ran rampant through the states.

From what they could make of it, it had indeed, begun with the children. Tiny mice and rats were found in the mouths of babies and toddlers. Cats and dogs were found dismembered, their blood staining the fingers of murdered children. Bits of hair and torn flesh were removed from the children's teeth, evidence of an unspeakable cruelty to their beloved pets.

But the worst was yet to come as the "virus", as they soon labeled it, spread into the adults, and possibly against their own will, they began to lash out at themselves, and each other. Pieces of human bodies were taken from the tires of a tractor, the farmer having run over the dying or the dead with his plow. Some bodies were unrecognizable, so vicious was the killing.

And in the end, when there were no more to kill, or when the survivors could simply not think enough to find one another, they horrifically began to kill themselves. The farmer who had run over so many was found in his barn, dead after repeatedly stabbing himself in the face with his own pitchfork. Another had simply smacked his head against a wall over and over and over again until his brain was crushed. Killed or suicide, the same was true of all the victims. Their eyes were entirely black right up to the lashes.

But in the center of the town was perhaps the most mysterious and terrifying spectacle for the rescue workers to find. A hundred burning bibles, piled high and taken from the homes of the peaceful townspeople, and lit on fire into a large blaze. Had the people done it themselves? Had they been sane enough to gather their own books and toss them into a raging fire? Theories escalated to new and horrific heights, being displayed by the millions in books, on television and a mass of ideas being shared on the world wide web.

One theory held true despite the mass of conflicting ideas. That is, that the townspeople were sick. That they were infected with an airborne disease, now labeled "Sin", undetectable to the microscope or to scientists. Like the aids virus, it was a quiet killer, laying dormant within the people's bodies until a certain smell or certain temperature awakened it, or contradicted it, enraging "Sin" until it made the host crazy.

Or….. that was the idea.

But "Sin" didn't just stop there, even as the hysteria began to die down and the fear began to settle. When no one was expecting and the theory of "Sin" began to seem but a reminder for big city people to stay where they are, the virus struck again. But this time it struck in a larger place, marking the theories that it was over, as a lie. Las Vegas Nevada, the big city with a small town mind, land of hopes and dreams, was struck over night.

Maybe Las Vegas was chosen for its location, being the only city for miles upon miles, secluded by desert on all sides. There was no escaping to another place, though they found bodies scattered some twenty miles in all directions. Over night, Sin had come and infected millions with its rage, people tearing one another to pieces in the streets, the beautiful Las Vegas strip nothing more than a blood drenched slab of hell. People hung from palm trees, their blood dripping down upon the investigators.

An airport in Orange County California had contacted Las Vegas's McCarren Airport, asking repeatedly why no flights had arrived on schedule. The only response was a chilling silence only once and a while set off by a horrifying scream in the distance and once by a crazed man apparently grabbing the microphone and shrieking repeatedly the word "Armageddon." All this people heard over a scratchy recorder the television media had the nerve enough to play for the world. And once more, in an even bigger pile, they found millions of burning bibles.

Again theories ran rampant through the world. Las Vegas had been a target of "Sin" because of terrorists. They'd simply been testing out their virus in Holy Ghost, on a smaller population. Still others insisted that Las Vegas had been taken down like a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah for its moral decay. That possibly the people of Holy Ghost were inbreeding, child molesters with some shocking secret.

Whatever the case, it was soon a forgotten idea as one by one, cities, towns and villages were destroyed by themselves. It became global as Australia, Hong Kong, England, Germany and even France were targeted, their streets chaotic with this new kind of fear. A fear no one could understand. And one that no one could stop. Not even me.

Eventually, men began to set up video recorders in their own streets, if nothing else, preserving their own demise for the camera and the knowledge of others. What was found after the killing spree was caught on tape and played for strong eyes only.

The camcorder had fallen or been knocked to its side, the legs and feet of people the only thing visible as the lights of the city were cut off. Screaming and the sound of running could be heard and the padding of feet was caught by the camera.

"Its coming! Its coming!" someone screamed, though no one could ever determine the sex simply because the tone was so distorted by fear. A million legs and feet were seen through the eye of the camera and the scene soon became chaotic as blood started pouring down pant legs and dripping onto shoes. People began to fall down dead, the ones alive stabbing their bodies with whatever they could get their hands on.

The tape was ended with a chorus of horrifying screams and the smack of a woman's head hitting the pavement as she landed in front of the camera, her face the only thing visible. White skin stained with the unmistakable, harsh color of blood and her eyes, black as the sky at midnight. Right up to the lashes.

I looked across the millions of dead bodies, my stomach contorting with nausea and an intelligent fear, my heart aching. So many lost souls that I couldn't bring back. So many people gone and my beloved Dragon Balls would do no good. Sometimes I think that I depended far too much upon them, letting the idea of any wish get to my head. Instead of appreciating what I had, I knew that I could have it back in the matter of a few days if I so wished it. But I suppose that is not important now, nor was it then, as the dragon refused to bring back the bodies of humans who had brought destruction upon themselves.

No, it wasn't natural causes, that was easy enough to ascertain. But suicide and mass hysteria were human weaknesses and matters of this kind were like asking the dragon to settle disputes between toddlers. He wanted none of it and so I was left to fight an enemy that for all I knew, was simply the evil in human hearts.

I think I must have wanted to cry at the sight, letting my eyes scan a million lost souls. A million stories were lost in a matter of minutes and for a split second, I became almost mad in my fear. What if the plague were to spread to my family? To my friends? What if I lost them all, as these people had? Was it eccentric of me to fear this or simply reasonable for the times?

I turned away from Vegeta as his eyes lingered too long upon me, my head facing the other way as my cheeks burned. I hated when he looked at me like that. Like he didn't hate me. Or almost, almost like he did, but was willing to put it off for a moment and simply examine me like a fat man at a buffet table.

Perhaps it was just his way, and I'd simply never taken the time to notice or even dare. I had to remind myself that Vegeta wasn't like me and never would be. Almost like he was a rare jungle cat, the kind that are so amazing to look at that for one split second, its like you lose all reasoning and are blind in your infatuation. You're drawn to them and in that very moment when you forget the danger behind the beauty, in that one instance when you let yourself be taken, they attack and God help you if you don't have the sense enough to escape.

Whatever the case, I didn't understand his foreign nature and instead of challenge it, I merely let him win this time and glanced away, willing to poison myself with visions of mass homicide and suicide. Everywhere I looked there was death and I felt myself weakening as the limp bodies became all the more gruesome to look at.

"Well, I don't know about you Kakarot," I heard his hoarse voice say, his brilliant accent lacing the words and subtly enhancing them. "But all this…. makes me want a drink."

I just stared at him in shock.

"What?" he insisted.

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Thank you for reading everyone. I'm posting this a BIT early due to the wonderful amount of reviews and kind emails I received. What amazing people you are. You've truly touched me. But there is something I must ask of you.

I'm looking for Monster fanart (seens how I have a website of my own now) and after the reaction from Dark Angel's request in this regard, I have the utmost faith in you. Also, I'm looking for daring, brave souls curious about their skills as an author and willing to submit it to the Kiss of Hell website for a blatantly honest review by either me or Bunni Girl.

Last but not least, I need you to forgive any slowness in updating on my part. I was in a terrible car wreck today, lost my car, my job and the usage of my left arm. (it will come back I assure you) Therefore, I will be slow to respond to emails and thanks for reviews. Please understand that this is not negligence on my part, simply that I will need to heal emotionally and physically from this loss. Plus, sitting in front of a computer screen, doped up on pain killers with a sling and a neck brace isn't exactly what I consider to be my highest priority.

Do NOT worry about me. I'll be perfectly fine once I can walk and think straight again. Until then, my website is being updated every day with new links, pictures of me, reviews, stories, and rants.

Love

Camaro