Dragonball Super Z
http://hometown.aol.com/juuhachigouda/dbszfic.html
By: Juuhachi-gou <juuhachigouda@aol.com> and MiraiBulma
Dragonball Z

Dead Man's Party:
Part One
"Don't Run Away"


All dressed up with nowhere to go
Walkin' with a dead man over my shoulder
Waiting for an invitation to arrive
Goin' to a party where no one's still alive

~*~

	The shadows lengthened in the April sun. The landscape for miles 
around was stark and forbidding, with only scant vegetation and no 
human habitation visible from one horizon's edge to the other. Even the 
larger saurians were absent from the area; there wasn't enough food for 
either the slow, ponderous herbivores or the fast-moving, dangerous 
predators. Nothing larger than a sand lizard called this place home. 
Today in particular, the noise and commotion from high up in the sky 
had kept the small creatures cowering in their underground burrows. It 
might have been a storm, but the sky was clear and cloudless. Another 
kind of tempest raged, one without rain or wind, with sound and fury 
far more forbidding than the worst lightning or thunder.
	High above the featureless plains hovered two figures, human-
looking, but not of this world; both had been born on a distant, long-
dead planet, many light-years away from Earth. Black hair and black 
eyes were the only common features between them, besides the brown-
furred tails each kept wrapped securely around their waists. One was 
taller, broad-shouldered, with hair that spiked out in a dozen 
different directions. The other was much smaller, hardly larger than a 
half-grown child, with fire-at-midnight hair that grew up and back like 
a bristling helm above a face set in a perpetual scowl of fury.
	The pair faced each other, unmoving for the moment, both 
breathing heavily, each taking stock of their own remaining energies 
while at the same time trying to gauge how much fight was in the other. 
Neither was completely fresh, but nor were they anywhere near the end 
of their respective resources. Nor did either seek a swift end to the 
confrontation. It was just beginning to get interesting.
	"HAAAAA~!" 
	Without any warning, Vegeta charged Gokou, who attempted to slip 
out of the way. He made it, but his tail didn't; he unlimbered it in 
order to keep his orientation in the air as he moved. In a flash Vegeta 
seized hold of the appendage in a savage, merciless grip. Gokou yelled 
in a most satisfactory manner: "ITAAAAAAII!!!!"
	"When will you learn to guard your tail, Kakarott?" Vegeta 
grinned fiercely, squeezing enough to make Gokou grimace in pain. "Pity 
you're not an Elite, like I am. And even so I know when to keep my tail 
wrapped up out of temptation's grasp. No wonder you let them relieve 
you of it; it's more a liability to you than an asset."
	For Gokou, the pain was comparable to being kicked in the groin. 
Actually, being kicked in the kintama was almost preferable--at least 
that was over fairly quickly unless your opponent kept stomping on you. 
But the tail...once someone had hold of that, the pain went on and on, 
sapping his strength, until they chose to release him.
	Gritting his teeth, he swung upwards at Vegeta's arm, hoping to 
dislodge his iron grip. Vegeta simply laughed and avoided the clumsy 
blow, delivering another torturous squeeze that made Gokou yelp like a 
kicked puppy. "Come on, Kakarott," he taunted, "surely the mightiest 
warrior ever born a low-blood Saiyajin can do better than that!"
	Another squeeze, and Gokou's arms doubled up to his chest and he 
howled. Vegeta chuckled. He was enjoying this just a little too much, 
he knew. Kakarott didn't have many exploitable weaknesses, and every 
once in a while it was helpful to remind him who was really at the top 
of the food chain. Even if this lowborn rabble had managed to achieve 
Super Saiyajin first, he still had a better, and Vegeta was it.
	*A simple miscalculation*, he told himself sternly, watching Gokou 
writhe and wondering what attack he would try next. *I should have been 
the first to achieve that level of power, not him. Kakarott's an 
upstart, just like his father was. A little humility will do him good.*
	Part of him knew better, of course. There were few creatures in 
the galaxy less proud than Son Gokou--he was about as humble as any 
warrior could be. Still, Vegeta reminded himself, the man did need to 
learn to guard that overly sensitive tail of his. If Vegeta could snag 
it in the midst of a spar, an enemy could just as easily catch hold of 
it during a real fight. True, not many adversaries would know of 
Kakarott's particular weakness, but still--
	"...ha...meeee..."
	Vegeta blinked. "Wha--?"
	"--HAAAAA!" Suddenly Gokou's hands were thrust up into Vegeta's 
face, and the world turned a brilliant blue-white. It was a weak blast, 
nowhere near full power, but it took Vegeta completely off-guard. Not 
only did he lose his hold on Gokou's tail, but the force of the blast 
drove him high into the air, then curved lazily as he still rode its 
crest, slamming him into the ground face-first. A tiny grass lizard 
who'd ventured out after a bug or two scampered clear as he struck, 
chittering and squawking back to its hole as the dust cloud rose and 
settled.
	Gokou hung in midair, gasping, as he gingerly tucked his bruised 
and throbbing tail under his sash. Vegeta was right, of course, about 
him keeping it under control--*De mo, does he have to enjoy making me 
yell so much?!*
	Vegeta pulled his head out of the ground with a snarl. "Very 
good, Kakarott," he hissed through clenched teeth, shaking clods of red 
dirt from his spiky hair. "Now let's see how fast you really are!" He 
kicked off the ground and launched himself like a bullet into the air, 
streaking right for Gokou, readying a foreblast in both his hands--
	*shk*
	"Okay, TIME OUT!!"
	*shk*
	Vegeta stopped so suddenly in his charge that he nearly 
whiplashed himself. Slowly he turned and looked for the source of the 
amplified voice, which had come from about a hundred meters away on the 
ground below.
	Gokou muttered, "Ut-oh...I think we're in trouble, Vegeta."
	Vegeta snorted. "What do you want, woman?" he sneered.
	Bulma stood with her fists planted on her lush hips, scowling up 
at him. In one hand she was holding a bright yellow bullhorn. Beside 
her stood ChiChi, arms folded, looking every bit as cross.
	Bulma raised the bullhorn again. *shk* "Do you two have ANY idea 
what TIME it is?" *shk*
	Gokou and Vegeta looked at each other, then back at the 
smoldering pair below.
	"Aaa..." Gokou finally ventured. "Did we miss breakfast?" 
	ChiChi took the bullhorn from Bulma and spoke through it. *shk* 
"AND lunch. And dinner's getting COLD. It would serve you right if I 
never fed you again, Son Gokou!" *shk* Finished, she handed the horn 
back to Bulma and folded her arms.
	Gokou gave a wail of despair more heartfelt than any of his 
earlier cries of pain. "Gomen, ChiChi!!!!" He dropped out of the sky 
immediately, landing beside his wife with a look that was one part 
heartfelt apology and three parts desperate supplication. He wrapped an 
arm around her stiff shoulders. "Don't say things like that! You're the 
best cook in the world! In the universe, ChiChi! I couldn't live 
without your cooking! I'll come home right away, okay? And--" 
Desperately he fished for some way of appeasing his seething mate. "And 
I'll stay home all day tomorrow! I won't spar once! I'll weed the 
garden and mow the grass and I'll--I'll even read a book! I promise! 
Yakusoku na!!! Pleasepleaseplease??"
	ChiChi softened a bit. "Well. All right. But before we eat you 
have to take a bath!"
	"Oh, hai! Hai! We go home right now, okay?" Hurriedly he whistled 
for the Kintouen; with ChiChi still in his arms, he hopped aboard and 
the floating golden cloud quickly whisked them both off towards home.
	Vegeta watched the scene play out with unabashed scorn on his 
face. "Amazing how any Saiyajin can be so controlled by five percent of 
his anatomy," he muttered, smirking as he drifted down to the ground.
	Bulma watched his descent with a steel-eyed glare; the moment he 
touched down, she turned on her heel and started stalking back towards 
her aircar.
	He met her there, blocking her path.
	"Out of my way," she snapped. 
	He folded his arms and returned her steady glare. He didn't 
budge.
	"Hmph!" Bulma turned and stalked around him to the other side of 
the car, clambering in from the passenger's side. She tossed the 
bullhorn into the back of the cab and started the engine with a violent 
twist of the key. With a measured hum, the car rose up off the ground. 
She slammed the throttle forward and felt the jerk of momentum as the 
gravity nullifiers kicked in. The roar of the engine filled her ears 
and she hunched down savagely over the wheel, eyes fixed on the road.
	It took her at least half a minute to realize that the landscape 
around her wasn't moving, and an additional eight and a half seconds to 
come to the conclusion that since her surroundings were static, that 
meant she wasn't going anywhere either.
	"Arghhhhh!!!" she growled, and pulled the throttle back. The car 
tilted slightly upwards, but still wouldn't move forward so much as a 
millimeter. Reverse had no effect, either. "You stupid car, what's 
wrong with you?"
	She determined she was a little less than two meters off the 
ground; she cut the hover mode and expected a sharp jolt as the vehicle 
dropped--a jolt that never came. The car sat, dead still and 
deactivated, suspended inexplicably in the air.
	Slowly Bulma took her hands off the wheel and leaned out the 
driver-side window. There was the ground, a short jump below her, and 
the shadow cast by the suspended car...and another, smaller, 
maddeningly familiar shadow drawn out long below.
	Bulma had to lean halfway out of the aircar to peek underneath 
it. Upside-down to her perspective, Vegeta smirked at her, still 
holding the car up in place with one hand.
	"Jerk!" Bulma opened the door and jumped to the ground, 
stomping away without bothering to look back. "Fine, if you want the 
car so bad, I'll walk home."
	She heard a thunderous crash behind as Vegeta tossed the 
abandoned aircar aside and it exploded in a burst of dull orange light. 
She didn't slow down or even glance back. The next moment strong arms 
wrapped around her waist, and her feet left the ground, which dropped 
away at a heart-stopping rate.
	"Put--me--DOWN!!!" Bulma roared, kicking and flailing and 
hammering at the iron bars of Vegeta's forearms with tight, tiny, 
useless fists.
	"If you insist," he murmured against her ear.
	And let go.
	"NONONONONOOOO!!" she screamed, clawing uselessly at the air as 
she fell. She didn't know how far up she was, her mind wasn't working 
clearly enough to gauge distance, but the smoke-belching ruin of the 
aircar looked like a child's toy below and she knew with terrible 
certainty that, when she hit, she wasn't going to leave a good-looking 
corpse.
	Arms around her waist again, bearing her up, and she found 
herself able to breathe once more. "Make up your mind," Vegeta 
chuckled.
	"Beast!!" Bulma pounded at his forearms as hard as she could, 
only managing to bruise her hands in the process. "First you leave me 
alone all day so you can come out here in the middle of nowhere and 
play tag with Son-kun, then you wreck my favorite car, and now you're 
tormenting me shamelessly..." She couldn't decide whether she was 
closer to laughter or to tears.
	The wind rushed past them at furious speed. Vegeta laughed again, 
a low throaty rumble that made Bulma's chest flutter, and he rubbed his 
cheek against hers with a gentle roughness. "Oh, I haven't begun 
tormenting you," he promised silkenly, "yet."
	Bulma's diminishing squeals of protest were carried away on the 
evening breeze.

~*~

	"Come on, Trunks-kun!" Goten was dancing from one foot to the 
other, looking at his best friend entreatingly.
	"No." Trunks' scowl would have done his father proud. He refused 
even to glance at Goten, but continued to obstinately sharpen his 
already razor-edged sword. "En-oh, that means no, that means no way no 
how, not ever."
	Goten whined, "But, Trunks-kun...! It's fun, hontou! And you 
won't believe how powerful--"
	Trunks dropped the whetstone and stood to face Goten. The late 
afternoon breeze stirred pale lavender strands across his intense blue 
eyes. "Goten," he said, in a voice that purred good sense and reason. 
"I appreciate what you're saying, but I simply don't care for the idea. 
It's nothing against you, or against the idea, but I just don't see any 
point in discussing this further." He tossed his sword carelessly up in 
the air. The blade spun once, flashing in the dying sunlight, and 
Trunks leaned slightly to one side without the slightest glance upward 
as it fell point-downward into the sheath across his back with a 
shrinng! of finality. He straightened up at once and brushed his bangs 
out of his eyes with an absent swipe of one hand. "Now, why don't we go 
inside and get cleaned up for dinner? I'm sure Papa and Mom will be 
home soon."
	"Will you at least think about it, Trunks-kun? Just a little?"
	Goten's eyes were as wide and pleading as a hungry puppy's. 
Trunks laughed softly and clapped Goten on the shoulder. "Okay, all 
right, I'll think about it. I don't promise that I'll change my mind, 
though. I really don't think I'd be any fonder of 'Fusion' than Papa 
is. Come on, let's go."

~*~

	The small hill behind Capsule Corporation was quiet, as always. A 
cluster of headstones dotted its grassy crest, each bearing a name that 
was all too familiar to this evening's visitor. The red light of the 
setting sun glinted off cornsilk-pale hair as the young woman knelt 
before a freshly-dug depression in the ground, set a bit apart from the 
other graves.
	Small, slender hands laid a tattered, faded denim vest with a 
hole burned through the back in the shallow excavation alongside a 
stretched and torn T-shirt that might once have been red. 
	The girl sat back on her heels and drew a small, silvery knife. 
Two flashes, and twin swatches of soft blonde hair fell into the ersatz 
grave.
	"It's all I have left of you to bury," Marron whispered. "Kaa-
san...Tou-san...I hope your souls can rest easy now, wherever you are. 
Aisuzu is dead, in our world and in this one...and Goten and Bra-chan 
and I are all still alive." She swiped the back of her dirty hand 
across her face to brush away hot tears. "They're good to us here, you 
know...as good as they know how to be, and Bra-chan and Goten are so 
happy." She tried to smile bravely. "I hope someday I can be happy here 
as well."
	She carefully covered the hole over and laid a wreath of woven 
spring buds on top of the pile of earth. She stood, dusting her hands 
off on her jeans and straightening the blue tank top she wore. She 
stood a moment longer before the small mound, her hands clasped before 
her, her eyes shut tight. When she felt herself finally under some kind 
of control, she lowered her hands, opened her eyes, took a deep breath 
and turned around.
	And froze.
	Juuhachi-gou stood at the edge of the treeline, just outside the 
small clearing. "I hope you can be happy here, too," she said quietly. 
"Please forgive me; I didn't mean to intrude."
	"It's--it's okay," Marron said softly. "I was just..." She 
faltered, uncertain of how to explain.
	But Juu nodded. "I know. I can only imagine how hard this is for 
you." She stepped forward into the small clearing. Her long pale hair, 
the exact color of Marron's own, stirred in the freshening breeze. 
"It's very hard to lose someone you love and have nothing left of them 
at all. And you, and Goten and Bra, have lost more than most people can 
imagine."
	"We'll be all right," Marron said, tossing her head so that the 
two pigtails mounted high on her head, now cropped to the level of her 
chin, danced on either side of her face. "We're survivors."
	"Yes, you are." Juuhachi-gou smiled. "That's why you're here. So 
many times you could have just given up, let go--but you didn't. Not 
ever."
	"My tou-san taught me that," Marron said, with a slight defiant 
lift of her pointed chin. "He wasn't the strongest fighter, or the 
toughest, but he was the bravest man I ever met. Besides Gokou-san, I 
mean; he's just as brave."
	"You're right." Juu looked off towards the horizon. The sun's 
fiery disk was just slipping below the horizon, and a quick flash of 
green lit the sky as it disappeared--there and gone in an eyeblink, 
leaving behind a riot of purple and rose and deep blue in its wake. 
"Kuririn--this world's Kuririn--knew he didn't stand a chance against 
Juunana-gou and me. If he'd run away, we would have let him go, 
wouldn't have bothered with him, but he didn't run. He faced us knowing 
he was going to die." She looked so sad. "I wish I could have stopped 
it. Changed it. Saved him, gotten to know him. I think I really would 
have liked him if I had."
	"You loved him," Marron answered quietly. "At least my kaa-san 
loved him. More than anything."
	Juu nodded again. "I was another person then. Not even a person; 
just a killing machine set loose on a helpless world. Both of us were. 
We had no goals or hopes or dreams or desires; we were doing what we 
had been programmed to do, nothing more."
	"What happened to him?" Marron asked suddenly.
	Juuhachi-gou looked at her, puzzled. "Kuririn? I told you, we--"
	"Not tou--not Kuririn-san. Juunana-oji-san."
	"Juunana-gou..." Juuhachi-gou looked down. 
	"Yes. You're alive, and I know he must be somewhere, too."
	Juu shook her head, not raising her eyes. "He came back just as I 
did...but he was still evil and didn't want to change. He wanted to 
make me become what he was, what I'd once been, and there was no 
turning him aside from it."
	"Did you kill him?" Not an accusation, merely a question put 
boldly forward.
	An honest question, deserving an honest answer. "No; but I 
probably would have had to--if Vegeta hadn't beaten me to it." She 
looked at the daughter of her other self, a look of mingled grief and 
shame. "I wish there'd been another way, but he had the same chance I 
did to change, and he chose not to. If only--if only he'd listened, if 
only I'd been able to talk or shout or beat some sense into him."
	"You miss him?"
	"I do. I think I miss more who he was before we became what we 
did, even though I can't remember very well what our lives were like 
before Gero turned us into cyborgs. I think--I believe he wasn't a bad 
person, just bitter and misguided. And of course, Gero's programming 
didn't improve things much. I had the chance to fight it, and overcome 
it, finally. He never did."
	"So you don't have any family left, either," Marron said quietly.
	Juuhachi-gou managed a smile. One slim small hand reached out and 
brushed a few stray silken strands from Marron's high, pale brow. "I 
have you, and you have me. That's a good place to start."
	Marron looked up at her, her heart in her eyes. The next moment 
she flung herself into Juuhachi-gou's arms. "Kaa-san..."
	Juuhachi-gou folded her into a comforting embrace. "I'm here, 
musume," she murmured, kissing the top of Marron's head. "I won't ever 
leave you. I promise."

~*~

	Videl woke from a deep sleep. With a new mother's instinct she 
knew that her daughter was crying. She yawned as she rose from the bed, 
snagging her dressing-gown in passing as she padded from the bedroom 
into the new, brightly-painted nursery.
	As she reached the doorway, she saw that the soft pink-tinted 
light above the crib was already on. A tall, lean-muscled figure held a 
tiny squirming bundle, crooning softly.
	"Gohan...?" Videl whispered. "It's my turn to feed the baby..."
	Her husband turned around and gave her a sheepish grin. "Saa, you 
were so fast asleep I didn't want to wake you. Neither did she, ne, 
Pan-chan?" he asked, smiling down at the infant cradled so tenderly in 
arms that could crush mountains.
	"I woke up anyway. Here, give her to me." She accepted Pan from 
her father's embrace and sat down in the rocking chair. "Shush, now, 
aka-chan, I know you're hungry. Kaa-san's here."
	As she nursed the baby, rocking slowly back and forth in the 
chair, Gohan wandered over and knelt beside her, watching mother and 
child, his wife and daughter, with softly shining eyes.
	"She looks like you," he ventured. "The same nose, the same 
eyes..."
	"She has your eyes," Videl corrected him gently. "And she's going 
to have that wild careless hair you keep cropped so close."
	Gohan chuckled and ran a hand through the short rumpled black 
bush atop his head. "We don't know for sure, maybe she'll have soft 
silky hair like her kaa-san." 
	"You didn't."
	Gohan shrugged a little and touched one of the tiny hands. It 
immediately curled around his finger. "It doesn't matter, ne? She's 
ours. Part of you and part of me."
	"She'll belong to no one but herself," Videl murmured, smiling. 
"She'll make her own way and live her own life. And she'll grow up in a 
world of peace and happiness."
	Gohan noticed the distant sadness in her eyes. "She'll have 
everything we didn't," he assured her.
	Videl nodded, her face still somber. "I wish Tou-san could have 
seen his grandchild. He'd be so proud of her."
	"Saa, that reminds me--I was thinking maybe we should enter the 
Budokai, ne? Get back into fighting trim?"
	"Go-han!" Videl scoffed, but she smiled a bit. "You couldn't get 
out of fighting trim if you tried. Me? No, I have to officiate the 
whole blasted thing, remember? After all, it's the first Tenkaichi 
Budokai in twenty years, and it's being held in my father's honor. I 
have to stand up in front of all those people and smile pretty for the 
camera." She shuddered a bit. "Besides, I've had my fill of fighting 
for one lifetime. I'm perfectly content to be a normal, ordinary, 
everyday housewife and mother who also happens to be a requisition 
specialist for New Hope City's reconstruction program."
	"Mm."
	"You can if you want to, though. I won't mind."
	"Ano...I'm not sure I do want to, really. I never liked fighting 
much--I only learned how because Piccolo-san taught me, because he had 
to. There's a part of me that likes fighting--that loves it, really--
but that part of me got plenty of fighting in the bad years. I'm 
enjoying being able to live in peace for a while."
	"Hmm. Well, you'd better make your mind up fast. The tournament 
starts next week, remember."
	"I know. Maybe I'll sleep on it, ne?"
	"Good idea. Speaking of sleep, I think our little one's about 
ready to drift back to dreamland." Gently Videl laid Pan over one 
shoulder, burped her properly (Gohan chuckled at the tiny sound), and 
stood up to carry her back to her crib. Videl stood there a moment, 
watching her, and when Gohan appeared quietly beside her and slipped a 
solid arm around her shoulders, she leaned against him, and he rested 
his cheek atop her head. 
	"Children are the metal piece that hold the fan together," Gohan 
whispered. "My kaa-san always says that. Without them, a marriage isn't 
really complete."
	"I know some people who would argue with that," Videl answered 
just as softly. "But not in this room, ne?"
	"Sou."

~*~

	The sky hung low, iron grey, over a mountain range far to the 
north of New Hope City. The jagged black peaks jutted brokenly above 
the horizon like the teeth of an ancient, long-dead gargantuan, tearing 
hungrily into the forbidding sky.
	A cave was crudely scooped out of one cliffside, the entrance all 
but blocked up by fallen boulders and settling debris. Deep within, far 
from any daylight, lay the shattered remains of what had once been the 
laboratory of a madman.
	A picture of the long-dead Dr. Gero could easily have been put 
beside the entry for "mad scientist" in any dictionary. The lone 
survivor of the infamous Red Ribbon Army, he had become obsessed with 
the destruction of Son Gokou--the one responsible for foiling Red 
Ribbon's plans for world domination. To that end, he had constructed a 
series of jinzouningen--humanoid robots, killing machines. Some had 
been born human, others Gero had built from scratch and had been 
completely mechanical. Of the twenty known products of his labor, only 
one--Juuhachi-gou--was currently active. All the others--including 
Juuni-gou, Dr. Gero's last monstrous creation, which was actually Dr. 
Gero's own brain in a superpowerful android body--had been destroyed.
	Or so everyone believed.
	In a subterranean level below the main floor of the ruined lab, 
in a chamber that no one living even knew existed, a row of stasis 
capsules, each fully three meters long and a meter and a half in 
circumference, stood along the rough rock wall. All were empty--save 
one.
	The sole functioning stasis chamber hummed quietly to its 
unresponsive occupant, as it had done for countless years. Juunana-gou 
and Juuhachi-gou had never known about this place, though they 
themselves had slept here in their turn, as had all of Gero's 
jinzouningen. Now only one remained, the one Gero considered his 
greatest failure, forgotten and left to sleep its undreaming sleep 
forever.
	Fate had other plans.
	Though no active volcanoes remained this far north, the mantle 
below still trembled sometimes with the restless movements of magma 
below the surface. Occasionally, a crack would appear in the soot-black 
rock and allow a trickle of the planet's molten lifeblood to ooze out, 
hissing as it touched the snow and cooled into volcanic glass. At other 
times, the pressure would build up and suddenly shift the structure of 
the surface, causing subsidences and random rockslides.
	On this particular day, in mid-spring, Gero's abandoned lab 
shivered with tremors. A landslide covered the gaping hole, sealing the 
lab completely. In the lower, secret vault, an empty stasis chamber, 
its cover hanging open, rocked on its foundation, teetered for a 
moment, then crashed over into its neighbor. Like dominoes, the 
chambers fell, crashing loudly to the floor one after another, sending 
up thick clouds of smoky dust and causing sparks to shoot from the 
flint-hard floor into the blind darkness.
	A siren began beeping blandly from the sole active chamber, 
accompanied by the flashing of a dull red light on its exterior 
console. The door cracked open with a hiss of expelled air, and a 
massive, hulking figure sat up.
	Hesitant at first, the jinzouningen got its bearings quickly and 
stepped out of the fallen capsule, righting itself. Obviously the 
capsule had been nearly too small to accommodate it; on its feet, it 
stood nearly three meters high. It glanced around in the dusty gloom, 
but saw no other activity in the chamber.
	It took less than a heartbeat for the programming to come online. 
Gero was nowhere to be found, but that meant nothing. Its purpose was 
already clear, had been clear from the first moment of its awareness. 
	Guided by vision that could see clearly even in total darkness, 
the massive shape headed for the accessway, climbing up into the 
laboratory proper. The sight of the total destruction gave it some 
pause, but not enough to deter it from its ultimate purpose. It paused 
only a moment over the decapitated, robotized form of its creator. Dr. 
Gero was dead, and any further orders or directives from him were now 
null and void.
	It had only one purpose, one meaning for its existence, and it 
would see that purpose carried out. It was the least it could do for 
its 
	(father)
	for its maker.
	The heavy slide of boulders showered out from the cliffside, the 
heaviest of them no more than a momentary hindrance to the force that 
drove them. When the entryway was clear, the last jinzouningen took one 
leap from the ledge and launched into the air, flying off towards the 
south to seek out its predetermined target.

End Chapter Twenty-One